This blog includes posts on lead generation, eMarketing, Web Marketing, SEO and other leading edge marketing techniques.
-Alan Blume
Archive for the 'emerging business' Category
Filling the Sales Funnel with the Four Step Marketing Plan – Webinar
Posted on January 20th, 2012 by Alan Blume
Expert panel will review the Four Step Marketing Plan and discuss the critical elements required for a successful strategy in 2012. Case studies of several organizations leveraging this integrated approach will be analyzed. The Four Step Marketing Plan helps organization gain access to in-profile prospects and provide sales team with qualified opportunities. Topics include:
- Building your prospect database and email list
- Reaching your target market through email marketing
- Leveraging warm calls for quality appointments
- Expanding reach through Social Media Marketing
Title: Filling the Sales Funnel with the Four Step Marketing Plan
Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM EST
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/616170737
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
For more information, please visit: www.startmarketingtech.com
For our new book, please visit: Sell More & Work Less
Updated Top 20 Website Tips For an Effective Website
Posted on January 13th, 2012 by Alan Blume
Here is an updated Top 20 Website Tips to ensure your website is effective and up to date:
The Top 10 website elements that your organization should review when designing your website:
- Header, logo and value proposition
- Navigation (keep it simple)
- Page title, meta description, keywords (on page SEO)
- Unique design, color and theme & content balance
- Graphics, video, blog
- Download speed
- Quality inbound links, no-follow outbound links
- Call to Action!
- Analytics
- Conversion rate
The Top 10 Watch Out tips include:
- Beware of templates that make your site look the same as other sites
- Out of date content
- Out of date images and photographs
- Comingling of Personal Lines and Commercial Lines
- Vague or non-existent Call To Actions on each page
- Too many Calls To Action on a given web page
- Browser incompatibility
- Large graphics or Flash video with limited content
- Broken links
- Using design elements and features that make your site look the same as other sites
Once the Top 20 is fully reviewed, take the time to review your analytics, be it free Google analytics or a fee for service solution. What is your bounce rate? What are your top ten blogs? Are there certain traffic spikes attributable to web marketing initiative such as eMarketing and webinars? Learn the nuances of your site, monitor, measure and leverage your website as one of the truly important tools in your marketing efforts.
Microsoft Is Up In The Cloud With Office 365
Posted on June 30th, 2011 by Alan Blume
Microsoft Moves to The Cloud
Microsoft has further embraced the cloud and will offer it’s hugely popular Microsoft Office solution as a cloud based application. This is a major admission by Microsoft, showing an understanding that it needs to address Google Apps which has a small but growing marketing share. Considering the billions of dollars in sales of MS Office, Microsoft is hoping that their cloud based Office 365 won’t cannibalize desktop Office sales, which seems like a reasonable guess, at least in the short term. The pricing currently listed on Microsoft’s website is $6 per month with a guarantee of 99.9% up time.
With progressively more work taking place in the cloud, this is a bet that Microsoft needs to make. Other than Office, everything this blogger, writer and businessman uses is in the cloud, certainly not anomalous to many people and businesses today. The market seemed to respond favorably to this announcement with strong gain for the week, the largest Microsoft has seen in some time. Only time will tell if this is a bet Microsoft will win. So much time has elapsed with cloud computing developments that Microsoft’s progress reminds me of a Joni Mitchell song:
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
Beware Of Tubely Emails – Viral Marketing At Its Worst
Posted on March 31st, 2011 by Alan Blume
Tubely Spam Invite
There are many great companies and attributes when it comes to social media, email marketing and social networking. Then there are companies like Tubely. Beware of emails from friends, colleagues and relatives if you see an email asking to “Accept” an invitation to join their network. Make sure the email is from a reputable network (like Facebook or LinkedIn for example). Yesterday my wife received an email from her sister. She thought it was an invitation to access some online photos her sister was posting. So she clicked the green accept button to view them. After all, the email did come from her sister who is active on Facebook and other online social media networks. Moments later, she realized she was duped, taken in by an email which had not been sent by her sister at all, her sisters address book had been “Tubely hijacked”.
