Go To Market
Website Keywords Practically Useless in Google Search
2009-09-30T18:51:50ZMeta tag keywords used to keep marketers in a frenzied search for the literary silver bullet. Clients would loose sleep wondering if designers were using the best keywords to improve rankings.
Turns out Meta data in the head portion of your website is actually quite useless in terms of climbing search result listings. It is important when defining your site and HOW it gets listed, but, as far as Google is concerned, Keywords are useless. Don’t take it from me…here’s what Google has to say.
I’ll talk more about improving your search results in the future…but if you want to get started now – the number one thing you can do is make sure people are linking to you. This is also why it’s so important to promote your business on social marketing websites.
Principles of marketing 1 of 4
2009-08-03T02:39:57ZThis is the first of a four part series discussing what I consider the four basic principles of marketing. This theory is from a bird’s eye view and looks at the overall mechanism that drives fundamental marketing initiatives.
Interrupt
Consumers are not always aware of you. They have lives and could potentially live them in their entirety without ever knowing your product or service ever existed. The only way you’ll have a snowballs chance is to interrupt their lives. Interruptions can come in a variety of flavors, but we all know them as advertisements. I use the word advertisement loosely to encompass television, radio, online, print and my recent favorite – the parking lot stripe.
The interrupted consumer is now on the verge of becoming a potential customer. Joy! They’ve seen your glossy brand. Taken a few seconds out of their busy day to lift their eyes and glance at your urinal advertisement for garage scented candles. You’ve done it…but wait. They blink and stare at grout instead. What happened?
Interrupting a consumer is actually pretty easy. By some estimates consumers are assaulted with as many as 3,000 advertisements per day. Try this…build a simple a-frame sandwich board with your logo on it and stand on the 16 st. mall around noon. You’ll nail about 800 pairs of eyeballs. Done!
In the next post we’ll examine the art or engagement. This is where we actually have to use our brain.
Google Alerts can boost your online marketing efforts
2009-05-19T23:02:35Z
Google has a unique service that remains off the radar for most people. It’s called Google Alerts and is a simple yet effective way to keep track of specific keywords or topics. In many ways it can serve as an eyeglass into how well your brand has infiltrated the internet. It can also help you track competitors, key audiences, trends and keywords related to your products or services.
The service is free and easy to setup.
- Go to http://www.google.com/alerts
- Enter your search terms. Try your company or product name. You can use general terms or focus in your results by putting specific phrases or words in quotes.
- The type is pretty self explanatory. If you specifically want to know when someone Blogs about you, you can select blogs. Comprehensive is usually the best selection for starters.
- How often? Select once a day. As it happens can be useful, but may flood your inbox depending on what you are searching for.
- Enter your email address and your alerts will be delivered directly to your inbox. If you have a Gmail/Google account you can also subscribe to alerts via Google Reader. This comes in handy when you are managing multiple alerts.
Results do vary. Depending on your search terms and use of quotations, you could get very useful information. You may get a lot of junk as well. For instance, if your a Real Estate Agent and created an alert for “real estate” the data will not be very valuable to you. Alerts for “Denver real estate” may help refine those results to something a bit more meaningful.
LG sponsors local recycling program
2009-03-07T14:59:19Z9news and LG team up to sponsor a local electronics recycling program. I’m heading down to toss in my share of unwanted and outdated electronics, including my very first CRT monitor from 1993.
LG paid for all the recycling fees. I believe they estimated 30 trailers and hundreds if not thousands of people attending the event – when I went by there was a line from the highway!
What has LG gained? Other than the hundreds of on-site visitors and thousands of hits from online traffic, they have aligned themselves with an important environmental topic. Giving is good. This can only benefit their brand and ultimately, the sale of more LG electronics. Electronics that will ultimately be stashed in the back of a pick up and taken to the next recycling event in the not-so-distant future.
Put it all in Backpack!
2009-02-27T00:53:50ZI’ve been using Backpack for a while now and can’t get over how simple and powerful this tool is. Developed by 37Signals Backpack is a centralized online tack board for files, to-do’s, calendars, notes, whiteboards and reminders. Backpack is a web-based service that helps businesses and individuals get and stay organized.
