Internet Marketing Training Opportunity: Large Companies May Apply

Every Friday at noon, our Provo Labs Academy members get together to discuss all the latest internet marketing news. I have promised to read MarketingVOX every day and to visit all the new web sites and try the new tools that affect internet marketing. Then I’ll lead a discussion about each one, we’ll talk about who is going to test the various new channels and report back on them in a subsequent meeting.

Today we discussed Turn.com‘s new CPA network, Marchex’s new PPC network that operates on 200,000 domains that they own (they claim a higher conversion rate from direct navigation traffic than from keyword searches on search engines), Amazon’s ClickRiver PPC network (in beta), Like.com‘s amazing visual search engine, which hopefully will someday accept data feeds like Froogle does (we also discussed Froogle), and finally, we turned some attention to Google’s foray into radio advertising vs. what Bid4Spots.com is already doing with a reverse auction than 2,200 stations already participate in.

It was an incredibly fun session. Every week, we’ll have a similar discussion about all the latest news. We should start podcasting it in a week or two also. This podcast will likely be a key part of the Academy for Entrepreneurs that we hope to roll out nationally, probably next year.

We signed up two new members to the Academy today, including one who has sold two very successful internet companies and is working on a very cool new idea. Having some veterans around in addition to the first time entrepreneurs provides an excellent diversity and variety of opinions. We probably still have room for about 15 more members, although there are 4 more that appear ready to sign up.

In addition to the Friday “what’s new in internet marketing” discussion, we’ll have meetings at noon on Monday (search engine training), Tuesday (email marketing), Wednesday (web site design and conversion rate). We may also have a 4 pm brainstorm session once a week and a 9 pm session occasionally.

I’ve decided that in addition to the $200-500 memberships that most of our Academy members have been signing up for, that we are going to start a new program, a Corporate Membership, that will provide one seat at all of our training and brainstorm events that can be shared by different individuals within a single company. This will cost $1,000 per month, with a 12-month commitment.

So any company that has several employees that it wants to learn internet marketing, search engine marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, subscription marketing, web design usability and conversion rate marketing, analytics, Web 2.0 technology, and mobile application development (we are sending two key employees to a major mobile app development conference this month) can rotate its staff through our weekly meetings, so that over time many employees will be exposed to powerful internet marketing tactics and a new way of thinking and looking for new opportunities.

We will probably limit this to about 10 companies, since our major emphasis at the Academy is on helping startup companies.

If you are interested email me or call Pat at 801-373-6565 on Monday to inquire.