Internet Marketing and PR Strategies – Are You The Invisible Business?

Way back in the day, I had a client who owned a transmission shop in a city of 100,000 people. His transmission shop was named 'AAA Transmission'. He chose this name because this would be the first listing in the yellow pages when someone searched for 'transmission' (yellow page optimization was and is much simpler than search engine optimization). This placement in the yellow pages was responsible for bringing in nearly 90% of his new business.

One year, due to an oversight, the phone book company failed to place his ad in the yellow pages section. He lost 90% of his call-in business practically overnight. The phone stopped ringing. This simple oversight nearly destroyed his business. As a result, he was then forced to run large ads in the local newspaper week after week after week - a very expensive proposition.

As a business owner, you would likely find this story to be sad indeed. However, believe it or not, this is most likely your story if you have not taken the time to develop a laser sharp Internet search engine strategy for your business. The Internet has replaced the old phone book for a very high percentage of the population. In your case, however, you may be invisible to the entire world, not just a city of 100,000.

Imagine for a moment a directory containing nearly half a billion entries (this is close to the truth, assuming we count both websites and blogs). Your goal is to have your business appear on the first page of that directory under an appropriate heading such as ‘printer’ or ‘accountant’. How would you do that? That is what search engine optimization is all about.

Most businesses find this to be a very daunting, if not completely overwhelming task. Very few people will every type your business name directly into the search engine query box as most of the world population does not yet know you even exist. Instead, they will use a broader term, describing what they are looking for. They will use words like ‘printer’ or ‘accountant’ or 'transmission'. If your competition appears and you do not, this is the same as having no listing in the yellow pages. If nearly everyone is using that search engine to make decisions about where to place their business, you are in trouble indeed.

Take just a moment and do this. Type in that very broad term that relates to your business. Look at the total number of sites returned. That is the number of sites that make up your competition in this 500 million entry directory known as the search engine.

The search engine will always hold the final say regarding where you are placed in this directory. Again, for some, getting to that first or perhaps second or third page can be likened to finding the Holy Grail buried in your back yard. This is not likely to happen. And, for most, this seems to be a nearly impossible task.

But it is not difficult if you have done your homework. All that is required is a strategy that incorporates three key components

1. You must know how your potential client thinks and which words your client will use to find you – not the words you might use, but rather the words THEY will use. This keyword analysis is a vital first step in the process.

2. You must know and fully understand how search engines work. This will require some hours of serious study and research.

3. You must design a strategy that incorporates both of the above and simultaneously outshines the strategy of the millions of sites who are your competitors.

You have two options. You can take the time to learn what you need to know and to develop that strategy based on your particular situation or you must hire someone you trust to do this for your business. Failure to do either will certainly cause you to be nearly invisible to those who matter – your potential clients.

Posted by Don at Free Publicity Focus Group

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Social Marketing And Blogging - Thoughts

The following thoughts are excerpted from McCauley's Marketing Manifesto. Note: Social marketing at the corporate level, a relatively recent development, is far too broad a topic for inclusion here. That being said, for the rest of the world . . .

1. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social sites are not social marketing.

a. These are social marketing message delivery tools. Social marketing is a completely different subject. Remember that tools are just tools - they are not the strategy.

2. Engaging in social marketing is the Internet equivalent of doing referral marketing, only a lot bigger.

a. Social marketing is not 'new'. As a matter of fact, social marketing was the first form of marketing to exist. Back before we had newspapers, radio, tv, magazines and other forms of media, the only way to get the word out was to tell other people - your friends - their friends - and the word was simply passed from person to person. Media and the Internet made this far easier to do without paying for advertising.

b. If people like you, they will pass the word along to their friends. Those friends will then bypass every other option available to get to you, because their friend recommended you. This is the power of social marketing. (See 'What Successful Marketers Know . . . That Most Don't' located in the articles section of this site)

3. As a tool, Twitter can be used for marketing but should not be used as a sales pitch machine.

a, Social marketing involves creating trust, developing real relationships and providing value at a level that will cause another to pass the word regarding you, your product or your service. Therefore you should strive to provide that trust and that value. Try not to bore everyone with never-ending sales pitches or frankly boring posts. An informal study has shown that there are basically three types of tweeters:

Type A
9 am – ‘Buy my stuff’
11 am – ‘Buy my stuff’
1 pm – ‘Buy my stuff’
3 pm – ‘Buy my stuff’
5 pm – ‘Buy my stuff’
7 pm – ‘Buy my stuff’

This gets old fast and becomes an unfollow. This is like saying ‘Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!’. This is tweeting up the wong twee.

