Biznology

SMBs, Economic Downturns, and Opportunity

2008-10-10T01:09:36Z

Now, more than ever, marketing for the SMB will be critical. As we stare down the barrel of this economic mess we are in, it's time to make some cold, hard decisions. As business owners, these decisions might be around staff (who can you keep, who might need to move on, and who can't you afford to lose) and making sure that you get through this. There are many ways to get through any turbulent time. It's been done before. However, in my estimation this particular point in time requires a call to action that has never been sounded before. This one will require real planning, foresight, and guts. This one will require change. Actual change. Not talk about change but real change. Tired of politicians talking about change? They have no clue what change is for the SMB. Are you ready and willing to change? If yes, read on, and if no, well, I guess I can offer you "good luck."

Here are five quick points that I feel will make or break the SMB in the next 12-24 months.

Perform a complete examination and analysis of all current marketing and sales efforts. If you think that cutting spending in this area is a good way to protect yourself during this time, you will regret the move. If you cannot be objective enough to truly analyze this mission-critical area and accept the need for change and adjustment, then you are just quitting. Find the funds to hire outside help in this area immediately if you think it would help you to gain an objective point of view.

Serve your current customers as never before. If you think you give excellent customer service, then don't rest on your laurels. Step up the intensity of your efforts to make sure your current customer base has few (if any) reasons to shop around. In a downturn, they will be able to find better pricing as your competition does whatever it takes to bring in new business. If you are lacking in customer service and don't tend to your clients as well as you could, move this activity up to or near the top of your priorities. Change how you treat those customers you already have.

Don't compromise. Change and compromise are related but not the same. Change is a result of identifying an area of weakness and making the necessary adjustments to strengthen that weak spot. Compromise often requires "giving in" on an area of strength in order to do something else. An area to hold fast on and not compromise is price. If you start to "fire sale" your services, you devalue them in more than just price. Now is the time to hold steady on price. One way to "compromise" might be to simply deliver more value through greater efficiency for the money.

Sell like you have never sold before. I have heard many business people say that they get their business from referrals so they don't need to "sell." That's just ridiculous. You might get a lot of referrals indeed, but what about the people who need your product or service but don't know anyone who could refer your offerings to them? As your competition hits this slippery slope, there might be more opportunity out there than ever before. If you are not there right at the moment of need, one of your competitors will snatch up this sale because you were sitting back waiting for a referral.

Stop talking about using the Internet to support and grow your business and just do it. This is the most efficient way to generate leads for sales, bar none. I contend that the use of Internet marketing and social media will make or break all SMBs during these tough times. People who are looking for direction are turning more and more to Google to give them real guidance on their options. If you are not participating in that part of the marketing game, you will suffer. Even your current customers will check out where you stand with regard to the competition in the search engines. If you continue to ignore this now essential element of any successful marketing plan, then you are simply inviting failure to come sit at the table with you. Why risk it?

This is not rocket science. This is not anything that you haven't HEARD before. What it might very well be, though, is something that you have not ACTED on before. This time around if you choose to ride it out and not take a proactive stance you may be setting yourself up for years of struggle even when things get better. I think the risk of taking these actions is significantly lower than the risk of not taking them. Of course, as always it's your call, but don't complain if your inaction leads to trouble. No one wants to hear complaints from someone who did nothing to avoid trouble. They'll just make a referral to someone else who gets it.

Marketing Feedback Keeps Speeding Up

2008-10-09T01:45:38Z

Modern marketing is based on feedback. Try something, watch what the customer does, and then try something else. So, it's good news that Yahoo! has come out with a new free Web analytics service. And it includes real-time data, so you don't have to wait a day or two before you see what your customers did. To find out more about how "Marketing Feedback Keeps Speeding Up," check out my post at Search Engine Guide.

WebProNews Interviews Bill Hunt and Me

2008-10-08T20:39:45Z

I hope you enjoy an interview that Mike Sachoff did with Bill Hunt and me about what's changed the last few years in search marketing—especially regarding social media. It's all part of the publicity machine surrounding the second edition of our book, but it's not a commercial. Plus it has a good beat and is easy to dance to...

Should Search Marketers Care About LSI?

