It used to be that businesses concentrated their marketing efforts exclusively on traditional (offline) media – like print ads, TV commercials, radio, PR campaigns, events, billboards, direct mail, glossy brochures. And then the Internet happened. And then social media changed the Internet. A recent report by GrowBiz Media, a small business market research firm, and online survey company Zoomerang led to key insights on how much money small businesses are allocating for their Internet marketing efforts. Entitled “SMB Marketing Practices: Small to Midsized Business Survey Results, 2010”, the report gathers information from 751 completed surveys across the U.S., by businesses with less than 1,000 employees. Among the key takeaways: More than half of the businesses with less than $1000 marketing budget are adopting social media practices, most notably in social networks Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (in that order). Around 39 percent of respondents are spending more than 20 percent of their marketing budgets on websites (design, development, content creation, marketing, – Read the full article
Ever heard of NaNoWriMo? If you’re an aspiring novelist, it’s a safe bet that you have. The acronym stands for “National Novel Writing Month”, which is marked every November as a creative writing project encouraging participants to write 50,000 words of fiction in one month. If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, but you have plans someday of self-publishing your own book – be it a novel, short story collection, poetry, memoir, corporate souvenir, e-book, children’s book, cookbook, picture book, guide or how-to book, vampire anthology, etc. – then you might want to read on. Of course, you can always work on finding an agent and attempt to have your manuscript edited, printed, distributed, and marketed by traditional publishers. But that takes a lot of guts – and, possibly, money. (Besides, one can only take so much rejection letters.) So in case you choose to do-it-yourself, or have no choice but to do-it-yourself, below is a list of the top five – Read the full article
Forgive us? We’re feeling kind of guilty that we’ve written a number of Twitter articles that provide a lot of tips on how to use the popular social media site – without providing an equal number of examples. So let us make it up to you with these great examples of how today’s biggest brands and businesses are using Twitter. Starbucks (@Starbucks): The Seattle-based coffee giant offers “freshly brewed tweets” to a loyal following of over 1 million Twitter users. Check the brand’s profile out, and you’ll be surprised by the number of @replies/mentions they tweet in a day. That’s what engagement is all about. All too often, companies misuse Twitter by spamming their followers with relentless sales talk and ads – without caring to respond to mentions or direct messages. Sure, while Starbucks does post the occasional promo or new offer, the brand’s use of Twitter is mainly to connect intimately with fans and customers. It listens, and as – Read the full article
Ordering a pizza is a weekend tradition in many families. Pizza goes along with college football, study sessions, and – and the Internet? Yes, the Internet! These days more of the population are starting to find the advantages of ordering online – and by advantages, we also mean advantages for the pizzerias, restaurants, and other similar delivery businesses. That’s because ordering online offers a new way to market to the individual pizza enthusiast, or the bachelor ordering in for the weekend, or the bored, hungry online surfer or football score watcher. What makes ordering online such a potent marketing tool is the fact that, when ordering, say, a pepperoni thick with fries on the side, the system will normally have to ask for contact information to verify the order. This information typically includes an E-mail address. Once the address is obtained, the pizza company can start to send out specials about two to three times a week straight to the – Read the full article
Magento is, perhaps, today’s most evolved e-Commerce platform. If you’ve been reading this blog, then you’ll know by now how much we here at Lakeshore Branding love the solution. Magento e-Commerce’s flexibility, rich feature set, SEO-friendly capabilities, and comprehensive merchandising and marketing features make it an ideal platform of online stores and sellers (regardless of size) as well as for shoppers (regardless of demographic or budget). Looking to design, develop, implement, or fully customize your own Magento-powered store? Don’t worry yourself sick trying to figure it out by yourself. (Newbie-ness doesn’t have to be so awful.) There’s a bunch of Magento e-Commerce books – by Varien, the official developer, and by independent programmers and designers – that should help you every step of the way, no matter your level of skill and expertise in Magento. Yes, books: these are still as good an educational tool as any. We’ve compiled a list of the best of them. Take a look: Magento – Read the full article
With the nation uncertain whether or not the Great Recession is over, and waiting to see what happens next, we all need to sit back and think to ourselves what we need to do to pull ourselves out of the situation that we’re in. Most people in the business and economics world claim that a large part of this recession is a lack of demand. The idea is this: if people aren’t spending money on buying things, then no one sees the need to make and sell products. As a result, people are being laid off and not being rehired elsewhere; it seems there’d be no need for their labor, since no one is buying anything anyway. How does someone create demand, though? It doesn’t seem plausible that someone can create within people a desire to buy, but what we can do as a nation is create something new for which there might be a desire. What people want right – Read the full article
The VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) market is so competitive these days. There are so many different companies trying to vie for the same market, it is unreal. While many consider only three companies – RIM, Google, and Apple – to be in real competition, Facebook might just make an appearance. The key to making any of these services be in high demand is to create the right buzz through Internet marketing programs. The right program should the right people to the technology. Here’s the reason why people feel that a Facebook-created physical mobile phone is such a bad idea: they believe that the popular online social media website has no business being in the ring with the rest of the heavy hitters. The best bet being thrown out for Facebook is to create a VoIP like Google Voice and stick to creating a “softphone” instead. The softphone can easily be marketed through Facebook itself as a natural progression for – Read the full article
Article marketing is no doubt one of the quickest and easiest way to promote your website. But most webmasters don’t look into this method of promotion because they think that it is difficult and time-consuming. The fact is, article marketing is probably the cheapest and fastest way to get free targeted visitors to your blog or website. Step 1: Keyword Research To start off your article marketing campaign, effective keyword research is a must. If you are after a specific niche, then the keywords you are after are probably researched already. If you have no idea how to do keyword research, don’t be afraid, here is the perfect place to learn. Some tools to help you get started: Google Keyword Tool (One of the Must-Use of any online marketer) Micro Niche Finder (My personal favorite, because it tells you exactly whether the keyword is good or not) Market Samurai (Another pretty cool market research program, and a bunch of other functions) Make – Read the full article