Type B
9 am – ‘Just got up’
11 am – ‘Thinking about lunch’
1 pm – ‘I ate too much lunch. Naptime’
3 pm – ‘Just got up’
5 pm – ‘Thinking about dinner’
7 pm – ‘I ate too much dinner. Going to bed’

This also gets old and becomes an unfollow. If you do this, you are in twubble.

Type C
9 am – Great Twitter tools (link)
11 am – Found a great article that will help you (link)
1 pm – Found a whitepaper everyone should read (link)
3 pm – Read this survey
5 pm – Read my article on advertising (link)
7 pm – Found a cool web site (link)

Type C's get the followers. The point is that providing valuable information to others, passing it along, makes for happy followers. They will come to appreciate you and will actually look forward to your tweets (assuming you are attempting to use these types of tools to create awareness). Remember this. Please remember this. It's twue.

4. Be careful what you say

a. Of course, this goes without saying but I said it anyway. One of the worst examples is when you get a post that says 'I found a site that got me 2000 new followers last week!' Then, when you visit their Twitter page, the poster only has 100 followers. What does that say about the person who made that post? Ask yourself - why do you covet those followers in the first place - what is the real goal here?

Always remember that a bad message or a bad impression sent to a lot of people will only cause you to fail faster. First things first. If you don't know what those first things might be, stop here and start at the top of this page again.

5. Treat social marketing tools as you would the watering hole or the golf course.

a. Think of social marketing tools as places to get familiar and casual with your potential buyers outside the restrictions of the marketplace. We know that lots of really great deals are made at the local watering hole or on the golf course. This is because it pays to know people and this is how you get to know them. However, if you as a business owner spend all day in the bar screaming ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ you will most likely be out of business very quickly.

If you are going to attempt to use social marketing, the easy way out is to pretend you are at a casual party filled with potential clients. Don't bore, don't blather on endlessly about yourself or your accomplishments and don't dance in inappropriate ways. You are in front of thousands of potential customers who, depending on the time of day, have not been drinking. Act and speak accordingly.

Posted by Free Publicity Focus Group

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The Most Powerful Marketing Strategy You Will Ever Use

First, allow me to preface this by stating that I am not the bragging type. I am, however, very confident that I do know my subject. My subject is, of course, marketing.

Since 1977, I have personally built 3 service businesses in the 'real world' from nothing; all very successful. I spent no money whatsoever on advertising or marketing. I have consulted with hundreds of businesses and have helped them build those businesses. I have been there and I have done that. What I am about to show you will, if implemented and used consistently, allow you to build whatever business you own faster and more efficiently than you dreamed possible. Not only can you do this; anyone can do this.

This technique lies at the very core of many of the successful business ventures I have been involved in since the beginning. Let us begin by considering:

The Key Factor

Every successful marketing professional knows that referral marketing is the most effective method to use when marketing a product or service.

If someone gets a referral to some product or service from one of their friends, they will pass by every other form of advertising offered them and knock themselves out to seek out and find what their friend has recommended. If a friend recommends a website, they will go there. If a friend tells them a particular book is quite good, they will spend the money to check it out without hesitation. (Did you see yourself there for a moment?)

This is because most people believe their friends will not lie to them, jerk them around, yell at them, blink at them, try to trick them into hitting a buy button or use any other slick marketing tactic on them. If their friend tells them something is worthwhile and relevant, they will often seek it out immediately in absolute trust and will most likely purchase it. Those of us in the marketing game know that a referral is like pure gold, for a referral is pre-sold. It is often money in the bank. The credibility that lies at the heart of successfully marketing anything is inherent in the referral process.

However, referrals are sometimes hard to come by. We often forget to ask. The referrals you get most likely come sporadically. We would love to have a mailbox full of referrals every day, wouldn't we? But that seldom happens (for most of us). Most of us treat referrals as a hit or miss proposition. Wrong.

Be aware that there is a method that can create an ongoing, unlimited stream of referrals. This method outperforms any other method I have come across in 30 years of creating marketing and publicity plans for my clients. That method is to use gifting to create publicity, awareness and, most importantly, referrals. In a nutshell, here is how it works.

The Method

* You, as owner, offer a gift of real and lasting value at no charge
* You allow the gift to be passed to others
* You brand the gift
* You then publicize the gift itself

The end result is that your gift can go ‘viral’ and create a massive amount of free publicity for your practice or business, a huge amount of awareness and a virtual landslide of new referrals. Done properly, it works every time. It almost never fails. However you will find many people who don’t experience success.

