This is the final post of the series. To start from the beginning. click here.

In this post we will briefly explore the last example in that post. For a recap, the business up for discussion involves a toy company. The following bits of information were given.

1. The company’s website is subpar.
2. They are considering a radio campaign.
3. They are launching a new product shortly—so shortly, in fact, that they have determined that it is unlikely that they will be able to wait for a purely internet marketing campaign to return results.

This will likely be the most expensive of the discussed campaigns (though by no means are we going to forget about trying to reduce costs by developing a deliberate marketing strategy), so it may be a lesson that planning early is key to minimizing costs. Luckily, if the company is considering the use of a radio campaign, they already know that they may need to spend a couple bucks.

When conducting a radio or television campaign, the first step must always be to prepare the website. Quick changes which make the web presence presentable are key. The reasoning behind this argument is that in nearly every case, a radio or television advertisement drives potential customers to Google for a quick web search. In most cases, the consumer should not be left to respond to the call to action directly. Rather, the consumer, it should be assumed, will forget nearly all of the information from the advertisement. The use of any active marketing strategy, therefore, should only be expected to influence the desires, and therefore searching habits, of a desired consumer base.
The first step, therefore, is an emergency website facelift.

Next, quick optimization tactics (META information optimization, content generation, etc.) is key to try to tackle some of the keywords of utmost importance.

Third, frequent and directed press releases (and article directory submissions) can produce significant results in minutes to hours. Though these will do little to boost the company’s website itself, the press releases will give the company high ranking search engine results for difficult keywords.

Fourth, the radio campaign may be conducted. The building blocks are all set, and after the other steps are complete, the radio campaign can be a success. In order to minimize costs, the campaign should begin with an attempt to get free exposure from local and college radio stations. Frequently they want local content and will allow the company to get air time at no cost.

Fifth, the radio campaign should be complimented by an inexpensive direct marketing strategy (mailing, flyer distribution, etc.) to maximize the return.

I will now discuss a typical marketing campaigns for the second scenario posed in the first blog of this series. If you missed it, click here. The situation is this:

An established mechanic finds his business in heavy competition in recent years. Many shops are popping up around his, and he is seeing a steady decline in business and must lower his rates to stay competitive. He doesn’t want to spend a fortune on marketing as his operational costs are significant, but he can’t fathom a 20 thousand dollar a month advertising strategy.

Three key elements of this scenario really stand out as the most important. Once again, we must consider the stated fact that his operational costs are high. Second, the budget is described to be low. The third point, which is that time is of the essence, is perhaps of even higher priority. I will describe these issues in reverse order.

First, time is of the essence. That is to say that no matter the plan, no matter the marketing campaign, no matter the tools used, we don’t have much time. The difference between this example and many others is that while the mechanic cannot spend money like an enormous corporation would, he cannot afford to stay in business very long with the current trends: lowered prices, increased competition, etc. This information is not given, but it comes with knowing the industry. Having had experience in the automotive repair industry, casey troy marketing, has worked closely with clients to develop strategies that would fit their budgets while dynamically adapting to their industry. As such, it has become abundantly clear that there are two ways in which automotive repair/mechanic businesses run. First, they may employ mechanics at an hourly rate. Second, they pay by the job. In either case they face the risk of operating costs running above revenue generated or losing employees if they do not maintain adequate business. In other words, marketing strategies must have a quick turnaround.

Next, the budget must be considered. While we will seek a plan that maximized budget, step one is to determine the type of budget. In this case, the budget is described to be on the low side while taking into consideration the above paragraph’s message.

Lastly, his operational costs are high. This is incorporated in the paragraph above last, but the fact is distinctly important in that the implication that the business needs to see a turn return remains important.

All things considered, a fitting campaign may include the following:

• Guerrilla marketing tactics to hit high yield niche locations and demographics. If the shop is near a school, flyering, direct distribution of coupons, etc. should be inexpensive yet effective.
• Press releases are key if the area is small enough to capture. casey troy marketing, for example has been working with many clients in smaller districts of Los Angeles and its surrounding areas. Smaller area such as Santa Clarita (Valencia, Newhall, Canyon Country, Castaic), Gardena, Santa Monica, Studio City, etc. are areas in which conquering keywords with frequent press releases is feasible.
• SEO… just about always, these situations dictate some basic search engine optimization, search engine marketing, or SEMM.
• Cheap radio/Television publicity. All attempts should be made to gain free or affordable exposure through local TV and radio stations.

These strategies (and others) should give high yields with low costs, fit the industry and business model, and be dynamic enough to strategically change over time.

Stay tuned for more.

