Think Social Media is a Fad?
Do you understand social media? Do you think it’s just a fad that will go away in a couple of years? Think again.
Social media is here to stay and it is changing the way we do business on the web forever. Need proof? Watch this video.
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How Google’s Pay Per Click Ad Auction Works
Google’s Adwords system is an excellent way to get your business on the first page of the search results without spending months on SEO to get there. Instead, your ad is displayed on the top and right side of the page, and you pay a fee every time someone clicks your ad.
One of the first questions people ask me when discussing Pay Per Click Advertising, is “How much does each click cost?” The fact is, there is no way of knowing until you start running ads. There are many factors determining cost per click, not the least of which is the number of advertisers bidding on those keywords.
Google’s Adwords is based on an auction. You are in a bidding competition with other advertisers for the ad positions available on the page. Basically, the highest bids get the highest positions, but not always. It’s a little more complicated than that, but rather than me try to explain it, I’ll leave it to Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, who does an excellent job of breaking it down for you in this video.
Marketing Your Business During a Recession
There’s a very interesting post on the Google Retail Blog about segmenting consumers based on their psychological reaction to the current recession rather than the usual demographic segmentation most marketers use. I got a lot out of it so I thought I would share it with you. It may help you understand how to market your business both online and offline during this recession.
Under normal economic conditions, you may look at demographics to decide how to market your products. Things like age, gender, and interests may all play a roll in guiding our marketing efforts. However, the recession is front and center in everyone’s mind and is probably the biggest factor consumers consider before making any buying decision.
The post author breaks consumers into 4 segments based off their current economic situation and emotional reaction to the recession and gives you a glimpse into their mindset and even tells you how to target each segment.
I encourage you to read the article and think about how you can apply it to your marketing efforts. I got a lot out of it and I’m sure you will too.
Google Retail Blog: The Skinny on Recession Psychology
Does Your Business Have a Fan Club?
One of my core values when it comes to business, and especially customer service, is to always deliver more than what’s expected of me.
I spent much of my career managing the help desk of a software company and I always had loads of customers that would ask for me by name because they knew that I would solve their problem, and then some.
Most support techs would just answer a question and get the customer off the phone. Whenever I could, I would point out to the customer a feature of the software that they are not using that could make their job easier. I would take the time to show them how to use it. I would try to show them a better way of doing things. They would always be grateful, and would always request me the next time they called. Many would flat out refuse to talk to anyone else and would sometimes wait hours for me to return their calls, when they could have talked to another tech immediately.
I guess you could say they became fans of mine, which was a pretty cool feeling.
I believe that if you apply the philosophy of over delivering to any business, there is no limit to the amount of success you can achieve.
How can you apply this to your business? Be creative. There is always a little more we can give to our customers that will only take a little more effort, but will make us remarkable in their eyes and turn them into fans not just customers.
Fans will keep coming back to you over and over, and they will tell all of their friends about you.
Does your business have customers, or fans?
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My First Blog Post
My first post is officially live! I’m sure you’re not nearly as excited about it as I am, but if you hang around and keep up to date with this blog, I think you’ll come around.
This blog isn’t going to be an outlet for me to try and hawk my services to you. The rest of the site does enough of that. No I have much greater aspirations for this.
See, in my business, I am a strategist, consultant, and marketer all in one. I grow businesses by helping them establish a presence on the web. So I decided to use my blog as another tool to help you grow your business, both online and offline.
I’ve got some great ideas in the works for how I’m going to do that…
So stay tuned…
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