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Dangerous Marketing Campaigns
Lila Buchalski, Managing Partner

Targeting your key demographic online is getting harder and harder. While new portals that offer information to niche markets spring up like summer weeds, it is hard to decipher the legitimacy of not only their readership, but the depth and significance of their content, the source of their traffic, and the accuracy of their traffic reporting. The reasons for this lie in not only the increasing popularity of the internet for all ages, but the costs and low expected results now associated with “targeted” marketing campaigns.

Initially,  the online marketing boom mainly changed the daily habits of adolescents, college kids, and young entrepreneurs.  Now, Grandparents look forward to e-mails with fresh picture attachments, and more people meet their significant others on the web than they do at speed-dating convention. If there is an interest, someone has created a way to profit from it online. While the readiness of information is a convenience, it has led to a whole new set of concerns for small business owners.

Who can you trust to get your message across to the professionals who need your services?  I am sure that there are many websites that consider themselves home to the community that can jump start your business. Claiming to be fueled by expert credentials, with an “opt-in” readership of people waiting to be sold on your breakthrough methods or product, these websites seem to be the answer to marketing prayers.  For the small fee of  $30,000+, you too can speak to these managers and share your wisdom.

How is this possible for the small business owner to justify? How can you trust that the website is representing their credentials appropriately, and that investing with them will be safe and, most importantly, productive? It is an excellent possibility their compiled “subscriber” lists come from others’ saleable data.  There’s also the chance that  many of those e-mail addresses will prove to be invalid.

Unless  the World Wide Web takes measures to institute standards and credential guidelines for information portals, here are a few tips to help evaluate a site before you invest in their sales and marketing packages:

• How did they compile their subscriber list?  How do they maintain that list to minimize the number of invalid e-mail accounts that it contains 
• Where do they get their content? From other site’s feeds, or do they create it in house? How often do they update this information (weekly, monthly, never)?  Always ask this question, and then complete due diligence to confirm that the information portal does post in this time frame, and that articles are not reposted or recycled articles from another online portal. 
• How often do they send out mass e-mails to their subscriber list? If the website sends out new information more than two times a week, there is a lower chance that their messages will be highly regarded or even noticed.
• Who are their key authors and senior management? What are their credentials? Make sure that those writers and managers have a thorough understanding of the topic they sell, as well as commensurate credentials. 
• How long has the information portal been operating under that domain name and in that in capacity? My “rule of thumb” is to beware of any site that has more then 8k subscribers per year in operation.
• Survey your clients and prospective clients. See where they actually call home on the web. If a significant percentage (40%-50%) of these clients are at least somewhat familiar with the information portal you are considering investing with, it is probably a safe investment.
• Spend some time looking at the ads that are currently on the site you are interested in. Are you impressed with the amount of visibility they receive? Are the posted ads from quality companies that you feel are in keeping with the message of the site?  
• Are there a lot of ads for one of your larger competitors that may dwarf your message? What ideas do the sales and marketing team at the information portal have to keep that from happening?
• Call some of the other companies that are advertising on the site. A call may come out of the blue to them, but this element of surprise may create more honest answers, as pre-qualified references are often a waste of time. Find the decision maker at the establishment that is currently advertising on the site and ask them questions like: “What kind of return are you seeing?” “How quickly do they respond to your issues or questions?” “Do they seek your approval before issuing statements on your behalf?” Try to ask these types of questions as many times as you can without completely agitating the person on the other end of the phone. It may seem annoying to the person on the other end, but it ends up being an effective tool for seeking information.

By performing this kind of due diligence, you will be able to more easily identify and evaluate information portals that will help you maximize your marketing investment. Many marketing firms have already performed  comprehensive evaluations of information portals, so they may be able to relay this kind of information to you more quickly than performing investigative work on you own. Also, if you do not have the staff to accomplish this, many online marketing firms would be happy to perform this service for you. Hiring an experienced firm to help your company evaluate your options for allocation of marketing funds may prove to be a wise investment.  This is especially true when you consider what can be gained through an effective and targeted online marketing campaign, as well as what can be lost by choosing an ill equipped, poorly managed, or over-hyped portal.
 

