Generate User Reviews

If you are doing any kind of Social Media Marketing, no matter what size your company is, you should know how important it is to leverage reviews in both online and offline marketing efforts. Some studies are showing that 72% of consumers trust online customer reviews as much as a personal recommendations. Who’d have guessed, huh? Obviously any reviews no matter how or where it comes from can help to get customers to make buying decision.

There are of course a few areas that can make you get a little worried about reviews. There is of course the fear of negative feedback. Then there is the fear of time needed to develop and implement a successful reviewing tool while obtaining trustworthy, relevant reviews.

To help you, here are a few ways to help you get user reviews without really trying too hard.

1. ASK YOUR FANS: 

It’s not against the rules to ask. Really, just ask the 3 F’s (family, friends, fans) to make their love of you and your services known to the world, via a formal review. After all if you can’t as your 3 F’s who can you ask?

2. FOLLOW UP A POST-SERVICE/PURCHASE:

There’s a key time frame to follow up with a customer who has purchase a product or service from you to allow you to ask for a review. I cannot tell you what that is because it is different for every kind of company category, but one exists. You might need to test different time lengths to find what the optimal follow-up period for your business is but then you will know and you will never have to miss an opportunity to send a follow-up email, letter or phone call asking how a customer’s experience was.

3. ESTABLISH A PRESENCE ON MAJOR REVIEW SITES:

Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle, Storeboard, Citysearch, etc. are all good trusted sites to get and posts reviews. Or at least they want you to think so. Now I’m not argue so go get your company listed with a profile, then keep it updated and respond to all user comments both good and bad. These review sites also impact SEO, so by establishing a profile, your company can gain greater visibility, attract more hits and, hopefully, more reviews.

4. MAKE IT MULTI CHANNEL FRIENDLY:

As those in the online space are well aware, mobile and tablet usage is gaining traction. To ensure that customers visiting your site, regardless of the kind of device they are using, can easily access and enter their reviews, you need to make it multi channel friendly. Need help with this, call us and we can make it happen.

5. CREATE USER PROFILES:

As ego-driven people, we tend to act or as the case may be, write differently if we know someone is watching. By not allowing anonymous reviews, customers are not only likely to give more accurate reviews, but also more helpful ones because their name is on it (literally). In the B2B world, user profiles can also create an opportunity for user promotion, as a reviewer they can enter their company name as the user name and get a company plug.

6. PUBLISH REVIEWS FOR THE PUBLIC:

There’s no sense asking for reviews, if other people cannot see them. Additionally, those who previously read reviews that encouraged them to make a purchase, are more likely to come back and review their own experience.

7. OFFER DIFFERENT WAYS TO REVIEW A PRODUCT/SERVICE:

Not all of us are great writers. So the problem is if a customer , who isn’t great writer, could give you are great review you might want to offer them an option of multiple choice questions in order to rate your product or service on a scale of 1-10, this way all those non-writers will be able to leave an favorable opinion.

9. OFFER TRIAL PERIODS:

If you want reviews, but don’t have any customers, to leave them, one tactic is to offer trial period for your service. Do not make the condition that they have to review your service in the end, but offer the service and hope your quality offering and your follow-ups brings them back to give you a positive review.

10. WORK WITH A REVIEW AGGREGATOR:

There are companies out there that help companies generate reviews through referral engines (like us). They help to take the guess work out of the process by sending follow-up emails on your behalf, working with your social media profiles and offering customers a follow-up options to your business.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Social media can be made to be better. It just takes a little work. Now you know a few more tricks of the trade.

And if you want your business to be more and have more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Directed Landing Page Content

Say what you got to say and get out!

If you use or have ever thought about using a Landing Page for or part of a marketing campaign using less content is usually a better idea than packing it in. Yes less is more, if you want to keep them focused on an action you want them to take.

