Online Marketing Basics

Most small business owners will tell you that they get the Online Marketing basics when it comes to Social Media. They know they need a Facebook. They hear that Twitter is a good idea. "Fans" can "follow" and "like." And most of them will tell you that this is a good way to market their businesses online to their clients.

But what about LinkedIn? Isn't that just for job searchers? Or just a way to connect with people who might have access to a new job at a company you'd like to be at?

Wrong.

In an interview with Business Insider, Krista Canfield tells individuals and Small Business owners how to get the most out of their profiles, driving traffic your websites.

A few of her key points:

1. LinkedIn Today is a new daily digest of news and information that people are sharing on Linkedin.  This online pub allows you to look easily keep track of what is going on in your industry, or industries that you are interested in (like Advertising ideas for Small Businesses!)

2. Business Page customization options are becoming more and more robust. Not only can you post jobs about your company, but add photos and logos to give your profile a branded look and feel.  Your fans can also follow you on LinkedIn now as well (follow us here!)

3. Customize your LinkedIn URL to provide optimization. The provides relevance to the Search Engines, enabling you to come up in the results, and becoming more visible to your potential clients

To catch the rest of the points, take a look at the full article!

Many people don’t realize it, but staying organized can be one of the keys to your small business success. For instance, let’s look at your personal file storage. Do you keep team files on your hard drive? If so, I’m sure it takes up a lot of space, slows your computer down, and can only be accessed by one person – quite an inconvenience. One way to address this problem is by backing up your files on the internet through websites that provide online storage. There’s a variety of websites that provide free accounts and come with a minimum of 2GB of storage space. They are basically a virtual hard drive that you can store and share files. And, it’s usually fairly straight forward way to sync your files with the added benefit of being able to access them wherever you have Internet access. Plus, you can also use some as a “drop box” for distributing large files that would otherwise clog a recipient’s email inbox.

Here are a few options.
• www.dropbox.com
• www.mozy.com
• www.box.net
• www.mediafire.com

Now what about free advertising? Well, social media is gaining traction in the advertising and marketing community. And there’s a bunch great sites that can help you market your business while building your prospect list and increasing brand loyalty. Depending on your business needs and goals they too can be utilized for free! Post blogs, videos, pictures, specials, events, and more. A couple of free websites to advertise your business and build a customer base are:

• www.facebook.com
• www.twitter.com
• www.youtube.com
• www.linkedIn.com
• www.delicious.com
• www.blogger.com
• www.myspace.com

These are just a few examples to get you started and on your way to taking full advantage of what the Internet has available when it comes to aiding you in operating and advertising your business or service for free. Browse through the sites, see what works best for you, and choose what site is going to optimally help your business perform better.

We can all see what is available and where we can access it, but the biggest and most important question to be answered is “why”? Why take time to do this and incorporate these methods into current business practice? Well, there are the obvious reasons of convenience, savings in equipment cost, and extended presence online. However the largest gain that any business owner can take from these listed sites is the endless amount of opportunity for exposure and connection. When sharing your content online you not only put your content in front of people you know, but you also have the opportunity to be seen by anyone who is networked with anyone connected to your network. Anytime you can gain exposure and be seen online the better, and the great part is that the opportunity is endless regarding who can see you.

Not long ago I received an email from a friend proudly announcing the completion of his wife’s home business Web site. The feeling I got was not unlike those experienced when a friend announces the birth of a new child. At some point in the near future, I will be smiling, nodding, and pretending I can hear the choir of angels singing every time the baby fidgets or squirms. While this friend knows I’m an Internet marketing professional, he didn't quite know what he was getting into when he sent it to me.

The email was full of  pride at his wife’s accomplishment, and quite an accomplishment it was. She created a clean, bright and beautifully animated site. The content was well written, and nary an error was to be found. I’m sure everyone else on that email list joined in his sense of pride over such a stunning Web site.