Google’s search engine results offer a long list of complaints and accusations about Tubely, on page one the 5th through 10th results are all negative, accusing Tubely of spamming, scamming, stealing and hijacking. My wife agrees and spent a couple of hours responding to her friends and colleagues who received an unsolicited Tubely invitation from her. I think many would agree that Tubely is in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act. The first three rules of the CAN-SPAM Act: 1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. 2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. 3. Identify the message as an ad. In this bloggers opinion, Tubley is repeatedly violating the CAN-SPAM Act.
Of course this is merely a legal issue. There are boatloads of ethical and professional issues too. When a company hijacks an entire address book and sends out unsolicited emails, we must be dealing with the low end of the gene pool, or perhaps in this case, the low end of the gene tube. I went to the Tubely website but the Contact Us link does not work (what a surprise). There is no phone number to call (another shocker). But after a few minutes, I was able to find a company name. Astute Software, 502, Sampada, Bangur Nagar, Goregaon (West), Mumbai – 400 090, Maharashtra, India and an email: business@tubely.com.
On the Tubely privacy policy tab, visitors are instructed to contact Astute Software at the address noted above. If they listed a phone number or email address, I would have contacted them. What is the relationship between Astute Software in India and Tubely? “Astute Software (India) specializes in offshore Development of digital solutions and software applications.” After a little research, it appears that Astute Software is the publisher of Tubely, as they advertise “Tubely free video sharing 1.0 download by Astute Software” on several sites. Perhaps some free marketing advice may help Tubely and others like them. A new tag line might help: Tubely Both Viral And Vile. It is both descriptive and alliterative.
LinkedIn Tops 100 Million Mark
Posted on March 25th, 2011 by Alan Blume
On March 22nd LinkedIn reached a major milestone, eclipsing 100 million members worldwide. That’s a pretty significant number, one which according to LinkedIn is now growing at “roughly one million new LinkedIn members every week, the equivalent of a professional joining the site at faster than one member per second.”
LinkedIn sent me an email, noting that I was member number 356,048, an early adopter according to their email. I’m sure many of you reading this blog joined even earlier. The lesson here is about change, a roller coaster of change. Sometimes it takes a while for the coaster to make it up that big first hill, and then, it comes speeding down the track, weaving and winding its way toward a final destination. Of course on a coaster it is a known destination while on the internet, the horizon remains a vague blur. In both cases we can anticipate many unexpected (and sometimes thrilling) turns along the way. LinkedIn is now speeding down the track, and like any other roller coaster, and internet related things in general, don’t expect things to be in the same place very long. The internet is changing our lives and doing so quickly.
Many industries are in the process of climbing up that first roller coaster hill. And once they hit the peak, the subsequent velocity can be truly amazing. What’s changed so far? Social networking of course, trade shows, seminars, book publishing, etailing, newspapers, news reporting, public relations, marketing, banking, auctions and telecommuting to name just a few. Next up is movies and television. We’ve already seen some significant changes here – and we’re still climbing up that first roller coaster hill. Will traditional network TV be supplemented by a vast array of online, homegrown shows, or will it be replaced. Will individual reality shows be home produced and become the norm, or will the audience still prefer to see a professionally (if I can use that term) produced reality show? Will movies change, all but the mega special effect blockbuster replaced by indie movies, once pervasive and cheap internet distribution is available? Will we soon be watching news broadcasts and TV shows predominately on our Androids and iPhones? My eyes say no, though my brain says it will someday be likely.
Marketing has already hit the top of the hill and is changing rapidly. Telemarketing is on the decline, search marketing optimization, blogging, ePublishing and social media marketing are becoming mainstream. What’s the next big change we can expect to see? There are many expected, and they will likely change our lives, and optimistically I’d like to say for the better. Congratulations to LinkedIn on achieving this significant milestone, I use it (and so do many of my colleagues) every day – and it sounds like many, many others are finding value with this new network too.
Borders Group Falls Victim To Internet Rivals
Posted on February 16th, 2011 by Alan Blume
Brick and mortar infrastructure will make it progressively more difficult for companies to compete with Internet based rivals. These days the imminent casualties are pretty easy to spot, but in the future there will be many casualties which might seem surprising today. The most recent victim is Borders Group, which is the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain. According to Reuters, Borders filed for bankruptcy protection, after years of sharp sales declines that made it impossible to manage its crushing debt load, and it plans to close nearly one-third of its stores. Borders has not been able to capture market share in the online world, making it difficult to compete with Amazon and other rivals.