This keeps your prospects focused directly in the key message. This means you elimination all the extra details and needless content. If it does not pertain to the campaign don’t put it in. Not extra links to other pages, NO fancy graphics and design. Facts just the facts.


Larson Notes & Satire:  You want action. Then call for action. Keep it in plain sight, visible and understandable.

Call us we can find you new customers.


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

More Fans For Smaller Following

As companies get more Facebook fans for their company page there tends to be a drop off point where they reach a smaller and smaller part of their overall fan base. PageLever, which is a company that does Facebook analytics, found that as you gain a larger and larger group of fans the lower the reach any individual post has, on a percentage basis.

If your company has a small group of fans of say less than 10,000 (don’t I wish I had that many people fanning my company) people you should be getting 20% or more hits on any given post you put out at almost any time of the day. But companies like Coca-Cola and Walmart, who have more than 1 million fans, are only going to get about 6% of them to see a post -- unless they pay.

When you start to run out of the 3Fs of friends, family and followers or the 3C’s of customers, contacts and competitors you start to drop. I guess I don’t have enough friends in my life.


Larson Notes & Satire:  Can Facebook work? Yes. Can it work without paying? Yes. But then I need to ask what is or does the word work mean. On a normal day I am getting not 20%. I’m not seeing 10% but a mighty 9% of my fans see a normal post that I place in my Company’s Facebook fan page. Is this good or what? Well yes because of that 9% is quality and I have to face it my company is not a name that gets floated around the kitchen table. But then I’m not done yet because I go and take my post of 9% and pick up another 26% off of twitter, the grab that same post and while I’m at it grab another 19% off LinkedIn. This is how Social Media Marketing works or could be working. Don’t bet the house on just one channel but use a broad brush to paint your pathway.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Content Marketing & SEO

There have been what we might call radical shifts in Search and the relationship to Content. Some of this is in part due to Social Media and some is from the Search Engines efforts to keep content found pertinent, fresh and timely. How many times have you done a search can come up with a page full of results for 3 years ago? I know I have.

 

To keep your experience personal search engines have come to understand content. Believe it or not through integration and monitoring of different social media sites SE’s are finding ways to keep up.

 

For you to stay at the peak performance level you need to not just acknowledge but totally embrace the idea of content as the new king of the internet.

 

1. Create a process to create: Have a process in place before you start any content Search Engine Strategy. Have all or as many as possible internal infrastructure in place from all key players who will be impacted.

 

2. Get a Grasp on what you want to say: What do you want to be saying to your customers and prospects? What are their needs, wants and desires? Then with matched content using keywords in your writing to address those issues, go for it.

 

3. Where should your content reside: You need to be posting where your customers and prospects are.  This could take some study of the social media sites to know where you need to go.

 

4. Build your online relationships: facebook, google+, linkedin, pinterest, merchantcircle, storeboard, etc. work your 3F’s.

 

5. Optimize your content: You need to make sure you are using solid content packed with key words and phrases. You need to be thinking SEO tactics when you construct your content. Links, embedded coding, back links to web site. If your content is addressing needs your clients and prospects have you are right on track to have a winner.

 

Larson Notes & Satire:  If you can share some of the personal you, but remember to use the right words to push you up the search engine ladder. For social media people love stories, but search engines could care less.

 

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

 

 

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

 

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

 

 

 

 

Social Media Metrics Exposure vs Frequency

GM pulled of its ads from Facebook, this led many marketers to wonder if advertising on facebook or any social media site is a good thing. It is, and it isn’t. With 900 million (900,000,000) active users can you ignore facebook and all of social media? Is it worth paying for? Another good question.

In a study by Resolution Media and Kenshoo seperatly, they7 looked at the effectiveness of Facebook ads, these 2 companies analyzed global data of 65 billion (65,000,000,000) Facebook ad impressions and 20 million (20,000,000) Facebook ad clicks over a wide range of brands and categories. Now remember these are ad clicks and not what social media or even (in my humble opinion) how social media marketing should be used to get maximum exposure for you.
What is the long term viability of facebook and social media advertising?

