I have been talking about this one on and off since the first to the year; Real-Time Search. It’s here and it’s for real! Google and Bing have “officially” jumped into Real-Time, taking full advantage of partnerships and the ever changing face of SEO. If you do a search on Google you will now see a sizable part of the page dedicated to Real-Time search. This is not a static search result now but a scrolling, live update of content from all across the web about what you are looking for. Real time updates will continue to be taking up more and more of your screen space and in some cases the results will be very close to filling the search findings. As it stands today your company’s organic listing might have already changed dramatically in the findings. When did you last check? While the total number of results does not appear to have changed much, where you sit has or will if you are not active in the world of SM, blogs and the like.
Larson Notes & Satire: This is big struff going on here. Why do you think I posted my profile on over 50 SM sites as well as a bunch of ning sites? It was not for fun! It means getting to work on improving your web actions, your web active involvement. It means getting ontop of your real-time and social media initiatives now because they now take on a new impoortnce in your overall SEO strategy. Yes all that time you “waisted” in your SM sites are now become very important to you and your company! You’re in there with the knowledge (and yes active knowledge is power) on how to use SM while your competition is sitting there looking at there computer screen, scratching there heads saying; “What happened?” Anyone need someone to be writing and posting to their companies blog?
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. Yes we write blogs for selected companies. Should we be writing yours? Call or email us today.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Longer Search Queries Dropping
In Mid December Hit wise reported that the growth rate for longer search queries i.e. those searches using terms of 5 to 8 words was flat between October and November of 09. Searches of over 8 words were up 1% while shorter search queries (those 1 to 4 words) was flat on a month to month comparison. Searches of one word still make up the majority (24.13%) of ALL searches.
Larson Notes & Satire: So do you work harder at long strings or the one word wonders? I'm not sure but I’ll keep banging at the one word wonders and keep my focus on long sting attacks in the back ground. If I can get even up to the 2nd or 3rd page of a one word search and pack in my long string Meta tags key words I should be able to close the gap against the “big-boys”, maybe.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. Yes we write blogs for selected companies. Should we be writing yours? Call or email us today.
Larson Notes & Satire: So do you work harder at long strings or the one word wonders? I'm not sure but I’ll keep banging at the one word wonders and keep my focus on long sting attacks in the back ground. If I can get even up to the 2nd or 3rd page of a one word search and pack in my long string Meta tags key words I should be able to close the gap against the “big-boys”, maybe.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. Yes we write blogs for selected companies. Should we be writing yours? Call or email us today.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Getting Social?
Will Social Networking take the place of working relationships the old fashioned way? Face to face? I don’t think so. Yet, all these online tools (54 plus and 28 ning sites for my companies) let me connect in a number of ways I would never be able to if left to traditional ways to network such as work a room, join chambers and the like.
In a pole down by Gourmet News 83% of the people responding said that they will be expanding the use of their social networking with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube being mentioned specifically. Yet these are all tolls, nothing more, nothing less.
If you’re smart you will use all this wonderful technology to push your business. Letting us keep in touch in a quicker faster way. Having an online presence is now a necessity but it is not going to replace the personal touch that only you can bring to the table.
Larson Notes & Satire: Never underestimate the power of a personal visit or an actual phone call. To your customer’s eyes YOU are the company.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. Yes we write blogs for selected companies. Should we be writing yours? Call or email us today.
In a pole down by Gourmet News 83% of the people responding said that they will be expanding the use of their social networking with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube being mentioned specifically. Yet these are all tolls, nothing more, nothing less.
If you’re smart you will use all this wonderful technology to push your business. Letting us keep in touch in a quicker faster way. Having an online presence is now a necessity but it is not going to replace the personal touch that only you can bring to the table.
Larson Notes & Satire: Never underestimate the power of a personal visit or an actual phone call. To your customer’s eyes YOU are the company.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. Yes we write blogs for selected companies. Should we be writing yours? Call or email us today.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Social Media, Money Spender or Money Maker?
Is your investment (money and time) thought of as an expense or as an investment? Are you making money or losing money? Despite of some honest efforts most marketing departments are totally in the dark as to how to make money through SM. It’s like turning off the light in a room with no windows and then trying to find something.
In this new marketing world that has appeared in the last year, we need to connect on a day-to-day way in Web marketing. From customer acquisition to driving revenue and customer retention. Everyone from the corner office to the assembly line are looking at these strategic outcomes and how it will help protect their company and jobs. Don’t kid yourself we are all looking over our proverbial solders at what is behind us.
Today we are increasing conversion, and those with them, reducing shopping cart abandonment.
So you need to take action, tie tactical results to inside search, social conversations, email attacks, display and affiliate marketing to knowing behavioral metrics with measurable numbers. Make sure they are all working in unison to take prospects though the sales cycle all the way to completion not leaving them in the dark.
If you going to start a new campaign ask if it can be tract to an eventual customer action. If the answer is no, you might want to consider eliminating it or redesigning it. If the answer is yes, ask if it is part of a larger system and process that moves customers towards the eventual purchase, faster!
Then use it interactively. Advertising is inherently a mass, one dimensional thing. We talk at customers not usually with. Enter stage right SM marketing. Now we need to talk with customers in real time or as close to real time as possible. Most marketing and advertising professionals recognize the webs ability to crate immediate results from an e-mail blast to posted blogs, to a Google banner ad. But now, with the new SM tools we have at our disposal we still are clinging to the old habits. Be go out and do broadcast Tweets, Stuff our follower and friend lists full of strangers and people have no interest in what we are doing or selling thinking the more I have the better I’ll do (sorry been there done that).
Larson Notes & Satire: I challenge you to push the envelope! I challenge you to look at your SM the same way you look at your other marketing tactics and business. Demand yourself to positive outcomes!
If you are acquiring customers using a credible SM approach, if you’re listening then publish relevant content, if you’re publishing compelling, easily shared content, I think you are on the right track.