There seems to be a debate amongst many marketers (I really do prefer the term marketer—it reminds me off Willy Wonka!) between the proponents of internet marketing and classical marketing strategies. The argument is heated and peoples’ businesses are at stake, so it is important to understand both sides of the debate, the pros, the cons, and those involved.

The fact is that marketing is a field which is ever changing, often subjective, sometimes unquantifiable, and is dabbled with psychology and sociology. The field is arguably as old as mankind, but in its current form, with highly analytical and scientific notions, it is easily dated back to the industrial revolution. Any one of these facets would understandably make for a debatable subject, but all together, the mix makes for a messy, messy situation.

In my years working for a street-level/guerrilla-esque marketing firm, I heard over and over, “Sure internet’s great, but it takes too much time,” “SEO takes months or even years to bring results, and business owners don’t understand how to wait that long to see a return,” or most nasty of all, “No matter what happens in the advertising world, they’re always going to need us.”

I also spent my share of time involved with a web marketing group in my early years. There the statements ranged from “There just isn’t anything as cost effective or as worthwhile as SEO and web marketing’” to “Web marketing can do everything that other forms of marketing can do cheaper, better, more strategically, and with more traceable results.”

I challenge these attitudes. Neither marketing tactic replaces the other, and there are many scenarios in which either medium alone falls short. Take these two examples, and see what sort of strategies you would propose:

1. A law firm is opening a new service which relies upon unique customers calling in. Their marginal cost is low but fixed operational costs are high. It is therefore important that any proposed strategies create a bang. It simply isn’t cost effective to keep lawyers in the office, sitting around waiting for phone calls.
2. An established mechanic finds his business in heavy competition in recent years. Many shops are popping up around his, and he is seeing a steady decline in business and must lower his rates to stay competitive. He doesn’t want to spend a fortune on marketing as his operational costs are significant, but he can’t fathom a 20 thousand dollar a month advertising strategy.
3. A toy company is considering a radio campaign. Their website is a mess, but they are launching a new product and can’t afford to wait for search engine marketing to return results.

I will break these examples down in the coming posts, but for now, think about them, and challenge yourself to think of a deliberate and dynamic marketing strategy.

If you need a little help—here you go. The reality is simple. Nearly every company needs an effective web presence. Every business knows that the larger their footprint, the better the chance of catching the attention of their potential customers. A web presence is much like having another store operating in a busy thoroughfare. A website is basically the least expensive satellite store you will ever be able to open. Still though, how you do you capture the attention of the masses of those for whom a website would mean nothing (those in their car, outside, too busy to peruse, or not net-savvy)?

Stay tuned for part 2.

In my experience, clients are often concerned about their site’s ranking, but they don’t know how to tell if their site is truly utilizing their website to its fullest capacity.

The fact is that one of the most important facets of search engine optimization isn’t the actual optimization but rather determining the current flaws in the website and considering practical and desirable goals. Perhaps even more important (and something you can start yourself, even if you aren’t a computer expert) is investigating to see if your site is in need of help (and it probably does).

Below are some of the initial steps I take when analyzing a website for a client. These are the questions you need to ask yourself. In future posts, I will discuss in more detail what exactly you want the answers to be and what you can do to get there.

On first look:

1)      Is the site text heavy?

2)      If there is a lot of text, are the keywords placed in the top and bottom of the document?

3)      Are there hidden keywords?

4)      Is the text dynamic?

5)      Is it all flash or images?

6)      Are the titles the same for each page?

7)      Are there even titles?

8)      In the titles, where is the company name placed?

9)      Is it among keywords?

10)   How many words are in the titles?

11)   Are there many links?

12)   Are they outbound? Internal?

13)   Are the links utilizing good anchor text or are they words that are not beneficial?

14)   What is the domain name?

15)   Does the domain name contain any keywords?

16)   Are there any bad redirects?

When looking at the source code/file structure:

1)      Are the images named descriptively?

2)      Do they use alt tags?

3)      Are there meta tags?

4)      Is the description tag filled out well?

5)      How many characters are in the description?

6)      Are the page links nofollow?

7)      What about a robots.txt?

8)      Is there a sitemap?

9)      Are there hidden divs?

10)   Is the site w3c compliant?

11)   Does it matter—is this messing up the site’s ranking?

12)   Is Google Analytics being used? Who’s monitoring the site’s status?

After heading over to Google:

1)      Where is the site placed for the most valuable keywords?

2)      What is the Alexa ranking?

3)      How about page rank? Yahoo… etc…

4)      What does Google Analytics think about the keyword use?

5)      What is the competition for the major keywords?

6)      What about location—are there better keywords for the business’ physical location?

7)      What are the inbound links like?

8)      What is being done to get more?

