Thursday, October 28, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Monday, February 9, 2009
5 Tips for Effective Web Marketing in a Tough Economic Climate
Let's face it; economic times are tough right now. If you run a small business you have to be concerned about where every dollar goes. Office leases, phone bills, payroll, and the cost of raw materials all seem to be on the rise with no end in sight.
As you pour over your operating budget looking for opportunities to increase efficiencies and streamline operations make sure you carefully consider your marketing budget. There are many tactics whereby you can decrease your capital expenditures while at the same time increasing your exposure and visibility in the marketplace. Opportunities abound to market your business on the Internet with minimal cost you just have to know where to look and how to exploit them properly.
You need to begin to think about your website efforts as a complete “Web Marketing Campaign” and not just a billboard that goes online and is then forgotten about for months while you hope it drives business to your door.
Every great web marketing campaign begins with a solid website that is professionally designed, effectively communicates your marketing message to both your existing and potential customers, is intuitive and usable, and can be found on the search engines. For our purposes here, we’ll assume you have just that type of website in place. Now what?
What separates a simple web presence for your business to a money-making web marketing campaign is what you do after your website is launched. The following ideas are not an exhaustive list of what you should be doing, but is instead a list of some things you may not have considered.
Tip #1 - Reach out to your customers through various social networking websites.
Find out where your customers are and meet them there. By utilizing the many social networking websites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook you can find out where your customers are and reach out to them. Keep in mind these efforts tend to start slowly and build steam. Don’t get frustrated when users don’t flock to your Twitter page in the first few weeks. Keep providing valuable information and special deals and they will come.
Tip #2 – Find effective and affordable niche advertising.
Everyone knows by now how important back links are when it comes to search engine optimization (links from other websites to your website). One great way to accomplish this is to find niche websites your customers frequent and advertise. You can usually work directly with the website management and cut very affordable advertising deals for banner ads and text ads. Look for websites that offer you advertising statistics so you can be certain you are getting your money’s worth. Text ads are highly valued for the search engine optimization benefit it derives. Look for sponsorship opportunities for websites, podcasts and blogs.
Tip #3 – Email marketing works!
Gather customer emails and use them! When a customer provides you with their email address, it is OK to use it to send them information or special offers. Always give them to ability to opt out, but don’t be afraid of email. Make sure as you are collecting emails that you let customers know you will not sell their information and you will keep it private – and then mean what you say! You’ll find effective email marketing will increase website traffic and drive business. Again, utilize a service that allows you to measure success.
Tip #4 – Exploit emerging new media.
I do not believe there is a person on the planet that has not heard of YouTube. OK, that may be an exaggeration, but you get my point. Exploit new media to advance your product line or service offerings. Get creative and make sure your product or service is understood. Video on the web has so many benefits it warrants its own discussion but I’ll try to highlight just a few. It’s visual - people are so accustomed to gathering information from video sources that it is almost second nature. It is your opportunity to tell your story uninterrupted. How often does that happen? It is a tremendous pre-sales opportunity, plus a valued post-sale support mechanism.
Tip #5 – Measure your results.
All of these affordable marketing opportunities are fantastic, but they will not be worth much if you can’t measure results. You want to focus your efforts over time on the tactics that work for your specific situation and leave behind those that do not. Implement a good log file analytical tool and learn how to read it. Better yet, implement several. Your website host provider should provide you with some form of log file analysis software through your hosting control panel. If they do not, you should find a new website hosting solution provider. In addition, implement Google Analytics. It is free but keep in mind it is user dependent and while it will give you incredible detail it may not measure all your website traffic. Above all else, find a metric to watch over time and familiarize yourself with how your data trends.
These are just a few tips that will, if exploited properly, bring business to your website. In tough economic times it is important you are leveraging all possible avenues to increase business while keeping costs under control. View these tough times as an opportunity to increase market share with creative online marketing and you will come out on top.
As you pour over your operating budget looking for opportunities to increase efficiencies and streamline operations make sure you carefully consider your marketing budget. There are many tactics whereby you can decrease your capital expenditures while at the same time increasing your exposure and visibility in the marketplace. Opportunities abound to market your business on the Internet with minimal cost you just have to know where to look and how to exploit them properly.
You need to begin to think about your website efforts as a complete “Web Marketing Campaign” and not just a billboard that goes online and is then forgotten about for months while you hope it drives business to your door.
Every great web marketing campaign begins with a solid website that is professionally designed, effectively communicates your marketing message to both your existing and potential customers, is intuitive and usable, and can be found on the search engines. For our purposes here, we’ll assume you have just that type of website in place. Now what?
What separates a simple web presence for your business to a money-making web marketing campaign is what you do after your website is launched. The following ideas are not an exhaustive list of what you should be doing, but is instead a list of some things you may not have considered.