Start worrying less about immediately increasing conversion and more about the nurturing of your followers and friends as the travel into and down the sales funnel.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. Yes we write blogs for selected companies. Should we be writing yours? Call or email us today.
In this new marketing world that has appeared in the last year, we need to connect on a day-to-day way in Web marketing. From customer acquisition to driving revenue and customer retention. Everyone from the corner office to the assembly line are looking at these strategic outcomes and how it will help protect their company and jobs. Don’t kid yourself we are all looking over our proverbial solders at what is behind us.
Today we are increasing conversion, and those with them, reducing shopping cart abandonment.
So you need to take action, tie tactical results to inside search, social conversations, email attacks, display and affiliate marketing to knowing behavioral metrics with measurable numbers. Make sure they are all working in unison to take prospects though the sales cycle all the way to completion not leaving them in the dark.
If you going to start a new campaign ask if it can be tract to an eventual customer action. If the answer is no, you might want to consider eliminating it or redesigning it. If the answer is yes, ask if it is part of a larger system and process that moves customers towards the eventual purchase, faster!
Then use it interactively. Advertising is inherently a mass, one dimensional thing. We talk at customers not usually with. Enter stage right SM marketing. Now we need to talk with customers in real time or as close to real time as possible. Most marketing and advertising professionals recognize the webs ability to crate immediate results from an e-mail blast to posted blogs, to a Google banner ad. But now, with the new SM tools we have at our disposal we still are clinging to the old habits. Be go out and do broadcast Tweets, Stuff our follower and friend lists full of strangers and people have no interest in what we are doing or selling thinking the more I have the better I’ll do (sorry been there done that).
Larson Notes & Satire: I challenge you to push the envelope! I challenge you to look at your SM the same way you look at your other marketing tactics and business. Demand yourself to positive outcomes!
If you are acquiring customers using a credible SM approach, if you’re listening then publish relevant content, if you’re publishing compelling, easily shared content, I think you are on the right track.
Start worrying less about immediately increasing conversion and more about the nurturing of your followers and friends as the travel into and down the sales funnel.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. Yes we write blogs for selected companies. Should we be writing yours? Call or email us today.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
How Twitter is Changing the Internet
If you feel like you are getting lost in the shuffle you are not alone. Most people I talk to are trying to use between 6-10 different social sites, I say trying because when you network on multiple social sites at the same time it’s almost impossible to be effective at any of them. It’s no wonder people are lost and confused with how much time they should spend on what site, especially with new social sites popping up everyday.
The question should be, which “one” do I focus on with my time? Twitter is growing fast and many people simply don’t know if they should invest or split their time with another social site. I get asked a few questions over and over again, how can Twitter help me with my business? How does Twitter work? How is Twitter different from other social sites? When used properly you can get more done with greater results in less time from just one central hub social site, “Twitter”. Twitter gives you the ability to locate people looking for what you have to offer.
Let me list a few of the benefits Twitter can offer you or your business:
1. Brand Yourself: Branding yourself and your business using traditional means of advertising would cost you tens of thousands of dollars; with Twitter this is possible with no out of pocket expense and can happen very quickly.
2. Building Relationships: You can build relationships that provide you long term customers. More and more people are shopping online everyday and the sooner you learn how to build relationships online using social sites the sooner you can tap into this growing market.
3. Customer Service: In the offline world this is a problem that is only getting worse. In the online world of Internet marketing this has been reserved for those that could afford the high tech sites. With many 3rd party tools that integrate with Twitter, online customer service is quickly becoming a reality for everyone.
4. Engage: There has never been a time in the history of the Internet where you can invest your time engaging with people that want what you have. Better yet locate your competitor’s clients.
5. Provide Value: Providing value to both your prospects and customers is a must if you want to hear from them again. People hate to be sold but love to buy. Just one of many, Twitterfeed.com is a 3rd party tool that allows you to provide valuable content to your prospects, customers and followers. Now you can be the information provider without even doing the research.
6. Networking: I have spent thousands of dollars and driven thousands of miles trying to locate people to network with in my business. The thought of going global was out of the question. Now with Twitter there are no limitations, you can network with people locally, nationally and globally if you choose to do so.
7. Research: With Twitter you can research information you need in real time. More and more people I tweet with are sending out questions in the form of a tweet versus going to Google. This allows you to interact with people and meet new friends at the same time.
8. Traffic: Traffic Generation to your blog or website worldwide. Most people continue to build their business on a local level but the playing field has leveled. I know people who have generated traffic to their website from over a hundred plus countries within 30 days only using Twitter. Tell me where else can you do that?
Where we go from here no one knows, but so far it is pretty clear that Twitter is changing the Internet and making the world of marketing much less centralized, and much more people-driven.
· Content taken from: http://twitter.com/alferretti & http://twitter.com/skeeterhansen
Larson Notes & Satire: Twitter is fun and interesting, it does help with networking sharing knowledge etc but there is a lot of SPAM already. Do not just SPAM i.e. send out info with no interest to other people or giving them a real way to reply and comment. If you are smarter and more engaging you will just attract people which will not lead to anything rewarding, for you or them. Twitter does have low/no cost to set up time. But it does have a time cost which you need to be wary of. It can suck in hours quickly.
Twitter is great but is in its infancy, it will develop and become more main stream. There will always be something newer and cooler to follow, it is the nature of progress. Twitter is very much now, but what is the next “big thing”? I’m not sure but for now with the advent or real-time search out of Google and Bing, I see some good reasons for riding the Twitter wave.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.
The question should be, which “one” do I focus on with my time? Twitter is growing fast and many people simply don’t know if they should invest or split their time with another social site. I get asked a few questions over and over again, how can Twitter help me with my business? How does Twitter work? How is Twitter different from other social sites? When used properly you can get more done with greater results in less time from just one central hub social site, “Twitter”. Twitter gives you the ability to locate people looking for what you have to offer.
