Billboards and high-priced marketing

Billboards are certainly attractive, but they are also very expensive. Most small businesses simply do not have the resources to advertise in this way. Additionally, a 30-second spot on a prime-time television show often costs tens of thousands of dollars. This leaves the platform firmly in the hands of the big businesses and corporations.

Traditional indexing services

The Yellow Pages is mostly only profitable for local businesses such as restaurants and services these days. If you are looking for a doctor, a lawyer, a notary or even a pizza place in your area, then the telephone directory may be a good place to find what you need. But the truth is, that most people do not want to pick up the phone and talk to anyone. It takes time that they don’t have, and they would probably rather check to see if the company they want has a website and whether goods or services can be ordered with a credit card. Add to this the fact that you can now look up data like this instantly on your iPhones and then click a button to order what you want, and you can see why the Yellow Pages is behind the times.

Offline marketing outdated compared to online

Online marketing opens up so many more avenues for small businesses to succeed. It is extremely inexpensive to purchase a domain for your business and set up a basic website that describes your services and gives contact information. Additionally, for a relatively small budget, you can hire professional web designers and SEO or PPC firms to optimize your website for the Internet and make your goods and services completely accessible online.

By hiring a professional firm to prepare your website for the Internet, you will undoubtedly end up with more conversions to your product as your text will be keyword-optimized, propelling you to the top of the Google ranking page. Therefore, when people search on the Internet for a local business that offers your service, you will be among the top ranking sites and will obtain brand new clients in this way.

When you are selecting a company to redesign and prepare your website for effective Internet marketing, you should select a provider that is comfortable with not only basic SEO principles, but one that can also use social media such as Facebook, Youtube and Twitter to generate buzz and interest around your product. The best way to market goods and services is to create word-of-mouth interest around your topic.

Offline marketing is outdated because it simply cannot compete with the speed and efficiency of the Internet.

Split testing design elements

Also known as multivariate testing, split testing design elements are those which you implement in your website to determine how one or more components of your website will do in a live environment. When a website or service over the Internet is initially set up, users may be invited to test drive certain variations of a component or feature to determine which of the two (or more) are easier and friendlier to use. Keep in mind though, that the more options you provide at this early testing stage, the less likely you are to generate data, because users do not like to spend too much time testing these features.

This process can be compared to the ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ versions of a lot of software available. It is at these two stages where major design and implementation stages are still possible based on user feedback.

Site design and maximum user friendliness

There are a number of ways to assure that your website is as user friendly as possible. Some of the following are among the best design and user experience improvement methods:

Easy navigation— Ultimately, menus that make sense are the key to easy navigation. A reader should never have to guess at where a menu item will take them when they click. The link should indicate from the outset what the click will result in. This is also great for SEO purposes, as often the menu items will be relevant keywords to the topic of the website.

Appropriate text in links— Links should be a call to action for the user. Hyperlinks should be placed on the verb phrase logically and always tell the user where they will end up where they click.

CSS tips and tricks— Cascading Style Sheets are often used in websites to achieve effects which are not available in simple HTML. Some of the best examples of this are hover effects for mousing over items. This will allow you to reveal information to support your concept and will have the added bonus of containing relevant keywords in the code of your website.

Flash and JavaScript— Although Flash and JavaScript have come a long way, they are still not as efficient as HTML or CSS, primarily because it is difficult to embed proper keywords into these elements. They are often image-based or code-based. Added to this is the fact that many users may have compatibility issues, or outright turn off Flash and JavaScript based elements for privacy or security concerns.

When you extensively test your site before letting it go live, you can expect to get a lot of user feedback. This is the best way to facilitate website design & user experience improvement.

BEGIN WITH TRUST

Just like any relationship, the principle foundation must be built on trusting the other partner. In this case, before you select the marketing agency you work with; make sure you trust that their work, their image and their style fit your brand best. Case in point; if you have a company which produces products designed for a younger demographic, selecting a marketing agency that specializes in promoting products to the elderly might not be a wise decision. If you are working with a marketing agency that has a reputation for high-risk tactics and you are ultra-conservative in business practices, this match simply won’t jive.

When you begin the relationship between yourself and your marketing agency, it has to begin with you trusting that they are a perfect match for you and your brand. Conversely, they need to trust that you are going to commit the funding and the time needed to carefully craft and activate an effective marketing campaign.

PATIENCE IS KEY

Did you know that it took Marketing Agency who created the “I want to teach the world to sing” campaign for Coke over two years to develop and activate this highly successful campaign of the 1970’s? Marketing programs take time, and another big mistake business owners and executives make in regards to marketing agencies is they don’t realize how much time it takes to create the right campaign. You can’t expect to spend some money today and get your Return on Investment (ROI) tomorrow. Where other business owners and executives really fail is when they continuously hassle the marketing agency to produce results TODAY.