I’ve posted several blogs on this topic since March 2010:
- February 5th, 2011: http://startupselling.com/blogs/alanblume/office-buildings-are-obsolete-%E2%80%93-big-box-stores-too/
- June 13, 2010: http://startupselling.com/blogs/alanblume/office-buildings-are-obsolete-and-offshore-drilling-is-the-result/
- March 26, 2010: http://startupselling.com/blogs/alanblume/vacant-government-buildings-and-your-tax-dollars-feds-need-to-go-virtual/
Was this a moment of clairvoyance, should I quit the day job and become an Internet soothsayer? These predictions are pretty simple, just look for the cheaper and better distribution system and you’ll find the winner. Think of the Eerie canal compared to transit by horse and buggy. How about steam powered ships versus sail powered vessels? The telephone as opposed to snail mail, and email as opposed to fax. And today (and in the imminent future), Internet based or leveraged businesses will continue to win over brick and mortar businesses. Where are the next battles? Blockbuster versus Netflix, BestBuy versus Amazon and traditional publishers versus ePublshing are a few obvious matchups. Perhaps less obvious might be Walmart, shopping malls and libraries. These may seem an incongruous group, but they all face Internet based challenges, their existence predicated upon the ability to compete with cheaper, swifter and digital rivals.
Last week I purchased a new Dell XPS from Dell’s website. Upon receipt of this laptop (shipping was free), I noticed that it only had HDMI output (after all – VGA is getting old) and I needed a new nine foot HDMI to DVI cable to connect my external Samsung monitor. Online at Amazon and other e-tailers, prices ranged from $10 to $20 for many of them including shipping. Upon my arrival at BestBuy, my options were to buy a six foot cable for $40, or a longer HDMI cable with DVI converter for $90. The latter was the generic BestBuy brand, if I went with the name brand it would have been $130. This isn’t a matter of price gouging or unfair retailing by BestBuy, rather it’s a cost of doing business issue. Retail infrastructure is expensive, e-tail infrastructure is much, much cheaper. Time will tell who shall be the next brick and mortar victim, but I don’t think we’ll be waiting too long.
Office Buildings Are Obsolete – Big Box Stores Too?
Posted on February 5th, 2011 by Alan Blume
Internet Marketing
Last year I wrote a blog stating that office buildings are obsolete, and this year I’m thinking the same conjecture might also apply to big box stores. I recently noticed a Yahoo post entitled, The Coming Collapse of Commercial Real Estate is Already Here, by Stacy Curtin. Stacy aptly notes that BestBuy and Target missed their expected earnings targets, and as of this writing, Wal-Mart has seen 6 consecutive quarters of negative same store sales. Further, this happened to BestBuy even though a key competitor, CircuitCity, had moved into bankruptcy. Though this has occurred in a tough economy, many of their online competitors have seen significantly better results.
Stacy’s article states that more people are buying, they are just buying online. This seems true globally and anecdotally. About a year ago, I tried to purchase a receiver from BestBuy, only a couple of miles from my home. Unfortunately the receiver was out of stock. In fact all the receivers that might have been of interest to me were out of stock. A couple of years ago, I would have driven across the street to the now defunct CircuitCity (speaking of brick and mortar retail challenges). Instead, I drove home, went online to Amazon and purchased a better receiver for less money, which was delivered a day later. Obviously, I’m not alone. Many of my friends and colleagues now make routine purchases from Amazon as progressively more consumers become comfortable with online searching and shopping.
My CPA buys all his books on his Kindle, as do I, a faster, easier and more cost effective alternative to the brick and mortar bookstore. The challenges for BestBuy, Target, Wal-Mart, Blockbuster and Barnes & Noble are obvious, perhaps most evident by the huge electronic book display in the premium retail location at the front of the Barnes & Noble stores. B&N appears to be working hard to transition to a Kindle type operation with their new Nook. Better late than never, or simply too late for the date? Only time will tell, though their extensive brick and mortar costs may result in too much ballast for them to successfully navigate from retail to e-tail.
But retail isn’t alone in the commercial real estate challenge. Traditional office buildings will face a virtual workforce shift, as progressive companies opt for less costly and more efficient work from home staffing. This is happening with small virtual companies like StartUpSelling, Inc. and giants like IBM. Working virtually has amazing advantages, from resolving the commute related issue with today’s snow storm in Boston, to using highly cost effective tools like Skype which allows multistate, multiparty video conferencing for pennies a day.
