When the Yellow Pages (Phone Book) charges a business hundreds if not thousands per month to run a 12 month ad that the business is locked in to, do they guarantee in writing a certain ROI? I don’t think so.

What about Direct Mail through something like Money Mailer that usually costs about $500 for 10,000 addresses. Again, I don’t think so.

What about a newspaper ad that may cost $500, $1,000, $2,000 or more for 1 ad depending on the city and the size of the ad. Again, I say… I don’t think so.

So what’s up with people concerning Internet Marketing? Is there a guarantee that the phone will ring from it? No, it’s marketing. It’s advertising. There are lots and lots of variables…consistency…budget…the client…etc.

Marketing and advertising should give a higher ROI than the investment, but that is not always the case. In our Internet Marketing Business, the clients who get the biggest ROI are the ones that let us do what we were hired to do and trust our expertise in the field. These clients are usually very happy. The clients who are not happy are the controlling ones that often expect next day results. O.K., realistically not next day just the day after.

Two simple case studies…Both in the same field but one targets men and the other targets women. That’s why we worked with both at the same time.

Client 1: Knows exactly what the business is about
Client 2: Doesn’t have a clear business focus

Client 1: Approves our work fast
Client 2: Continuously revises copy

Client 1: Has a phone number that rings to a live person during business hours
Client 2: Phone number is a cell phone that doesn’t get reception at their office

I could go on and on. Needless to say,client # 2 decided that since their phone wasn’t ringing from the internet that they’d no longer use our services. We think it’s best if they find another marketing company.

Share your thoughts below…

At times us marketing managers and business owners can get pretty overly unbalanced in our focus of getting more leads and calls in our pursuits. High touch customer service is huge! It will make or break a business. Great customer service will lead to word of mouth business not just eCommerce efforts. “Word of mouth is the most powerful means by which any product or company builds a reputation, and the internet is a medium made for word of mouth.”-Bill Gates Business At The Speed of Thought. This becomes more and more precedent as social networks grow and social network marketing grows. We all have our favorite brands, vendors, and stores we love to frequent and those we don’t. Most times the likes and dislikes hinge on the basis of the quality of there customer service. For all companies that take calls from customers and potential customers need to be highly aware of what kind of conversations are taking place. A high majority of calls will be the basis of impressions made about your web business. How may rings before someone picks up? Is the person warm and receptive? How many times is the call transfered? How long are your hold times? Are the reps knowledgeable? Are the internal reps sales focused? If you are concerned with conversions your phone reps are a huge key to this. A sales focused (or one with incentive(aka Commissioned)) rep will greatly increase over phone sales and sales on the web after those customers hang up. I see this as a big hang-up with a lot of business in the transition to doing more and more business generated from the internet. So make sure you get it right in your organization so your business doesn’t get Hung-up On!

SPAM is down right annoying. I have one e-mail address that 95%+ of the messages are JUNK. It blows my mind.

What good is the CAN-SPAM Act doing? Part of the Act prohibits deceptive subject lines. Don’t you just love that one?

I recently decided to open one of the many Pay Pal SPAM e-mails that I get almost weekly and looked at the URL. What a surprise…it wasn’t actually from Pay Pal.

One of our clients called today to talk about SPAM…especially going to his employee’s BlackBerry’s. Fred gave him some advice and tightened up the SPAM filter on his e-mail, but the scary part is what if the good e-mails get dumped in to the SPAM side of the mix?

This blog gets plenty of SPAM comments that never get displayed. It’s amazing all the CRAP that is circulating online in the form of SPAM.

What are you doing to control SPAM in your internet world?

I still think that I’d rather deal with online SPAM than to eat canned SPAM. Have you ever tried eating that stuff? Oops… I changed the subject of this post, but I couldn’t resist. I don’t even know what’s in canned SPAM. It’s scary to even think about it. Have a GREAT weekend!