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Monday, February 25, 2008

Warning about Network Solutions

Wanna see a real time example of theft? Do this:

Go to http://GoDaddy.com

Search for a made-up domain name, something very unlikely to already be registered. If your first choice is already taken, try again. Repeat until you find one that is available, but do not actually register it. Then close the site.

Now go to http://NetworkSolutions.com and search for the same domain name. It should say that it is available.

Now go back to http://godaddy.com and search for the same domain name again. As you will see, the domain name is no longer available even though you have not registered it.

What happened? Network Solutions registered your domain name. If you want to buy it now, you will have to buy it from Network Solutions for $34.99, much higher than the normal price of $9.

Network Solutions claims this is a protection for you against a practice called "frontrunning", which is registering a domain name that someone just searched for so that you can re-sell it to them at a higher price. Funny the way Network Solutions is doing exactly the same thing they claim they are protecting you from.

Look, we have dealt with Network Solutions on many occasions in the past, and our opinion has always been the same - that it is a terrible company to do business with. They are difficult to work with and they over-charge for their services. But as far as we're concerned, this domain name issue goes beyond poor service. In our opinion, it is theft.

So...don't do business with Network Solutions. You can get exactly the same services at a lower price from GoDaddy or any of dozens of other companies.

If you need help choosing a registrar and getting your online business off the ground, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We're here to help.

Labels: business advice, domain names, domain registration, frontrunning, internet marketing, Network Solutions

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Allocating Your Advertising Budget: Think Before You Spend

Think before you spend. That is today's lesson. We're talking about spending with regard to what you spend on advertising, especially online advertising. We have a large client who inquired about advertising on the front page of Yahoo!. Before we even looked into what it would cost, we knew this was a bad idea.

Yahoo! has massive reach. The home page gets nearly 2 billion impressions PER DAY. That is a lot of eyeballs. It's fairly analogous to advertising during the Super Bowl, both in terms of reach and expense. So yes, advertising on the front page of Yahoo! would give you an incredible amount of exposure and probably drive a lot of traffic to your web site.

But even if you are a big enough company to afford Yahoo!, is it the best use of your money? Probably not. For a fraction of the cost, you could run ads on dozens or hundreds of web sites much more closely aligned with your target market. For instance, if you are a financial services company, you could run your ad on many financial-related web sites, where people are already interested in your type of service, for pennies on the dollar of what the Yahoo! ad would cost.

You should apply this kind of thinking to all of your marketing. Ask yourself: am I spending my money on an advertising forum that will expose my message to the maximum number of people who are good prospects for my service at the best price? If you have lots of money to spend on marketing, we still think you should apply this kind of thinking. Spend your money on targeted advertising first, and then if there are funds left over, you can use those funds on a more broad, branding-oriented campaign.

If you could use some guidance with your pay per click management or search engine optimization, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, business advice, internet marketing, marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, Yahoo

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Marketing Success for 2008: Measurement is the Key

Welcome to the first Work Media blog post of 2008. We hope everybody had a terrific New Years!

We've been finishing up the Work Media 2008 marketing plan and it got me thinking about something very important when it comes to marketing, and that is measurement. Even though we're an Internet marketing firm, we will be using a number of different strategies for promoting ourselves in our local market, several of which are off-line. It would be foolish to exclude certain marketing venues just because they are not the techniques we specialize in providing.

But the question is: how do you know what combination of marketing strategies to use? There are many - search engine marketing (which we, obviously, heavily recommend), direct marketing, print advertising, TV, radio, etc. The first clue as to what methods to use is by finding out what methods are used by your most successful competitors, or similar types of businesses that are successful in your home market.

One problem is that the strategies used by your competitors may not be the same that work for your business. So ultimately what you have to do is try different things and track results as tightly as you can. You need to try and associate leads with the marketing techniques that generated those leads. A couple of ways of doing this is to use a special URL or phone number with different advertising campaigns. For instance, if you run a TV ad campaign, you might direct viewers to a URL like "www.mysite.com/TV". Then when you check your stats, you can see how many visitors you had to the "TV" URL, which will give you a good idea how effective the campaign was.