I Tried That! It Didn't Work!

I have found that there are two broad reasons why this methods does not work for some people.

a. Many marketing companies and professionals use gifting. However in my opinion, it is used in the wrong way. A gift should be just that - a gift. It should have no strings attached. Giving a coupon or discount as a gift creates precisely the opposite effect you might wish to achieve by using a gift. It is an advertisement disguised as a gift. Trust is essential in the marketing process. If you are perceived to using any form of trickery or dishonesty, you will be quite dead in the proverbial water.

The minute you do this, your potential buyer sees right through the tactic. A REAL gift, given without any strings attached or any forced action, is greatly appreciated. Don't dress up an advertisement as a gift and expect any real results. You might as well give away those silly branded pens or calendars with your name on them.

b. Another primary reason most gifting strategies fail lies in the perceived VALUE of the gift itself. Hey, who needs another book about social security? Or a free report about gold? These gifts most likely generate some names, but really provide no value whatsoever. That information is available everywhere, always and at no charge. Do these types of 'gifts' provide any real value? Is this something people will knock themselves out to pass along to their friends?

People who use these types of strategies are collectors of names, not marketers. They are playing numbers. Marketers want the names of those who have a real interest in their product or service. Don't fool yourself into thinking you are experiencing success if you are collecting names. You can get names from a phone book. Very few of those names in the phone book will be interested specifically in your product or service. This is why advertising to the masses pulls such low numbers in regards to actual results.

What Will Work For Me?

The gifting strategy will work every time, but only if the gift meets the following test. The gift:

* must provide REAL value,
* must be something that is not generally or widely available elsewhere
* there must be a PERSONAL CONTACT involved in the exchange of the branded gift.

If your gift meets those three simple criteria, you mostly likely will be successful.

Hopefully, you have done the research to understand your potential client or customer. You know who they are, you know where they are, you know how many there are and you know how they prefer to receive their information. Most importantly, you need to know what they want, and you need to give it to them in the way they prefer.

If you know what they want, give them a gift that satisfies their own perception of their needs. Give it freely. Give it without obligation. Brand the daylights out of it and encourage them at every step to pass the thing along.

Then publicize the gift.

The end result is the best anyone marketing a product or service can hope for. The gift opens the door in such a way as to create good will. It sets the stage for allowing your potential buyers to see that you do have their best interests at heart - that you are not trying to trick them into buying something or signing up for something. You are providing something of real value at no cost.

Publicizing the gift itself is what makes this work, as this plays on the desire to obtain something of real value at no charge. If the gift truly helps the receiver solve a real problem, the ‘PR value’ is enormous.

How Does This Method Work?

a. You, as owner, give a gift, (a gift of real value, with no strings attached). Brand that gift with your own unique brand. Once the potential buyer sees there are no strings attached, no tricks involved, they WILL pass that gift along. The fact that the gift has your brand attached is not a from of coercion or trickery. Your message goes with the gift, and brings into play all that referral marketing offers.

b. You then publicize the fact that the gift is available only from you. You do this using the media, the Internet, your clients lists – any way you have available to you.

It is ridiculously simple. It is extremely effective.

What Is The ‘Downside’ To Using This Strategy?

The downside, if there is one, is that the gift may not lead directly to new client. That, I suppose we could say, is a downside. But to that I say, so what? Your message has gotten into the hands of another potential client in a very favorable, non intrusive manner, you have created good will, you have shown yourself to be mega professional and you have created the opportunity for that impression to be passed along to many other people. Your primary goal here is to position yourself as someone who has the best interests of others at heart, and to demonstrate your willingness to help others.

The gifting concept incorporates all of the best marketing stragies one can use, rolled up into one neat little package. It creates awareness, very positive publicity and allow your message to perhaps go viral. It is the best of all worlds.

For more visit www.freepublicitygroup.com

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Stupid Marketing Tricks Part VIII - The Cleaver Advertising Agency

Today is Hugh Beaumont's birthday (the actor who played the Beaver's father). Yesterday I was accused of 'spamming' because I mentioned my website address in a post on a discussion group for crying out loud. I also signed up for yet another social networking site. Now, you might ask, how do all of these things tie together in my own mind? In answer, I offer the following.

Stupid Marketing Tricks - Part VIII - The Cleaver Advertising Agency

Newspaper, radio, tv and magazines are suffering massive meltdowns. The revenue is drying up. The publishing business is not far behind. Why is this so? I call it the 'Ward Cleaver Syndrome'.

