Rather than thinking or wishing, they get out there and make it happen. I would proudly put myself in the “doer category”. Although there are amazing benefits of being a doer, I’ve often gotten myself into trouble as I didn’t think things through thoroughly enough. Can any of you relate to this?

I’ve also witnessed this  pattern in a lot of my small business owner clients. They get into trouble going after the wrong marketing activities. Specifically, marketing activities that were programmed into them since they first got into the business world. Many owners think…well we need to market the business so let’s put $1,000 per month into Radio, Yellow Pages, or Newspaper Advertising and  see if it generates any results.This called the “Pay and Pray” marketing strategy, and is

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for testing to see if different marketing may work. However, the majority of business owners (I run into) follow the pattern of just seeing what marketing sticks in traditional popular marketing channels. But that sad thing that I see is this type of business owner does not have any concrete basis (or statistics) for it. If you want to “do” the right marketing activities the right way, you must start with a good marketing plan.

What exactly is a marketing plan?

It’s a written document that is organized as a set of activities designed to promote your company, product or service. A successful marketing plan increases customers and profits and is usually planned for at least 1 year ahead of time.

A clear set of  strategies is the basis of a well-written plan, and the strategies should be proven producers. Don’t try more than one new strategy at the time so you know what’s working and what isn’t. Your marketing plan needs to contain a list of tactics or actions that make up each strategy

Essential elements of a marketing plan

1) Quality research is the foundation of your marketing plan

2) Marketing Mission Statements (should be connected to your overall business plan)

3) Set up specific but doable goals with time frames to reach them

4) Find out what your most effective “marketing channels” are

5) Create your marketing budget (complete steps 1 through 3 first)

6) Delegate responsibility to perform each part of your plan

7) Track and measure the success of your campaigns and re-valuate them

Build a Focused Marketing Plan is a post from: Peak Promotion

What a waste. It’s just as if Cisco revels in throwing this great little product away. Certainly there is still a good market for it and they could sell it off and save some of the cash they paid but that’s too much trouble for Cisco.

As a business person, I think of all the effort that went into that little camera, and almost get sick to think that these people would just trash it for no good reason. It’s like taking bite of an excellent meal and throwing the rest away. It sounds just like a Gov. agency.
It’s low arrogance.

Some would say that it’s getting obsolete as the new phones
can take HD video but the phones can’t compete with the Flip.
Who wants to upload all of their videos anyway?
I’m not that much of a narcissist myself but I’m sure
they are plenty. Even so you’d want to get the best
looking video to upload and the iPhone and other
candidates cannot hang.

Why Did Cisco Kill a Great Product for No Good Reason is a post from: Peak Promotion

“The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data,” former head of Google Schmidt said. “Failing that, there are other ways to get that information.”

[ARE YOU KIDDING? ERIC SCHMIDT WAS LOSING IT.   Google Inc. has too little concern for it's customers privacy (you know they've logged your searches AND your IP don't you?) and they now want Facebook members' info? What is puzzling is that they don't have to act out this way. More later...]

He declined to be specific, yet such a statement is likely to have peaked the interest of privacy groups everywhere.

from–Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Google is Creeping Us Out a Little is a post from: Peak Promotion

In the past year or two, every so called “guru” on the Net has come out with his or her own product to “teach” people how to use digital marketing to help local businesses show up in the search engines. The products range from simple instruction on how to fill out a Google Maps listing to full on bells and whistles courses costing thousands. The only trouble is that most of these gurus have no idea what they are doing in the brick and mortar world. Nonetheless hundreds if not thousands of “expert marketers” are swarming local businesses promising  making promises they could not keep in a million years. Hey they took a $47 course didn’t they? Or making the promise then taking the money and running out.

They are also making it harder for legitimate digital marketing veterans to get past the skepticism of the local business owner in order to help (sometimes save) her business. They are like so many roaches running all over leaving their bad aftertaste on the business community. We’ve just heard a few weeks ago that even Anthony Robbins the self help guy is getting into the “internet marketing” instruction business with his own course line. Are you kidding me? How many thousands will he sell on late night TV? He also has a radio spot running 24/7 on talk stations. I wonder if any of the “gurus”/info marketers are going to take some responsibility for the damage they are doing to the marketing field in this time of recession when business needs real professional help. Doubt it. It seems that mediocrity is a large part of our new online reality.

The New Landrush is On is a post from: Peak Promotion

Increasing the volume of visits to your website

In the final analysis, your internet business is driven by the level of traffic that arrives there. Because there are millions of web locations on the internet, all working for the business of customers, you must have a web site that draws attention. In this way, your website will be noticed as one that people visit when they are looking for the product that you sell or the service that you provide. An internet advertising site is a one of a kind marketing tool that promotes your business over other similar business sites. The increased visits to your web site help your new business to be visited by web crawlers and indexed much faster than otherwise.

Target your audience

Internet advertising like any other type of advertising depends upon reaching the right people. If you set up your advertising on web sites that are visited by the type of audience who would use your product anyway, you will find increasing sales almost without trying. The key is to understand who your audience is and what products or services they will use. The understanding you gain will allow you to place advertising correctly and to say the right words that will reach this targeted group of people.

More visits and more sales

When you have a new business on the internet, it may take a while to get noticed, especially if there are other businesses that sell similar products or services at about the same price. One of the ways to overcome the disadvantage of being just one of the crowd is to take an active role in your internet advertising so that you are creating a way to bring more visitors to your site. This will encourage a higher page rank for your web site which in turn brings even more visitors.

