Stephen D. Gross

We had the opportunity, this past week, to interview several severely frustrated potential small business clients who were looking for a quick website disaster relief strategy.  The degree of frustration inherent in today’s small business owners seems to be rising at epic proportions during the last 3-6 months.

What is the cause of their frustrations?  Website failure to produce.

More and more we are confronted by small business owners who look to us for website or web presence disaster relief.  Although we are always happy and willing to assist them, the ability for us to do so has become drastically hampered by the impressions and failures left by the previous internet website design and/or marketing company.

Case in point is Kelli (not her real name).  Kelli spent over an hour hammering us with “what-if” and “how-come” questions regarding her Internet strategy.  She claimed to have spent thousands and thousands of dollars over the past 2 years for web design and online marketing.  Unfortunately, as she said, her small business has had little if any return on the investment.

After listening for over an hour, and with Kelli still on the phone, we decided to run a quick real time analysis on her website and ask a few questions about her strategy.  YIKES, not good!!

As is normally the case these days, Kelli had a low-cost individual website designer develop a website for her business.  In addition, nobody considered pre-design criteria like keyword analysis, content analysis, value proposition, competitive analysis, and goals and objectives.  To make matters worse, she has employed two separate website design firms and has attempted at least 3 different online marketing strategies.

Fortunately, Kelli’s website and past marketing efforts have created a strong enough base to allow for some fairly quick and financially painless changes or modification to get things turned around.  Unfortunately, sooner than later, she will be forced to discard most of the past work in order to make room for the much needed long term changes.  These changes will be required to allow her to reach her long term goals and objectives.

So how do you stop this from happening to you, again.  Make sure you only work with a website or web presence company that fully understands the need for pre-design and marketing (not advertising) analysis.  This analysis must include the design of the online destination (website) as well as intended marketing efforts.  Failure to do so could translate into a disaster relief effort, or worse yet, a business failure.

Do you have a disaster story?  Leave a comment.

Interview and content provided by Brookstone Marketing Group

Now that the first decade of this century is over, small businesses are waking up to find themselves in a quandary trying to decide on traditional marketing versus online marketing and the means to finance either one.

Traditional Media Advertising and Marketing is often times out of the financial reach for most small business owners.  Even if they have the resources, small business owners get caught up in the need to justify and ensure a return on the investment of their time and hard earned dollars.  Traditional Media firms normally require an up front payment plus a long-term commitment before launching any campaign.  In addition, the charge for creative work is passed on as an addition expense to the media buying small business owner.

Internet or Online Marketing, more often than not, follows the same routine as Traditional Media firms in terms of financing the campaign and charging for creative.  The difference is that Online Marketing is typically far less expensive, much faster to launch, and easier to track and justify.  However, many online pay-per-click campaigns are launched by inexperienced marketing agents, and thus cost, and at times exhaust, their clients available budgets before a payback can be achieved.

Enter Social and Content Marketing.  These forms of Online Marketing can be seem elusive and untrackable for the small business owner.  Many times, the small business owners lack of understanding of the philosophy behind authority, trust, and communication keeps them from participating and committing financial resources towards this form of marketing.

Small business owners are looking for a low cost of entry solution for marketing for 2010.  The Internet can and will offer a pay-as-you-go alternative to the old fashion no-risk traditional media firm financial model.

Small Business owners seem poised and ready to commit the necessary dollars to get their business growing again.  However, they will only do so if the marketing channel is proven and offers a high opportunity for success and/or has some assurances built-in for controlling and tracking the marketing expenditures.

Brookstone Marketing Group has now released a marketing campaign that fits such a requirement, PayGo Marketing.  For more information concerning PayGo Online Marketing release click here.

What is your struggle with online marketing?  Leave a comment.

PayGo Online Marketing is a campaign offered by Brookstone Marketing Group.

So what is all the magic about the number 37?

Very simply stated, the number 37, in our opinion, is the root of success for almost all sales and marketing.  Every web designer, content writer, and marketing guru should know and understand the power of this number!

Ok, so what the heck is the magic in 37?  Did it originate from some super-duper magic show in Las Vegas?  HA!  Not really.

It really should be shown as 3-7.  These two numbers are somewhat separate in terms of how they perform their magic.  You probably use these numbers everyday without knowing it.

Had enough?  Give up yet?