The only that this accomplishes is that it develops friction between you and the agency. Yes this is your money and you should expect results. However, you must be patient when expecting great ROI results. Perhaps a weekly conference call, or weekly email report can be arranged so that the agency can update you on your company’s SEO campaign. It would also be wise to develop benchmarks and milestones so that the agency knows exactly what you expect and when you expect it. This is part of the trust factor and is critical to creating a successful, long-term marketing partnership.

CREATE SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

When you are working with your agency, it is always a great idea to start with comfortable guidelines and parameters. A good example of this is at the initial stages of contract negotiation. If the agency charges you a monthly retainer, ask specifically what you are receiving for this retainer, how many hours of work per day, how many consultations you expect to receive, and when you can start to expect results.

In short, most company executives head into a marketing partnership with skeptical thoughts and visions of wasting their money on a marketing campaign. But if you maintain open communication, have faith and trust in your marketing partner and understand that ROI improvement won’t happen the day after signing the contract, then you should be able to create a synergistic marketing partnership which will produce great success.

Even though social media has been active for the past decade, several businesses have not captured the concept on how social media has completely changed the way companies do business. One of the important ideas to comprehend about how social media impacts modern business is that social media is not a flash in the pan. Like it or not, social media is not only here to stay, but is poised to grow and evolve into the primary source of communication within the next few years.

Social Media comes in all shapes, sizes, and applications. Everywhere you turn, there is a new app for ‘that’, or people are ‘tweeting’ about a cool sale from their favorite retailer. However, the biggest area Social Media has impacted businesses is how they communicate with their consumer base.

Customers today want information quickly and the successful business accomplishes this feat by using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other media applications such as Smart Phone Apps and some Customer Relationship Management programs which are available to companies to constantly update their customers and keep them happy.

There are two very simple ways the modern business can engage in social media activity with very little cost:

Begin a Blog

Interaction with your customers is highly crucial to developing a solid social media campaign. And creating a well-developed blog is one of the easiest and cost effective ways to communicate with your customers. A blog attached to your company website allows you to update your customers on new products, special sales and incentives and news coming from your company. It gives your company a voice, an opportunity to explore and discuss business and social topics relevant to your business. Customers enjoy seeing this as it shows your company is not just a huge corporate identity, but you are people too; just like your customers.

Activate a Facebook or Twitter Account

Once you developed your blog, you’ll need a successful way of sharing this information on your website in a social setting. This can easily be accomplished with a Facebook and Twitter page. With over 2 Billion shoppers and consumers worldwide currently using Social Media applications like Facebook and Twitter daily, why wouldn’t you want to engage in this avenue? Facebook and Twitter pages are free to create. You can create advertisements targeted to specific markets for pennies on the dollar. Plus, once again, it engages communication between your company and your customer base.

Social Media is here to stay. And with more pages coming, more apps being developed and more companies evolving to the constant changes in the social media environment, the wise choice would be to embrace these changes. In order to survive in the modern business world, you should explore every option you have to maximize the social media communication you need to have with your important customers.

Myth: SEO is a quick solution to gain rankings

Truth: Proper SEO Management is a process which is always ongoing and involves a tremendous amount of work to maintain your keyword ranking. So you need to keep the SEO Program always evolving in order to reach proper ranking.

Myth: Flash Websites = Bad SEO

Truth: Flash is only bad when your designer lacks knowledge about proper optimization of the site. As long as there is relevant, good content on the site, it will help SEO rankings.

Myth: SEO is all about link building

Truth: Spamming a link to your site on every forum you can get your virtual hands on will not resultin a successful SEO campaign. You also have to add new content, optimize you own links for proper search terms and include several key phrases in the content in order to maximize SEO Success.

Myth: Your Page Rank is what determines SEO Success

Truth: Page Rank is only one of the several factors that search engines like Google use when they rank your website. Although page ranking is a key factor in measuring an SEO program’s success, it is by no means the only way to gauge whether your SEO platform is working.

Myth: All you need to do to rank high for a key search term in Google is submit your site for indexing

Truth: Manually submitting your site for indexing is not necessary. What is necessary is good, relevant content, a good off-site SEO campaign, and on-page optimization. SEO isn’t exactly a “if you build it, they will come” type of an activity.

Myth: Pay per Clicks Hurt your SEO Ranking

Truth: I’ve heard this more than a few times. PPC or Pay Per Click (aka Search Engine Marketing/Advertising) has no negative effect on ranking a page higher. Ever notice what pages are always on top? Well-funded advertised pages are always on the top of your listing in for a given search term. They may also hold the top spot for the organic (or non-paid) results. Google is not in the business to hurt their customer ranking, so this myth is flat our false.

