Internet Marketing Blog
Performance Marketing and Web Business Thoughts, Tips, and Trends
by flickr.com/dnsnfr
Over the past few months we’ve written a little about the internet marketing daily junk mail you all get in your email spam folders - specifically the stuff that promises to get your website “ranked #1 in the search engines.” By blogging about that stuff, we’re trying to set things straight and help you have a more comprehensive understanding of what makes a successful web presence. Of course there’s no way we can rebuke all the misinformation out there - there’s just too much of it - but I recently had a conversation with a client (who had been duped by one of those junk emails) that reminded me to keep trying.
So, I thought of you when I was reading Mark Jackson’s recent article in Search Engine Strategies Magazine, titled “3 Keys to a Successful Web Presence.” It’s a well written “in-a-nutshell” explanation of the important factors of creating and promoting a website. Chock full of real world analogies, the article states that the 3 keys are: >> Continue reading
Jun
80% of Americans Use the Internet, but Only 44% of Small Businesses Have Websites
Posted by: Jeremy Reither
by flickr.com/khym54
The vast majority of American customers are online, so why do so few of the businesses that serve them have any internet presence at all? Lots of consumers; relatively little competition among businesses. If that doesn’t spell opportunity for you SMB’s - especially those serving local markets - I don’t know what does.
According to Pew Research, 80% of American adults use the internet, but they’re unable to find most of the small and medium sized businesses (SMB’s) whose products and services they seek - because most of them don’t have a website. What’s funny is that business owners themselves use the internet at an even higher rate than the average American. Earlier this year MediaPost reported that 82% of business owners use search engines, but still relatively few of them actually have their own business website. These business owners - when wearing their consumer hat - clearly see the benefit of the internet, but for whatever reason have decided not to invest in their business’ internet presence…leaving the lion’s share of consumers to their online competitors.
If you’re a small or medium sized business owner, the writing is on the wall. Percentage wise, there are nearly twice as many consumers online as there are businesses serving them. The opportunity for SMB’s to reach new audiences online is too great to ignore - yet somehow some businesses are doing just that.
One of Google’s newest free products - available to the public soon - is Google Voice, which builds off of the GrandCentral Virtual PBX product they acquired last year. The voice service is currently only available by invitation only and for users that previously were customers of GrandCentral, but it is hoped that it will be more widely released in the near future.
There are many short videos showing how Google Voice works with your phones, and from what I can see Google has done it yet again. They have successfully provided calling features that go above and beyond making a simple phone call while simultaneously creating features that I never knew I needed, but instantly want.
The Google phone number isn’t actually attached to a specific phone, instead you decide which of your existing phones (work, home, cell, etc.) will ring after someone calls your Google number. You can designate which phone rings based on the group they belong to or on an individual basis, and there are a wide variety of other features once the call has been connected.
Some of the key features that will be offered with Google Voice are: >> Continue reading
Jun
by flickr.com/stevedepino
Yes, there are quite a few people who haven’t quite bought into the idea that a website can be a good source of leads for their service business. And even those who believe that although there are customers to be found online are not fully convinced that the lead quality (how well they convert, compared to traditional lead sources) justifies the effort.
But I’m here to tell you the same types of people who get referred to you through your friend or cousin are also searching online for your services online, and can become valuable leads for your business. You just need to know how to attract those those customers to your website, and how to convert them from a ‘visitor’ into a lead!
According to my own anecdotal research, these are the 3 most common concerns that small business owners have with regard to generating leads through their website - followed by my quick rebuttals: >> Continue reading
by flickr.com/23905174@N00
We have repeatedly discussed our experiences with email marketing providers VerticalResponse and Constant Contact, but those two leading providers aren’t the only players in the low price point - there are other popular providers worth checking out as well. And if price is a primary concern of yours, there are several more affordable options.
Some of the top competitors in the do-it-yourself email marketing space include Campaigner, iContact, and MailChimp. While each provider has their own unique offerings, we’ll just show a brief comparison of their basic pricing models to see how many emails you can get for your buck.
Most providers determine their pricing by mailing list size rather than by the number of emails you anticipate sending each month. This means you could send multiple emails to the same contact list each month, for the same monthly price. This table assumes 2,500 contacts or emails a month:
by flickr.com/sookie
Well, we’re not quite half way through 2009, and already it’s been a year of game changers for internet marketing. If you thought you hadn’t seen any good new ways to do business online lately, take a look at some of the newest players.
Microsoft released its new search engine (Bing) that experts are touting as a potential rival to Google’s search dominance; Twitter continues to be debated by the public, but embraced by businesses and marketers; and just last week Google itself announced the private launch of its apparently revolutionary online communication tool called Wave.
