Archive for February, 2008
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…
February 28 2008 | Internet Marketing and Marketing and SEO | 4 Comments »
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!
February 25 2008 | Business Building and General Business Issues and Pay Per Click Advertising and Social Networking | 1 Comment »
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!
February 22 2008 | Ethics and General Business Issues | 3 Comments »
Quality Score is HUGE for every PPC marketer. The better your QS, the higher placement you get, and Cheaper your clicks cost! When I first got my start in PPC I was able to reduce CPC for my employer by 50% after going to an educational session for Campaign Structure optimization. More and more recently I have been seeing changes in the ease of getting Good and Great QS for new campaigns by starting off broad. I have some old (real old) Clients that have 100′s of key words in one adroup with 90% great score and 10% good QS and minimum bid as low as $0.01. These days I have noticed proper structure from the start is even more needed to get and keep QS that is good and great from the start. Following this out line HERE is great to get and keep QS of good and great from the start and on. However, with some of my Geo targeted clients even with absurdly structured campaigns they still can get some poor and okay QS. Which takes a bit more work with the other variables in the AdWords Process. I found with these getting the Click Through Rate up as quickly as posable will get the QS up the quickest. I suggest using the link above as a reference in all new campaign and adgroup creation to keep your Quality Score as high as possible. If you have any great tips on this topic Please Let us know! Noah @ LookToTheRight.com
February 19 2008 | Pay Per Click Advertising | 2 Comments »
I must say I am a bit behind with this keyword tool. An SEO pro friend of mine mentioned that he used
Spyfu.com a lot. And asked if I had used it at all. Of course as a PPC pro I said I had definitely heard of it but wasn’t very familiar. I have known about and used KeyCompete before. However I have grown to like and appreciate SpyFu. Spy Fu is an online tool with limited free information and expansive information with a paid for version. Spy Fu lets you get a great glimpse at which keywords your competitors are targeting and using in their ad campaign. The estimates are pretty close to accurate. My SEO pro friend was curious as to how accurate their estimates were on Ad Spend. After using Spy Fu to analyze my own clients it seemed to be about 20% low on their estimates. This was for a handful of clients across various industries. Pretty good indicator. For all of us setting up and managing AdWords marketing campaigns and other PPC efforts, Spyfu.com should definitely become a resource in setup and ongoing PPC management!
February 13 2008 | Marketing | No Comments »
If you are time crunched like I am, it’s hard to sit down and read through WIRED. Although WIRED is all that…totally awesome…yada…yada in the opinion of the masses, I really like the five magazines ( Search Marketing Standard Magazine, Website Magazine, Revenue Magazine, Response Magazine and Target Marketing Magazine ) listed below because they are all about 50 to 75 pages or so each, easy to digest, cover multiple areas and are perfect for the 2008 time crunched seo/tech/marketing enthusiasts.
Click on the image to visit the websites and enjoy…
February 11 2008 | Marketing and Resources | 2 Comments »
We close out each week with our “Who Said That?,†where we give some link love to bloggers who have really captured our attention with their inspiring and thought provoking posts.
Let’s get started!
How Design Effects Your Website Visitors
This post, from the Small Farm Design blog, has several good points about the design of your website and how that design effects your visitors.
How to increase your internet connection speed
This post, from Trevor at Fakefall dot com, walks you through decreasing your XP reserve bandwidth to hopefully give you more bandwidth for your usage. Trevor’s tagline is:
From the mind of a 13 year old dot com kid
With starting at the age of 13, Trevor might just be one of those 20 year old millionaires we hear about in a few years.
Best Self-Employment Business Opportunities: 2008 Predictions Series
This post, from the U Turn Ahead blog, talks about the Top Ten Opportunities in 2008 for Personal Businesses. You might want to check to see if your business falls into one of these categories.
That wraps it up for this week. Here’s to you all having a great next week!
**who**
February 08 2008 | Who Said That? | 1 Comment »
This is part of a series that I am doing weekly on Favorite FREE SEO Tools. 
I encourage comments on the tools that are featured each week.
Please comment as follows:
1) Comment on the Tool that is featured.
2) Mention a similar Tool that you use that you like just as good or better.
3) Please do not simply link to Aaron Wall’s SEO Tools Page (just an example) and say, Check out all these FREE SEO Tools by Aaron Wall.
I hope you don’t mind me setting up the simple 3 step guideline above to keep the comments focused on just the tool being mentioned or other very similar tools.
Quintura is the featured tool this week. With this tool, you can find like keywords and dig, dig, dig even deeper.
Here’s a screen shot using the word “Real Estate” as the search phrase.
Notice the words surrounding “Real Estate:”Agent, Company, Services, Brokers, Listings, Commercial, etc. In other words, the tool is suggesting “Real Estate Agent,” “Real Estate Company,” etc. Notice what happens when I click on Company…the words change. Also, notice that the word “Mortgage” shows up:
Mortgage has to do with “Real Estate.” Then, notice below what happens when I click on “Mortgage.”
Can you see how Quintura can help you expand your keyword horizons?
February 06 2008 | Marketing and SEO | 5 Comments »
Did you know that you can advertise on Stumble Upon for .05 per click?
It’s easy to get started if you already have a Stumble Upon Account. You can simply click on Create Campaign, Choose a Category, Put in your URL and Ad Funds…You’re Done!
What about Bidvertiser? Have you ever used it? Like Stumble Upon Ads, it’s easy. It only takes a few simple steps. You should try it out if you are looking for an alternative form of internet advertising.
Traffic Help:Â I’m open to comments on how to drive traffic to The Open Door over the next 2 weeks. Any suggestions?
February 04 2008 | Internet Marketing and Pay Per Click Advertising | 7 Comments »
We close out each week with our Who Said That?, where we give some link love to bloggers who have really captured our attention with their inspiring and thought provoking posts.
Let’s get started!
Getting Things Done (GTD) with Mindmaps
I have been listening to the Internet Business Mastery podcast for the past month and thought I would add a link to one of their posts this week. I have listened to several “Internet Marketing” podcasts and I have only found one that I would recommend and this is it. They have good content and they present it well.
The above post talks about using mind mapping software to get things done. The software allows you to quickly and easily get ideas about a project recorded.
Standard Metrics Revisited: #4: Time on Page & Time on Site
I found the above article to have a lot of details about “Time on Page ” and “Time on Site”. If you want to know how these metrics are created read the post.
Three Digital Business Models That Could Rock Your World
In this post Steve Rubel talks about three new digital business models might take hold over the next four to five years. If you haven’t started thinking about what could come to past in the next few years check out his article.
**who**
February 01 2008 | Who Said That? | No Comments »