Let me list a few of the benefits Twitter can offer you or your business:
1. Brand Yourself: Branding yourself and your business using traditional means of advertising would cost you tens of thousands of dollars; with Twitter this is possible with no out of pocket expense and can happen very quickly.
2. Building Relationships: You can build relationships that provide you long term customers. More and more people are shopping online everyday and the sooner you learn how to build relationships online using social sites the sooner you can tap into this growing market.
3. Customer Service: In the offline world this is a problem that is only getting worse. In the online world of Internet marketing this has been reserved for those that could afford the high tech sites. With many 3rd party tools that integrate with Twitter, online customer service is quickly becoming a reality for everyone.
4. Engage: There has never been a time in the history of the Internet where you can invest your time engaging with people that want what you have. Better yet locate your competitor’s clients.
5. Provide Value: Providing value to both your prospects and customers is a must if you want to hear from them again. People hate to be sold but love to buy. Just one of many, Twitterfeed.com is a 3rd party tool that allows you to provide valuable content to your prospects, customers and followers. Now you can be the information provider without even doing the research.
6. Networking: I have spent thousands of dollars and driven thousands of miles trying to locate people to network with in my business. The thought of going global was out of the question. Now with Twitter there are no limitations, you can network with people locally, nationally and globally if you choose to do so.
7. Research: With Twitter you can research information you need in real time. More and more people I tweet with are sending out questions in the form of a tweet versus going to Google. This allows you to interact with people and meet new friends at the same time.
8. Traffic: Traffic Generation to your blog or website worldwide. Most people continue to build their business on a local level but the playing field has leveled. I know people who have generated traffic to their website from over a hundred plus countries within 30 days only using Twitter. Tell me where else can you do that?
Where we go from here no one knows, but so far it is pretty clear that Twitter is changing the Internet and making the world of marketing much less centralized, and much more people-driven.
· Content taken from: http://twitter.com/alferretti & http://twitter.com/skeeterhansen
Larson Notes & Satire: Twitter is fun and interesting, it does help with networking sharing knowledge etc but there is a lot of SPAM already. Do not just SPAM i.e. send out info with no interest to other people or giving them a real way to reply and comment. If you are smarter and more engaging you will just attract people which will not lead to anything rewarding, for you or them. Twitter does have low/no cost to set up time. But it does have a time cost which you need to be wary of. It can suck in hours quickly.
Twitter is great but is in its infancy, it will develop and become more main stream. There will always be something newer and cooler to follow, it is the nature of progress. Twitter is very much now, but what is the next “big thing”? I’m not sure but for now with the advent or real-time search out of Google and Bing, I see some good reasons for riding the Twitter wave.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Lead Defining Creates Marketing/Sales Success
When you don’t know who you are going after, more times than not your marketing and sales department start going off in two different directions. In the B2B telemarketing world, where I spent 25% or my time, a sales ready lead is defined quite specifically as someone who has engaged in a meaningful conversation and has a defined project, or need with a timeframe to buy, a budget to work with and a willingness to go further down the sales process with a salesperson. When trying to align marketing and sales and focus those departmental efforts on prospects can turn them into customers faster. This is why it is crucial to qualify your leads carefully.
By setting up the qualifying criteria for your leads you focus everyone on what kind of person or company buys from your company. Without this qualification information you will end up with inaccurate data in your marketing and pass on false or leads that are less than optimal. As you collect names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, only a small fraction, probably only about 10% are really viable leads that should be pushed on to the sales team.
In qualifying leads via telemarketing you can take raw names, identify them down faster into what we might call sales ready leads. When this works when you pinpoint your marketing into tight areas, everyone is happier and on the same page, something that many marketing and sales departments have a hard time with.
Larson Notes & Satire: In the mysterious world of lead generation quality of quantity is really the key. By mapping out what qualifies a viable lead keeps sales people from wild goose chases and lets marketing use higher priced marketing tools more effectively. If you hone in on your target your chances of striking pay dirt go up a thousand fold. In my business we often have to sit down in front of our crystal ball for a customer guessing on who they should be talking to because, quite frankly, they have no idea. Thank God for SIC numbers!
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
By setting up the qualifying criteria for your leads you focus everyone on what kind of person or company buys from your company. Without this qualification information you will end up with inaccurate data in your marketing and pass on false or leads that are less than optimal. As you collect names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, only a small fraction, probably only about 10% are really viable leads that should be pushed on to the sales team.
In qualifying leads via telemarketing you can take raw names, identify them down faster into what we might call sales ready leads. When this works when you pinpoint your marketing into tight areas, everyone is happier and on the same page, something that many marketing and sales departments have a hard time with.
Larson Notes & Satire: In the mysterious world of lead generation quality of quantity is really the key. By mapping out what qualifies a viable lead keeps sales people from wild goose chases and lets marketing use higher priced marketing tools more effectively. If you hone in on your target your chances of striking pay dirt go up a thousand fold. In my business we often have to sit down in front of our crystal ball for a customer guessing on who they should be talking to because, quite frankly, they have no idea. Thank God for SIC numbers!
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Best Leads Come From Focusing
Getting the best leads for your business usually comes down to focusing on the right things. But what are those right things?
First you need to target the right prospects. Look over what has bought from you in the past year. And develop and ideal prospect model based on the answers you come up with. What industries, what size companies, what problems did they have, who started the buying process, who made the final decision, why did they select your company instead of the competition, and how did they justify the decision? If you can answer these and others I’m sure you can come up with you are well on your way to having a very clear picture of who you need to be targeting in your marketing & sales attack.
Then take a look at your existing prospect database you’re using. How close do these people hit your ideal target? Find anything off target?
Now create the right offers to create action to what you know about your ideal target. You know why this group bought in the past, and the past should lead you to the future. Make it easy on yourself, you know these people so rather than creating offers from scratch use one from the past that was successful that you know works on this group. You can use a past idea, past sales and marketing materials.
And last be in sight and in the mind at the right tie using the right media. This means multichannel touches that puts you in front of the prospect in various ways and at the same time making it easy for them to act. SM, SEO, email, direct mail, telemarketing, are but a number of ways to get front and center.