Myth: Great Content will provide you with high rankings

Truth: As much as every professional writer would like you to believe this, it simply is not true. Quality content is very important in selling your message to your readers, but it certainly is not what builds ranking of your website. Your site needs to be optimized so that it correctly communicates with search engines. Don’t get me wrong, good, unique content will certainly get you credit, but only incomplete marketing campaigns and SEO strategies concentrate solely on content.

Myth: Google is the Only Search Engine that Matters

Truth: Let’s be honest, Google is the king of search engines but it certainly is not the only one on the block. A great SEO consultant understands how to market for multiple Search Engines on the market.

Myth: Meta-Tags give you good SEO. Nothing else is required.

Truth: Meta Tags are secondary in today’s search engines. Complex algorithms analyze the actual on-page (and off-page) tactics and content your site employs and determines its rankings. Google, for example utilizes in excess of 200 points of measure. Meta tags are only a few of that 200+.

Myth: The best length of SEO Content is no more than 250 Words

Truth: According to the previous statements from Google in regards to SEO, there is no certified length of copy which is deemed as being effective over than the other. The appropriate key is making sure that the keyword density is appropriate to the length of the article. And most importantly, the content must be unique, high-quality, and 100% readable. Google, and other search engines, know how to spot content which was written purely to manipulate a site’s rankings in search engine results pages.

There was a time when most businesses would set aside money to advertise on the local phone company Yellow Pages. However, with the constant changes in home telephone service, the advent of social media and instant access of phone numbers posted on the internet, it has become pretty much obsolete to spend your marketing and advertising dollars on Yellow Page advertising.

Here are a few facts to consider which help prove this point:

• Since 2007 over 15 US States have completely quit posting residential phone listings (or White Pages) in their phone books. The main reason for this is the increasingly high number of phone services being cancelled at home.
• People are using their cell phones more often for their entire telecommunication needs, therefore there is no need for a land-line in many households. This is evident by a cancellation rate of over 10% each year in the United States.
• Consumers are starting to consider online purchases as opposed to shopping at local stores. Ask any local merchant, and they’ll tell you their number one competitor is no longer the guy down the street, it has become the online marketing place. And since online advertisements are not generally posted in the Yellow Book, it has become a waste of money for many business owners to use this outlet of advertising any longer.
• Most students are no longer taught how to use the Yellow Pages in most elementary schools any longer. It used to be standard practice in either English or Math classes to teach how to properly use the phone book to look up phone numbers. Ask your typical 10-year old child how to use the Yellow Pages today to find out how true this statement is.
• Search Engines have made Yellow Pages obsolete. There was a time when people had to look up information on the Yellow Book in order to provide them the info they needed. But with pretty much every business listing posted online, the Yellow Book has become more of a door stopper than an effective advertising platform.
• Value of Advertising on Yellow Book has significantly decreased. Most vendors and companies find that advertising on blogs or websites are much cheaper and provide direct access to their business online than does Yellow Book Advertising. Plus the rates the Yellow Book charges for adverts have been steadily increasing and not decreasing due to demand.

Times have changed and even though the Yellow Book was once the premium form of advertising for any business in your home town, people just don’t use them any longer. The phone companies are starting to realize this and in several countries and states, simply no longer produce a phone book. And if they produce them, they certainly are no longer distributing them to consumers as frequently as they once were. For businesses looking to get the best bang for their buck in advertising, Yellow Book advertising is simply no longer a practical method.

Here are a few of our favorites from over the years:

“You need to put an emphasis in more Advertising, Get your Logo In front of Customers and they will choose you over the competition”

Not so fast there genius. In this simple statement you’ve got three of the best marketing lies every told.

First being you need that you need to put more emphasis on more advertising. This is simply not true. For most small businesses simply advertising their company is not effective use of their marketing dollar. They are often told this lie by – get ready for it – advertising consultants who make commissions by selling advertising space in print or online avenues. Yellow Pages comes to mind.

The next one, “Get your Logo in front of Customers” is also flat out bologna. People today don’t care about your logo, or your brand identification. They want to know what you can offer them. Why is your product good and worth their consumer dollar? Plus, how can you effectively track how successful putting your logo in front of a pair of eyes equates to profits for your company? Simply put, you can’t. So there is lie number two.

The final one, “And they’ll choose you over the competition” is the biggest lie of them all. This philosophy is called Image or Brand Identification Marketing. In order to be effective it takes YEARS and millions of dollars to show any true results. And most small businesses don’t have that type of marketing budget or time to wait for these marketing lies to generate success.