But I know a bit about marketing on the Internet, and pride, you see, is anathema to most small business Web sites. Why build a Web site for your business? To attract customers. To convince someone that your business has the right product or service to fulfill their needs. So however much respect I have for my friend and his wife, I had to tell them the site was relatively ineffective as an Internet marketing tool.

While a certain sense of pride is necessary to tout your own merits, that pride needs to be muted in order to conform to the tone necessary to attract business. A Web site shouldn't  be a vanity project. Day in, day out, I see a parade of vanity sites that show no awareness that anyone else will be looking at them.

Space on the site that could be used to neatly lay out a range of services is used to display a photo of a plumber’s dog. Instead of a concise list of pertinent educational qualifications is a block of text detailing a dentist’s junior year high-school class schedule! When your competitor’s site tells me everything I want to know and cuts out the noise, I’m far more likely to choose that business.

A shiny new Web site is a very exciting thing; but all too often, the novelty gets in the way of the site’s true marketing purpose. At least once a day, I see a vanity site that makes me want to ask the owner what he or she looks for when finding a business online. Kittens? Recipes for peppermint bark? A picture of my uncle? In most cases, I’m pretty sure the owners of these ill-focused sites want to see the same things the rest of us do – qualifications, services and raw information ─ the Internet advertising basics.

-- Contributed by Sean O’Brien

One of the key functions of our Internet technology platform is to analyze performance data and recommend changes to improve effectiveness and better align the campaign with online advertising objectives.

With the recent 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, I began thinking about how many aspects of the Internet marketing industry are constantly evolving. You may remember from your grade school biology classes that in order for a species to survive the forces of evolution, it must be able to adapt.


Small businesses continue to increase their expectations of online advertising as the general public becomes more Internet-savvy and more aware of how advertising really works in this relatively new media. Even language itself – which of course is fundamental to search engine marketing (SEM) – is constantly evolving. New words are coined; antiquated words fall out of use. Word meanings change, nouns become verbs, and increasing globalization of all human endeavors continue to meld languages together, creating new dialects.
 
SEM in particular has been a powerful catalyst for evolution in language, or at least in so far as it is used on the Web in Internet advertising. Keyword queries have helped to effectively digitize language itself, in a manner of speaking. Consumers use basic, one- or two-word phrases as queries, and the Internet advertising industry responds by breaking down its basic building materials, i.e., language itself, into the most basic of categories. Highly effective keyword phrases don’t usually exceed three words, and the useful keyword phrases in a successful online advertising campaign often use only a handful of single-root keywords. Breaking language down into single or double word place holders is, in a way, a binary representation of language itself.
 
And it doesn’t stop there. The value of keywords changes as well. Search engine users’ queries are constantly stored and analyzed by our interactive advertising software platform and the ad networks like Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask. This allows for the sum total of all queries to form what could be seen as a new collective public text; the queries spawn a dynamic, evolving text of consumer needs.
 
This blog, of course, is meant to be taken more as an abstract analogy than taken literally. It’s intended to illustrate how language evolves, and that in order for a business that relies on language as one of its most basic building blocks to survive, like any organism that thrives through evolution, it must be able to adapt. And that’s exactly what WebVisible’s technology platform enables us to do, helping  us better serve our clients.
 
Thanks to Niaz Chakravarty for his thorough and enjoyable training sessions.

-- Contributed by: Keith Dowling and Edgar Berdejo

-- Contributed by Kevin Ryan,
    WebVisible CMO
  
Joe the Plumber is so 2008.
Meet Arsen the Tailor, Southern California’s Best Kept Secret

Arriving back in Southern California after living in the grueling winters of New York
City was a breath of fresh (if not slightly smoggy) air. After taking some time to
settle in—and because my Mom wanted closure on this story—I’ve decided to close this series by revealing a closely held secret.

Since the early days of my online advertising career, I’ve been moderately obsessed with making sure I have access to some level of sartorial excellence. I would never claim to be an expert, and I’ve loosened up a bit over the years, but I do enjoy making sure my clothes are of good quality and made to fit well.