Fully functional and useful for solo users, Backpack was really designed to help teams tackle large projects and stay connected. Users can create shared and private pages. Sharing to do lists and files are done with just a couple clicks. The whiteboard feature is a simple online editing tool giving multiple users the ability to edit the same document on the fly. One of Backpack’s most notable features is the ability to create to-do lists and notes directly from email. On many occasions I have emailed myself notes and to-do’s while in meetings or away from my desk. You can even email files and photos to Backpack pages.
I recently setup a 50 user intranet for a furniture dealer in Denver, CO using Backpack. My pitch to the principals was essentially showing them the how-to videos already created by 37Signals. They were impressed, and Backpack answered all of their requirements for a company intranet. We’re now seeing a lot of activity and the employees have found it to be fun and useful. Their sales managers have taken it a step further and started creating and custom pages for key audiences in order to deliver proposals, images, notes and useful links. It has become a critical tool for day-to-day activities.
37Signals has offered several different investment levels each of which give you a 30 day free trial. Very affordable and immediately engaging, Backpack comes highly recommended from Kitzmiller Design. Watch some of the instructional videos and see for your self.
iPhone apps now officially un-productive
2008-12-29T15:16:30ZIt’s official…the iphone has become a gaming console in the palm of your hand. According to AppShopper, as of today, out of the top 100 Apps available for download, not a single one is a business app. It’s all fun and games. I’m not surprised, the gaming industry is a $9.5 billion dollar coin operated machine. Marketers have taken notice and have gone as far as adding in game advertising. Did you hear about the Obama ad in XBOX 360 games? That’s a lot of voting eyeballs with the average gaming age of 29. 59% of those eyes belong to men. You probably already knew this.
I think the lesson is obvious. Look to benefit from others successes…but don’t get in the habit. You still need to be innovative and original.
Start a press release campaign…today!
2008-12-22T06:37:46ZPress releases are a great way to stir up some attention. They are easy to create and distribute, but please make it interesting. Here are some questions to ask yourself. Is it newsworthy? Did you win an award? Hire national talent or land a big account? Did your company hit an anniversary? Do you have a new technology or service that may revolutionize our mundane lives? The press is almost always desperate for intriguing content. And don’t forget to use a stirring headline. Use words like “Astounding”, “Incredible”, “Fresh”, “New”, “Dramatic”, “Impact”…you get the idea.
Get online and compile a list of emails to local news channels and industry specific publishers. Grab “editor” or “news” email addresses. Most publications have a “What’s Happening” section to follow local headlines. Get in the habit of sending a press release once a month. If you’re not generating news, what are you doing?
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Think features and benefits
2008-12-22T06:33:12ZToothpaste cleans your teeth and leaves you with minty fresh breath. Blenders liquefy foods in seconds flat saving you time in the kitchen. Our agents have more than 10 years experience – they can find your dream home while saving you time and money. These are all examples of features and benefits. If you set out to write product brochures or an online catalog, this is a great reference point to build descriptive and informative morsels that your customers can easily digest. Plus it’s a great opportunity to mention the features or benefits your competitors can’t offer.
Start by listing your products in a spreadsheet with 2 other empty columns. Column B is a feature and column C is a benefit. Start typing. Send the spreadsheet to your employees and trade partners.
You can apply these same strategies to services as well. Spend some time on this. When it’s time to market your products or services you already have the ingredients for an incredible recipe. Good luck!
A database is essential
2008-12-15T17:39:02ZEven if you have sticky notes crammed in a cluttered box drawer with some names and numbers on it, consider yourself the proud owner of a database. Highly unproductive, but a database non-the-less. More often than not small businesses don’t keep track of their customers contact information as well as they should. A letter size notepad dedicated to recording contact information is a start. Obviously there are some more sophisticated methods for doing this.
Any spreadsheet program will work and many of the standard email programs on the market today have contact management systems. You can even go high tech and use online CRM systems like Highrise or ACT. Be sure to capture quality data. As the saying goes “crap in is crap out”. In this case it couldn’t be more true. Be consistent and capture your customers vitals; name, address, email and phone numbers. Once you have an electronic database you can market to them. Emails, newsletters, promotions, referral rewards, new products and the list goes on. You will spend far less money marketing to existing customers than you would trying to get new business. We’ll talk about new business soon.