The first explanation concerns the use of getting the buyers attention and making them sticky.  In other words, getting them to return to your website.  So here are the forms of magic:

You have no more than 3 seconds to gain the customer’s attention on your website, page, content, offering, and/or pricing.  Additionally, you have no more than 7 seconds to verify their decision to commit their attention and gain their trust. That’s right, you only have a maximum of 10 seconds to gain their attention and prove they made the right decision to commit their time.

Secondly, during these economic times and under non-emergency conditions, its takes an average of 3 visits to your website, etc. to get the customer to believe in your offering.  It may take as many as 7 visits for the customer to take the action you want them to take.

The “Marketing 37″ concept has been applied, in many different forms, throughout marketing history.  No the magic is not in pasting this number throughout your website (duh).  The real magic is using and applying these two “Marketing 37″ concepts to drastically increase your conversion ratio.  Understanding the need to grab the customers attention, get them coming back, and having them apply the actions you desire is really what the magic is all about.

What is your conversion ratios?  Leave a comment.

Visit Brookstone Marketing Group for more information

It seems the world of Web Design, Internet Marketing and Advertising, and Consulting is becoming over crowded with Guru’s, Strategists, and so-called experts.  These bobble heads are claiming to be online professionals with top-secret methods and strategies for success beyond imagination.

Well if it walks like a duck…..

Unfortunately, the real professionals find themselves having an even tougher time separating their message and abilities from the crowd.  Have you searched Twitter lately for online marketing experts?

The well intentioned, professional, and successful people like Jeff Walker, Mike Filsaime, Dan Hollings, Frank Kern, Shawn Casey, Tellman Knudson, and the staff at StomperNet to name a few, are providing tons of great information to educate oneself on the means to attack the world of Internet marketing.  Unfortunately, more often than not, the people who listen and learn from these sources do so haphazardly and tend to take a poetic license and automatically deem themselves a professorship at the World Wide Web College.

Can you say impostor?

So why did I use the term “Newscaster”?  Have you ever watched TV News?

Many years ago I had the opportunity to spend a few days with one of my wife’s relatives.  This relative just happened to have on-air experience with national news casting and a couple nationally known TV news shows (Don’t want to get in a law suite).  After trying to beat him in word games and TV shows several times, such as Jeopardy, without success, I finally asked him how in the world he knows so much about everything.  Was it his world travels? Education? Books? What was this top-secret weapon?

When he stopped laughing he informed me that he really isn’t that intelligent.  In fact he challenged me to get out the dictionary to see how many words he really knew the definition to.  I was astounded!!!  He was right.

So how does that story relate to Internet bobble heads? Just take a look around, find a few of them, and ask them some questions (Contact me if need some advice here).  Most of them can talk about online marketing with the best of them but most rarely ever make a dime for themselves or their customers.  In fact, more than likely, they have never even conducted a long-term online marketing campaign much less stuck around to see if it made money.

Employers get stuck with bobble heads on their payroll everyday.  Slick talking imposters have a habit of over exaggerating their abilities and experience.  For the most part, the intentions are honest but reality quickly sets in that the actual return on the employer’s investment may leave a lot to be desired.

How do we correct this trend?

Time is usually the automatic fix.  As metrics and analytics become less hyperspace-oriented and therefore more user friendly, business management will rely less on the messenger and more on the message for actual results and justification.

Have you been burnt by “Newcasters” ?  Leave a comment.

Visit Brookstone Marketing Group for more information.

One of the little known but highly recognized facts concerning a quality online presence is the effect on employee or staff attitudes and loyalty.

Did you know that the average age of an Internet searcher is over 35 years of age?  Did you also know that the age cycle is growing in both age directions?

To first analyze this phenomena you should first ask yourself these questions.  How good is the website presence of the company you work for or own?  Are they using the most up-to-date practices?  Would you promote the presence of your company to your friends?

In our experience, regarding small businesses, we have found that over 90% of small businesses have an online presence so poor that their staff is either not positively impressed enough to promote their own company website or are so unimpressed that it makes a negative impact on their impression and workplace attitudes.

The fact is that the average age of staffing for small business is under the age (less than 30) of the non-internet world.  In other words, the staff doesn’t remember or hasn’t been alive on this planet long enough to experience life without the use of the internet.

Most small business owners are older than their staff and therefore have trouble relating to an age group that depends on the Internet almost exclusively for information and knowledge.  Conversely, the staff looks upon the small business owner as a fossil and somewhat outdated if the business has a poor online presence.

In conclusion, over 90% of small businesses fail to make a good impression on their staff, can potentially foster a negative attitude, and fail to reap the benefits of word of mouth trust and marketing factors when they ignore their own online presence.

What is your opinion?  Leave a comment.