“Social media has quickly become one of the preferred channels for brands, and when done right, can foster meaningful relationships between brands and consumers in ways that were never before possible,” says Alan Osetek, president of Resolution Media. “The purpose of this study was to define what ‘doing it right’ means in terms of measureable actions and outcomes, and giving marketers a model for demonstrating effectiveness.”

The study showed that Sponsored Stories and Post Ads receive about double the click-through rate (CTR) of Social and Web Ads, which means that ads with social context resonate better with audience members likely due to a personal connection. Additionally, Post Ads draw more attention because they usually feature special offers and are larger than normal ads. I guess this is true because they did a study on it but, well I usually ignore those kinds of adds myself unless I see it and it really matters to me at that specific time.

The data also shows that higher CTR leads to lower average cost-per-click (CPC) rates, with Post Ads averaging a CPC of $0.24, Sponsored Stories averaging $0.46, Web Ads averaging $0.59 and Social Ads averaging the highest CPC at $0.78. But for advertisers that choose the cost-per-thousand (CPM) model, Sponsored Stories are the most expensive ad type – averaging a CPM of $0.31 compared to Web Ads that averaged the lowest CPM of $0.18. That could become a lot of money, couldn’t it? Hope you have deep pockets  for the start up. This might be more pricy than direct mail.

The study also showed a new metric called “Exposure Rate,” which measures targeted engagement on Facebook. This metric determines the percentage of the target audience that you are reaching out to and exposing your message to. High exposure rates correlate to a high CTR and conversion rates, with the ads that reached 76-100 percent of their intended audience also receiving an average CTR of .038 percent and conversion rate of 31.92%. In comparison, ads that only reached 0-25 percent of the intended audience resulted in an average CTR of 0.028% and a conversion rate of 11.81 percent. High exposure rates don’t guarantee success, you need to balance this metric with frequency and I might add time of day, to find the number of times the average Facebook user has been exposed to your ad. The study shows that there is a conversion rate drop-off of 32 percent when ads are shown to consumers more than six times. This means that the ad is being shown too frequently, your target will start to ignore it. Additionally, the CTR averaged 39 percent lower after the sixth impression.

One way that marketers can optimize exposure rate and frequency is by maintaining a CPC above the maximum recommended bid. This is because the study’s data showed that the exposure rate was higher for ads with CPCs that were greater than the maximum recommended bid, driving the average exposure rate up by 11.5 percent. Additionally, the data showed that frequency dropped when the CPC was above the maximum recommended bid, by an average of 1.7 exposures.

Larson Notes & Satire:  We all are not made of money and for most of us PFC makes no sense.  Social Media still comes down to the 3 F’s, family friends and fans.  Nothing else really matters. Keep your F’s safe, close, protected, happy and interacted.

When “they” say “doing it right” what are they really saying? Do I hear spend money? In almost anything I read from street smart marketers and sales people it is interaction. Seems funny that my postings are getting an exposure rate of 12-18%. It does not seem to matter what time of the day it is, the % is almost always the same. Would PFC be a good thing?

Then I need to really question paying a higher rate for CPC. Come on who is fooling who here? I’m not a big advocate of paying for clicks in the first place. Now it may have its place but does have its place but not as the center part of your marketing plan. Think long term, think organically.
Then start thinking trichannel. social, telemarketing, direct mail and watch your numbers really take off.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

SEO 5 Tips to Bring Organic Traffic to Your Website

You have a website. You finally sat down wrote some content and got it up and running. Yea! It’s done. It’s up. Build it and people will come. Only if they can find it.
You worked hard to get the words just right weaving in your key words soothe copy flows just right. Maybe put in some graphics. Now what?

A website is of little or no use if nobody can find it.
Mastering the organic or natural search ranking has proven to be a fundamental part of the online marketing mix and should be part of yours.