Larson Notes & Satire: Become an industry collector. If you know a certain industry or profile group, go after them. Own them. Make them yours!
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
First you need to target the right prospects. Look over what has bought from you in the past year. And develop and ideal prospect model based on the answers you come up with. What industries, what size companies, what problems did they have, who started the buying process, who made the final decision, why did they select your company instead of the competition, and how did they justify the decision? If you can answer these and others I’m sure you can come up with you are well on your way to having a very clear picture of who you need to be targeting in your marketing & sales attack.
Then take a look at your existing prospect database you’re using. How close do these people hit your ideal target? Find anything off target?
Now create the right offers to create action to what you know about your ideal target. You know why this group bought in the past, and the past should lead you to the future. Make it easy on yourself, you know these people so rather than creating offers from scratch use one from the past that was successful that you know works on this group. You can use a past idea, past sales and marketing materials.
And last be in sight and in the mind at the right tie using the right media. This means multichannel touches that puts you in front of the prospect in various ways and at the same time making it easy for them to act. SM, SEO, email, direct mail, telemarketing, are but a number of ways to get front and center.
Larson Notes & Satire: Become an industry collector. If you know a certain industry or profile group, go after them. Own them. Make them yours!
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
What is Social Media Best At?
The roll of what Social Media is best at might be changing (see last week’s blog on real-time Search Engines) but Web 2.0 and the Social Media mystique is not a quick ticket to selling your goods and services. Or is it?
When you remove all the veils and the “marketers” who have become Twitter and Facebook experts overnight, it all comes down to one basic thing, knowledge sharing. Sharing not telling. Out and out selling of yourself is not a good thing. This is after all social networking not social selling. If your product or service takes lots of knowledge this is the place, If your product or service is always changing, this is the place. It is a fact that in giving away some of your intellectual content is really good for business.
If we look at SM as a place to involve your friends, followers and audience in a worthwhile conversation, not one sided, one directional, I think we are headed in the right direction.
Larson Notes & Satire: We need to look at SM as a place to have directed conversations about you and what your company can offer someone. Sure, if you read all my blogs, you might be able to do what I do, and that might “hurt” my short term business, but if you do it well and succeed, it will only build my credibility. If my credibility is built up, it will build my circle of influence, which will build my customer base as people and businesses find me, need me and contract me. Push SM into a selling mode and you are not going to go very fast.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
When you remove all the veils and the “marketers” who have become Twitter and Facebook experts overnight, it all comes down to one basic thing, knowledge sharing. Sharing not telling. Out and out selling of yourself is not a good thing. This is after all social networking not social selling. If your product or service takes lots of knowledge this is the place, If your product or service is always changing, this is the place. It is a fact that in giving away some of your intellectual content is really good for business.
If we look at SM as a place to involve your friends, followers and audience in a worthwhile conversation, not one sided, one directional, I think we are headed in the right direction.
Larson Notes & Satire: We need to look at SM as a place to have directed conversations about you and what your company can offer someone. Sure, if you read all my blogs, you might be able to do what I do, and that might “hurt” my short term business, but if you do it well and succeed, it will only build my credibility. If my credibility is built up, it will build my circle of influence, which will build my customer base as people and businesses find me, need me and contract me. Push SM into a selling mode and you are not going to go very fast.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Week Ahead January 11-15, 2010
Monday:
Tuesday: November trade balance,
Wednesday: Federal Reserve beige book
Thursday: December retail sales, November business inventories, Weekly initial jobless claims
Friday: December consumer price index, December industrial production
Larson Notes & Satire: Same as last week, Jobs, jobs, jobs. The statics that came out last week did not look good for jobs, again. Same as last week, as we look deeper into the New Year there are two major areas we need to be looking at productivity and jobs. If we can put in place the jobs needed we will increase consumption which will increase demand. If we can lower taxes we can put more money in the pockets of people and businesses that will buy what we sell. If we can keep the dollar low, we can continue to market more heavily overseas, if China puts its currency in line with the world that might just put things in proper balance, but without complete worldwide pressure the Chinese will not do that. Heck why should they went things are all balanced in their directions as the increase production capability, more so than the world is able to consume and these factories are such high polluters that … well far be in for me to understand it all but if the Copenhagen accord was to work the USA could go to ZERO pollution, and I mean ZERO, none, nothing, and if the Chinese continue on their reckless pollution path, it would still overtake the world. Sorry people, I cannot be accused of being politically correct, never have, never will and I will call a spade a spade as I see it.
The Christmas buying season makes all the production statistics almost meaningless except for the December retail sales, which as low as stores kept their inventories, as well as the rest of the business, will look not too bad. Yes inventories will be low and production will be good.
The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printers both small and mid-sized.
We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except
the Great Plains States.
If interested give us a call at 847-991-0488.
Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday: Tuesday: Running Training 6:15am,
Wednesday: Thursday: Running Training 6:15am
Friday: Saturday: Marathon Training 6:15am
Sunday:
Trade show schedule:
> February 9-11, 2010 Medical Design & Manufacturing West, Anaheim Convention center Anaheim CA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> March 14-16 2010 Internal Home and Housewares Show, McCormick Place, Chicago
> May 12-13, 2010 OrthoTec Conference Orthopaedic Capital Center at Grace College Winona Lake (Warsaw), IN (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> June 8-10, 2010 EastPack 2010 Jacob K Javits Convention Center New York NY FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)
Time slots still available to meet & talk over coffee.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Real Time Web SEO’s
Another behind the scenes event that was going on over the last year was “real-time Web”. This is a search engine with results based on recent information that is flowing over the web, things that are happening and changing each and every second. Traditional Search Engines move around web sites real-time search results are powered by people working the web with real-time search results and their current thoughts on those topics.