This strategy is not perfect. In the above example, someone could type your URL without the "TV", in which case you would not be able to make the connection. But this strategy is at least a starting point. A more accurate, but more complicated, way to measure ad campaign performance is to set up a unique phone number for different ads. Then you can tell which ads are working by how many calls come in for different phone numbers. There are a number of different companies that can help you set these phone numbers up and provide call tracking.

So when you are working out your marketing plan (you do have a marketing plan, don't you?), please keep in mind how you are going to measure performance. Finding the right marketing mix can mean the difference between success and failure for your marketing and your business.

For help implementing a successful marketing plan for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, analytics, business advice, business planning, internet marketing, marketing, marketing plan, performance measurement, tracking, web site marketing

Friday, December 14, 2007

A Seven Sentence Marketing Plan for 2008

We are working on Work Media's 2008 marketing plan, so I thought that would be a good subject for today's blog post. I was listening to an audio program at some point in the last year that had a formula for a seven sentence marketing plan. This may be a Michael Gerber invention (I can't remember exactly who it was), but here are the seven questions to ask to create your seven sentence marketing plan:

1. What action do you want your prospects to take?

2. What is your competitive advantage?

3. Who is your target market?

4. What marketing weapons are you going to use?

5. What is your niche in the marketplace?

6. What is your "identity"?

7. What is your marketing budget (as a % of projected gross sales)?

If you use these seven questions as a mental diving board to think deeply about your business' marketing, you will be in good position to sketch out a more detailed plan. It might be a good idea to create one document that is literally a seven sentence plan based on the above questions (a sort-of thumbnail) and another document that elaborates in much greater detail.

An important part of having a plan is LOOKING at the plan periodically. I'll admit that we have historically been bad about creating a nice plan and then having it sit in a shelf collecting dust. I know we're not the only ones. But let's change our ways, starting in 2008. You've got about two and half weeks left this year to do your brainstorming and create your plans for the new year. So get your marketing plan created and look at it periodically to see if you're on track. It just might make a huge difference in your performance for the new year.

And of course, make sure you have an Internet component to your marketing plan. Search engine marketing is the only form of marketing that can immediately place your message in front of people who are looking for exactly what you're selling.

If you need some help developing a strong Internet marketing plan, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We specialize in helping companies find just the right combination of strategies. We would love to help you.

Labels: advertising, business advice, business plan, business planning, internet marketing, marketing, marketing plan

Monday, November 05, 2007

The $100,000 Business Lesson

Hey, we're not just Internet marketers - we're also business men. And our point in this blog is to teach you all that we can not just about Internet marketing, but about lessons we learn and experiences we have along the way. We just had a real life business lesson that cost us $100 thousand. We don't want you to make the same mistake in your business, so we thought we would share our lesson with you, our valued readers, in hopes that you will do better.

So what is the $100 thousand business lesson? It's this:

Always be thoroughly prepared for any communication you will be having with potential customers - ask if there is a particular agenda or topics that will be covered in advance; anticipate questions they will ask; take notes in advance. Do this regardless if it is an in-person meeting or a phone call.

We were pitching for a prospective client and thought we had the deal in the bag. There was a scheduled telephone to discuss a "plan" - what I did not realize is that the call was really an interview because our prospect was also talking to another company. I was expecting something much more informal and didn't do any extra preparation (having already devoted many hours to the writing of a proposal). As a result, the other company got the gig and we lost a piece of business that would have been worth nearly $100 thousand.

So if you are pitching business, even if it is to a company with whom you already have a relationship, be overly-prepared for every interaction you have with the prospect. Assume that the fate of the deal rests on every phone call or every meeting. Take nothing for granted.

There you have it. $100 thousand worth of business advice, and you got it for free just for reading the Work Media Internet Marketing blog.

If you need some help promoting your company online, call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: business advice, communications, internet marketing, marketing