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) is setting your site up for increased visibility in organic searches and work and rework the content are important to hit the higher end of a search for prospect awareness and customer acquisition.

About 50% of people begin their search from the results of an organic search. 70% those people click on the organic listings before they click on a sponsored link. You know those listing in color (pink?) at the top of a search page.

So how can you up in the rankings and not land on page 43? Even if you get up to page 4 you’re lost because most people don’t even look that far back.
1. Create online WOM buzz about your site, product or service. Push out online press releases. There are distribution services on the Web that offer no-cost packages, sites such as PRlog.org, Free-press-release.com and others. Post a link on a news release to your social marketing sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

2. Start an inbound link program. Set up a reciprocal link page. Start a blog roll (a listing of URLs on a blog, as opposed to a website) that contains links from industry sites that would be willing to swap links with your page, keeping in mind that relevance, rank and quality ia paramount when selecting linking partners. Search engines not only hate it but might black ball you for doing what they call link harvesting which is a collection of links from random websites that have no relevance to your site, so find link partners that have a similar or a working synergy to your business.

3. Create great content and a link back to your site. Look into putting original, useful, valuable and action related information with relevant high quality content directories such as eZinearticles.com, ArticlesBase.com and Goarticles.com. This is a great way to increase market awareness, as well as inbound links to your site. Keep your content targeted to the directory & the audience you want to attract. There is also a syndication opportunities, as third-party sites and people may come across your article when doing a Web search and republish your content on their own websites.
4. You web pages should be keyword-rich and related to your business. Make a list of your top 10 to 15 keywords and variations of those words and incorporate them into the copy on your site. Search engines crawl Web pages from top to bottom, so your strongest keywords should be in that order on your home page and sub-pages with the most relevant on the top, the least relevant on the bottom.

You'll want to do the same for your tag lines. Make sure your title and meta tags are unique and full of your keywords. And your alt tags/alt attributions (images) should have relevant descriptions, as well. It all counts when the search engines spider through your page.

5. List your site on any online directories and classified sites you can find by category, region or topic. The more the merrier and getting more push up the search engine page ladder. Some directories like Business.com have a small fee involved but there are many other directories and classified sites like Dmoz.org, Info.com, Superpages.com and Craigslist.org that are free and can be targeted by location and product or offer type.

Then before you start your SEO program, find out how many hits your site is getting now so you can measure both pre and post SEO hit numbers and statistics. You can upload a site counter which counts the number of visits to your website if you want, I find them sort of useless but it’s your site. You can get your site's traffic ranking at Alexa.com or Quantcast.com, or get your site's daily visit average from Google Analytics or another application Perhaps your host does it for you like mine does, then chart your weekly progress.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Now understand that natural organic search may take several months for a site to be optimized and gain in the search engines, so be patient. You will eventually see results.
Don’t get trapped by the companies that go out and guarantee number one page ranking. Heck I can do that with my eyes closed. Give me your money and I’ll do it.

But to get #1 page ranking takes time, energy and dare I say talent. It is a combination of all you do, from the front end to the back end of your page, to your url name, to any landing pages you set up, to your social media work to blogging, to everything you say and do on the web.
That is why people come and throw their money at people and companies like mine.

And if you do need a host and or web site we do that as well.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

The Daily Deal

Is it the right thing to do? Does it work? Do people or your kind of clients respond? The daily deal has become one of the hottest marketing trends going on in marketing today. Thank you web and social media marketing. Heck we at Larson & Associates are using it. Groupon, LivingSocial, Larson, are all hammering the Daily Deal idea. If done right it can be a good thing as 74% of those using daily deals do make a profit, but that does leave 26% losing money. If they are doing their deals via Groupon or Livingsocial there are commission costs deeper than just the cost of the enticement. You can try to do it alone, but the drawback is exposure.

Yes, location, location, location! Or is it exposure, exposure, exposure!

