Out of the Fog Marketing

Nielsen Online's October 2007 reports show that social networking sites and blogs are still expanding. Social networking giant MySpace drew 19% more unique users between October 2006 and October 2007, and Facebook grew 125% in the same period. Linked In - the business networking site - grew by 189%.

If someone in your company does not have time to blog, then at the very least make sure every employee has a LinkedIn profile that points back to your corporate website.

Labels: business social networking, facebook, LinkedIn, michigan, myspace, social media

Go to Market Strategies has a great short article on how to qualify leads by profiling your current customer base. This is one of the first things we do when creating a marketing plan for a new client. It's amazing the amount of information you can glean just by looking up your existing client's profiles (guerilla marketing hint: most local libraries have online business databases containing Dun & Bradstreet info).

Once you profile your customers, you'll be able to order better email and direct mail lists and even target your online efforts more effectively.

Labels: client profiles, guerrilla marketing, lead generation, lead qualification, marketing plans

A number of respected SEO experts have lately been somewhat negative on the use of press releases as part of internet marketing campaigns. Press releases with keyword-rich titles do work - a little better on Yahoo! than Google, but they work.
Here's an example... if you type "michigan marketing firm" into Yahoo! Search you'll see the Clarity Quest website at #2. However, check out #1 - it's a PR Web link to a press release we issued back in June 2007!
Now I don't recommend you fabricate topics for a release or issue junk releases. There should be an actual news story as the basis for the releases. But completely ignoring SEO PR as part of your internet marketing strategy is a mistake.

Labels: Internet marketing, link building for SEO, press releases., SEO press release, web marketing

Many small to medium-sized companies often dismiss marketing guideline documents. Tech entrepreneurs are not big on formal marketing documentation and process. However it's a huge oversight not to have your rule book in place before you begin the marketing game.

Marketing, and especially advertising, can be a large part of your annual budget and expensive to design. Create a play book that defines your target audience, key messages, short company descriptions and logo usage will go a long way to avoid costly collateral rework and messaging errors.

Then be consistent. If you logo is purple in Canada and blue in the U.S. this does nothing to reinforce your brand. The presentation the CEO uses should have the same look at feel as the one the sales team has on its laptop. Everyone in the company should be able to describe in 30 seconds what value the company's products or services bring to its customers.

One of my favorite books on this topic is Harry Beckwith's Selling the Invisible. It now new, hip or trendy (it was first published in '97), but it contains solid, easily digested advice on consistently positioning your company and what it sells.

Labels: b2bmarketing, biotech marketing, guerilla marketing, marketing budget

Squidoo launched yet another FREE site, The Ever Project. The concept is simple: the site lets users build a keyword-rich page such as greatest.seocompany.ever. You should grab your keyword-rich site URLs while they are still available.

You can choose from about 50 superlatives for the first word and add anything you want for the second word in the url. You are then taken to a page where you add reasons why you chose a company, product, person etc. as the best, worst, smartest, etc. thing ever. Then pagebuilder takes off and builds the page for you. The result is a Squidoo-type page with a newspaper look.

They only downside I see so far it that the page displays pay-per-click ads so you can give your competitors ads a new forum

Labels: everproject, SEO, SEO backlinks, squidoo, squidoo lens

I encourage all of our clients to get profiles on the big social networking sites: LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook. Invariably when I mention Facebook the CEO or owner of the client company will look at me with more than a little skepticism. "Isn't that the site my teenager is on?" is a typical next question.

While, yes your teenager might be on Facebook, more and more CEOs, thought leaders and technology gurus are posting profiles and joining groups on these networking sites. Facebook announced the details of its new advertising program in New York yesterday. Facebook now will give advertisers the ability to create their own profile pages on its system that will let users identify themselves as fans of a product. Each user's news feed will let others view the products she endorses such as "Shelley is a fan of Apple Computer".

So take notice small businesses. Can you afford not the have a profile on these sites? The word of mouth and validation marketing alone is worth the time and effort.

Labels: facebook, small business, social media, social networking, technology business

Promote your company's generosity. Many of our clients give time and money to charitable organizations. However, virtually none of them promote the fact. I'm not talking about a self-serving rant, but just letting the community and media aware of the campaign.

Our firm started a campaign to give a percentage of our profits to Kiva - a microloan organization. We issued a simple press release and the media pickup was amazing. We had 3-4 leads in just a few days after the announcement and it was a nice ice breaker with prospects. It also attracted a certain type of client - ones that have some of the same values as we do.

Labels: PR charitable campaigns, PR charity, public relations