Tip #1 - Reach out to your customers through various social networking websites.
Find out where your customers are and meet them there. By utilizing the many social networking websites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook you can find out where your customers are and reach out to them. Keep in mind these efforts tend to start slowly and build steam. Don’t get frustrated when users don’t flock to your Twitter page in the first few weeks. Keep providing valuable information and special deals and they will come.
Tip #2 – Find effective and affordable niche advertising.
Everyone knows by now how important back links are when it comes to search engine optimization (links from other websites to your website). One great way to accomplish this is to find niche websites your customers frequent and advertise. You can usually work directly with the website management and cut very affordable advertising deals for banner ads and text ads. Look for websites that offer you advertising statistics so you can be certain you are getting your money’s worth. Text ads are highly valued for the search engine optimization benefit it derives. Look for sponsorship opportunities for websites, podcasts and blogs.
Tip #3 – Email marketing works!
Gather customer emails and use them! When a customer provides you with their email address, it is OK to use it to send them information or special offers. Always give them to ability to opt out, but don’t be afraid of email. Make sure as you are collecting emails that you let customers know you will not sell their information and you will keep it private – and then mean what you say! You’ll find effective email marketing will increase website traffic and drive business. Again, utilize a service that allows you to measure success.
Tip #4 – Exploit emerging new media.
I do not believe there is a person on the planet that has not heard of YouTube. OK, that may be an exaggeration, but you get my point. Exploit new media to advance your product line or service offerings. Get creative and make sure your product or service is understood. Video on the web has so many benefits it warrants its own discussion but I’ll try to highlight just a few. It’s visual - people are so accustomed to gathering information from video sources that it is almost second nature. It is your opportunity to tell your story uninterrupted. How often does that happen? It is a tremendous pre-sales opportunity, plus a valued post-sale support mechanism.
Tip #5 – Measure your results.
All of these affordable marketing opportunities are fantastic, but they will not be worth much if you can’t measure results. You want to focus your efforts over time on the tactics that work for your specific situation and leave behind those that do not. Implement a good log file analytical tool and learn how to read it. Better yet, implement several. Your website host provider should provide you with some form of log file analysis software through your hosting control panel. If they do not, you should find a new website hosting solution provider. In addition, implement Google Analytics. It is free but keep in mind it is user dependent and while it will give you incredible detail it may not measure all your website traffic. Above all else, find a metric to watch over time and familiarize yourself with how your data trends.
These are just a few tips that will, if exploited properly, bring business to your website. In tough economic times it is important you are leveraging all possible avenues to increase business while keeping costs under control. View these tough times as an opportunity to increase market share with creative online marketing and you will come out on top.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Turn your blackberry into a scanner radio
You can turn your blackberry into a police/fire scanner radio. I have a Blackberry Curve from Verizon Wireless - with other devices your mileage may vary.
First you need to either create an audio stream off your local scanner or identify a website that contains a live scanner feed. You can set a stream up fairly easily using Winamp and Shoutcast. Basically you will feed the audio from your scanner to your computer and Winamp (running on your computer) will feed the audio to a streaming server. At CalvertNews.info we use Shoutcast - it is affordable and very reliable.
Once you have your URL for your shoutcast feed (usually an IP address) you can do many things with it - embed it on a website or listen via your Blackberry.
Next - you need to download and install mediaPlayer from dollars5 software onto your Blackberry. You can then use their radio functionality to add your Shoutcast station to the player list. It works great - you can then feed the mini-jack earphone output into the aux jack (if you are lucky enough to have one) in your car to listen to your scanner in your car!
First you need to either create an audio stream off your local scanner or identify a website that contains a live scanner feed. You can set a stream up fairly easily using Winamp and Shoutcast. Basically you will feed the audio from your scanner to your computer and Winamp (running on your computer) will feed the audio to a streaming server. At CalvertNews.info we use Shoutcast - it is affordable and very reliable.
Once you have your URL for your shoutcast feed (usually an IP address) you can do many things with it - embed it on a website or listen via your Blackberry.
Next - you need to download and install mediaPlayer from dollars5 software onto your Blackberry. You can then use their radio functionality to add your Shoutcast station to the player list. It works great - you can then feed the mini-jack earphone output into the aux jack (if you are lucky enough to have one) in your car to listen to your scanner in your car!
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Snakehead!
On a more personal note: I was fishing back in July in a local southern Maryland pond and caught this 18" snakehead frankenfish. These fish stink, but fight well.
Personalized URL's for direct mail
We've just introduced a new feature into our contentManager content management system that allows direct mail vendors to create personalized URL's from their mailing lists. Imagine sending a direct mail piece with your potential customers name as a part of your website URL. The response rate increases dramatically and you have the opportunity to collect additional marketing data.
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