So what makes the daily deal so exciting is the impulsiveness of the buyer. There it is, buy it or lose it. Do it now! As I see it the only real long term reason to push into the daily deal is to drive brand recognition and customer loyalty. Sure if you need some quick cash it can help as well but don’t we all want long term growth?

Larson Notes & Satire:  Do you want a spike in your sales. Try a daily deal to find out. For today Larson has 2 going:

The winning state of the day is Montana. If you have a company in Montana and sign up for a telemarketing pilot program (3 weeks minimum) of at least 15 hours a week minimum by 4:30 central time today 10/18/11 there will be no set up fee for your program. http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

Today's "Build Illinois" county is White County. If you have a company in White County Illinois and sign up for a telemarketing pilot program (3 weeks minimum) of at least 15 hours a week minimum by 4:30 central time today 10/18/11 there will be no set up fee for your program. http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

Both have bought in new accounts that I think we probably would not have gotten.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Power Drive Your Search

We all understand how powerful it is to own the top spots in a key work search. The higher up you are usually means you are going to get some good quality hits on your site. On the same line of thought, a keyword search is one of the few chances where you have someone just stopping by (your web site) and basically saying “This is what I am looking to buy.”

So some of my more aggressive customers have come to old Uncle Howard and asked, “How can I get more without killing my budget?” And to solve this problem I put a plan that wedded Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing a little differently. First I had a landing page created for the project, packed with all those juicy key words in content, Meta tag key works and title. Then launching that I constructed a Social Media attack around that message basically pushing it into and through their Social Media world so when we were done, they actually owned the first page of a keyword search.


Now it you push it to its logical conclusion you will use those same keywords and content in email, mobile to direct mail to yes your telemarketing attack and hammer those words home.


Now add a pay of click?


Larson Notes & Satire: Can it be done? It already has. I have always preached that you need to work within your budget and your means to hold and work your media at near 100% efficiency. Do that day in and day out and you will control your position and your destiny.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Ladybug Keyword Search

Sesame Street: Ladybugs' Picnic Lyrics


One two three
Four five six
Seven eight nine
Ten eleven twelve
Ladybugs
Came to the ladybugs' picnic
One two three
Four five six
Seven eight nine
Ten eleven twelve
And they all played games
At the ladybugs' picnic
They had twelve sacks so they ran sack races
They fell on their backs and they fell on their faces
The ladybugs 12
At the ladybugs' picnic
They played jump rope but the rope it broke
So they just sat around telling knock-knock jokes
The ladybugs 12
At the ladybugs' picnic
One two three
Four five six
Seven eight nine
Ten eleven twelve
And they chatted away
At the ladybugs' picnic
They talked about the high price of furniture and rugs
And fire insurance for ladybugs
The ladybugs 12
At the ladybugs' picnic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr8vUTm64h0


How many words does it take to get you to the top of a keyword search? The Ladybug keyword search picnic knew. What keywords does it take to get you where you want to be? How many ladybugs came to the picnic? Are you inviting people (though keyword strings) to your ladybug picnic?


One, two, three, four five six?


When people are doing an organic search for something the number of keywords they use is
23% - 1 word
24% - 2 words
20% - 3 words
14% - 4 words
8% - 5 words
5% - 6 words
2% - 7 words
4% - 8 words
* Experian Hitwize January 2011 from a sample of 10 million US internet users.


I can push myself up to the #1 spot in my target areas of the marketing with word strings; I now have it down to 3 words in a keyword search to get the #1 on Google, Yahoo and Bing. With met tag works, landing pages and the like, I can make magic happen on the web.


Just because all the focus these days is on Social Media Marketing these days does not mean you can sit back and not pay any attention to Search Engine Optimization) (SEO).


If you’re like me, and I’ll bet you are, the hardest thing you face in your business is differentiating yourself from the competition. It is hard to say the least, to stand out from the crowd. You can adjust your blog posts, develop web landing pages to go after specific markets, create your set of keywords, do a search engine submission, etc, etc, etc.