Do these changes spell the imminent destruction and removal of office buildings and big box retail? I think this is too strong a statement. There will likely be a need for many types of retail establishment, from groceries to lumber, from household items to convenience items. And there will be office based businesses that require some or perhaps many employees to congregate. That said, the changes to brick and mortar retail and offices are upon us, gaining speed every day, as the convenience and cost efficacy of virtual business and e-tail offers a more convenient path for the rapidly increasing, interconnected internet world.
The Virtual Storm Changing Marketing And PR
Posted on February 3rd, 2011 by Alan Blume
Web-based Strategies
There is a new approach, a new way, a virtual storm of change swirling around marketing and PR. Take for example, the new reach of internet based PR methods including free PR websites, social media marketing opportunities, RSS feeds, blogging best practices, and pod casting. These are just a few of the innovations changing the landscape of publishing, journalism and public relations, a virtual storm within which we all now live, as the winds of change continue to alter the business climate.
These winds can be highly favorable to many businesses, including smaller and midsized companies, offering an opportunity to level the playing field regardless of employee count or cash reserves. The business world continues to experience a virtual evolution; some might argue it’s more akin to a virtual revolution. One of the dynamically changing elements encompasses the evolution of public relations. With inexpensive and even free PR sites available to any business; it’s fairly easy to create and implement an effective PR strategy, and carry the message to millions. This opportunity is compounded when leveraging social networking sites such as LinkedIn, FaceBook and Twitter. And businesses can take advantage of these new virtual opportunities while simultaneously helping their SEO and Search Engine Marketing.
There are many good sites to choose from. Some of these are free, some have a modest annual fee, others charge on a per press release basis and some offer all three of these options. The big difference between the free and fee based press releases revolves around the appearance of the actual release. Free sites typically incorporate ads around the press release in a similar way to article directories or search engine results pages (SERPs). This is essentially a PPC strategy whereby these free press release sites derive revenue from traffic and clicks. Fee based sites eliminate the ads, create a more attractive and professional release, and derive revenue for the fees. And some sites offer a combination of both offerings.
There are many press release sites available for use. Two of the sites I have recently used include:
Both sites work well, distribute the press releases promptly and do so to a wide audience, send a confirmation email once the release is accepted and distributed and offer a link to the posted release. Of course there are a plethora of other sites available including: PR.com, 1888PressPrelease.com, TheOpenPress.com, FreePressReleaseCenter.info, Information-Online.com, OpenPR.com, PR-Inside.com, PRdb.net, PressAbout.com, PressMethod.com, PressReleasePoint.com, YourFreePressRelease.net, BusinessWire.com, MarketWire.com, PRWeb.com, eWorldWire.com, PRLeap.com, eReleases.com, PRBuzz.com andPRNewsWire.com to mention just a few of the choices your business might consider. PR sites are often measured by page rank and Alexa rank. These are relevant in so much as a higher ranked PR site theoretically packs more internet punch than a lower ranked site. However, your results may vary based upon your industry, niche and specific PR strategy.
Which one is right for you? That depends upon your goals. Is your business trying to drive traffic to your website? Is your goal primarily SEO based as you try to move your business up in the rankings? Are you seeking to capture the attention of a highly specific audience? Is your goal to merely augment your search engine marketing strategy? Are you seeking highly tailored, branded results and wish to ensure there are no PPC ads on your releases? Do you need more advance functionality for tracking and monitoring your prior releases or scheduling upcoming releases? Predicated upon your goals, your business can determine which site(s) are most appropriate and if you need free PR, fee based PR or some combination of both. The level of marketing proficiency to submit consistent press releases for your organization is relatively low. That said the level of marketing discipline to do so often remains beyond the reach of many small businesses, usually the result of a lack of personnel, thus offering a relatively painless outsource opportunity for those companies which just can’t get the PR job done. For more information read Your Virtual Success (Career Press)or contact StartUpSelling: http://www.startupselling.com/contact.html
Top 5 Tips When Creating A Virtual Business
Posted on February 1st, 2011 by Alan Blume
Here's to "Your Virtual Success"!