Back in the late 50's and early 60's print media used to run ads that featured Dad sitting at the head of the dinner table, dressed in a crisp white shirt and skinny tie and smoking his pipe, smiling cluelessly. Mom was always serving up something like a perfectly cooked turkey in her beehive hairdo and A-frame dress, while the kids sat in their plaid shirts, buttoned up completely to the top, with a napkin sticking out of the top, sprouting their cowlicks proudly and licking their little chops. The background was normally greenish and the headline was always shouting something like 'My Family Deserves Only The Best!'

This is the year 2009. Those days are gone. However, the people who created those ads are not. And, unfortunately, many of them still want to run things.

When I listen to or read some of the rants, wails and comments of the big dogs in these industries, I get the impression that they are most likely sitting in a 50's style backyard bomb-shelter, typing it out on a Royal typewriter, or perhaps broadcasting their message using a tube style ham radio. ('Gee Beav, I guess things are changin' huh?')

Not in their world. In this, the real world.

Marketing is now 'social' in nature. 'Social' is a term that loosely means 'NO GATEKEEPERS'. It is a free exchange of ideas and information. As I have mentioned hundreds of times, you, as an individual, are on a completely level playing field against corporations that have millions in their advertising budget. You are equal. This is fantastic news for you. This is bad news for them.

This opens up a whole new can of worms, filled with both good worms and bad worms. China be damned - the Internet is all about free people and free exchange. Some of the newspapers, magazines, radio and television moguls don't like the free exchange of information. Free exchange means they have nothing to sell. Bloggers can now destroy companies. Google and Amazon are making their moves to take over the world. Blah, blah, blah.

It is only the Cleavers of the world who are getting upset, because their tightly controlled little world is crashing down. You can hear the desperation in every word they speak. The fear is as thick as the maple syrup on Mrs. Cleaver's pancakes. They are losing their control.

As a marketer in the year 2009, you can now take your message directly to your buyer. No advertising necessary. No regulation imposed. Do as you please. The market itself will determine your fate, not some editor or some publisher or some other myopic, self righteous judge of what the public may have or have not.

The field of book publishing is trying desperately to adapt. However, like everyone else, as a group they have no idea which direction to take. Unfortunately most of those in power have a June Cleaver 'The Internet - isn't that nice, dear!' kind of mindset. Too late for many of them. Many of the publishing companies appear to be more interested in FIGHTING the changes than they are in MONETIZING these positive changes. In a social environment, they will lose.

The Color Computer is gone. 8 tracks and CB radios are no more. Neither is it necessary to play by any set of rules given by any organization with Mr. Cleaver at the helm. Don't get me wrong. Beaver Cleaver's dad was a really nice guy. However, today, Mr. Cleaver would be merely clueless and completely out of touch. Try though he might, he could no longer control anything, for the world will have passed him by.

Google is not destroying any newspaper, radio, tv, magazine or publishing company. The market itself is determining that these things are no longer relevant to any degree and therefore, they will not survive in their present form.

If you are still using marketing strategies from the 1990's and before, you will not be attacked. No one will tell you. Instead, you will simply be politely ignored. Then, much like Ward, June, Beaver and Wally, you will be forgotten.

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Asoma Music Teams With Dan Millman To Create 'Song Of The Sage' - Music That Changes Lives

[Killaloe, Ontario – December 12, 2008] Asoma Music, a Canadian media company, has teamed up with Dan Millman, author of several bestsellers including 'The Way Of The Peaceful Warrior', to produce an audio product that can literally change lives. Entitled 'Song Of The Sage', the CD (also available for direct download) features twelve tracks, each dedicated to detailing a spiritual law. The readings are drawn from Dan Millman's book, 'The Laws of Spirit'. The voice recordings are done by Dan Millman himself and are combined with lush music created by Asoma Music. The end result is an experience that can take the listener to deep levels of relaxation while simultaneously allowing the listener to absorb spiritual principles that transform one's life experience.

Dan Millman is a prolific author who has sold millions of copies of his books worldwide. These include Way Of The Peaceful Warrior, The Journeys of Socrates, Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior, Wisdom of the Peaceful Warrior, The Life You Were Born To Live, Everyday Enlightenment, No Ordinary Moments, Living on Purpose, Body Mind Master, and The Laws of Spirit. He has also authored two children's books; Secret of the Peaceful Warrior and Quest for the Crystal Castle.

View the entire multi-media release at http://www.freepublicitygroup.com/Release_Asoma-Music.html

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