I’m afraid this might read like a “how to find a good tailor in Newport Beach” or “where’s the best place to find custom clothes in Orange County” piece, but stick with me; there’s a bit more going on here.

To me, a good tailor fills the role a good bartender plays in the life of many others. In the early days of my career, I preferred having one or two good outfits in lieu of ten bad ones. I was pretty broke when I first started, and competition for looking good was stiff in my first agency job. I am not embarrassed to say I used to get dressed at the dry cleaner at least once a week back then.

My biological and genetic roadmap has dictated a need for custom clothes. About ten years ago, I moved to SoCal from New York City. Within days, I set out to find a good tailor. I found this tailor in the Yellow Pages (in ad unit we used to call a space ad). No graphics, just a small one-inch text box under “tailors.” No Web site, no online listing, nothing.

More recently, after weeks of traveling across the country and enjoying the bounty of gourmet places like Waffle House and Cracker Barrel, it was time for another visit to my favorite tailor.

Arsen Gueleserian has been a practicing tailor since he was 12 years old. Arsen worked in France and Germany before he opened up shop in Orange County California in 1979. Why Arsen chose to move half way around the world is another story, but I can tell you he found working with Neiman Marcus less fulfilling than working for himself. So, in 1981, he opened his doors on Newport Boulevard in Costa Mesa, California.

On any day of the week, you’d find Arsen, his wife and his son, Shant, at his shop. In this particular instance, you’d also find a pile of my best custom suits.

Let me see if I can accurately describe the difficulty of finding a tailor in Newport Beach and the surrounding communities like Huntington Beach, Corona Del Mar, Laguna Beach and Irvine. I am a NY boy. To me, a tailor is a guy that when you walk through the door, there are some fine examples of sartorial excellence hanging about, and the tools of the trade should be very close by. He or she has a tape measure around his neck and his or her hands appear to be stained with tailor’s chalk.

Some of the other tailors I’ve found in the aforementioned beach communities more closely resemble a Ferrari show room with cover models serving cappuccino and no actual tailors to be found. These are the kind of places where “going custom” means picking swatches with a hottie and sending a garment order form off for someone else to build and fit. Of course, that’s one direction to go, but you’ll pay triple-digit percentage markups for those garments.

Another option is hoping your dry cleaner can make some changes, but they usually send things to an outsourced cutter. In the unusual instance that he’s any good, you’ll have to pay his premium plus a little something for the dry cleaner. I’d rather have the guy with the tape measure and chalk. I don’t care what the shop looks like; I’m looking at the clothes.

If you’ve been following my trip, you’ll recall I’ve met a few artists along the way
across America. I remembered Gil Hibben’s words when he told me he still cuts all his own blades. Arsen cuts his own fabrics.

From the moment I walked through the door all those years ago, through last Saturday, I have been pleased with the work that has been done. I’ve had custom suits and shirts made and have witnessed perfect hems, the likes of which God herself would be proud to wear.

Arsen has a Web site now, and it’s not a multi-million-dollar enriched digital experience. Like many small business sites, Arsen’s site tells you where to find the shop, what he does, and a bit about him. While it may be basic by today’s big spender standards, it maintains the essence of his creations.

The challenge for most small business is maintaining the core identity of their local brand in crossing over from tangible media onto the screen you see before you now. That challenge is balanced with the need to be found by the right people at the right time, which is the essence of marketing on the Internet.

When I searched for Arsen on major engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, I found local listings within local avenues such as maps with the search sites. Text links directed me to more popular sites for small business like Judy’s Book, California Directory, Local.com, Yelp, YellowBot, CitySearch, Insider Pages, Topix and YellowBook.

As if the problems small companies face weren’t great enough, when looking at local online marketing, small businesses have to navigate listing and advertising options on directory and social media sites that receive a great deal of natural search traffic from search sites. They also have to contend with reviews on these sites. It took me about an hour to add a two-line review on each of the sites I mentioned above.