There are several categories of Search Queries from which we can benefit from a real-time web search. If you are a sports fan and your team, say the Black Hawks, just won over the Boston Bruins, a real-time search would allow you to see what other fans are saying in real time, on any number of sites, posts and blogs. Same holds true with a national disaster. You get real time answers and adv ice.
Businesses are taking notice of this. I need to assume you are involved in and with twitter. Twitter offers a search function on its site to hand you twits I real time.
The bottom line is that there is a major challenge for real-time search engines. On the traditional Web, a search leads to profits as advertisers and marketers experience conversion rates based on pay-per-click (ppc). However as advertisers want to come up on product related searches and if a major portion of teal-time Web searches are informational based what is going to happen? Will the relevancy of advertisers who will pay a price for PPC become diluted? Or will they move from sites that push real-time to sites that do not?
Google and Bing recently announced plans to include some real-time results in their searches! Web companies are facing a big problem. Anyone can have their voice heard on real time, but what makes it so powerful is that you and I can, if we use SM correctly can rise to the top. At the same time this tool also has a major down side and that is SPAMMERS. At the same time more sources are being actively seen due to real-time, so too will the SPAMMER manipulate this wonderful marketing advancement.
While today’s searches are probably suited for the traditional search engines, the vast potential for real-time gives rise to a whole new way to use the web.
Larson Notes & Satire: I have already stopped truncating my web site on twitter so my full URL is posted. To be indexed by the real-time Web you NEED to be active on places like Twitter, Facebook, Dig, Nings, MerchantCircle and all the other SM sites. Make timely status updates and relative posts that are important to your business and your product/service line. What is happening now in your business and industry. What common interests to you have with your prospects and customers? Add that to the idea that your business must have some authority behind it and you’re on your way. ON Twitter for example you will benefit by having as many followers in your specialty niches as possible. That way if you post something of quality and it gets retwitted, the real-time Search Engines will start to take over and give you even more exposure.
Traditional search engines don’t alter results very often so a first page ranking usually takes a long time to get and then can remain there for months or even years. With real time Web, first page rankings can come and go at the blink of an eye. Is this what SM marketing has been leading us to. Now I can only start to sit back and smile at my time I spent on how to make and work all the SM sites I’m in. Yes, maybe, just maybe my (your) time has come.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
There are several categories of Search Queries from which we can benefit from a real-time web search. If you are a sports fan and your team, say the Black Hawks, just won over the Boston Bruins, a real-time search would allow you to see what other fans are saying in real time, on any number of sites, posts and blogs. Same holds true with a national disaster. You get real time answers and adv ice.
Businesses are taking notice of this. I need to assume you are involved in and with twitter. Twitter offers a search function on its site to hand you twits I real time.
The bottom line is that there is a major challenge for real-time search engines. On the traditional Web, a search leads to profits as advertisers and marketers experience conversion rates based on pay-per-click (ppc). However as advertisers want to come up on product related searches and if a major portion of teal-time Web searches are informational based what is going to happen? Will the relevancy of advertisers who will pay a price for PPC become diluted? Or will they move from sites that push real-time to sites that do not?
Google and Bing recently announced plans to include some real-time results in their searches! Web companies are facing a big problem. Anyone can have their voice heard on real time, but what makes it so powerful is that you and I can, if we use SM correctly can rise to the top. At the same time this tool also has a major down side and that is SPAMMERS. At the same time more sources are being actively seen due to real-time, so too will the SPAMMER manipulate this wonderful marketing advancement.
While today’s searches are probably suited for the traditional search engines, the vast potential for real-time gives rise to a whole new way to use the web.
Larson Notes & Satire: I have already stopped truncating my web site on twitter so my full URL is posted. To be indexed by the real-time Web you NEED to be active on places like Twitter, Facebook, Dig, Nings, MerchantCircle and all the other SM sites. Make timely status updates and relative posts that are important to your business and your product/service line. What is happening now in your business and industry. What common interests to you have with your prospects and customers? Add that to the idea that your business must have some authority behind it and you’re on your way. ON Twitter for example you will benefit by having as many followers in your specialty niches as possible. That way if you post something of quality and it gets retwitted, the real-time Search Engines will start to take over and give you even more exposure.
Traditional search engines don’t alter results very often so a first page ranking usually takes a long time to get and then can remain there for months or even years. With real time Web, first page rankings can come and go at the blink of an eye. Is this what SM marketing has been leading us to. Now I can only start to sit back and smile at my time I spent on how to make and work all the SM sites I’m in. Yes, maybe, just maybe my (your) time has come.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Local Search Trends & Ideas
We have seen a lot of changes over the last year. Yet, inspite of all the changes in SM, mobile, banner, pay for click, Search Engines are still the most popular and widely used online channel for gather information, conducting research and finding a business or company to buy from.
When starting from scratch create your (local) search engine marketing with Google in mind as the majority of searches are made from there. Luckily many of the same techniques that you will be using can also be applied to Yahoo and Bing.
To establishing a local search engine presence there are three proven methods to establish your local SE presence. While it is advantageous to work on all three there are of course pros and cons to each method including cost and speed to achieve good results.
First is of course Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To appear in one of the top 3 pages of a natural or organic search result is the ultimate in any SEO marketing attack. As much as this is the gold medal of achievements, especially if your key works or stings are very competitive it is also is the one area that (usually) takes the longest to achieve gold star results. However, you can speed this process up by targeting specific search terms with geographic modifiers. For example if you are a Running Shoe Store in Palatine Illinois you might want to use “Palatine Running Shoes” or “Chicago Running Shoes” as a keyword string rather than just “Running Shoes”
Second is using Google for setting up a Local Business Listing, which by the way is free. These listings have several benefits with in the Search world. First would be local business terms which Google shows a visitor a set of local business listings with in a map of that location embedded in the search result page. In the spring of 2009 Google started showing these listings on generic searches based on the location of the searcher without the use of geographic modifiers and just start their search with the product/service description.
Your listing also appears on the Google Maps website. This appearance on the Google Maps opp on popular mobile devices such as iPhone has been a big development for local businesses with the same listing on the Google Maps website on the phone with complete address, hone number and directions from the searcher’s current location.