If you want to get anywhere in organic natural search (still the best kind of online marketing in my mind), it takes time. Don’t expect any miracles in the first month. After posting your first set of keywords, playing with content and links, the doing an optimization you need to wait, sometimes as much as 30 days.


In talking to Google (ok here it is tech time) they say they are using more that 200 signals with up to 50 variations to determine a websites ranking and that this algorithm is updated weekly! The good folks at Bing say that its algorithm looks at more than 1,000 signals and the emphasis is on newer signals such as social (see previous blog on Bing and Facebook working together). Of course Google is working with twitter to spider out those postings so what do we have?


Looking at this from a Search Engine Marketers perspective with the introduction of social media content into the search engine rankings sort of steals the marketer’s ability to control their specific message and the companies or clients brand message. Or does it?


Still you can’t cheat your way to the top. Sorry Social Media Friends, Followers and Fans it just doesn’t and isn’t happening (yet). You still have to go through the natural selection process to get ranked high. Keywords and solid content still rules.


It might really pay to hire a writer well versed in web site content writing to help you. This is a specialty field of which the payback is usually more than worth the price, provided you have the funds to wait for a ROI of a few months.


Now let’s get things even more confusing. To put in another clog in the system, there is Mobil Search. Another high interest area of the “new media” people. Don’t get me wrong, this is an important marketing tool and with more and more smartphones coming online this becomes a more important area. Google reported recently that there was a 400% increase in their “Click to call” feature and 1 out of 5 of those were Local Related clicks. How important is this? Just follow the money, Walgreens increased their mobile search budget by 300%.


So where are we? Things are ever changing and there is and always will be new online marketing tools to use and play with but for now one thing remains the same, to come to the Ladybug picnic of Keyword search it takes 1, 2, 3 – 4, 5, 6 – 7, 8, 9 – 10, 11, 12 words at the ladybug search picnic.


Larson Notes & Satire:
I was halfway into writing this blog when I took a moment to stop, save and go to my web site and play with my keywords. Yes, they needed a major overhaul. Now I sit and wait for the little spiders to come through and take a peak. Will they like what I just did? I’ll find out in a week or 2. Until then I’ll keep working the social media side trying to passively find some new customers while working the telemarketing side to actively hunt down some new accounts.


Like everything else you need to put a multichannel attack into place if you can. Time, energy and money all come into play and as I have said in the past, it is better to work in only 1, 2 or 3 channels that you can work completely and hard, than 6 that you only work half heartily or every once in a while.


Does it work? That’s why we help to “Make good businesses great and great businesses even better.”


Want your very own blog but can’t or don’t have time to write it?
Larson & Associates has the people who can write specifically for your business, call today!


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates


https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

So Many Marketing Channels

It’s a mix and match world of Marketing with not only more and different choices than we had 10 years ago but new and different ways to use and mix them together. It is a mix and match world. So let me ask you, do you have a marketing attack plan, have you thought about what tools you want to be using and mixing and what their effect on each other is? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/marketing_tools For our part in this battle over the customer’s mind over the next few days I will be mixing and matching telemarketing, direct mail, social media marketing, e mail, TV, radio, blogs and a few others and try to find how they each can work with the other so we can all make better, more educated decisions on what to use.


Your needs and choices are not going to be the same as the ones I need to make for my company and its growth.


Direct marketing has always been tough and now more than ever everything is on the table, every dollar spent, every second used is questioned and is held accountable.


We have the big 6 channels, telemarketing, direct mail, social media marketing, web marketing / SEM, TV and radio with a cast of smaller but possibly equally important channels for you to be incorporating and weaving in.


You drive to work or home, do you have the radio on? You get home or to work, you check email, you listen to any voice messages the mail comes you scan though it to see what there is. The phone rings you pick it up. You sit back and turn on the news or a TV show. Banner ads come up on your browser as you do a web search. There are just so many ways to be touched with today’s marketing. And while we might not be able to pick the channels that are the cheapest or easiest for your customers, yours, not mine, you can determine how you want to blend them together to get the maximum ROI as you go along.