2008-10-07T20:47:40Z

When my editor at Internet Evolution asked me to explain how LSI is used by Google and other search engines, it was hard for me to argue I was the wrong person to do that. I've spent many years in search technology and I have been following this technique since the 1990s. But I've never written about LSI before, because I don't think that search marketers need to understand most of these arcane algorithmic techniques. Check out "De-mystifying LSI and Other Search Arcana" to find out why.

Inside Social Media Marketing

2008-10-06T12:27:25Z

I had the opportunity to speak to MENG's October meeting on Friday. Now I realize that MENG's sounds like a Chinese restaurant, but it's actually the Marketing Executives Networking Group—I am a member of the New Jersey chapter and was happy to meet some other folks from the organization. The thing I like the most about MENG is the e-mail list, where every day you get several messages from other members looking for help on various subjects. In addition to it being a great resource when you need help yourself, it's a great way to network with people to be able to reach out and give them a helping hand. I like that a lot better than sending an e-mail asking to meet someone. This way, you are helping them and if the relationship naturally progresses further, great. Anyway, I though you might be interested in a peek at my slides on Inside Social Media Marketing. If you're not a member of MENG, and you're a high-level marketing exec, I highly recommend the group.

Search Marketing Clients Hold Keys to Their Own Success

2008-10-03T03:23:40Z

by Frank Reed

I have to admit that search marketing as an industry suffers from an image problem. In fact, some good old fashioned online reputation monitoring is needed to see how much we are "loved," but there's more to the story. In fact, today I will contend that if any search marketer gets hooked up with a client that "doesn't get it" or is just plain out of the loop regarding search then much of the problems that the industry wrestles with can be placed squarely on the client. What you say?! Isn't the customer always right? Well, if I wanted to be PC I would say "Yes sir!" but I prefer to be honest and just say "Not always."

If you are looking to work with a search marketing agency / consultant / provider there are a few things you need to know. My take this week is on what is needed to be a good search marketing client. That's right. Success in search marketing is as much dependent on the actions or inaction of the client as anything else.

Since I work primarily with the SMB (small / medium business) market I have worked with everyone from the actual business owner to the person who had search marketing thrust upon them as another duty in an already jam packed schedule. Below are some qualities and actions needed to be deemed a good client. If you follow these guidelines I guarantee that your experience with your search marketing provider will be the best it possibly can be. Does it mean you will have guaranteed success? No. If you expect that then you should stop here and go buy a yellow page ad instead.

Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is search marketing success. Make sure you understand completely what the difference in search engine optimization timetables and paid search timetables are. Paid search provides more potential for short term gratification and should work hand in hand with SEO practices designed to get "free" traffic over the longer haul. If you believe that SEO success should happen in a month then don't get involved at all.

Time. Your time. Search marketing, when done correctly, is not something that is a "set it and forget it" deal. You will need to be involved directly with your provider and not just for a summary phone conference. If you have limited knowledge of search marketing you will need to invest in yourself to benefit by taking the time to learn these disciplines. Because the competitive landscape is constantly changing you need to be constantly learning and tweaking. By the way, if your provider acts like they are protecting national security secrets and won't educate you regarding search marketing then make the right call: fire them.

Implementation. Most search marketers don't want to have the ability to go into the code for your site and make the changes that they recommend. I know we don't. There are too many opportunities for mistakes that are simply not worth the potential liability. Because of this it is imperative that you have all the key players on your side needed to implement the changes ready to go. If you are getting great information but it is never implemented (which happens far more than I ever imagined) then you are wasting your time and mine as well.

Flexibility. Search marketing and all the ancillary activities around it including many social media options require out of the box thinking and a degree of risk taking. I can't tell you how many times the use of the word "blog" has made a client break out in a cold sweat and stick their head in the sand. If you are not going to color outside the lines there are plenty of places to waste your marketing dollars that are safe and predictable. Do them instead and save us the grief.

Accountability. If you like to pass the buck and point fingers then please don't get involved in search marketing. I find it absolutely essential to have wide open and honest communication with my clients. If we are screwing up then we HAVE to own it. If you are doing the same then "man up" to face the problem and do what is needed for success. We have found that once clients face their issues head on they are thrilled with the speed of progress that begins to take place.

