Out of the Fog Marketing

The beta Google Trends is fascinating for compare search volumes of similar terms. Does "PC repair" get more volume than "computer repair" and is the trend staying the same over time? Google Trends gives you the information in a graphical format. You can even narrow your search by geographic location.

Labels: google trends, keyword analysis, keyword research, seo research, SEO tools

You gotta love when the web teaches you a new lesson. We had a call yesterday from a great Michigan-based prospect and when I asked him where he found us, it wasn't Google. Gasp. It was a very long tail search term on Yahoo! organic results. A term I didn't even know our firm was ranked #1 for on Yahoo! Gasp again.

Yes, this was a very tech-savvy individual. Yes, it was a technically sophisticated company. Then I remember the early adopters all used Yahoo! first. My first web-based email account in the mid-nineties was a Yahoo! account which I own to this day.

So Yahoo!, I'll give you your due from now on. Yes only 15% of technology buyers search on you vs. Google, but that's still a really big number.

Oh and by the way, that Yahoo! ranking was due to the fact we wrote great text and coded our site properly - amazing how that works.

Labels: link building for SEO, long tail search, Michigan SEO, yahoo search rankings

I see a consistent theme coming up among service-based businesses and that's lack of clarity when it comes to "packaging" the company's offerings. While I understand many service clients need a customized solution, at times you need a menu to get people talking or thinking on the right track.

For example, instead of a web pages that touts how great your company is at "Public Relations" how about a list of some PR services your firm offers: media kit creation, editorial calendars, search-engine-optimized press releases, etc. Positioning your services this way forces you to really examine exactly what you do and how you do it so your messaging is bound to be more clear. And potential colleagues, peers and partners will understand exactly what your firm does.

Labels: messaging, positioning, public relations, services packaging

I had a few last minute meeting cancellations this week so I took the time to get creative. I (gasp) shut off my cell phone and closed Outlook for 2 hours at a time. And a wonderful thing happened. I was able to finish a new corporate pitch in just a few hours. My creative juices flowed and I felt reinvigorated.

Mark McGuiness has a great free book entitled Time Management for Creative People. Turn off your Twitter, your phone and email, and check it out.

Labels: creative writing, creativity, mark mcguiness, time management

Feeling inundated with the amount of email you get each day? Check out Melvin Mann's "Inbox Zero" video. The video has some audio/video sync problems, but it's an interesting concept.

Labels: email strategies, outlook productivity, productivity

This past holiday I was amazed at how many of my female friends received tech gadgets as presents. One friend was beaming about her new MacBook and iPOD combo, one was pretty jazzed about a new Blackberry, and I myself asked for a 22" monitor and a MIO GPS system for my car.

I figured being in a tech consulting field, I probably surrounded myself with some pretty tech-savvy friends that were out of the norm. Until I read Microtrends by Mark Penn...

As the CEO of Burson-Marsteller and advisor to both Clinton campaigns, Mark's job is to spot up and coming trends. In fact, identified "soccer Moms" as an important group for Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign. In his new book, he identifies small patterns in behavior that are influencing our lives.

In the technology section, Mark identifies a group he calls "Tech Fatales". It turns out there is sizable group of tech-savvy women being ignored by most technology retail outlets. Women outspend men 3 to 2 on technology and influence 57 percent of new technology purchases. Girls are more likely than boys to use cell phones, digital cameras, satellite radios, and DVD recorders.
But Best Buy, Circuit City, Verizon and Geek Squad almost go out of their way to be condescending to women especially in the more hardcore "tech" departments. I'm more comfortable buying a car as a woman today that walking into those stores sometimes. Retailers note - that's why we buy technology online.

There are also some interesting implications for technology OEMs. Women want gadgets that don't smudge makeup, home electronics that hide out of the way when not in use, and keyboards and PDAs that work with fingernails.

We just may start to see less Zales commercials and more Radio Shack ones on Lifetime...

Labels: blackberry, cell phones, ipod, macbook, mark penn, microtrending, mio, pdas, purchases, tech gadgets, women spending on technology, women tech purchases, women technology, women-friendly electronics

I just came across Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen blog on Seth Godin's blog. Wow - what an amazing amount of useful information related to the design and delivery of presentations. I'm so glad to see another designer tackle poor Powerpoint design as I'm a big fan of Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points. He overnight changed the way our firm designed our client pitch presentations.

Reynolds' blog discusses the presentation styles of many business leaders and public speakers. It's fascinating. The one thing most of the presentation styles have in common is no more than one point per slide and one eye-catching visual per slide. At first, I was somewhat hesitant to use a "design-centric" presentation in front of nuts-and-bolts technology firm owners. But, in over 40 presentations not one person in the audience has commented negatively. In fact, even among design firms we stand out when pitching ourselves.

Everyone who purchases the new Presentation Zen book will get $130 worth of credits to download high resolution stock images from special selection plus a coupon code for 25% off your first purchase of $65 or more.

If you don't have a New Year's resolution yet, you might want to consider "make better presentations".

Labels: better marketing presentations, better powerpoint, better presentations, cliff atkinson, garr reynolds, istockphoto, microsoft powerpoint, presentation zen, public speaking, seth godin