Larson Notes & Satire: I have said over and over my big 3 tools are telemarketing, direct mail and social media marketing. My social work might also include blogs if not add that. You need to figure it out for yourself of have someone like me do the figuring and implementation for you. But whatever you choose you need to pick your channels and use them to the utmost. I mean 95%-100% use. If not, back off that channel and use what you can use at a high level.


Over the next few days and maybe weeks depending on the time I have Ill look at mixing and matching different channels and how they work or maybe don’t work together. I hope you enjoy it.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd is our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates


https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Need A Social Media Expert?

After our blog of yesterday “Bing To Index Facebook” I have to ask the leading in question, Do you need a Social Media Expert on your staff or team?


As Social Media grows as an accepted form or marketing, advertising and sales do you need a Social Media Expert? If you are a Social Media enthusiast you are probably jumping up and down saying Yes! Yes! Yes! If not, you’re sitting there thinking ya right. Social Media is a bunch of busy bodies sitting around with nothing else to do.


I doubt if you even have to guess where I stand on this issue. Yes!


No matter what side your on, pro or con I think that we can all agree that when a SM program fails it is because of 1 of 2 reasons, either the company went out and set up a Facebook pang with a twitter account in a loud voice declares “We are doing Social Media” and does not work to be established and noticed and makes no consorted effort to become a involved player or a company goes out and tries to buy their way to the top without any real strategy. Wrong platform, wrong content, and they push out there message thinking it works like traditional advertising does.


Think again, Social Media heavy on the SOCIAL.


I have found and seen that companies that are doing well in Social Media Marketing for the most part have a person or group of (excited) people who serve as the core to their program. This is a person or people who want to be using the social channels any way they can, tying to push the envelope to deliver the kind of INTERACTION MESSAGE that the F’s (friends, fans, followers) want to see, hear and interact with.


Now the key question for me, Can this function or should this function be outsourced? IN some ways yes and others you better think about it.


Using a company like mine can help you plan out your attack, organize it, putting together the strategy, policies and general education of your employees on what to do with this new tool. Some people say that what they, an outside source might not be able to do is actually speak for the company, but again I question that. In the Larson plan there is 1 person and1 person alone that works on any given account. They know you, love you, understand you. They can get so close that they are able to speak as “the company” would. Then you need to trust them to do it. Can you? If you hold the leash too tight your Social Media will stagnate and stall.


Larson Notes & Satire: As a company I have for the last 13 years devoted myself to lead generation and the kind of advertising and marketing the gets customers to my clients FAST. Today, not tomorrow. They don’t have time to wait, and I don’t have the patience. So where does Social Media fit in? When we started at it was a little more each year, then the year became a little more each month and the month became a week and the week became a day. Will the day become an hour? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/SocialMediaMarketing we are ready to serve you if you want us.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Bing To Index Facebook

Bing has made an announcement that might prove to be a big hit, I mean a very big hit for those of us now are using Facebook as a Social Media Marketing tool and at the same time huge blow to Google’s dominance. Starting now, yes now, Bing is incorporating Facebook data into its search results. Been there and did some searches and yes it is up and running on the Bing search engine! So now if you search for something on Bing and you have activated Facebook results, you will see the pages, products and websites your friends (even their faces show up) like and recommend way up in results, no matter if that website normally ranks first second or heaven forbid, the last page on a search.

Perhaps even more interesting is that these results will appear totally independent of any traditional and what we thought of as normal SEO practices. If your friends like it, it will appear on the first page. Magic?


More than ever for companies engaged in Social Media Marketing “It's Not What you Know, but Who you Know”. Content is important but it is who you are rubbing elbows with that will be making a major difference.


The more your business is visible on Facebook, the better chance of your website being Liked and your content, products and services being pushed higher up on this new social search results.