Admittedly I may sound a bit harsh here. However, I have been doing this long enough to know search marketing is a collaborative partnering endeavor when it works the best. I strive for win / win situations and that can only occur when both sides of the ledger are taking full responsibility for their activities. I know that's hard in the real world because stuff happens. Stuff happening is no excuse for sabotaging success. Search marketing requires going the extra mile and you have to be in shape to handle it. Now stop reading and go do something!

Consumer Vigilantes Want Justice from Your Business

2008-10-02T10:44:21Z

We've all had the experience of feeling oh-so-small at the hands of a large company. Sometimes that happens during the sales process, but at least then we have the option of walking away. When it really stings is after we've purchased a product or service. That feeling of powerlessness—that they've really got you—is immensely frustrating to most people. But now people have ways to fight back. This was all brought to mind again when my wife told me about how she spent her day yesterday.

We've owned Quicken for our personal finances for 10 years, but for most of that time we were using Quicken '97 (I think) because it did what we want. This year, my wife (who does all the home finances) decided that she wanted our checking and credit card accounts linked up to Quicken, so we upgraded to Quicken 2008. She's been struggling to make that feature work ever since.

Now, my experience with Intuit is that they are a smart company that spends more time on customers experience than most companies I know. So I was shocked when Linda told me how bad her customer service experiences have been. She was so annoyed by it that she wrote a couple of blog posts about it, one for yesterday's Quicken disaster and another one for today's Quicken service disappointment. Why does a smart company like Intuit spend so much to design their software but cheap out on customers service?

I wish that these incidents were more isolated, but all of us run into them every day. The part that I've never understood is how each of us can relate to those poor customer experiences, because we've undergone them, but still dish them out when we are on the job. Or stand idly by while others dish them out on our behalf. We rationalize the reasons we behave this way, but we still do it.

More and more, however, customers are firing back, whether it's a blog entry like Linda's, message board complaints, or ratings and reviews. Or something bigger.

Comcast has been bedeviled by angry consumers the last couple of years, with everything from the sleeping customer service technician video to a site called Comcast Must Die. But they've started to change. In fact, Comcast Must Die just announced that Comcast is listening to them enough that they are branching out to handle complaints against other companies. So, customer vigilantes demanded changes from Comcast, got them, and are now moving on to right other wrongs.

What about your company? Does your customer service team inspire loyalty or outrage? Are you listening to what your customers are saying and responding? Or are you simply following procedures or saying that things are not your job? One thing that I know is that no customer ever got excited by service that merely followed the procedures.

Three Years Is a Long Time in the Search Biz

2008-10-01T19:10:51Z

It seems like much longer than three years ago that Bill Hunt and I wrote the first edition of Search Engine Marketing, Inc. But it was published in 2005. Somehow, the industry seemed a lot smaller and simpler back then. By now, it's grown up and is a major part of almost any marketer's toolbox. As the second edition of the book comes out this week, I wanted to reflect on all the things that have changed. Some of these things are covered at length in the second edition, because they directly affect how search marketing is done. But other things are just changes in the industry that make me wonder about what things will be like in three more years.

So, let's do the big stuff first. Even though we updated the first edition for each printing (there were seven of them in all), we were constrained by the page numbering of the very first printing. We couldn't add lots of new material because it would throw off the pagination of the rest of the book. Instead, we removed pictures to add text, we de-emphasized some things to add others, and generally colored within the lines. In the second edition, we could tear the cover off and rewrite it any way we wanted. Now, we didn't rewrite everything, because we kind of liked it the way it was (and things that were timeless might not need any updating), but there were many industry changes that required a fresh look:

Sitemaps. At first a Google initiative, now all the major search engines support sitemaps. If your site is having trouble getting indexed and you haven't tried sitemaps, why not?

Hybrid auctions. In 2005, only Google factored click rate into paid search rankings. The rest were strictly high-bidder auctions. Understanding bid jamming and other arcane techniques was required, where now you need them only for second-tier paid search engines that few utilize.

New tools. Nowhere did we see more change than in tools. The demise of the old Overture keyword tool looked like a huge blow to the skinflint community that won't or can't buy keyword tools, but just before we went to press, Google updated its free tool to top even what Overture did.

