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My little city is on the list. Billings has been growing like crazy the last couple of years and I’ve felt like some great things were happening. But it’s always nice to have someone else tell you that some things are going well.

 - Billings is ranked No. 31 in Inc.com’s Best U.S. Cities for Doing Business.
http://www.matr.net/article-29822.html

The original article is here

http://www.inc.com/articles/2008/07/where-are-the-best-cities-to-do-business.html

Tags: billings, mt, marketing

Tags: Googlekeyword suggestion tool, ed dale’s video, search marketing

According to reports from WSJ late Monday, Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) is planning to unveil a new service that measures Internet usage. This new tool should help advertisers target the best places place their online ads with more accuracy than companies like ComScore Inc. (Nasdad: SCOR) and Nielsen Online who have to rely on panels or surveys, which can be inconsistent and incomplete.

According to the article Google’s new service will be offered to marketers for free like their Analytics tool, according to the ad executives who have been told about the service.
It will be very exciting to watch how well this tehcnology works.

What are your thoughts on Google making this tool available?
Doug

Tags: Google, marketing, google new ad service

clipped from money.cnn.com Building your first business Web site There are several factors to consider when establishing a Web presence, including the type of business, what you want to do online, and your level of technical savvy, says Robert Monroe, who co-coordinates the business and technology program at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper business school. He suggests first asking yourself these basic questions: “Your Web site is going to be a key marketing component of your business,” Farris says. “Don’t forget to save some money for ongoing site traffic improvements,” Cutting says. He employs a search optimization company to make Dakin Farm easier to find. ?

They just had a great small business marketing conference down in Houston. The focus was on online marketing and it looks like they covered a lot of good information. Here’s the link to the site: Small Business Marketing Unleashed

This further confirms my thoughts that small businesses are just beginning to wake up to the fact that marketing has changed and the old ways just don’t work as well anymore. Businesses that understand how web marketing fits into their marketing mix will dominate their markets for years before their competition realizes what is happening.

We will see more and more conferences like this and the local marketing companies will learn that if they don’t understand how to provide a multichannel solution for their clients that they will lose them.

The days of wasting money on branding style ads for local businesses are over. Advertising costs too much and it doesn’t work as well as it once did. Less and less time is spent reading the paper, watching local TV or using the phonebook. In today’s market you have to be there when your client is looking for you and more and more they are looking online.

1. Decide on your goal, your time line and your time commitment
2. Decide how you will get there – Affiliate, eBay, Adsense, info product, ecommerce etc
3. Make a written plan that you feel you can follow – block out time on your calendar that you will be working on your new venture.
4. Get off every e-mail list. If you must, keep one or two that are pertinent to your interests.
5. Stop all of your paid monthly programs – But I’ll miss out on all of the new PLR content – hmm what about the 1,000 articles already on your harddrive?
6. Learn one of the programs you already have on your harddrive. Most of the systems work at least a little bit. Besides you will learn more by completing a system that fails than you will reading and not implementing the best system out there.
7. Finish something. Get your website or blog up, get your product done etc…  Choose a path and stick to it.
8. Stop wasting time reading forums and / or blogs unless you have a plan or reason to be posting.
9. Check your email rarely. No more than once every couple of hours.
10. Buy my course – Just kidding

1. Buy all of the new tools and programs. The ones with a monthly subscription option are the best.
2. Join every Giveaway event and download everything you can.
3. Download every free report that you can find.
4. Get on everybody’s list — Because can’t get too many e-mails telling you to buy Product Launch Formula or Mass Control.
5. Read every email that comes in – as soon as it comes in. You might miss some new trend if you don’t.
6. Read and comment on forums – especially posts complaining, complaining about gurus really helps you grow your business.
   1. Bonus points if you subscribe to each post you make so you can respond if someone disagrees with you.
7. Join Facebook and MySpace and every other Social Site on the web to make friends and find more people who will complain about how bad their business is going.
8. Attend every teleseminar and watch every video.
9. Make sure that your website is “Perfect” before you launch – you cannot spend too much time getting it right
10.  Spend your time writing top ten lists when you should be producing products :-0

Tomorrow I will post the Top Ten Ways to be Successful Online.

I interviewed Walt with The Marketing Caddy on BlogTalkRadio March 31st follow the link if you would like to listen to the recording of our discussion:
The 5 Deadly Marketing Sins of Small Businesses
1. Not having a marketing mindset.
2. Failure to fully leverage assets.
3. Marketing to Everyone.
4. Same and Lame.
5. No Lead Generation Systems.
Bonus: Fear and Lack of Understanding of the Internet as a Marketing Tool.

How you use these seven strengths is vital to you business growth. No matter what it is that you sell there are more people on the internet to buy than can ever walk through your door. Does that mean that I think you should close your doors and just operate online? No I believe that there are some huge advantages to combining the strengths of both channels.
 

That was Barnes and Noble’s biggest mistake when Amazon was just a small online bookstore that was bleeding cash. If Barnes and Noble had focused on their strength in brick and mortar locations and combined their “clicks with their bricks” they would be the largest online bookseller today and Amazon would be gone or limping along.

  What are these 7 vital ingredients that I’m talking about? 
1. You get to look a customer in the eye and ask them questions. 

There are some amazing analytics tools available on the internet for tracking and surveying customers. I use Google Analytics everyday, but in my opinion they still are not a substitute for years of looking a customer in the eye, asking them questions and watching their response. Most internet marketers never get this opportunity. That is a strength of your offline business. I believe that that if Barnes and Noble or Blockbuster had handled this better then we wouldn’t have Amazon or NetFlix.

2. Many people still like the idea of going into a store.
The shopping experience is changing, but retail stores will not go away for a long, long time. I appreciate the convenience of the web for items that I know I want. But when I want to browse nothing beats a funky little store or browising the book or movie aisles to decide what I want to buy.
 

3. You can send people from your retail location to your online store.
This is a great marketing channel. You can have a slightly different inventory available online. Many successful Online/offline stores will have their hottest, seasonal items ont their shelves and all of their inventory online.

4. Your local clients will tell their out of town friends.
If you do a good job of servicing your local clients they will evangelize you to their friends. You can even provide incentives to those that bring you new customers. Start

5. You can form a relationship with your customers.
This is similar to #1 but the differences are that you will see them at church the ball games etc. They will see you as a real person, and probably refer to you as your business. You’ll be the furniture guy or jewelry lady, but it will make a difference in your business.

6. In store Pickup

This is especially strong if you have multiple locations - like Barnes and Noble had. You can allow people to pay for their items online and pick them up in your store. This will give you another chance to upsell to them. And there is nothing better than upselling someone who is picking something up that they already paid for because they feel like they are getting a gift.

7. In store returns
Yes, none of us likes to take returns. But there are some great advantages to having them return it to your store. First it gives you the chance to find why they really returned it. Rarely will you get the real answer online. Second it gives you a chance to change it into an exchange or upselling them something else.

If you properly combine the strengths of your offline business with your online business you will see  significant business growth.