Tag: marketing

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Search To Be Found – Using Search Marketing to Reach Your Audience

As appeared in the Presence Pointers column of the May 2008 issue of “Business Watch” magazine.

Now that you have your website up and running, are you looking to get more out of it? Your site should not only serve as a destination, but as a channel to connect you with your target audience. This month, we’re going to focus on one of the most important ways to make that happen.

It’s called search marketing. As a business, you may well be quite aware of marketing and even advertising; and I can’t imagine too many people now who aren’t at least somewhat familiar with the concept of searching online. However the combination of these two things may still be a bit foreign to many people. Continue reading “Search To Be Found – Using Search Marketing to Reach Your Audience”

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Realizing Recessionary Gains

As appeared in the Presence Pointers column of the March 2008 issue of “Business Watch” magazine.

Economy got you down? Talk of recession and overall uncertainty keeping you up at night? If you said yes, you can at least take comfort in knowing that you aren’t alone. But the real question is, “what does this mean for your Web presence?”

The thought might surprise you, but possibly now more than ever, your Web focus should be stronger than ever. Let’s take a look at what this economic condition might mean and how we can best position ourselves.

Don’t panic. No deep macroeconomic discussion here. Essentially we are talking about an economic period of negative output — whatever that means. What it means to us is we are going to be more cautious with our money.

Let’s take a look at how we can use our Web presence to address some of the key recessionary thought drivers. Continue reading “Realizing Recessionary Gains”

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Holiday Tips for Retail Procrastinators

As appeared in the Presence Pointers column of the December 2007 issue of “Business Watch” magazine.

Each year, the web plays a bigger and bigger role during the holiday season. How this impacts your business may vary, depending first and foremost whether you sell directly online or not, but also whether your customers are locally based. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the web is only important if you sell online or have customers all over the state, country, or throughout the world.

Hopefully you implemented some of the local-focused tips from back in July. If not, it isn’t too late to take action, however the kind of action you take, or don’t take, is very important. If the holiday season represents a sizable portion of your annual sales, now is certainly not the time for redesigning, re-launching, or just about anything else you can think of that begins with “re” in regards to your website. The risks are far too great. Continue reading “Holiday Tips for Retail Procrastinators”

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It’s Not About You

As appeared in the Presence Pointers column of the November 2007 issue of “Business Watch” magazine.

What is your website? Is it a marketing tool? Is it a sales tool? Is it a source of information? These are important questions, but they aren’t the most important question you should be asking. There are six fundamental questions, (who, what, when, where, why, and how) and there is a reason why “who” is the first question. Without “who?” the other questions just aren’t as important anyway.

Unfortunately, many websites answer this first question wrongly. So what’s the correct answer? Let me give you a hint…it’s not about you. You may develop, manage, and even pay for your site, but it’s your target customers’ or potential customers’ site. If you doubt this-seriously, when was the last time you visited your own website anyway? Continue reading “It’s Not About You”

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Reputection: Protecting Your Online Reputation

As appeared in the Presence Pointers column of the October 2007 issue of “Business Watch” magazine.

Last month we started a discussion on reputation management, specifically, one aspect called reputation monitoring. Reputation monitoring is really the task of keeping our eyes and ears open and setting up automated information delivery networks to help with monitoring what is being said about us online. Already it is probably coming to you, the question of what to do now that you’ve “monitored?”

Reputation protection, or “reputection” if you will, is the ever important other half of reputation management. How we handle the negative information we come across during our monitoring can however, have an even more damaging and negative impact than the original information. Continue reading “Reputection: Protecting Your Online Reputation”