Add to this all the host of other popular “social media marketing” tools - like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, and oh yeah, don’t forget blogs - and you can see that long gone are the days of “if you build it they will come.” The game has been changing constantly since the internet became a legitimate avenue for marketing - and 2009 will be no different.
And yes, all of those sites named above can be effectively used to market your business. Want to learn more? Check out some of our most recent blog posts, or drop a line any time.
Jun
Create More Professional Looking Customer Surveys Easily with Constant Contact
Posted by: Carolyn Young
by flickr.com/dashka
We recently evaluated the pricing of the survey offered by email marketing providers VerticalResponse and Constant Contact - and now, after doing a trial of both products, we have found that the customization options in Constant Contact’s ListenUp! survey product are far superior to those of VerticalResponse. Want to poll your clients, but want to make sure the survey reflects your brand? Constant Contact makes that easy - and goes above and beyond with available formatting options.
Both VR and CC provide the ability to create a survey from scratch or work from existing templates that have pre-written questions you can edit. If your survey questions are pretty standard or if you just don’t have a need for much design customization, then the provided templates from either service are a fine starting point.
But if you prefer to create your survey from scratch or need to create a more stylized and visually engaging survey that reflects the design of your website, for example, then we recommend Constant Contact’s Survey product. The formatting options Constant Contact offers for their survey product blow VerticalResponse out of the water.
Jun
Don’t Google it, Bing it: Microsoft May Be Changing the Game of Online Marketing
Posted by: Jeremy Reither
Google may be the 800 pound gorilla in the search market right now, but there’s a new prodigy in town. The current king of all search engines handles about a quarter billion searches per day, and for the vast majority of those, it does its job well: it delivers relevant search results, quickly, and in a intuitive layout, but that hasn’t kept Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask and others from trying to do some or all of those things better. That’s as clear as ever since Microsoft rolled out what looks to be a real contender in the search space…called Bing. If early reports are any indication, this could mean significant strategic changes (and opportunities) for business marketing themselves online.
Nobody is suggesting that anyone is going to knock Google off its throne any time soon - it’s got to knock Yahoo out of the #2 spot first. Uh, wait, it already did…for a day. Since Bing is replacing Microsoft’s previous search engine (Live), it’s not exactly starting from scratch. Live’s 7% share of the search market is now Bing’s, which gives Bing a bit of a running start. Add to that all the fanfare surrounding Bing’s launch, and it actually surpassed Yahoo to take over the #2 spot for a day earlier this month.
So, why should you care?
For years businesses marketing themselves online have really only focused on “the rule of Google.” In other words, when you built a new website, you did it with Google’s guidelines in mind. Yahoo and MSN - afterthoughts. When you launched a new pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaign, you did it on Google’s AdWords system first. Yahoo and MSN - maybe later. A true challenger to Google would change the way businesses are marketed online. It would add complexity, as search engine marketers try to abide by the guidelines of two major search engines; and it could also create opportunity for those looking to launch more cost effective PPC campaigns.
The big “if” is about whether Bing can live up to the hype. Microsoft, despite its deep pockets, has a history of hits and misses. But early reports indicate that it may have a winner with Bing. And well, just like Google, you can use Bing as a verb, too.
May
Blown Away: Google’s New ‘Wave’ Tool May Just Revolutionize Online Communication
Posted by: Jeremy Reither
On Wednesday Google announced a new product they’re planning to launch later this year - called Wave - which they sort of implied has the ability to replace email as the most dominant form of communication on the internet. Let me repeat that - they think that with this new tool they can make email a thing of the past. And based on their 80 minute technical video demo (below), I honestly think they might be able to pull that off - that’s how amazing Wave looks.
Try to imagine a communication tool that is like Email, but allows instantaneous conversations like instant messenger (IM), and more detailed document collaboration than Google Docs. Imagine that this tool integrates with Twitter, your blog, Google maps, and more - and that’s just the stuff Google is including in the plain version. Wave is going to be “open source” software, which means non-Google engineers will have access to the code, and will be able to create their own features, including wiki’s, private label versions, games, and an infinite number of other add-ons to share with other users. >> Continue reading
May
Customer support is a major consideration when deciding on most “mission critical” services for your business, and the same should be true when choosing your web hosting provider. Makes sure your hosting provider offers 24/7 technical support, and you will save yourself some real headach (and revenue) if/when you need to call them. Want recommendations? BlueHost.com, and HostGator.com, DreamHost.com - they are all popular hosting companies, and they’re all known for their excellent customer support.
If you’re not “hands-on” in your website development, you may not think much about the level of support offered by your hosting company, but don’t assume that your web designers have already thought about this critical element. It’s worth double-checking which hosting provider is being used for your business website. Because when your website goes down, and you need support, that is not the time you want to find out your hosting company has limited business hours.
Here are some of the support features that these above hosting providers offer their customers:
>> Continue reading