The downside is that to be on the local business listing your page must be optimized to appear on the first page.
Larson Notes & Satyr: To make the most or an online SEO marketing attack my suggestions would be to start with a free local business listing. Then start a pay-for-click, this will guarantee immediate local presence for your business. Once you have those two components in place, you can begin a SEO campaign. If done right you can slowing diminish your pay-for-click campaign as your organic searches rise up in the listings. Then again, if you are getting a good ROI off of your clicks, keep it as part as your long term campaign and add another area of the overall puzzle.
It’s a game of chess; learn the rules and the moves and you can win, even against the “big boys”.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
When starting from scratch create your (local) search engine marketing with Google in mind as the majority of searches are made from there. Luckily many of the same techniques that you will be using can also be applied to Yahoo and Bing.
To establishing a local search engine presence there are three proven methods to establish your local SE presence. While it is advantageous to work on all three there are of course pros and cons to each method including cost and speed to achieve good results.
First is of course Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To appear in one of the top 3 pages of a natural or organic search result is the ultimate in any SEO marketing attack. As much as this is the gold medal of achievements, especially if your key works or stings are very competitive it is also is the one area that (usually) takes the longest to achieve gold star results. However, you can speed this process up by targeting specific search terms with geographic modifiers. For example if you are a Running Shoe Store in Palatine Illinois you might want to use “Palatine Running Shoes” or “Chicago Running Shoes” as a keyword string rather than just “Running Shoes”
Second is using Google for setting up a Local Business Listing, which by the way is free. These listings have several benefits with in the Search world. First would be local business terms which Google shows a visitor a set of local business listings with in a map of that location embedded in the search result page. In the spring of 2009 Google started showing these listings on generic searches based on the location of the searcher without the use of geographic modifiers and just start their search with the product/service description.
Your listing also appears on the Google Maps website. This appearance on the Google Maps opp on popular mobile devices such as iPhone has been a big development for local businesses with the same listing on the Google Maps website on the phone with complete address, hone number and directions from the searcher’s current location.
The downside is that to be on the local business listing your page must be optimized to appear on the first page.
Larson Notes & Satyr: To make the most or an online SEO marketing attack my suggestions would be to start with a free local business listing. Then start a pay-for-click, this will guarantee immediate local presence for your business. Once you have those two components in place, you can begin a SEO campaign. If done right you can slowing diminish your pay-for-click campaign as your organic searches rise up in the listings. Then again, if you are getting a good ROI off of your clicks, keep it as part as your long term campaign and add another area of the overall puzzle.
It’s a game of chess; learn the rules and the moves and you can win, even against the “big boys”.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Search Engine Optimization Trends For 2010
Of all the Web services that are offered Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the one that is surrounded by the most mystique. Considering that success and failure is a moving target to get the “best” ranking and at the same time the Search Engines change the rules as you “play” it is no wonder it is a puzzlement to the general web browsing world.
When we take for example the news that Google and Bing are going to start indexing Twitter, it gives a question to what will be the affect on SERP’s (search engine results page), is a reason for businesses to get involved in social media marketing and networking, as we see that over all affect of their (our) SEO strategy.
When someone goes and reviews or comments on your company or product that conversation may just start appearing in a search result. Talk about scary stuff, huh? This will increase your visibility and reputation (for the good or bad) and you will be entirely out of control. So in short the ultimate driver of (your) web site traffic will be your online conversations. This could become the best way to get discovered by consumers and prospects.
As it has evolved over, mainly, the last 2 years and even more so in 2009, SM is influencing SEO practices. In this area dollar costs for marketing go down BUT time costs can go way up!
Another important area is that instead of manipulating keywords, content and links, SEO plans will need to rely on “digital asset optimization” or taking stock of the content you produce such as your blog, your posts, etc. and optimizing it for the appropriate channels such as YouTube or Google.
Keeping all this information bouncing around in your head, SEO strategy moves from one approach to multi-channel manipulation. One channel manipulation that the SEO companies have been relying on is drying up as the loopholes that they have learned to manipulate are closing. Rather than focusing on keywords and links, write better content for your site, make better posts, write more pointed blogs. You and I need to beat the manipulation pros by being smarter and more creative in how you create and promote your content.
Larson Notes & Satyr: When thinking of SEO for 2010 and SERP we need to be focusing on keywords used, building links and writing good content, which will all attract links in and of its own accord. We are taking of content not just as spider food but as prospect engagers. You need to get your prospects to engage with your service and brand so eventually as they talk online about you your page rises to the top.
Now the question is, what page? Your web site, one of your SM pages or your blog? Key here is to put links on your SM and Blog pages back to your web site and at the same time give good solid content and information.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
When we take for example the news that Google and Bing are going to start indexing Twitter, it gives a question to what will be the affect on SERP’s (search engine results page), is a reason for businesses to get involved in social media marketing and networking, as we see that over all affect of their (our) SEO strategy.
When someone goes and reviews or comments on your company or product that conversation may just start appearing in a search result. Talk about scary stuff, huh? This will increase your visibility and reputation (for the good or bad) and you will be entirely out of control. So in short the ultimate driver of (your) web site traffic will be your online conversations. This could become the best way to get discovered by consumers and prospects.
As it has evolved over, mainly, the last 2 years and even more so in 2009, SM is influencing SEO practices. In this area dollar costs for marketing go down BUT time costs can go way up!
Another important area is that instead of manipulating keywords, content and links, SEO plans will need to rely on “digital asset optimization” or taking stock of the content you produce such as your blog, your posts, etc. and optimizing it for the appropriate channels such as YouTube or Google.
Keeping all this information bouncing around in your head, SEO strategy moves from one approach to multi-channel manipulation. One channel manipulation that the SEO companies have been relying on is drying up as the loopholes that they have learned to manipulate are closing. Rather than focusing on keywords and links, write better content for your site, make better posts, write more pointed blogs. You and I need to beat the manipulation pros by being smarter and more creative in how you create and promote your content.