Please visit Brookstone Marketing Group for more information.

Do you know the top SEO technique?

Backlinks are commonly ranked in the top 5 in terms of most important steps for ranking your website or webpage on the front page of search engine results.  So what are the top three backlink criteria for using this critical factor for getting moved up on the SEO ladder?

1. Keyword Relevancy – Make sure the links back to your page are relevant to the page content.  Anchor text,      Title & Meta Tags, and Content all play a valuable role and should be addressed before creating the link.  Keywords are often compared by the search engines to establish relevancy within the link and search engine result page.

2. High Value Links: Establish your links with pages with a high Page Rank value.  PageRank results from a “ballot” among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it (”incoming links“). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page. (Click here for more Page Rank information)

3. Avoid NoFollow – Avoid backlinks with Nofollow in the HTML  attributes.  In a nutshell, nofollows are intended to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring. (Click here for more Nofollow information)

Make sure you or your SEO professional understands and implements a strong Backlink practice when getting your website or webpage ranked in the search engines.  Remember quality of backlinks often trumps quantity when getting ranked high in search engine results.

Having trouble with backlinks?  Leave a comment.

Provided by Brookstone Marketing Group

While it is very common for online businesses to neglect the opportunity for additional revenue by simply providing an 800# on their website, these same companies further neglect to understand the real power in this simple but sometime difficult to implement strategy.

Our experiences have proven that a visible telephone number shown on the header of a website can not only increase revenue by as much as 100%, it can also provide a tremendous positive effect on authority and trust values.  Many online researchers and consumers alike believe that an 800# provides a sense of security with their decision to purchase.

Obviously providing an 800# alone will not reach the intended goals of doing so.  A business must then implement a system to answer and take the appropriate action as requested and shown in the eyes of the caller. Developing proper telephany expertise in sales and customer service is a must.

Telephone Systems must be researched and implemented.   The following questions must, at a bare minimum, be addressed:

- Does the system provide ACD, Multiple Voicemail, Transfer, Groups, multiple methods of Call Distribution, and DID numbers?

- Does the system have CRM capabilities and what systems will it integrate with?

- Does the system provide variable methods of reporting; by employee, phone number, time and day, group, area code, and department?

- Does the system provide import/export and data support to integrate with outside reporting systems?

Finally, it is wise to understand what type of business you are involved in.  Do you sell a need based product or service?  Or, maybe you sell a more emotional or decision based product or service?  The payback and profitability for purchasing a system and hiring a staff for support may well rest on the answer to these questions.

Do you have a telephone sales story?  Leave a comment.

Provided on behalf of Brookstone Marketing Group

What makes it so powerful?

Aside from the obvious need for online copywriting and years of Internet marketing expertise, the real power in social marketing comes from the ability to combine and compound many online marketing channels.  Even greater is the ability to cross pollinate or further compound many accounts within each of Twitter, Facebook and other marketing channels to reach thousands if not millions of users within a single campaign.

The ability to have two-way communications is tremendous.  Being able to listen to your customers and discuss your business offers and needs at the same time is unmatched by any other media channel.

The coup de gras is the add-on capability to acquire, collect and nurture new and existing customers.  Keeping customers is almost as hard as getting new ones with today’s real-time search environment.  Many up to date business practices include a dedicated email marketing staff to talk, listen, relay, and offer advice to and with their customers 24/7.

Provided by Brookstone Marketing Group

We build first and analyze second right?

This sounds like a crazy question but that is exactly what most website designers and online marketers do!  The pressures of today’s tight budgets and rapid launch demands are dictating short cuts in strategy and design.  The Internet is full of the dead bodies of failed websites, content and strategies due to a lack of professional analytics.

The movie “Field of Dreams” said it best….. “If you build it, he will come”.  This mentality is the root cause of the problem.  The sad fact is most if not all Internet failures could have been avoided by applying pre-launch analytics.  Most wait until after they are experiencing an impeding implosion before conducting any form of analytics.  The end result is more often than not a decision that the cause, product, or market must have been a bad fit.

Read more…

Provided by Brookstone Marketing Group

Without a doubt the world of content creation has finally reached its Internet maturity.  Just like Branding, content is the fingerprint of your image and authority.

What is content?  The answer is practically everything that is written and/or read by a viewer and a search engine.  Content includes product descriptions & specs, instructions, FAQ’s, title tags, Ads, Blogs, Forums, Press releases, Articles, and many other forms of electronic display.

Read more…

Learn more from Brookstone Marketing Group