There are obviously hundreds of more changes of substance that have affected search marketing tools and techniques, but I am also thinking about some other changes. As the industry has matured, it's become more of a big business with a little less room for quirkiness. Some might have thought a few of us to be unprofessional a few years ago for the way we dressed or talked, but now there's a kind of style and attitude that's become normal rather than dangerous.

And when some of us engage in bad behavior now, it's big news. There is a lot of heat without a lot of light every time someone disses search marketing or is caught in some kind of ethical brain cramp.

And I remember when we wrote and blogged and spoke for fun rather than for money.

I am not criticizing anyone. Some people don't like the way I speak and I am certainly doing this for money now. I am just noticing that some of the fun goes out as the success comes in. It was smaller, friendlier, and somehow more exciting a few years ago. I notice that I am spending as much time on social media and reputation monitoring as on search, I think because it's edgier.

And there's nothing to do about it—I am just feeling wistful. (I'm not exactly sure what "wist" is, but many people have told me lately that I am full of it.) I think that we're watching the normal progression of seeing something that was almost a hobby turn into a business. When it was a hobby, we complained that no one "gets it" and that we'll starve if this doesn't turn around. Now that it's a business, I am complaining that everyone is in it for the money. Poor us, huh?

What does all this mean to a search marketer? Well, you need to stay up-to-date, because the techniques do change, even if the overall principles are relatively stable. But you knew that.

I think the other kinds of changes in the industry tell search marketers something, too. That search is mainstream. That metric-based marketing has become so important that it's in danger of crowding out other ideas.

I recently sat next to a veteran marketer who has been very successful in the digital age. who nevertheless lamented that too many companies now do everything by the numbers and no longer value creativity. I don't know how pervasive that is, but what a turnaround! Three years ago, you could still get blank stares when you mentioned direct marketing techniques. (I know that I did.)

So if the pendulum is swinging too far toward the numbers, it will be interesting to see whether we remember that we need creativity to subject to the numbers. As this veteran marketer put it, "If you test two lousy choices and pick the best one, what kind of process is that?" Uh, a dumb one, for sure.

Because for all the changes we've seen, marketing is still, well, marketing. We still need a noteworthy product with differentiated benefits. And willing customers that we can target. And a creative message that resonates with that target audience. We needed it in print, and on TV, and online too. No matter how much things change, a lot stays the same.

So what do you think are the biggest changes in the last three years? I'd love to hear from you.

If you receive this newsletter once per month but are left wanting more, you could be reading these rants every day. Sign up for the daily Biznology blog as an RSS feed or by e-mail and other options.

Four Podcasts on Internet Marketing

2008-09-30T00:35:33Z

For those of you that don't know, Bill Hunt and I have a new edition of our book coming out. I'll talk more about it later this week when I have a chance to discuss the changes in depth. For today, I'd like to share four podcasts that we recorded that copywriting guru Heather Lloyd-Martin moderated, including one with David Meerman Scott, author of the bestselling The New Rules of Marketing and PR and the co-author of the new Tuned In.. The first podcast is on search marketing basics, the second on changes since the first edition, the third on social media marketing, and the last on Web site search. Check out the details after the break.

In the first podcast, Heather helps Bill and I to explain the basics of search marketing, so that folks who haven't taken the search marketing plunge can get an idea of the things they'll need to do to be successful.

Heather takes Bill and I through a deeper set of questions in part 2, where we explore the changes in search marketing since the first edition of our book came out in 2005. We discuss the rise of hybrid paid search auctions, the adoption of sitemaps, and other big changes.

Part 3 features David Meerman Scott talking with Bill and me, as Heather walks us all through the details of social media marketing. David was kind enough to write the Foreword for the Second Edition, and we have a new chapter in our book on social media marketing. Who better than David to discuss it with? Social media is exciting all by itself, but we think it's even more interesting when used in combination with search marketing.

The last podcast, also moderated by Heather, is about another new chapter in our second edition, this one on Web site search. Bill and I felt that there are so many similarities in how to do search marketing and how to improve Web site search that we wanted to help our readers use the skills for one to succeed at both.

I hope that you get something out of these podcasts—Bill and I certainly enjoyed making them.

