Marketing has changed - Have you changed your marketing?
There are very few people I know who are as knowledgeable about strategic business planning as Doug McIsaac. He's a very talented, "under the radar" expert who has a natural knack for finding simple strategies to dramatically increase your profits. Doug is my go to guy for innovative Internet Marketing ideas and I think he's crazy for sharing all of his secrets.
Ron Douglas
TrafficSage.com
RecipeSecrets.Net"
by Doug Mcisaac
Once again Chris Lang delivers great social marketing advice. Check out the 5 steps to ” how this is done” and the 5 steps “How can I use social marketing…”
“Social marketing and Google rankings and how you can leverage social marketing in
your own marketing campaigns?
Tags: socialmarketing, chris lang
by Doug Mcisaac
This is a great example of using a small dataset to extrapolate inaccurate results. I was reading this article, which reads like it was a press release, and thought it had some interesting statistics and I really agree with what they have to say. Smart business owners are increasing their marketing efforts:
“With the critical holiday buying season on the horizon, it’s no surprise that small businesses are concerned about the uncertain state of the economy. Rather than accept the dire predictions of lower sales, most small businesses will bolster their holiday sales efforts with aggressive marketing plans”
Small businesses tend to use a mix of marketing methods, but the majority (60 percent) say they rely on email marketing most for the holiday season
60% will rely on email marketing?? What?? Every survey that I’ve seen showed that only 30-40% of small businesses even had websites. Which fits with my own personal experience. Even if we were to assume that every small business with a website used email marketing; which is highly unlikely, we would still be short 60% of respondents.
When I checked to see who was surveyed I found out that Constant Contact had surveyed their customers. Now that made sense, 60% of the people who have a service to do email promotions are going to do promotions for the holidays. That’s like going to a soccer game and asking everyone to tell you their favorite sport.
What happens most of the time is that someone reads an article like this grabs the data and starts repeating it. But before you do that you must learn to see what the dataset for the survey was. It will keep you from repeating data that obviously is not true for the whole population.
Here’s the link to the rest of the article if you are interested.
U.S. Small Businesses Boost Marketing Efforts in Response to Economic Uncertainty Constant Contact Annual Small Business Holiday Survey Shows More Businesses Plan Heavier Promotional Push Earlier
U.S. Small Businesses Boost Marketing Efforts in Response to Economic Uncertainty – MarketWatch
ur
by Doug Mcisaac
Here’s a great blog post explaining how to get more people to your website. It’s great straightforward advice. It’s funny how much people look for “tricks” and “secrets” when it really just comes down to start an interesting conversation, allow others to join it and start new conversations often. Enjoy Doug
5 Ways to Make Your Website Sticky
Tags: makeyour website sticky, SEO, blogging
by Doug Mcisaac
Danny Sullivan, One of the top SEO consultants tells of his frustrating local search experience
Searching For Small Businesses, Coming Up FrustratedHaving written about search for years, it’s often easy for me to mistakenly assume that everyone gets it. Search is where the customers are. Surely every business owner, large or small, understands by now the importance of appearing before these customers in search. Surely. But as I’ve looked for local businesses to help with my needs after a recent move, I’ve had a personal reminder of just how far behind some companies remain.I spent the past 12 years living in a small English village, where there was little need to turn to search engines if I needed help with my home. Everyone in the village knew who the plumber was, the two people who painted homes or that if you wanted a meal delivered, only one little Chinese food place would make the trip out. Domino’s Pizza? Forget it.Now I’ve just moved back to where I’m originally from, suburban Southern California. Getting my new house in order has sent me to search engines again and again, leaving me almost in shock at the mess I find out there.
Searching For Small Businesses, Coming Up Frustrated
Tags: localSEO, local search, small business marketing, online marketing
by Doug Mcisaac
Online4Offline is in the 7th week of our 12 week online marketing expert interview series. Our goal is to help you supercharge your business as we enter the last 100 days of 2008.
During this series we will introduce you to proven techniques and tools to expand your business online and offline. Our presenters will include coaches, marketing consultants, authors, software providers and other “in the trenches” entrepreneurs.
This week out guest is Stephanie Chandler. We’ll be discussing how you can use information to build you business.
Stephanie is the author of several business and marketing books including:
– From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur (John Wiley & Sons)
– The Author’s Guide to Building an Online Platform (Quill Driver)
– The Business Startup Checklist and Planning Guide (Aventine)
– Marketing Your Business Online (Stephanie Chandler Enterprises, LLC)
She is the founder of http://www.BusinessInfoGuide.com, a directory of resources for entrepreneurs and http://www.TheBusinessGrowthConnection.com, a marketing company specializing in electronic newsletters.
Join us on the call Wednesday, October 22nd at 11:00am MST / 1:00pm EST / 6:00pm BST
You can listen online: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/online4offline Or dial in (347) 945-7951
Can’t make the call? Sign up for downloads of the calls at http://www.Online4Offline.com/experts/