There are challenges and thankfully there are solutions. This is just one example of the need for small businesses to find experts to help with continued expansion into social platforms alongside search engine marketing, display, local and mobile advertising. I wonder where such businesses in need might find an expert Internet advertising agency?


Arsen’s European Tailoring
1840 Newport Blvd.
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
(949) 646 3400

 

In his first formal address to Congress last night, President Obama emphasized the message around the Recovery and Reinvestment Act saying, "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before."

We all hope for the best, but know nothing will happen overnight. What are you, as a small business owner, doing right now to keep your business strong?

Analyst firm, eMarketer, today released data that shows while consumers are purchasing less, and being more picky about what they buy, online search advertising is becomming more important to marketers.

“The recession is driving marketers to concentrate on gaining new business, even more than on customer retention objectives,” says David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics. “Search is the ultimate online acquisition tool, and therefore is positioned to do relatively well in this economy.”

Advertising on the Internet, where customers are actively looking for products and services like yours, is one of your best sources for attracting new business -- with proven return-on-investment!

Have questions about getting started in online advertising? Give WebVisible a call!
 
-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

Despite the recession, eMarketer recently predicted that U.S. search advertising on the Internet will still grow 14.9% in 2009, to $12.3 billion.

While search engine marketing is not recession-proof, it appears to be recession-resistant. Search is highly measurable; therefore, it remains a mainstay in marketing budgets as advertisers depend on more accountable and effective tactics in uncertain economic times.

While consumers may be shopping less, they are looking for deals, creating an opportunity for many small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). But you must be alert to avoid making mistakes that can hinder your online advertising campaigns.

Below is Part 1 of four basic strategies that can help you obtain the best results as you plan your online advertising campaign. Remember, your site content should accurately reflect your business, and your ads should reflect your site for best results.

Mistake #1: Not matching online ads to the content of your site
Sometimes a new advertiser will write ad copy that does not closely match the content on the landing page. This can confuse visitors. And search engines will place your ad higher if it has direct relevance to the content of the destination URL.

If the landing page is text-heavy, prior to embarking on an online advertising effort, new advertisers could analyze their Web site’s text with a free online tool like the Keyword Density Analyzer at http://www.pagerank.net/keyword-density-analyzer/. Tools like this show the most frequently used words on any single Web page, so the advertiser can use empirical data instead of guesswork to see which words are already used the most.

Multiple landing pages can even be used to draw different customer groups to different pages based on their respective searches. (Bonus Tip: Study word choices on competitive Web sites also!)

Mistake #2: Not selecting the best, high-potential keywords
New advertisers about to invest on a campaign should consider it a true investment, treating keyword selection with the utmost proper attention in order to come up with the very strongest possible keyword set. In search engine marketing campaigns, each word counts.

Advertisers can use a simple thought experiment to quickly and easily focus on the most valuable keywords for a particular product or service: What is the single word that (in the advertiser’s opinion) would convert the best? Next, what if one could select only three words to describe the core business, product or service to a potential customer?

Now expand that to ten words. Then, a short paragraph. By the end of the exercise, there should be a short list of the most likely candidates. Avoid using superlatives: “experts,” “the best.”

Also, commonly misspelled words can be valuable terms. Finally, geographic modifiers such as cities, states, regions, towns, districts, or the names of common groupings of these areas, can help with targeting. Google Sets (at http://labs.google.com/sets ) is a useful tool to help determine related keyword ideas from a few words.

Part 2 will cover two more common mistakes to avoid!

-- Contributed by Dan Lozano

As 2008 comes to a close, local business owners and consumers alike are wondering what’s next. Will the economy straighten itself out? What about the housing market? And what does this all mean for the small business owner - the ones that can’t count on the government to bail them out? Basically, they are going to have to connect with consumers more efficiently and cost-effectively, or risk losing customers to competitors.