What Kind of Search Marketing Partner Do You Want?

2008-09-26T19:06:41Z

by Frank Reed

Search marketing is a mystery to many. Part voodoo, part black magic and chock full of snake oil salesmen. It's the marketing world's version of a black hole. Business owners don't want to get too close to it for fear of being sucked in, never to be heard of again. (Tip: Getting sucked into a black hole can ruin your whole day.) While search marketing is now a requirement for effective marketing in the new economy, it is fraught with more shapes and sizes of practitioners than even I care to admit. Today we will take a look at a few profiles of search marketing providers that exist, as well as some tidbits to help you navigate these treacherous waters so you safely land on the shore of a search solution that best fits your business needs. While this list is not exhaustive, I do think it hits the high points. If I offend any search marketers out there, please remember that I too am one of you. I would love to hear your feedback (or defense).

Profile #1 - The Full Service Agency

This can take the form of a division of a large advertising agency or a large search marketing agency who says they are an online marketing agency. Either way you will hear a pitch about full service this and that. "We can 'handle' ALL of your marketing needs here under one roof. Why deal with multiple vendors blah, blah, blah." Usually this type of firm incorporates a lower case letter "i" in either their names or their offerings. They are not cheap and depending on who you work with they may not actually perform the work they recommend. Usually reserved for the Global 2500 types, the price tag will be high and it will be done on their terms.

Summary: Jack of all trades, master of none?

Profile #2 - The Search Marketing Agency

There's no law stopping you from calling anything a "search marketing agency." The "agency" that you hire may be a one-man band or small pack of search marketers (who travel in numbers for impressiveness). Skill level and knowledge of the industry is all over the map here and there has never been a better case for "caveat emptor" in business than working with a search marketing "agency."

There are very good small agencies out there, but take care to ensure your small agency is not merely a "broker." Often small shops simply outsource your work to other small providers. Prices will be all over the map, with services being defined differently from different providers. Even worse, the services are undefined, giving carte blanche to the provider to do as he wishes. Shame on you Mr. Business Owner, if you let this happen. Pricing will amount to a monthly retainer for services which might be too rigid in scope for any real success.

Summary: Do your homework. Ask a ton of questions about exactly what is being done for your fees and how it will benefit you. Get at least four different quotes before you buy.

Profile #3 - The Used Search Salesman

My personal favorite, this is the slick sales approach that promises you everything (We GUARANTEE first page) with a high-pressure close on the deal. Oftentimes, these folks will claim some proprietary system that makes them different, such as a network of linked blogs, or a slick software application. (I even had one guy tell me that Google came and trained his company on how to get number 1 rankings).

After shaking hands with such a salesman, check to see if you have all five fingers left. There are endless stories about search marketing scammers, so be on your guard. If there is an "end of month" discount or some other sales gimmick to make you take action, beware. If you do say "yes," you might have committed to a deal of six months or more, and are then passed off to a delivery team that knows nothing about the salesperson's promises. Pricing varies greatly but usually falls in the "$$$ per month for a defined number of months" category.

Summary: If you feel like you are being "sold" during the process of choosing your provider, then there are probably large gaps between the sales promises and the delivery of services.

Profile #4 - The Search Consultant

As with anything else, there are bad search consultants out there. I personally am moving to this model though, and here's why: The consultant is not constrained by service delivery procedures designed to get the most out a delivery team.

Instead, because the services are truly customized to fit your business' specific needs within its search goals, there is higher probability of success. Consultants can either deliver the service themselves or can deliver a strategy then provide options for you to look at for execution.

Consultants benefit those with in-house talent because they complement and supplement rather than compete with existing resources. Lastly, a good search consultant will work with integrity because there is no one to blame if something goes wrong or doesn't work.

While not cheap (average about $250 per hour), the consultant is someone you can use on an as-needed basis and needs to continually prove his or her worth in order to be allowed to work with you. Like I said, there are bad ones out there, so do your homework, but give a consultant a tryout of sorts before you commit anything of significance.

Summary: This seems to be the delivery method that benefits the end user the best and provides the flexibility that is an absolute essential in search marketing.

Well, that's a lot to chew on. I look forward to some feedback because I am sure there are experiences on both sides of the ledger (search marketing providers and buyers) that can benefit us all.