If your business has not been active in Social Media Marketing you better get it going. (A pause for a commercial message: At Larson’s we know what we are doing and we can get you going on a Social Media Marketing campaign, quickly, easily and completely)


Yet, content is still King, long live the King. The only way a page will be Liked by the masses on Facebook is if it contains great content. So don’t think you can park your content on the side and get all your friends to like you and you will be projected up onto the heaven of web search pages, the first page. It is still going to take work, lots of work. Varied content, blog posts, videos, images and audio, not to mention content that is optimized. And not to add more challenges but this does not kill off traditional SEO. Pages will still need to be "found" in order to be Liked from this new Bing button. Total strangers to your business can still influence search results, so SEO still matters.


It's easy to see that Bing is relying, or are they hoping and praying on using Facebook for social search. You might think that, because it's focused only on Facebook, this news is not totally earth shaking, as Facebook goes past three-quarters of a billion users across the world, but, it is. At least to Bing. Consider now that Facebook users 750,000000,000 (looks more impressive when you type out all the zeros) of them now have a reason to use Bing rather than Google.


Another interesting thought is that Facebook could technically block Google from indexing any or all of its content. This would and could kill Google’s need to heavy Facebook users.


In the words of Bing:
"At Bing, our mission is to help you make faster, more informed decisions. We designed a new way to experience search, focusing on great design, task completion, instant answers, and vertical categories like shopping and travel to help you make decisions faster. While we’ve made great strides in these areas, there is a huge opportunity for improvement. Today, search remains largely driven by facts and links – we think it’s time to change that.


Research tells us that 90% of people seek advice from family and friends as part of the decision making process. This “Friend Effect” is apparent in most of our decisions and often outweighs other facts because people feel more confident, smarter and safer with the wisdom of their trusted circle. A movie critic may pan the latest summer block buster, but your friends say it’s the feel good movie of the year, so you ignore the critic and go (and wholeheartedly agree). Historically, search hasn’t incorporated this “Friend Effect” – and 80% of people will delay making a decision until they can get a friend’s stamp of approval. This decision delay, or period of time it takes to hunt down a friend for advice, can last anywhere from a few minutes to days, whether you’re waiting for a call back, text, email or tweet.


Today, Bing is bringing the collective IQ of the Web together with the opinions of the people you trust most, to bring the “Friend Effect” to search. Starting today, you can receive personalized search results based on the opinions of your friends by simply signing into Facebook. New features make it easier to see what your Facebook friends “like” across the Web, incorporate the collective know-how of the Web into your search results, and begin adding a more conversational aspect to your searches. Decisions can now be made with more than facts, now the opinions of your trusted friends and the collective wisdom of the Web.


You can quickly see what your friends like and are sharing. Find and connect with the right friends faster. Pick the brains of friends of who live where you’re traveling and share shopping lists with your own team of retail gurus. And, return the favor to your friends by liking more things on the Web. With one click you can let your network know that you like a brand, an article, a celebrity or even a place. Because we know the best decisions are not just fueled by facts, they require the opinions and recommendations of your friends."


If you are a heavy social or local Social Networking person Google search results, while complete are now less relevant as my person search needs become more social and localized. How many online socialites are there? Now you can start to understand why Google has been frantically trying to enter the social space with Google +1. Maybe, for once it's too little, too late for Google.


Larson Notes & Satire: Ill just let the above words set in and let you think on it for a while. If you are not hammering away at Social Media Marketing like we have (active since 2006) you better. I’ve been saying it over and over. Get involved in Social Media Marketing for your business, and then Google started doing “Real Time Search”. At that time the Larson web site http://www.larsonassociates.ws/ saw a 1000% weekly hit increase, yes you heard me 1000%. Now with this new Bing deal? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/SocialMediaMarketing we are ready to serve ourselves and you. Will we see another 1000% increase? That would be nice.


“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.