Leading research and analysis company Kelsey Group recently released their predictions for 2009 within the interactive local media space. Below are a few of their key predictions that pertain to local online marketing and Internet advertising:

SMB Search Spending Will Grow
A tighter budget means more attention to return on investment. Small and medium- sized businesses (SMBs) measuring ROI are really measuring instant gratification. The business sends an e-mail and gets an immediate response. To the SMB, an immediate response is a better ROI. We can quibble about what the real ROIs are, but in the end it is the SMB’s perception that matters. What to watch for: Accelerated declines for traditional media. Search spending from SMBs will double within two years.

More Mobile Search and Ads
Google’s T-Mobile partnership, Nokia N97, Wal-Mart selling iPhones for $100 and all the other higher-end devices becoming ubiquitous will mean even more Internet browsing and searching. What to watch for: Integration of mobile advertisers onto these local platforms. Advertisers will be largely opted in during the sales and sign-up process. 2009 is the year of bundling mobile.

More Local Content Coming Online
With SMB profile pages commonplace and Web sites gaining in popularity, there is a tremendous need for content. Add to that the fact that better content translates to higher lead volumes. Whether it’s through offline content coming online via companies like Virtual Paper or freelance search engine optimization writers, we’re going to see more local content filling the empty profile pages and Web sites. What to watch for: More truly local content will appear in search results and business detail pages - finally.

-- Contributed by Morgan Robinson

Once a local online advertising campaign has begun, it is important to have a healthy understanding of the data generated by the marketing program. When organized and presented properly, regularly scheduled conversations can address the questions "how is the campaign going?" and "what should we do next?"   The basic elements of data in a local paid search campaign are:

• Text Ads and variations
• Keywords, both category-related and geographic terms
• Geographic target areas
• Impressions
• Clicks
• Post-click activity
• Data available by each media outlet

This data can be immediately overwhelming to a local advertiser and the online marketing consultant who is managing and tracking the campaign.  By a) knowing what information is most important, b) organizing and tracking information in a logical, useful way, and c) comparing data to benchmarks and goals, a productive campaign "health check" conversation can occur.

The types of questions and answers to discuss include:

• Where are people looking for my business?
• What do they care about?
• How do they describe my business and their needs?
• When are they looking/showing interest?
• What do they do after they search?
• How are we responding to their inquiries?
• How do I stack up to my peers? My competitors?

Not as dramatic as Christmas in July, I know. But if you're managing your own Web site doing your own marketing on the Internet you have plenty of work in front of you, and may have no budget for software to help you build it. Here are a few free or very inexpensive resources to help you, because you’ve been good this year…. so far.

Free image resources:
Picnik Photo Editor
This free, but there's a paid version with more features for you to play with. Picnik gives you all the basic features you'll need to edit, crop, remove red-eye, sharpen, and straighten up your photos, then pipe them straight over to your desktop, or to photobucket, flickr, or several other commonly used photo storage and hosting sites. This is a real gem of a tool. No registration is required, but registering free lets you use the export features and some other features.

Slideroll Slideshow Builder
Upload your images and slideroll will walk you through building a vivid and fun slideshow that you can copy-paste right into your site. Easy to use, free, and a good space-saver for those with a lot of images to show.

StockXchange
This site is great for FREE, professional quality, full-size images that you can use royalty-free for personal or business purposes. Very liberal licensing allows you to select images that fit your needs.

iStockPhoto
This is the cheapest site I have ever seen for stock photos. Very affordable prices (most under $10) for very large high-quality images.

Free online form tools:
Add interactive functionality to your site with fillable forms. Some include more whizzy features than others, so shop around until you find the one that feels right to you.

www.createforms.com
www.wufoo.com
www.formlogix.com
www.freedback.com

There are lots of other tools online to help your local online advertising effort -- just go to your favorite search engine and ask for what you want to find, or leave a comment in this message to find out more.

-- Contributed by Dan Lozano