Larson Notes & Satyr: When thinking of SEO for 2010 and SERP we need to be focusing on keywords used, building links and writing good content, which will all attract links in and of its own accord. We are taking of content not just as spider food but as prospect engagers. You need to get your prospects to engage with your service and brand so eventually as they talk online about you your page rises to the top.
Now the question is, what page? Your web site, one of your SM pages or your blog? Key here is to put links on your SM and Blog pages back to your web site and at the same time give good solid content and information.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Search Engine Myths Exposed
The most important thing about search engine optimization (SEO) is that nothing and I mean nothing is constant. And with the passing of time there are myths that have cropped up that trick people into making the wrong choices and waste time and money, your two most important recourses.
The first and maybe the most damaging myth is that of Guaranteed Success. There is no guarantee in SEOs. Don’t believe the guaranteed get you on the top 10 of Google search boasts out of companies. Sure maybe on your or your companies name but on key words. Nope not going to happen that easily.
Second is Meta Tag Keywords. After years of mystery surrounding the issue of Meta tag keywords, you can sleep tonight; Google does not use this data to determine your search engine results. While you might want to use Meta tag keywords as a reference guide to keep track of the words and terms you want to be optimizing for individual pages, don’t rely on them to capture that elusive first (page) listing. BUT, Yahoo does apparently continue to use Meta tag keywords and as for Bing, the jury is still out. So yes keep your Meta tag keywords accurate and up to date, as this might offer some form of insurance just in case some search engines do factor the Meta tags into their algorithms.
Third; Meta Tag Descriptions. If we go back to 2007 and e3arlier almost every SEO was talking about the proper length of your Meta tag descriptions. And then at the same time the Meta tag description that was displayed was always the few lines of text specified by the site owner, but once again that has changed! Google’s algorithm now picks up matching lines and phrases in the page content itself that is related to the search and displays a selective part of that content on the SERP’s little one liner. So, sigh, be sure to do your keyword research when preparing your NEW content.
Forth, is Keyword Density. Yes copy and paste fans, during the evolution of the SEO someone did notice that specific keyword density helped in optimizing content. So as you might have already guessed every SEO picked up on that little trick and while there are probably was some truth to that practice at the time, the search engine spiders started getting smarter and were able to catch patterns, such as the practice of having invisible text over or under your page of your key words repeated over and over. Now, while ensuring the content of the page being optimized includes your keywords, the density matters more to the myth that reality
Fifth is Dynamic URL’s. The big 3 (Google, Yahoo & Bing) have made some major strides in how to manage dynamic URL’s (A URL that results from the search of a database-driven Web site or the URL of a Web site that runs a script) so duplicate content is much less a concern in today’s search engine world. Today they are converted to a more SEO friendly format including canonical link tags that tell the search engines to index the preferred URL and not the long, dynamic one.
Sixth is Flash. It is not there yet but search engines, Google in particular are getting better at indexing Flash based content there is still a long way to go. Being a lover of designing sites in Flash, I am half smiling. It used to be that having an all Flash website was death when it came to your sites ranking. But the reality is still that using a Flash only site gives you fewer options for SEOs compared to content rich pages. This does not mean it is bad. It means that you need to focus on other SEO factors to get good results.
Larson Notes & Satyr: All you need to remember is that the web of 2 years ago is not the web of today. Heck, just wait as Facebook and Twitter start to get searched. If you are active in those arenas all your work, waiting and time sacrifice might start to pay off. Well, maybe.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
The first and maybe the most damaging myth is that of Guaranteed Success. There is no guarantee in SEOs. Don’t believe the guaranteed get you on the top 10 of Google search boasts out of companies. Sure maybe on your or your companies name but on key words. Nope not going to happen that easily.
Second is Meta Tag Keywords. After years of mystery surrounding the issue of Meta tag keywords, you can sleep tonight; Google does not use this data to determine your search engine results. While you might want to use Meta tag keywords as a reference guide to keep track of the words and terms you want to be optimizing for individual pages, don’t rely on them to capture that elusive first (page) listing. BUT, Yahoo does apparently continue to use Meta tag keywords and as for Bing, the jury is still out. So yes keep your Meta tag keywords accurate and up to date, as this might offer some form of insurance just in case some search engines do factor the Meta tags into their algorithms.
Third; Meta Tag Descriptions. If we go back to 2007 and e3arlier almost every SEO was talking about the proper length of your Meta tag descriptions. And then at the same time the Meta tag description that was displayed was always the few lines of text specified by the site owner, but once again that has changed! Google’s algorithm now picks up matching lines and phrases in the page content itself that is related to the search and displays a selective part of that content on the SERP’s little one liner. So, sigh, be sure to do your keyword research when preparing your NEW content.
Forth, is Keyword Density. Yes copy and paste fans, during the evolution of the SEO someone did notice that specific keyword density helped in optimizing content. So as you might have already guessed every SEO picked up on that little trick and while there are probably was some truth to that practice at the time, the search engine spiders started getting smarter and were able to catch patterns, such as the practice of having invisible text over or under your page of your key words repeated over and over. Now, while ensuring the content of the page being optimized includes your keywords, the density matters more to the myth that reality
Fifth is Dynamic URL’s. The big 3 (Google, Yahoo & Bing) have made some major strides in how to manage dynamic URL’s (A URL that results from the search of a database-driven Web site or the URL of a Web site that runs a script) so duplicate content is much less a concern in today’s search engine world. Today they are converted to a more SEO friendly format including canonical link tags that tell the search engines to index the preferred URL and not the long, dynamic one.
Sixth is Flash. It is not there yet but search engines, Google in particular are getting better at indexing Flash based content there is still a long way to go. Being a lover of designing sites in Flash, I am half smiling. It used to be that having an all Flash website was death when it came to your sites ranking. But the reality is still that using a Flash only site gives you fewer options for SEOs compared to content rich pages. This does not mean it is bad. It means that you need to focus on other SEO factors to get good results.
Larson Notes & Satyr: All you need to remember is that the web of 2 years ago is not the web of today. Heck, just wait as Facebook and Twitter start to get searched. If you are active in those arenas all your work, waiting and time sacrifice might start to pay off. Well, maybe.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Monday, January 4, 2010
The Week Ahead January 4- January 8, 2010
Monday: December Institute for Supply Management Index, November construction spending
Tuesday: December Auto Sales, November factory orders
Wednesday: Institute for supply management services index
Thursday: Weekly initial jobless claims
Friday: December employment report, November wholesale inventories, November consumer credit
Larson Notes & Satire: Welcome back after a nice Holiday break, at least for some of us. Now back to the grindstone of making the world work.
Are you ready for a fun ride this year. What are your goals and aspirations for your company this year? Personally I have divided the year (and beyond) into 3 segments, January thru May, Jun thru August and September thru May 2011. Each period has goals build upon the last period’s achievements. I know where I am going. Do you?
The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printer both small and mid-sized.
We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except
Tuesday: December Auto Sales, November factory orders
Wednesday: Institute for supply management services index
Thursday: Weekly initial jobless claims
Friday: December employment report, November wholesale inventories, November consumer credit
Larson Notes & Satire: Welcome back after a nice Holiday break, at least for some of us. Now back to the grindstone of making the world work.
Are you ready for a fun ride this year. What are your goals and aspirations for your company this year? Personally I have divided the year (and beyond) into 3 segments, January thru May, Jun thru August and September thru May 2011. Each period has goals build upon the last period’s achievements. I know where I am going. Do you?
The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printer both small and mid-sized.
We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except
the Great Plains States.
If interested give us a call at 847-991-0488.
Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday: Tuesday: Running Training 6:15am,
Wednesday: Thursday: Running Training 6:15am
Friday: Saturday: Marathon Training 6:15am
Sunday:
Trade show schedule:
> February 9-11, 2010 Medical Design & Manufacturing West, Anaheim Convention center Anaheim CA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> March 14-16 2010 Internal Home and Housewares Show, McCormick Place, Chicago
> May 12-13, 2010 OrthoTec Conference Orthopaedic Capital Center at Grace College Winona Lake (Warsaw), IN (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> June 8-10, 2010 EastPack 2010 Jacob K Javits Convention Center New York NY FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)
Time slots still available to meet & talk over coffee.
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain for 30 minutes.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Industrial Commodity Price Index 2009
The Purchasing Industrial Commodity Price Index closed December at 179.8 (100=January 1992), a drop-off of 6.3% from the same month in 2008. More importantly, it generated a full-year index average of 171.7, down 31.1% from the record-high 249.2 in 2008. Prices paid by manufacturing and construction buying groups for raw materials staggered to the finish line in December, sliding 0.1% from November's reading. The energy index in December dropped 2% while chemicals increased 2%, plastics dropped 1%, metals rose 1%, wood products expanded by 10% but pulp and paper products were flat. Interestingly, the overall index has increased somewhat steadily since its low point of 162.9 in May. The second-half rally in commodity prices in 2009 "has been extraordinary" and sets the stage for a recovery in spot-market costs of raw materials in 2010.
Commodity prices were lifted by the revving up of China's industrial activity. Other factors include the beginning of economic recovery in G7 nations-with the U.S. pulling out of its recession in the third quarter-exceptional monetary and fiscal policy stimulus, renewed institutional and sovereign wealth-fund inflows into commodities and investor interest into such "hard assets" as crude oil and precious metals. In 2010, "commodity prices should continue to move higher," Because of ongoing strength in China's economic growth, some re-stocking of basic materials by industrialized nations, continued interest by investors in commodities as an asset and renewed weakness in the U.S. dollar.
Larson Notes & Satire: The U.S. economy will not come roaring back in the coming months, but odds are that by the end of 2010, the tentative and fragile recovery will have evolved into a self-sustaining economic expansion. And with a rebound in industrial production, now forecast by Blue Chip Economic Indicators to rise 3.9%, buyers can expect a rebound in raw materials, commodities and components pricing as next year progresses.
Its 2010 now. A new year, a new decade. You make your way in life and in your business. If you work it right most of you should at least see double digit growth for 2010. Heck shoot the moon and double or triple your company’s size. You could do it! If you are an individual salesperson I would what nothing short of doubling your sales numbers in 2010. Or if you really want to soot the moon triple or go for quadrupling your sales numbers. And if you need help, call on us, more than happy to help make my fiends successful. I’m game, are you?
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Commodity prices were lifted by the revving up of China's industrial activity. Other factors include the beginning of economic recovery in G7 nations-with the U.S. pulling out of its recession in the third quarter-exceptional monetary and fiscal policy stimulus, renewed institutional and sovereign wealth-fund inflows into commodities and investor interest into such "hard assets" as crude oil and precious metals. In 2010, "commodity prices should continue to move higher," Because of ongoing strength in China's economic growth, some re-stocking of basic materials by industrialized nations, continued interest by investors in commodities as an asset and renewed weakness in the U.S. dollar.
Larson Notes & Satire: The U.S. economy will not come roaring back in the coming months, but odds are that by the end of 2010, the tentative and fragile recovery will have evolved into a self-sustaining economic expansion. And with a rebound in industrial production, now forecast by Blue Chip Economic Indicators to rise 3.9%, buyers can expect a rebound in raw materials, commodities and components pricing as next year progresses.
Its 2010 now. A new year, a new decade. You make your way in life and in your business. If you work it right most of you should at least see double digit growth for 2010. Heck shoot the moon and double or triple your company’s size. You could do it! If you are an individual salesperson I would what nothing short of doubling your sales numbers in 2010. Or if you really want to soot the moon triple or go for quadrupling your sales numbers. And if you need help, call on us, more than happy to help make my fiends successful. I’m game, are you?
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://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.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.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