Perhaps you’re considering creating a business or expanding a current business. As with many businesses, investing in inventory, product development or warehouse space might seem requisite. And perhaps this appears to be a reasonable or even logical approach, borrowing the famous quote from Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come.” After all, your simple business plan projects profits after only a modest startup period. My advice is to think about this again. When creating a new business, it’s highly advantageous to operate in a way that is both conducive to a flexible lifestyle while mitigating downside risk, including ramp up time or significant upfront investment.
Then again, you might be thinking that you can alleviate the risk by securing a bank loan, tapping into your home equity or even attracting venture capital. My advice, once again, is to think about another path, preferably one revolving around the golden rules above. Yes, there are a select few who can beat the traditional small business odds which are often estimated at 5 to 1, where only 20% of new businesses succeeded in the first 3 years. Venture capital odds are surely the worst, where many experts maintain the odds that you will succeed (find VC funding, maintain control of your company and enjoy a positive liquidation event) are about 5,000 to 1. How difficult are these odds? At roughly 5,000 to 1, you would odds comparable to getting struck by lightning.
Bootstrapping your virtual business should be much easier than funding a traditional brick and mortar business. Before opening a traditional storefront, or investing in a physical office, ask yourself if you can work from a home office, or if you can adjust your operations to accommodate a virtual business model. Instead of getting on a plane or train, are you sure a “face to face” Skype conference call wouldn’t suffice? At a cost of about $5 per month, you can simultaneously video conference with multiple people, regardless of their location. Instead of investing up front in capital equipment, can your new business secure orders in advance, or even deposits in advance of delivery?
- A short path to the money (limited ramp-up or development time)
- No upfront capital
- Customer deposits in advance of delivery
- Contractor based assistance for delivery
- Niche marketing opportunity (it’s much easier to target a vertical than a horizontal)
When thinking about your next venture, think about the Top 5 virtual business startup tips and if possible, find a virtual business model that leverages these for your new or existing business. Try to follow some or all of these.
Colossal, Exponential, Gargantuan, Humongous Internet Growth – And Then Some
Posted on January 29th, 2011 by Alan Blume
The Internet has experienced colossal growth over the last decade. Perhaps colossal isn’t sufficiently substantive to describe the growth, if so, you should choose your favorite adjective: enormous, exponential, gargantuan, gigantic, huge, humongous, immense, mammoth, or titanic might better suffice, though the latter does have the negative connotation associated with icebergs and boating. Regardless of your preferred adjective, we can agree that the numbers are truly staggering. Here are a few mind blowing stats which were gleaned from the www.royal.pingdom.com website (you have to like that domain name):
- 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
- 2.9 billion – The number of email accounts worldwide.
- 25% – Share of email accounts that are corporate.
- 255 million – The number of websites as of December 2010.
- 21.4 million – Added websites in 2010.
- 202 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (10/2010).
- 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (6/2010).
- 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
- 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
- 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
- 2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.
- 35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
- 5 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (9/2010).
- 3+ billion – Photos uploaded per month to Facebook.
Both the growth and sheer size of these numbers represents a new reality, a virtual, interconnected world which will define new rules for marketing and communication, from both personal and business perspectives. The internet has redefined businesses, from giant new players like Google, to small virtual companies like StartUpSelling, Inc. As with all things there are positives and negatives, winners and losers. On the winning side are emerging countries benefiting from information previously unavailable to them, social networking for individuals and business, and new and existing companies embracing an internet based business paradigm. On the losing side are traditional businesses from book stores to publishing companies, from video stores to brick and mortar consumer electronics, and countries imposing censorship restrictions on internet use.
In the near future, however, this titanic explosion of internet use will offer benefits to those who leverage the opportunities. Yes, there are risks here, including privacy issues, inappropriate content for children, security issues and potential viruses. That said, most people would agree that the colossal expansion of the internet offers great potential and an expanded knowledge base. For example, as a quick check to the figures noted above, I went to the web and found another site listing total internet use at 1.966 billion, essentially the same number quoted above. The ability to find germane information at ones fingertips is unprecedented, we are very fortunate to benefit from this innovation. Perhaps we should then refer to the increased internet use as a gargantuan increase, as opposed to a titanic increase, realizing of course, there may be virtual icebergs in cyberspace too.