Online Marketing Challenges for New and Small Business Owners
Lila Buchalski, Managing Partner

Motivated new and small business owners claw and scrape to get their businesses off the ground. However, online marketing decisions can often be challenging. Whether it is search engine optimization, custom or basic web site creation, or full blast online marketing campaigns, these costly and possibly discretionary attributes can be overwhelming.

Are web sites necessary? Most would instantly say, “Absolutely.” While they are probably right in most cases, I do feel that there are exceptions to the rule. An amateur web site can negatively affect your company’s competitive edge even more than not having a web site at all. With the identity theft, phishing, and pharming epidemics that currently plague the World Wide Web, customers only feel comfortable using sites that look and feel professionally implemented. This is especially true when it comes to purchasing services online.

If your firm is performing any type of sales initiative, your name and company name should be prepared to be “Googled.” “Googled” is a popular term that refers to someone searching through the Google engine to judge what is listed in reference to your firm.  This is often done when a company is deciding whether or not to take advantage of your services.

One of the credentials that many knowledge based service businesses are judged upon is whether they choose to share their knowledge with the community. If you are sharing information, it will be apparent when your company name is “Googled”. A good example of what most prospective clients enjoy finding are regular postings on mailing lists or forums that help other industry professionals to collectively solve vertical challenges. This is not a costly process, in fact, it is normally free. If free is your budget, this may be a good way to enhance general publicity and online visibility.

If you are interested in creating a web site to help market your product or services, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Keep it professional. If you are not a writer, make sure to hire someone who is. Grammar mistakes and awkward sentences will not be tolerated by prospective clients. Make sure that all content is succinct and puts across the correct online persona for your organization. 
• Budget accordingly. If you do no have a large budget, stick to content management systems that you can easily update on your own, and do not overly modify the templates that the system provides. This will keep the look of your web site basic, but professional. Template’s work well for corporate web site’s that are not used as an overt sales tool.
• If you are planning to have an online store, make sure it is professional looking, user friendly, and secure. Advanced Secure Sockets Layer’s  (SSL Certificates) are necessary. These should always be professionally implemented to ensure overall productivity.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is another conundrum. Every company wants to show up on page one of a Google Search, however, SEO can range from $60 - $800 a month.  Although most would expect that this kind of heavy investment would allow instant success, do not expect that your sales will be based on search engine traffic just because you are paying $800.00 a month for optimization.

Google and Yahoo discretionarily index sites. While many search engine optimization professionals can get you onto page one for the search strings that apply to your business, it will take some time to get there. There are multiple factors that go into this process. The most pointed way I have heard it described is, “your site has to be popular with the cool sites”. “Cool” sites are sites with a great deal of traffic, and targeted content.

If you do not have a site that you think people would link to, don’t worry. There are other ways to move forward. As I aforementioned, you can post in forums or publish articles on sites that discuss topics you are familiar with. If allowed, you can include your URL in the text, pointing that site to your own. Another way forward is to include more text within your site that discusses your products and offerings. For example, if you sell apples, you can write a story about the history of the apple. This story will include the word apple (your keyword) many times, increasing the density of the word on you site. This process shows the search engines that your site is a portal with quite a bit of apple information, and the site therefore receives heightened visibility.

This exposure can also be accomplished by sharing content with a similar third party site. However, you can not just steal content from any portal! Copyright laws require third parties to ask permission to reproduce content. This process is simple but may require a screening process on the part of both parties to ensure article, author, and overall publisher content quality. Many sites will eventually allow third parties to repost the body of their article with proper tribute (often a link to their site accompanied by a short blurb).

Overall, the most important thing to keep in mind is that starting an online marketing campaign will attract new clients that may have never known your organization existed. You are creating a way to generate leads and alert new prospective clients to your services and products.  Before leaping into a full scale marketing campaign, however, remember to be cautious when allocating funds. Consult with online marketing professionals, and exercise all of the numerous ways to increase your online presence.