Advertising links

Advertising links created by internet advertising of your product or service to your own web site help to bring more visitors and, by extension, more sales to you. The trick is to select advertising links that reach members of your target audience at high numbers. Reaching the right audience with your advertising links is at least as important as reaching any audience at all. Web sites devoted to advertising create lots of interest and activity amongst the search engine spiders, because there is a variety of products, hopefully all in the same general field or service type.

Internet Advertising : First Impressions Count is a post from: Peak Promotion

Amazing “What is a browser?” video from Google is a post from: Peak Promotion

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa had says, “We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true.

We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.”

Then why is it still on the toolbar? Some people think it has never been such a big deal , but I wonder what planet they are living on.

Peter Norvig, G’s Director of Research said that it may be time for some re-branding when it comes to the term. There may be a different term coming. “There’s a technical formula that’s PageRank, which is the way of judging the links between pages, and that’s just one component of how we rank the pages and you get your final search results. There’s all these other things that come in, but they don’t have a catchy name. So some people apply PageRank to mean all the components that give you the final ranking, and that’s where we get confused. So probably we need some other term for that…We’ll get some marketing guys on it.”

So go ahead and change the term and SEO meisters will go nuts over the new one. What’s new?

Google might be changing “Page Rank” to something else. is a post from: Peak Promotion

First Google starts their own affiliate network then they run a real live enjoyable Super Bowl ad. Our favorite of the game.

The question is why? Did Bing suddenly grow a market share? Did internet affiliates unionize? More later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU

Hell Freezes Over at Big G is a post from: Peak Promotion

I know this isn’t the usual post but we’ve been waiting to get a look at the finished product for a while now. Apple’s new tablet computer the iPad was officially introduced today. If it’s one thing, it’s unmistakebly Apple.

My first impression of the iPad is mixed:

Apple does it’s thing on  stage again and introduces the audience to the Jetson’s memo pad, but it has no video-conferencing.
I like the iPad though. The way it looked anyway I thought it might break new ground with video features. Nope. Cam at all? Nope.

It’s hooking up to the ATT 3G network first at $30 per month unlimited data.

It’s about $640 and upward for the 3G model. I expected a much higher price – I’m surprised. You can check it out at www.apple.com for yourself but here’s a few thoughts before you go nuts to buy one. (Like us.)

It’s not light. It feels pretty heavy in your hand, substantial.

The screen is 1024 x 768 and beautiful. Feels just like a huge iPhone in your hands.

The speed of the CPU is something to be amazed at. It’s lightning fast from what I can tell.

Webpages load up super fast, and it scrolls without a hiccup. Moving into and out of apps is a breeze. But there’s no multitasking at all. None. All this power and very little you can do with it all at once. No multitasking means no streaming Pandora when you’re working in Pages… you can figure it out. It’s a real “go figure” for this device. The ebook implementation is about as close as you can get to reading without a stack of bound paper in your hand. The visual stuff really helps flesh out the experience. It may be just for show, but it counts. The keyboard is good, not great. Not quite as responsive as it looked in the demos. It’s a good first try but I’ll wait for the killer model certain to come later at another price point. Jetson gear it’s not, yet.

Apple’s New iPad is a post from: Peak Promotion

It’s nearly impossible for any size business to make it online without a marketing budget. There, I said it. I hear from a lot of small business people about their online efforts and I’m surprised that they still even use the phrase “word of mouth”. I’ll put it this way: Everyone in the “first world” knows about Amazon.com right? Does Amazon rely on “word of mouth” for there marketing? No. Does Apple? Porsche? No. Even the mighty Google advertises and market themselves like there’s no tomorrow.

Sure, social networking is going nuts with users now, but how are you going to reach them with your offer? Your business needs focused marketing and that means dollars. Now you need to balance your budget so that it is spent in a way that will bring you the highest return on your investment.

These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself:

1. Where am I trying to take my business this year, exactly?

2. Which will it require most of – higher sales, more leads and/or more traffic?

3. What is my total budget for online marketing efforts?

4. What ROI will I be satisfied with? What ROI do I absolutely need?

4. What marketing mix should I invest in to develop the ROI I need?

If you’re an eCommerce company, you probably need to increase your sales. If you’ve got tight targeted traffic, but a disappointing conversion rate, you probably want to place marketing that will turn that traffic into more sales. If your traffic is high but not very targeted (if the visitors coming to your site aren’t necessarily interested in what you’re offering), want to start driving more targeted traffic. It’s time to take stock of your strengths and use them to improve your results.

Tracking Is Mandatory

Every marketing campaign you create and run online (and off line) should be tracked. You should know every dollar you are spending, and every dollar of profit you’re making from that spend. If you’re not sure how or what to track, your first step should be to setup Google Analytics or some other analytics program. There are many available but Google’s is free. Then go to the Google Help Center and learn a little about what you’ll be looking at in the analytics program. Depending on what kind of selling you do, there are others that will give you your profit picture much easier than Google, such as Tracking202.com, Xtreme Conversions and Ad Trackz. A small part of your budget should go to either the purchase of a tracking script or straight forward book on learning how to use Google’s.

If you’re not tracking your marketing, you are flying blind and it should be your absolute first action item tomorrow.

Next in Part 2, Conversion Rates.

Good Luck

How to Allocate Your Marketing Budget in 2010 – Part 1 is a post from: Peak Promotion