9)      Is Google Adwords being used?

10)   Does it have to be?

When considering the client (or your own business):

1)      If they had to choose ten keywords that would make them millionaires, are they practical?

2)      What kind of money/time (they’re same thing) do they have to put into search engine optimization?

3)      Is anyone on staff able to do content management/generation?

4)      Can they handle the task of learning about keywords?

5)      Who will research market trends, keywords, and client interest?

Lastly, after everything (that mentioned above and much, much more):

1)      What is the priority of each of the goals?

2)      Are they practical, and what do we do if not?

3)      What kind of return on investment are we looking for?

As you can see, it’s really not as simple as thinking about valuable keywords and color schemes. In fact, the major questions come lower on the list, which ask if the proposed methodologies are realistic and beneficial.

Don’t let this discourage you, though. SEO is a lot of work, but it is worth it, and the results do come. In fact, not all of the issues need to be resolved immediately—any progress can have dramatic results on your site ranking.

As a short anecdote, I have been working (as I mentioned before) with an established web-based company just north of Los Angeles (Santa Clarita—Valencia, California to be exact) for the last month or so. These questions were the first that I considered when beginning to take them on as a client. The answers have directed our work thus far, and they still help us keep on our goals. Proper analysis is invaluable from start to finish.

Good luck on your quest for first page rankings.

This week I have been counseling a business owner on some SEO practices. We are redesigning his site, and while it is still in the design stages, it is a few shades better already to say the least. While discussing with him the implications of site design, consumer awareness, general marketing, and web marketing, I took note of the biggest confusions that he had. Here are the discussions I had with him on each of those issues, which I think may be of huge benefit to you guys out there.

1)      Design, design, design: The fact is that if you get to the top of Google and you cover the page for your niche, you will make money. Still, don’t forget that the end user is your actual consumer, and if your site is terrible looking or un-useful, you are killing yourself. Imagine what those top spots on Google could mean to you if your users actually enjoyed your website—you would be visible and awesome (a great combo). Invest some time and energy into the design of your site, and you will see a huge increase in revenue.

2)      SEO, SEO, SEO: Maybe this should have gone as number one. Heck, read it along as 1a, but no matter what, let it sink in. If you are investing time and/or money into a website, make an effort to appease the search engine gods. A recent statistic I read was that less that 10% of all websites put any work into search engine optimization—that means that with a little will power, you can beat the competition (at least on realistic keywords… it might take a lot of willpower for the harder ones)!

3)      Consumer focus: the business owner discussed above has an online franchise company, and he therefore has different facets to his websites. He has aspects of the site for consumers, some for potential franchisees, some for current franchisees, and some for advertisers. We are working to separate them so as to keep the content pertinent to the reader. If you are careful, it is possible to have a site designed for many users, with each of them seeing only the content they want and need.

4)      K.I.S.S.: Keep it simple-ish. Simple is good; clutter is bad. Most users read the top and bottom of a page. I have spent quite a bit of time in my career explaining to clients that it is great to have loads of content. After all, it’s good for SEO and for the user, but don’t just throw it all on one page, and don’t throw it on multiple pages without some serious planning, either. A lot of information can be a burden as well as a blessing.

5)      Abide by web standards. Check out the information from the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) at http://www.w3.org/. Live by the rules if you want users on different browsers to be able to access your content.

6)      On the same note as number 5, I must separate this point out, which I discuss with nearly every client. With the invention of WYSIWYG website design tools, many people who are creating websites probably shouldn’t. I don’t mean that with a tone which could stifle creativity, but make sure that the site is made for the end user, and don’t just trust your site designer. Check that it fits in a decently small browser window, make sure you don’t use crazy fonts, take advice from established and credible web designers, and you might just be able to do much of the work yourself. Again, though, don’t trust the WYSIWYG always really gives you “what you see.”

7)      Be social, but not too social: No matter what efforts you employ, don’t forget that you have a minion much stronger than yourself. If you have a decent size following, allow them to spread the word. Be careful with how you add social buttons to your web pages, however. Some “out of the box” buttons will leak out a lot of SEO juices by providing ungodly amounts of outbound link from your pages.

8)      Combine marketing efforts. There is no reason to stick to one marketing campaign or style. Cover more demographics and get a good return by analyzing multiple means. Often our marketing goals are to 1) manipulate interest and/or 2) enhance consumer awareness. Consumers are everywhere and not always reachable by one medium or another, so regard all marketing efforts as valuable if the ROI (return on investment) will be high.

There are loads more issues to discuss, but for now, take heed with these tidbits. I discuss these eight pointers approximately two to three times every day, so consider yourself a step above if you really implement them. In the future, I will discuss more tips.