Inside Web Marketing

2008-09-25T18:57:43Z

I thoroughly enjoyed my time today at the Digital Marketing Symposium, held in Times Square in New York City by Richmond Events. You can check out the slides for my workshop, "Converting Online Visitors to Customers" and my closing keynote speech, "How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules," but I also wanted to share with you the most insightful thing I heard today. The morning keynote speaker, John Moore (veteran of Starbucks and Whole Foods), told us, "Only confident brands should use social media marketing." He explained that if you doubt that you're so special, or you worry about what your customers really think, stay away from social media and instead invest your money in whatever will give you that confidence first. That's good advice for anyone.

Are Your Customers Invisible?

2008-09-24T20:11:04Z

Do you act like your Internet customers covered themselves with vanishing cream? I mean, you suspect they are out there, but you don't really treat them the same as you treat flesh-and-blood customers that walk into your store? If so, you really ought to read my new post on Small Business Answers, "Are Your Customers Invisible?"

Business at Web Speed

2008-09-23T21:11:35Z

I spent an enjoyable two days in Orlando speaking at TMW's TRANSFORUM 2008, a conference for the transportation services industry, which I knew little about previously. They were interested in learning more about Internet marketing, but I especially enjoyed a session where I talked about how other aspects of business, beyond Internet marketing, could also benefit from a "Do It Wrong Quickly" approach. If you have the right feedback loop, and you can experiment quickly and cheaply, you can apply the same approach to many aspects of business. Learn more by checking out my slides for "Business at Web Speed."

Search Keywords: Have a Demographic and a Smile

2008-09-22T14:20:47Z

by Eva Lyford

Does your Web site marketing speak to customers where they live? Can your customers or prospects connect with the content based on where they're from--or is your content too generic and trying to talk to the whole nation at once (or too specific to your home office)? Most sites might vary content based on the visitor's past transactions or clickstream. But if you don't have that to work with, starting with geographically based targeting may provide an edge over the competition.

I grew up within a few miles of the Illinois-Wisconsin border, in a rural community where the highlight of a summer's day for a kid could be a trip to the corner store for a soda. A few years later, I was at Cornell University and stopped in a store to get a soda. They said they had none when I asked, so I left, puzzled by the fact that they had a Coca-Cola sign but I couldn't get a drink. I did figure out later that if I asked for a "soda" in Ithaca, folks thought I wanted an ice-cream float; to get a carbonated beverage, I had to ask for a "pop." I doubt the bean counters in Atlanta ever noticed the hit to the general ledger, but I noticed how important dialect and context could be for business transactions.

Targeting geographically requires that you be able to tell from where your traffic originates. Geographic location can be derived from IP address via geo-targeting, with certain limitations. Sometimes the IP address location might not reflect the user's actual physical presence, but instead shows the location of their ISP's server. That might still be pretty darned close, or might reflect an affiliation that is still relevant for targeting. ISP geographic associations might be fairly broad and certain IP addresses might not have known geographic associations. Even with these limits though, the geographic targeting is useful, certainly enough so that you could serve dynamically variable content to your site visitors.

Tie that geographically-specific content to Google Adwords, which enables targeting on a variety of geo-specific criteria for even more lift to your conversions. That way, you can market your "soda" in one market and drive that to the soda-specific page and market the "pop" in another, driving to a pop-specific page. There are hundreds of examples of this--for example, baseball hats are called ball caps in Tennessee; and "ball caps" returns a pool of hits only 38% of the size of the "baseball caps" pool. That's a much smaller segment in which your product or service can rise to the top.

Perhaps some more subtlety is called for in your product than would be needed for mere beverages or can happen just by using regional dialects; can your product or service be positioned differently based on personalities? In Richard Florida's book, Who's Your City?, he outlines in one chapter the results from The Place and Happiness Survey that show how personality types cluster in certain geographic areas, as shown in the following map. So one could market to the areas based on that personality profile. Note that these Big Five personality traits should be understood in the academic psychologist's context from whence they came (again, you have to understand people based on their place).

The ethanol marketers seem to be starting along this path. In the speed-oriented town of Indianapolis, ethanol's long association in racing is touted. