Ok first off what is Marketing Integration? According to Wikipedia Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is the coordination and integration of all marketing communication tools, avenues, functions and sources within a company into a seamless program that maximizes the impact on consumers and other end users at a minimal cost.
A marketing plan will consist on the following:
1. Situation analysis
2. Marketing objectives
3. Marketing budget
You have to understand what the consumer's wants and needs are. This might or might not be what your wants and needs to sell are. You need to be understanding to the fact that consumer's costs are to be a cost competitive solution to satisfy their needs or wants. It is using a variety of channels working together in harmony to present a unified message with the ability to give feedback and make communication a two-way street.
It is a strategy aimed at unifying different marketing methods and tactics such as mass marketing, one-to-one marketing, social media marketing, telemarketing and direct marketing with an objective being to complement and reinforce the market impact of each used channel, and to employ the market data generated by these efforts in product development, pricing, distribution, customer service.
So you are using 3 or more marketing channels. Wonderful, now let’s get them integrated and working syngeriously.
Integrated Marketing is not just grabbing some marketing tools out of the box and start using them but rather a strategy and implantation plan to coordinate each task in harmony with the other to construct your efforts like the construction of a building. It’s not a series of efforts that once you do them you cross them off the list of things you’ve done, but rather a series of unified efforts of vision, branding, positioning internal coordination and customer communication to propel your efforts better.
1st start by working internally with your own people. If you are big enough to have multiple customer touch points, everyone needs to be on the same page in being able to communicate your companies brand and its desired position in the customer’s mind.
2nd is to leverage your marketing consistently. If you can create a single point of attack message you want to get across to your market you stand a better chance of winning. Have 1 core message and have all channels tie into this one single message.
3rd part to this plan of attack is to standardize the customer experience. Ya, we can’t leave out the customer in all this, they are, after all, the reason we are doing all this marketing stuff, aren’t they? So take the time to evaluate your company’s core message and service / product offerings so at the times of interaction you control the conversation. Work to keep yourself consistent at every level of your company.
4th part of our attack is to consolidate your data. The can be no fiefdoms. Everyone MUST have access to what is happening so they have a part ownership in what is going on. There is no private sales information, there is no secret marketing stuff, there is no privy purchasing knowledge, it’s all for one and one for all. If you make this BIG step you and your company can find greater insights into all the parts of your customer’s experience
5th is to look for ways to be putting social median marketing to work for your company. Online social media marketing has not just captured the interest of consumers but some companies as well. Poke around and find where you fit in best and exploit the knowledge you find out.
You can be improving your prospects and customers experience with you. If you keep your eyes open, get your team working as one and pulling in the same direction. But you are still the boss and it all starts at the top.
Larson Notes & Satire: Yesterday I pulled out a statistic that most marketers are only working Social Media 6 hours or less a week. That in my mind does not cut the mustard. SM is where the people, your prospects, your customers are right now. I don’t care if you are B2B or B2C they are out there on line now.
Now I have been training for a marathon all winter long, and I’m going to tell you there were some days this winter where I just did not want to go out into the cold and run. Then I would think about all the other runners out there who are choosing not to run today and my race and training plan and how doing it now and my competition not running only makes me that much better and them that little farther behind. The same is true with Marketing. Each step you take that your competition does not makes you that much more visible. And in marketing being visible is a good thing. If you think that in a key word search there are only 10 listings on the first page and if you have 1 of those that is 1/10th of the page “real estate”! Get 2 (which when using a good Social Media marketing campaign is not as impossible as it might sound and you start to OWN 1/5th or more of a page. Now the more consistent your message and ALL your sites, your web site and your social media sites the more 1st, 2nd and 3rd page ownership you will start to own.
Just this morning when I did a key word search on just one word “telemarketing” for the very first time my site came up on the 1st page in the local search section! Am I excited or what? Yes like “oh ya baby, its working!”
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.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
The World of Social Media Marketing
Let’s start with the statistics to set the stage.
65% - Marketers who have been using Social Media for 1 month or less
14% - Businesses who outsource any part of their Social Media Marketing
9% - Marketers that are saying they are planning to decrease the use of MySpace
6 Hours – Average number of hours per week the majority of marketers are suing Social Media
85% - Marketers who say exposure is the best benefit of Social Media
Ok we have set the stage with our props.
The pros will tell you it is hard to get a firm number on their ROI with social media efforts that is why they don’t know what to do with it. So they turn to things like Alterian, Bazaarvoice, Radian6 among others to tell them what is happening. While these tools are helpful you can also be paying upwards of $600 a month. If that is what you need to know what is happening in your Social Media network and your Social Media Marketing I don’t think you are very social.
Yet if you need numbers to show the “Shirts” I guess you need to do it. You can measure how online reviews affect you, how influential your blog is. This lets them target their overall message in their marketing which can produce higher sales. It can difference the kinds of hits and sales coming for different sources such as a blog, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. In Constant Contact (I am told) there is a “Social Media Stats” program that was stated last September to all users to track where emails are being posted in the social media world. Alterian even offers a service that will tag and sort “relevant” social media information.
The old days (1 year ago) the idea was just getting people to collect information that was coming back at them, now? Now we seem to be demanding mountains of data so we can make sound decisions. We need information to make a decision. Is this the next evolution in Social Media Marketing? Do we need to do a business analyst to tell us “This is what we should do.”?
I live and die by gut instinct. If you’re not quick on your feet you will get passed. Sometimes it has worked out, other times, not. But I know quickly if I have made a good choice or not.
Larson Notes & Satire: If you are Daddy Warbucks, and have deep pockets I guess you can do all this statically programming stuff. Uncle Howie’s pockets are not that deep and I am not in that club. The fact I’m Norwegian can make a penny cry has nothing to do with it.
If you have been reading or watching me you know I operate Marketing with a “Seat Of My Pants” philosophy and use information requests, proposals and sales as my ROI criteria and count.
I know how many hits, both unique and multi, my web site got yesterday or a month ago. I can also tell you, once I peak in my files how many proposals I did last week or a year ago and how many sales that translated into.
When I saw that the “Big Dogs” are spending all of 6 hours in and on their Social Media Market and world I clapped my hands and clicked my heals! Talk about getting lost in the shuffle. I started leaving MySpace over a year ago in favor of Facebook. Keep running boys! And as for exposure being the best use of Social Media Marketing, forget it, exposure is nice but I want to sell something.
Bye bye boys. . . This is my pond and the water I’m swimming is (still) just fine.
If you need to go on and spend that money on those fancy programs. Get all your stactical analysis done. For me, I got myself and my staff racking over the Social Media world keeping the world safe for us here in the Land Of Larson.
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/larsonassoiates
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.
65% - Marketers who have been using Social Media for 1 month or less
14% - Businesses who outsource any part of their Social Media Marketing
9% - Marketers that are saying they are planning to decrease the use of MySpace
6 Hours – Average number of hours per week the majority of marketers are suing Social Media
85% - Marketers who say exposure is the best benefit of Social Media
Ok we have set the stage with our props.
The pros will tell you it is hard to get a firm number on their ROI with social media efforts that is why they don’t know what to do with it. So they turn to things like Alterian, Bazaarvoice, Radian6 among others to tell them what is happening. While these tools are helpful you can also be paying upwards of $600 a month. If that is what you need to know what is happening in your Social Media network and your Social Media Marketing I don’t think you are very social.
Yet if you need numbers to show the “Shirts” I guess you need to do it. You can measure how online reviews affect you, how influential your blog is. This lets them target their overall message in their marketing which can produce higher sales. It can difference the kinds of hits and sales coming for different sources such as a blog, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. In Constant Contact (I am told) there is a “Social Media Stats” program that was stated last September to all users to track where emails are being posted in the social media world. Alterian even offers a service that will tag and sort “relevant” social media information.
The old days (1 year ago) the idea was just getting people to collect information that was coming back at them, now? Now we seem to be demanding mountains of data so we can make sound decisions. We need information to make a decision. Is this the next evolution in Social Media Marketing? Do we need to do a business analyst to tell us “This is what we should do.”?
I live and die by gut instinct. If you’re not quick on your feet you will get passed. Sometimes it has worked out, other times, not. But I know quickly if I have made a good choice or not.
Larson Notes & Satire: If you are Daddy Warbucks, and have deep pockets I guess you can do all this statically programming stuff. Uncle Howie’s pockets are not that deep and I am not in that club. The fact I’m Norwegian can make a penny cry has nothing to do with it.
I have 2 reports on what kind of marketing efforts companies are planning on using and where the money is going to be going this year sitting in my stack of stuff. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I guess I should put them out in a blog for you. Ya think?
If you have been reading or watching me you know I operate Marketing with a “Seat Of My Pants” philosophy and use information requests, proposals and sales as my ROI criteria and count.
I know how many hits, both unique and multi, my web site got yesterday or a month ago. I can also tell you, once I peak in my files how many proposals I did last week or a year ago and how many sales that translated into.
When I saw that the “Big Dogs” are spending all of 6 hours in and on their Social Media Market and world I clapped my hands and clicked my heals! Talk about getting lost in the shuffle. I started leaving MySpace over a year ago in favor of Facebook. Keep running boys! And as for exposure being the best use of Social Media Marketing, forget it, exposure is nice but I want to sell something.
Bye bye boys. . . This is my pond and the water I’m swimming is (still) just fine.
If you need to go on and spend that money on those fancy programs. Get all your stactical analysis done. For me, I got myself and my staff racking over the Social Media world keeping the world safe for us here in the Land Of Larson.
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/larsonassoiates
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.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
How’s Your Key Word Usage?
Using different words that mean the same thing can make your web page or blog post more interesting for readers and followers. It can also help you from making search engines think your site is all about some random overused term. I can across this (and quite a few other tools in my work the in the last week. This tool, the Keyword Analysis Tool helps you take a look at your use and possible under or over use of any given word or words.
Just provide the tool with a URL, and it'll return a list of the most commonly used words on the page. Look them over, and you should be able to see if you're using terms that aren't keywords too often.
Just go to http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml and enter in your web site.
Now I don’t know about you but every time I do one of these little exercises I not only learn something but then I actually apply some of what I learned and guess what? My site gets better and stronger. I found words that I want stronger and maybe some words that I don’t really care about that are over powering some of the others.
Larson Notes & Satire: I have lots of tricks up my sleeve. Not that I’m a web Houdini or anything but as most of you know my web site is noting to really write home about. So why do I keep it? It is a work in progress to see just how high I can get a two bit web site up in the rankings.
It is a work in progress to show how with a small budget I can go up against the big dogs with all their big time web developers, search engine optimization programs and (compared to mine) massive marketing budgets and blow them out of my pond. Ya, I want to be the Big Fish in my Little Pond. I don’t need an ocean of customers or leads but I will be the one who takes out the biggest catch out of my pond.
I figure that if I can do it my way for me, I can do it for my guerrilla loving marketing customers. You want to own your fishing hole? Then call me!
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.
Just provide the tool with a URL, and it'll return a list of the most commonly used words on the page. Look them over, and you should be able to see if you're using terms that aren't keywords too often.
Just go to http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml and enter in your web site.
Now I don’t know about you but every time I do one of these little exercises I not only learn something but then I actually apply some of what I learned and guess what? My site gets better and stronger. I found words that I want stronger and maybe some words that I don’t really care about that are over powering some of the others.
Larson Notes & Satire: I have lots of tricks up my sleeve. Not that I’m a web Houdini or anything but as most of you know my web site is noting to really write home about. So why do I keep it? It is a work in progress to see just how high I can get a two bit web site up in the rankings.
It is a work in progress to show how with a small budget I can go up against the big dogs with all their big time web developers, search engine optimization programs and (compared to mine) massive marketing budgets and blow them out of my pond. Ya, I want to be the Big Fish in my Little Pond. I don’t need an ocean of customers or leads but I will be the one who takes out the biggest catch out of my pond.
I figure that if I can do it my way for me, I can do it for my guerrilla loving marketing customers. You want to own your fishing hole? Then call me!
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.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Effect Of Universal Search Planning
Local search, natural search, paid search, pushing your web site to get higher and higher, that’s what it’s all about.
In working towards higher rankings on this level will if nothing else decrease the overall visibility of your competition. The more you “own” of the search page ranking pages the less there will be for other companies web sites. Do I need to tell you who their loss of visibility is a good thing? Additionally your ad and blog copy can start to be pushed up getting you greater resonance and more responses or at the least web hits.
So what can you be doing to get yourself up there. Or should I say what more can you be doing?
Knowing full well that I talked about this in my last blog, lets really put the pedal to the metal and move forward
A) Examine Yourself. Check your overall online self in how you come up in the engines NOW. To get where you want to be you got to know where you are starting. If you don’t how will you know if you are making advances in and on the web?
B) Keep Your Eyes Open. Make sure that you appear on the keywords that your target audience use or would use to find a company like yours.
C) Keep Your Ears Open. Listen and pay attention to what and how your target marketing audience is talking to and about you and your industry. The more you know the better chance you have in applying what you are hearing into your over all marking.
D) Test It. The more we think we know the more we find out how little we actually do know. So test, test, test and tweak that copy and those key words till you see or start to see movement. Then do it again.
Larson Notes & Satire: Universal search has opened up huge opportunities to you as a marketer as well as for your customers and prospects. Use it or you will lose it. Grind yourself up or at least work at getting up there of be prepared to fall in the search rankings even more than you are now.
If you’re smart you will push your set to the top, if not, well it’s like a dog pile, and you will end up at the bottom.
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.
In working towards higher rankings on this level will if nothing else decrease the overall visibility of your competition. The more you “own” of the search page ranking pages the less there will be for other companies web sites. Do I need to tell you who their loss of visibility is a good thing? Additionally your ad and blog copy can start to be pushed up getting you greater resonance and more responses or at the least web hits.
So what can you be doing to get yourself up there. Or should I say what more can you be doing?
Knowing full well that I talked about this in my last blog, lets really put the pedal to the metal and move forward
A) Examine Yourself. Check your overall online self in how you come up in the engines NOW. To get where you want to be you got to know where you are starting. If you don’t how will you know if you are making advances in and on the web?
B) Keep Your Eyes Open. Make sure that you appear on the keywords that your target audience use or would use to find a company like yours.
C) Keep Your Ears Open. Listen and pay attention to what and how your target marketing audience is talking to and about you and your industry. The more you know the better chance you have in applying what you are hearing into your over all marking.
D) Test It. The more we think we know the more we find out how little we actually do know. So test, test, test and tweak that copy and those key words till you see or start to see movement. Then do it again.
Larson Notes & Satire: Universal search has opened up huge opportunities to you as a marketer as well as for your customers and prospects. Use it or you will lose it. Grind yourself up or at least work at getting up there of be prepared to fall in the search rankings even more than you are now.
If you’re smart you will push your set to the top, if not, well it’s like a dog pile, and you will end up at the bottom.
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.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Positioning Yourself For The Top Spot
That coveted top search position, so tantalizing makes my mouth water.
Now with universal search including images, product links, shopping links, social media commentary, video, news outlets to name a few of the new searchable items in the last 9 months,
Web searches and ranking has become more complex when going for a higher listing what is a search engine marketer suppose to do?
I would suspect that most of us underleverage our abilities in the area of natural search marketing. Without optimizing your site in some way shape or form you don’t stand a chance. Point is Goggles algorithms have become so dependent on off-site promotions that what you are doing away from your main site such as your Social Media Sites has become even more important in regard to Universal Search.
Now I might not need to be telling you this but it never hurts to hear it again. Start with the basics such as finding out how your customers and prospects are now finding you and talking about you. And make sure your site is fully optimized to play into this action.
After that I have 5 handy dandy tips for you.
1. Get tagged and named. Web sites are getting more and more complex and larger. Again images, video, auto posting capabilities. Doing such things as making sure your fines are named and not numbered. Now you do know that the Search Engine Spiders can’t see your fancy images and videos right? So you also know you need to tag or name them in a way that is relevant to both the search engine needs and what you actually have posted.
2. Your Outreach. Reach out and touch someone is a slogan that rings as true today as it did for MaBell way back when. You have a better chance to capturing that top spot if you go viral. Ya blogging starts to become critical. Your blog other blogs, you need to let people know that you have pics and videos out there. But in the necessary back links that are relevant to help with search engine rankings, but make sure it is relevant. Be a good neighbor and don’t force feed yourself and posts.
3. Be Newsworthy. News any news is a big part of universal search content. Not just the earth shacking kind we have just seen in Japan but softer kind, the kind that said you launched a new service or introduced a new product or open up a new social media page. This too is newsworthy. Try a press release both in traditional print as well as some of the online press release sites. All this helps you get seen and found.
4. Keep working Social. Social Media plays a very important roll in search and has since about last June (2010) when real time search came into being. Social Media’s roll in universal search in very important. Get yourself the object of a big twitter feed and you might move up a few pages. The more twits the higher you go. You might want to try posting a video on not just YouTube but try BrightCove, Viddler or Vimeo.com, and I would do this even if you are hosting the video on your own site.
5. Get Local. More than 20% of the searches on Google revolve around some sort of localized search. So get local. You have multiple locations? List them. Let people know where your brick and mortar is.
Remember it is game of moving up and down in the engines. Learn to play and play well and you to up. Don’t learn or play good, you go down.
Larson Notes & Satire: The search engines can be very remarkable. They don’t care about your race, creed or color. They don’t care how big or small your company is, they care about 1 thing: How well you feed them information in a way they like. Ya it’s all about them, not you! It’s me me me but in the way for them them them! You want to be rated high, then do it their way or it’s the bye bye on the highway . So hand spoon them your information. This is your time to shine. To tell your story as you need it to be told. The louder you can get the more ears will hear about you. So SHOUT it out!
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.
Now with universal search including images, product links, shopping links, social media commentary, video, news outlets to name a few of the new searchable items in the last 9 months,
Web searches and ranking has become more complex when going for a higher listing what is a search engine marketer suppose to do?
I would suspect that most of us underleverage our abilities in the area of natural search marketing. Without optimizing your site in some way shape or form you don’t stand a chance. Point is Goggles algorithms have become so dependent on off-site promotions that what you are doing away from your main site such as your Social Media Sites has become even more important in regard to Universal Search.
Now I might not need to be telling you this but it never hurts to hear it again. Start with the basics such as finding out how your customers and prospects are now finding you and talking about you. And make sure your site is fully optimized to play into this action.
After that I have 5 handy dandy tips for you.
1. Get tagged and named. Web sites are getting more and more complex and larger. Again images, video, auto posting capabilities. Doing such things as making sure your fines are named and not numbered. Now you do know that the Search Engine Spiders can’t see your fancy images and videos right? So you also know you need to tag or name them in a way that is relevant to both the search engine needs and what you actually have posted.
2. Your Outreach. Reach out and touch someone is a slogan that rings as true today as it did for MaBell way back when. You have a better chance to capturing that top spot if you go viral. Ya blogging starts to become critical. Your blog other blogs, you need to let people know that you have pics and videos out there. But in the necessary back links that are relevant to help with search engine rankings, but make sure it is relevant. Be a good neighbor and don’t force feed yourself and posts.
3. Be Newsworthy. News any news is a big part of universal search content. Not just the earth shacking kind we have just seen in Japan but softer kind, the kind that said you launched a new service or introduced a new product or open up a new social media page. This too is newsworthy. Try a press release both in traditional print as well as some of the online press release sites. All this helps you get seen and found.
4. Keep working Social. Social Media plays a very important roll in search and has since about last June (2010) when real time search came into being. Social Media’s roll in universal search in very important. Get yourself the object of a big twitter feed and you might move up a few pages. The more twits the higher you go. You might want to try posting a video on not just YouTube but try BrightCove, Viddler or Vimeo.com, and I would do this even if you are hosting the video on your own site.
5. Get Local. More than 20% of the searches on Google revolve around some sort of localized search. So get local. You have multiple locations? List them. Let people know where your brick and mortar is.
Remember it is game of moving up and down in the engines. Learn to play and play well and you to up. Don’t learn or play good, you go down.
Larson Notes & Satire: The search engines can be very remarkable. They don’t care about your race, creed or color. They don’t care how big or small your company is, they care about 1 thing: How well you feed them information in a way they like. Ya it’s all about them, not you! It’s me me me but in the way for them them them! You want to be rated high, then do it their way or it’s the bye bye on the highway . So hand spoon them your information. This is your time to shine. To tell your story as you need it to be told. The louder you can get the more ears will hear about you. So SHOUT it out!
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.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Where are your Back Links (and other stuff)
As a piggyback from yesterdays blog today’s [post is a Free SEO Tool called
Backlink Analyzer for search engine optimization. The SearchBliss Backlink Analyzer will report the total backlinks for your website and list the top (up to 100) URLs by value linking to your site.
It’s like decorating search engines walls with awards and certificates, people like to spotlight their achievements. Backlink Analyzer will let you do that in terms of connections.
Just feed this tool a URL, and it'll attempt to determine the number of backlinks the sites received. Then, it will highlight up to 100 of the most valuable URLs that link to the site, letting you see your accomplishments.
Go to; http://www.searchbliss.com/seo-tools/backlinks-report.asp
Enter your web site URL in the little box and find out where your site links to.
On my site
We Found 389 Backlinks
Top URLs Linking To
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/:
I will not list out the top 100 here but try it and see how many backlinks you come up with
Then for fun I hit the link for Social Bookmark & Blog Search Checker and got
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Engine Incoming Links
del.icio.us: 0
Diigo: 0
Google Blog Search: 140
IceRocket: 9
Total: 149
With a score of 149 that did not bode well considering they score blogs out at
Limited Presence 0 - 500
Average Presence 501 - 1,000
Above Avg. Presence 1.001 - 5,000
Contender 5,001 - 10,000
Player 10,001 - 50,000 900 lb. Gorilla 50,001 +
Then I did the Search Engine Saturation Checker another Free SEO Tool. Search engine saturation simply refers to the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain.
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Engine Indexed Pages
Google: 51
Bing (MSN): 12
Yahoo!: 32
Total: 95
Larson Notes & Satire: There is work to be done! SEO is a game. To get higher ranking all you need to do is learn how to play the game.
If you don’t want to do it yourself we are more than happy to play the game for you, we find it fun and exhilarating, especially when we win!
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.
Backlink Analyzer for search engine optimization. The SearchBliss Backlink Analyzer will report the total backlinks for your website and list the top (up to 100) URLs by value linking to your site.
It’s like decorating search engines walls with awards and certificates, people like to spotlight their achievements. Backlink Analyzer will let you do that in terms of connections.
Just feed this tool a URL, and it'll attempt to determine the number of backlinks the sites received. Then, it will highlight up to 100 of the most valuable URLs that link to the site, letting you see your accomplishments.
Go to; http://www.searchbliss.com/seo-tools/backlinks-report.asp
Enter your web site URL in the little box and find out where your site links to.
On my site
We Found 389 Backlinks
Top URLs Linking To
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/:
I will not list out the top 100 here but try it and see how many backlinks you come up with
Then for fun I hit the link for Social Bookmark & Blog Search Checker and got
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Engine Incoming Links
del.icio.us: 0
Diigo: 0
Google Blog Search: 140
IceRocket: 9
Total: 149
With a score of 149 that did not bode well considering they score blogs out at
Limited Presence 0 - 500
Average Presence 501 - 1,000
Above Avg. Presence 1.001 - 5,000
Contender 5,001 - 10,000
Player 10,001 - 50,000 900 lb. Gorilla 50,001 +
Then I did the Search Engine Saturation Checker another Free SEO Tool. Search engine saturation simply refers to the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain.
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Engine Indexed Pages
Google: 51
Bing (MSN): 12
Yahoo!: 32
Total: 95
Larson Notes & Satire: There is work to be done! SEO is a game. To get higher ranking all you need to do is learn how to play the game.
If you don’t want to do it yourself we are more than happy to play the game for you, we find it fun and exhilarating, especially when we win!
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.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Watch Your Back. . . Links
Social Networks Backlink Checker is a Free SEO Tool for search engine optimization. Social networks have become important part any SEO campaign. Check any website's back links on the major social networks with this SEO tool, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more for free
At the most basic level, search engines try to find results that are useful to real people. For that reason, social signals of linked in sites are starting to carry more importance. So if you want to see if people using social networks like your site(s), consider using this Social Networks Backlink Checker tool.
The Social Networks Backlink Checker takes a URL and tries to determine how many incoming links it's received from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon. Then you can gauge whether you need to increase your social media marketing efforts.
Simply go to: http://www.searchbliss.com/seo-tools/social-backlink-check.asp
Enter your URL (Website) in the little box with the access code and you get your results.
Here is how I came up:
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Network Incoming Links
Twitter: 70
Facebook: 578
Myspace: 0
LinkedIn: 726
StumbleUpon: 0
Larson Notes & Satire: I can handle that. Was very happy with Facebook, very pleased with LinkedIn but on Twitter? Well I guess I have not been working that as much. As for MySpace, well I have almost abandoned it. And StubmleUpon? I expected at least 1 incoming link but I think that would have been to one of my blogs so. . .
Taking this to its logical conclusion I need to pound harder so on the Social Media site I have more links out there and more links should mean a higher ranking and a higher ranking should mean more hits on my site and more hits on my site should mean more customers, right?
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.
At the most basic level, search engines try to find results that are useful to real people. For that reason, social signals of linked in sites are starting to carry more importance. So if you want to see if people using social networks like your site(s), consider using this Social Networks Backlink Checker tool.
The Social Networks Backlink Checker takes a URL and tries to determine how many incoming links it's received from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon. Then you can gauge whether you need to increase your social media marketing efforts.
Simply go to: http://www.searchbliss.com/seo-tools/social-backlink-check.asp
Enter your URL (Website) in the little box with the access code and you get your results.
Here is how I came up:
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Network Incoming Links
Twitter: 70
Facebook: 578
Myspace: 0
LinkedIn: 726
StumbleUpon: 0
Larson Notes & Satire: I can handle that. Was very happy with Facebook, very pleased with LinkedIn but on Twitter? Well I guess I have not been working that as much. As for MySpace, well I have almost abandoned it. And StubmleUpon? I expected at least 1 incoming link but I think that would have been to one of my blogs so. . .
Taking this to its logical conclusion I need to pound harder so on the Social Media site I have more links out there and more links should mean a higher ranking and a higher ranking should mean more hits on my site and more hits on my site should mean more customers, right?
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.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
What Is a Rumor Worth?
Marvin Gaye I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Ooh, I bet you're wondering how I knew
About you're plans to make me blue
With some other guy that you knew before.
Between the two of us guys
You know I love you more.
It took me by surprise I must say,
When I found out yesterday.
Don't you know that...
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.
I know that a man ain't supposed to cry,
But these tears I can't hold inside.
Losin' you would end my life you see,
Cause you mean that much to me.
You could have told me yourself
That you love someone else.
Instead...
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.
People say believe half of what you see,
Son, and none of what you hear.
I can't help bein' confused
If it's true please tell me dear?
Do you plan to let me go
For the other guy you loved before?
Don't you know...
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.
As a rational human being we need to have an understanding of the social and business world around us. Add that to the combustible world of Social Media and Social Media Marketing and you as a business owner and or marketer face an ambiguous blanked threat from situations that you have no, yes NO control over. People say things. Post things, regardless of their validly or not and away they go. . . flying at the speed of light across the world wide web!
Good or bad rumors affect you and your business. So what, if anything can you do?
1) Strengthen your key influencers. Keep them close, safe and informed. What is said from a close friend or family member has or weight than that of an unknown person to push the good or help you to down play the bad
2) Immediacy of influencer action. Rumors more often than not take hold in your close knot groups and neighborhoods. Keep your home base safe and informed.
3) The number of sources. The more people in a given network who believe in a rumor the more likely that someone else is going to believe it.
Using these 3 components of the Rumor Mill, we can start to see how a rumor can spread based on varying motivations for spreading it. Good or bad, people talk and repost.
So what can you do?
First: develop a trust with your clients, friends and followers. The more you are trusted the more you can squelch negative rumors and push forward positive ones. So how do you get trust? Try keeping your word, giving regular communication and keep yourself going in one stead direction. Be who you are and you should have no problem with this.
Second: If you keep a regular channel of information flowing you are more likely than not to limit any uncertainty and anxiety over rumors that are circling around you.
Third: Keep an ear to the wind. Use search alerts that search for your name being circulated online. Google yourself, you and your company, a couple of times a day. Be proactive
Forth: Be fast on your feet. Quickly confirm good rumors or squish bad rumors and steal the thunder of those who would benefit from people in your Social World hearing it.
Fifth: Always be ready to rebut and dispute a false rumor. That is where a so called neutral third party friend or follower comes in handy as your Lone Ranger or White Knight.
Larson Notes & Satire: Was Marvin talking about his girlfriend or his customer? If you can hear about a customer looking to take their work to a different company before they do or before they really get into active conversation with the other company you stand a much better chance of righting the wrong of what happened. It makes no difference if the wrong was real or perceived. To the customer it is real and that is what counts Take me and AT&T. Hint hint. I spend a lot of money to Ma Bell. They should be licking my boots. Funny how they don’t seem to care after they have my yearly contract under their belt. Enter new phone system and internet provider. A new communication company here in the Land Of Larson? Well I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, but …. If I could save you up to 66% on your communication bill would you be interested?
Ok see how that happens?
This is going to be a very fun year in the Land Of Larson. The tip of the iceberg has only started to hit the ship! If you are my competition I would start to be worried. The kid is on his game and moving in the right direction with new products and services? I was looking at getting into Video E-Mails.
Another rumor? I wonder. Did I or didn't I?
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
Ooh, I bet you're wondering how I knew
About you're plans to make me blue
With some other guy that you knew before.
Between the two of us guys
You know I love you more.
It took me by surprise I must say,
When I found out yesterday.
Don't you know that...
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.
I know that a man ain't supposed to cry,
But these tears I can't hold inside.
Losin' you would end my life you see,
Cause you mean that much to me.
You could have told me yourself
That you love someone else.
Instead...
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.
People say believe half of what you see,
Son, and none of what you hear.
I can't help bein' confused
If it's true please tell me dear?
Do you plan to let me go
For the other guy you loved before?
Don't you know...
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.
As a rational human being we need to have an understanding of the social and business world around us. Add that to the combustible world of Social Media and Social Media Marketing and you as a business owner and or marketer face an ambiguous blanked threat from situations that you have no, yes NO control over. People say things. Post things, regardless of their validly or not and away they go. . . flying at the speed of light across the world wide web!
Good or bad rumors affect you and your business. So what, if anything can you do?
1) Strengthen your key influencers. Keep them close, safe and informed. What is said from a close friend or family member has or weight than that of an unknown person to push the good or help you to down play the bad
2) Immediacy of influencer action. Rumors more often than not take hold in your close knot groups and neighborhoods. Keep your home base safe and informed.
3) The number of sources. The more people in a given network who believe in a rumor the more likely that someone else is going to believe it.
Using these 3 components of the Rumor Mill, we can start to see how a rumor can spread based on varying motivations for spreading it. Good or bad, people talk and repost.
So what can you do?
First: develop a trust with your clients, friends and followers. The more you are trusted the more you can squelch negative rumors and push forward positive ones. So how do you get trust? Try keeping your word, giving regular communication and keep yourself going in one stead direction. Be who you are and you should have no problem with this.
Second: If you keep a regular channel of information flowing you are more likely than not to limit any uncertainty and anxiety over rumors that are circling around you.
Third: Keep an ear to the wind. Use search alerts that search for your name being circulated online. Google yourself, you and your company, a couple of times a day. Be proactive
Forth: Be fast on your feet. Quickly confirm good rumors or squish bad rumors and steal the thunder of those who would benefit from people in your Social World hearing it.
Fifth: Always be ready to rebut and dispute a false rumor. That is where a so called neutral third party friend or follower comes in handy as your Lone Ranger or White Knight.
Larson Notes & Satire: Was Marvin talking about his girlfriend or his customer? If you can hear about a customer looking to take their work to a different company before they do or before they really get into active conversation with the other company you stand a much better chance of righting the wrong of what happened. It makes no difference if the wrong was real or perceived. To the customer it is real and that is what counts Take me and AT&T. Hint hint. I spend a lot of money to Ma Bell. They should be licking my boots. Funny how they don’t seem to care after they have my yearly contract under their belt. Enter new phone system and internet provider. A new communication company here in the Land Of Larson? Well I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, but …. If I could save you up to 66% on your communication bill would you be interested?
Ok see how that happens?
This is going to be a very fun year in the Land Of Larson. The tip of the iceberg has only started to hit the ship! If you are my competition I would start to be worried. The kid is on his game and moving in the right direction with new products and services? I was looking at getting into Video E-Mails.
Another rumor? I wonder. Did I or didn't I?
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Cross-Browser Website Compatibility Test
Found this little tool today from Gomez (www.gomez.com ). It has always been a problem that you make a site then cast it out there and you have no idea who will look at it or on what browser they will take a peek at your site. Heck I still have a machine running windows 98 for special purposes. Your customers and prospects are accessing your Website using different versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Google Chrome and you have no control at all.
Now you can be a little more proactive and take a look at how your site will look on any number of platforms fast and easily at:
http://www.gomez.com/cross-browser-website-compatibility-test/tm-22-feb/
Enjoy
Larson Notes & Satire: It’s pretty good but it is not perfect. My site came up looking good on Safari 2.0.2, Macintosh OSX 10.4, Internet Explorer 6.0, Windows XP, Firefox 3.6.10, Windows Vista, but on Chrome & Windows 7, it showed a “no show”. I called it up on my machine using my Chrome browser and bingo there it was all nice and pretty or as pretty as my site can look.
Yet when putting together a new page or when I get around to a remake or a new site on a different platform and place now I have a tool to look at it in multiple screens.
So how did your site do? All good to go?
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
Now you can be a little more proactive and take a look at how your site will look on any number of platforms fast and easily at:
http://www.gomez.com/cross-browser-website-compatibility-test/tm-22-feb/
Enjoy
Larson Notes & Satire: It’s pretty good but it is not perfect. My site came up looking good on Safari 2.0.2, Macintosh OSX 10.4, Internet Explorer 6.0, Windows XP, Firefox 3.6.10, Windows Vista, but on Chrome & Windows 7, it showed a “no show”. I called it up on my machine using my Chrome browser and bingo there it was all nice and pretty or as pretty as my site can look.
Yet when putting together a new page or when I get around to a remake or a new site on a different platform and place now I have a tool to look at it in multiple screens.
So how did your site do? All good to go?
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
Monday, March 7, 2011
Saving Your Social Media Marketing Campaign
Was Simon & Garfunkel’s song “A Hazy Shade Of Winter” a song made to describe Social Media Marketing.
“Time,
Time,
Time, see what's become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities.
I was so hard to please.
Look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.
Hear the Salvation Army band.
Down by the riverside's
Bound to be a better ride
Than what you've got planned.
Carry your cup in your hand.
And look around.
Leaves are brown.
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.
Hang on to your hopes, my friend.
That's an easy thing to say,
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend that you can build them again.
Look around,
The grass is high,
The fields are ripe,
It's the springtime of my life.
Seasons change with the scenery;
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Seasons change with the scenery;
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Funny how my memory skips
Looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme.
Drinking my vodka and lime,
I look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.”
Seems like today the talk on the street is how to revive an almost non-existent Social Marketing Campaign or how to save a dying one.
For the most part marketers and entrepreneurs have gotten the content for their Front pages down correctly, they have and are producing more than enough content and useful information about their companies and they have set up the sites for good search engine optimization but they are still missing that key element for social media marketing. They, you, we, I, are just not being SOCIAL.
With content on the internet growing at over 50% a year if you are relying on Search Engines only it’s just not going to happen. You can’t just publish and hope it will work its way up to the top of Google, yahoo or bing. You need to get out your soap box, get up and start proclaiming your message.
Soap Box 1: Start a newsletter. Start working with your existing audience. This is the easiest and most assessable group of people you have. With a delivery of monthly or more often, biweekly or weekly are not out of the question if it is a value option for the reader. Give them good solid content not just a bunch of gobblity gook advertisements about yourself.
Soap Box 2: Engage your key influencers. I’ll bet you that you have at least one or two major bloggers in your list of followers. You already have 1 here with me. Now the idea is to reach out to these key Social Media Players and get really personal. Ask to meet them or for a phone appointment. Comment on their blogs. Compliment them on their work, offer to republish something they wrote and posted, (some “experts” say if you need to offer to pay a licensing fee or something to that effect, Larson says forget that stuff. You are giving them a FREE outlet to your followers and that should be more than enough of a payback) If you can get them excited about you and what you are trying to do, they will send people your way with a number of online possibilities.
Soap Box 3: Let them in. Tear down the walls of hindrance. Ya drop the registration forms. Why they don’t work. If I see a white paper that I want I might take a peek, If I have to fill out a form the first thing that comes into my head is, “Ok if I do this I will either get a sales call from the company which I probably don’t want or I will get emails from them till the end of time. So I don’t down load, I don’t read and I don’t find out how good your company is. It is a fact over 50% of people leave a sight when a registration form appears so I am not alone. This blatant abandonment is a loss of possible referrals, retwitts or reposts to you. If I were you I would be thinking of ways to encourage people to though your name and content all over the web. Those that want what you do, will then find and come to you!
Soap Box 4: Invite comments. Try to have your blogs be through provoking and response generating. Fill it with feedback, ideas and questions that beg for your readers to make comments. Try to address each and every comment. You want to control the flow but not stymie the thread. Then go one step farther and use twitter Facebook and LinkedIn to repost the best of the best.
Soap Box 5: Be Responsive. When a post or request for input brings you fruit thank whoever it is. If you are unable to (again) respond to each and every comment, at least acknowledge the thread or open discussion. Again use twitter Facebook and LinkedIn to repost the best posts.
Soap Box 6: Repackage and reuse. You can publish podcasts or video versions of your blog entries or put a few past posts together that have a synergy between them into a new post. Again give people a way to have some ownership in what you are doing. Show your expertise in how you handle the threads.
Larson Notes & Satire: Time time time, so put time on your side, these are ways to maximize your time and even mutiply your time buy getting action and reposts. This could be any of the seasons for your Social Media Marketing, winter, spring, summer or fall. It is all what you make of it; you are in charge of what you do and can’t do in The Social Media arena. It is all up to you, unless you go out and hire a Social Media Marketing Company (like Larson could be doing for you). But if you hide yourself under a wall of fear and not let in the full scope of what this Channel can bring you are only cutting off your own nose. Stand up. Get up on that Social Media Soap Box and start engaging. Hire a brass band and blow your horn!
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
“Time,
Time,
Time, see what's become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities.
I was so hard to please.
Look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.
Hear the Salvation Army band.
Down by the riverside's
Bound to be a better ride
Than what you've got planned.
Carry your cup in your hand.
And look around.
Leaves are brown.
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.
Hang on to your hopes, my friend.
That's an easy thing to say,
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend that you can build them again.
Look around,
The grass is high,
The fields are ripe,
It's the springtime of my life.
Seasons change with the scenery;
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Seasons change with the scenery;
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Funny how my memory skips
Looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme.
Drinking my vodka and lime,
I look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.”
Seems like today the talk on the street is how to revive an almost non-existent Social Marketing Campaign or how to save a dying one.
For the most part marketers and entrepreneurs have gotten the content for their Front pages down correctly, they have and are producing more than enough content and useful information about their companies and they have set up the sites for good search engine optimization but they are still missing that key element for social media marketing. They, you, we, I, are just not being SOCIAL.
With content on the internet growing at over 50% a year if you are relying on Search Engines only it’s just not going to happen. You can’t just publish and hope it will work its way up to the top of Google, yahoo or bing. You need to get out your soap box, get up and start proclaiming your message.
Soap Box 1: Start a newsletter. Start working with your existing audience. This is the easiest and most assessable group of people you have. With a delivery of monthly or more often, biweekly or weekly are not out of the question if it is a value option for the reader. Give them good solid content not just a bunch of gobblity gook advertisements about yourself.
Soap Box 2: Engage your key influencers. I’ll bet you that you have at least one or two major bloggers in your list of followers. You already have 1 here with me. Now the idea is to reach out to these key Social Media Players and get really personal. Ask to meet them or for a phone appointment. Comment on their blogs. Compliment them on their work, offer to republish something they wrote and posted, (some “experts” say if you need to offer to pay a licensing fee or something to that effect, Larson says forget that stuff. You are giving them a FREE outlet to your followers and that should be more than enough of a payback) If you can get them excited about you and what you are trying to do, they will send people your way with a number of online possibilities.
Soap Box 3: Let them in. Tear down the walls of hindrance. Ya drop the registration forms. Why they don’t work. If I see a white paper that I want I might take a peek, If I have to fill out a form the first thing that comes into my head is, “Ok if I do this I will either get a sales call from the company which I probably don’t want or I will get emails from them till the end of time. So I don’t down load, I don’t read and I don’t find out how good your company is. It is a fact over 50% of people leave a sight when a registration form appears so I am not alone. This blatant abandonment is a loss of possible referrals, retwitts or reposts to you. If I were you I would be thinking of ways to encourage people to though your name and content all over the web. Those that want what you do, will then find and come to you!
Soap Box 4: Invite comments. Try to have your blogs be through provoking and response generating. Fill it with feedback, ideas and questions that beg for your readers to make comments. Try to address each and every comment. You want to control the flow but not stymie the thread. Then go one step farther and use twitter Facebook and LinkedIn to repost the best of the best.
Soap Box 5: Be Responsive. When a post or request for input brings you fruit thank whoever it is. If you are unable to (again) respond to each and every comment, at least acknowledge the thread or open discussion. Again use twitter Facebook and LinkedIn to repost the best posts.
Soap Box 6: Repackage and reuse. You can publish podcasts or video versions of your blog entries or put a few past posts together that have a synergy between them into a new post. Again give people a way to have some ownership in what you are doing. Show your expertise in how you handle the threads.
Larson Notes & Satire: Time time time, so put time on your side, these are ways to maximize your time and even mutiply your time buy getting action and reposts. This could be any of the seasons for your Social Media Marketing, winter, spring, summer or fall. It is all what you make of it; you are in charge of what you do and can’t do in The Social Media arena. It is all up to you, unless you go out and hire a Social Media Marketing Company (like Larson could be doing for you). But if you hide yourself under a wall of fear and not let in the full scope of what this Channel can bring you are only cutting off your own nose. Stand up. Get up on that Social Media Soap Box and start engaging. Hire a brass band and blow your horn!
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
Friday, March 4, 2011
20% of your customers are draining your profit by 80%
20% of your customers are eating up your profits by 80%. The old Pareto’s 80/20 rule does tend to hold true more often than not. The bottom 20% of your customers or even prospects are the people who are costing you more money to service than what they spend with you. They might be killing your business.
Now let’s take that down to creating or buying a list of prospects. You don't want to just buy a list when 20% of the names will be automatically unprofitable. Think about it. You don’t have the time or money to be wasting, do you? You want, no need to understand who your best customers are so you can go out and find more just like them. There are ways to do this, be it on your own or by using a list manager.
If you start to take this approach it will start to force you to think differently. Consider: What if you changed your sales incentives to be aimed at only closing deals only with those kinds or accounts that have the same needs, desirers and structures of your now most profitable accounts rather than closing any and every deal that falls on your desk? If you did this, you can start the shift to a mindset of going after the perfect customer.
Coming out of a direct marketing company where it's easy to build a list of names, we need to refine those efforts and not get into the Oscar Olsen syndrome of “good enough”. Don’t do the same old again and again. If you want to run a meat market marketing attack go down to Bob's the butcher's Meat Market, if you want to be going out and running through a cycle every two or three months of acquiring new names and pushing them out through the funnel system, go on. For my money I want and need more bang for my buck.
Larson Notes & Satire: When you are wearing your marketing hat you need to get more. More visibility and more action. This means using databases in every conceivable ways possible on every channel you can work with at 95% and above. That does not mean you just in dabble in direct mail or email. Mix it up, shack and bake baby, ad in a secret ingredient. Mix in telemarketing, digital advertising, dare a say go out and buy a key word if you can identify those high value customers and plan your entire advertising campaign accordingly, you might actually get higher ROI. And this in turn can contribute to the success of interactive marketing by using customer knowledge to create relevant email, deliver real-time offers in online and off line channels.
Did I say plan out your advertising and marketing? Now that’s going to hurt! All you fly by the seat of your pants marketers out there, you are not Procter and Gamble who have more money to through at advertising in one day that any of us have in 5 years so “choose wisely”. It’s only your company and your life.
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
Now let’s take that down to creating or buying a list of prospects. You don't want to just buy a list when 20% of the names will be automatically unprofitable. Think about it. You don’t have the time or money to be wasting, do you? You want, no need to understand who your best customers are so you can go out and find more just like them. There are ways to do this, be it on your own or by using a list manager.
If you start to take this approach it will start to force you to think differently. Consider: What if you changed your sales incentives to be aimed at only closing deals only with those kinds or accounts that have the same needs, desirers and structures of your now most profitable accounts rather than closing any and every deal that falls on your desk? If you did this, you can start the shift to a mindset of going after the perfect customer.
Coming out of a direct marketing company where it's easy to build a list of names, we need to refine those efforts and not get into the Oscar Olsen syndrome of “good enough”. Don’t do the same old again and again. If you want to run a meat market marketing attack go down to Bob's the butcher's Meat Market, if you want to be going out and running through a cycle every two or three months of acquiring new names and pushing them out through the funnel system, go on. For my money I want and need more bang for my buck.
Larson Notes & Satire: When you are wearing your marketing hat you need to get more. More visibility and more action. This means using databases in every conceivable ways possible on every channel you can work with at 95% and above. That does not mean you just in dabble in direct mail or email. Mix it up, shack and bake baby, ad in a secret ingredient. Mix in telemarketing, digital advertising, dare a say go out and buy a key word if you can identify those high value customers and plan your entire advertising campaign accordingly, you might actually get higher ROI. And this in turn can contribute to the success of interactive marketing by using customer knowledge to create relevant email, deliver real-time offers in online and off line channels.
Did I say plan out your advertising and marketing? Now that’s going to hurt! All you fly by the seat of your pants marketers out there, you are not Procter and Gamble who have more money to through at advertising in one day that any of us have in 5 years so “choose wisely”. It’s only your company and your life.
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Finding Your Sites Key Word Ranking
How good are your key word search rankings? It gets a little tiring to go though and test your site's ranking, one keyword or search engine at a time, isn’t? Here is a little thing I found a few days ago and have been playing around with called Keyword Envy and it addresses that issue in a very significant way by helping you find out how well you are doing much more efficiently by using all major search engines
This tool will measure a URL against up to five different search terms at a time, and will also check it on Google Canada, Google UK, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask in addition to good old Google.
http://www.keywordenvy.com/
Well I did it and talk about a slap in the face. Ouch! In one word string I came up NUMBER 1 but the rest of the word stings I really would like to be hitting (at least in the top 100 searches) nothing, nada, zip, goose egg! I guess I have some major work to do.
Then what reading level is your site?
I have done this a few times and well mine keeps coming up at a college level. Should I change it? I have thought about it but then I think, no, I am saying what I want to say in the way I want to say it and going after the people I want.
I have a few other pages that I need to elevate the words and word usage but I want my site at a higher level, not because I am stuck up but because I want to target a higher level of buyer.
So see how your sites words are constructed and the effect you are having on visitors in Readability Test:
http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readingresults
This tool takes a URL and (at its most basic level) sees how frequently you're using long words. Then it'll pop out several scores to indicate whether you should bring the level of discussion in the direction of "The Cat in the Hat" so as not to lose people.
Larson Notes & Satire: You got to know what you got if you are going to change it to where you want it to be. I know (at least my front page is doing what I want. Word usage wise) but as for my key word search. Well I am going to have to do some major playing and restructuring. But it’s a game I intend to win.
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
This tool will measure a URL against up to five different search terms at a time, and will also check it on Google Canada, Google UK, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask in addition to good old Google.
http://www.keywordenvy.com/
Well I did it and talk about a slap in the face. Ouch! In one word string I came up NUMBER 1 but the rest of the word stings I really would like to be hitting (at least in the top 100 searches) nothing, nada, zip, goose egg! I guess I have some major work to do.
Then what reading level is your site?
I have done this a few times and well mine keeps coming up at a college level. Should I change it? I have thought about it but then I think, no, I am saying what I want to say in the way I want to say it and going after the people I want.
I have a few other pages that I need to elevate the words and word usage but I want my site at a higher level, not because I am stuck up but because I want to target a higher level of buyer.
So see how your sites words are constructed and the effect you are having on visitors in Readability Test:
http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readingresults
This tool takes a URL and (at its most basic level) sees how frequently you're using long words. Then it'll pop out several scores to indicate whether you should bring the level of discussion in the direction of "The Cat in the Hat" so as not to lose people.
Larson Notes & Satire: You got to know what you got if you are going to change it to where you want it to be. I know (at least my front page is doing what I want. Word usage wise) but as for my key word search. Well I am going to have to do some major playing and restructuring. But it’s a game I intend to win.
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.
P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
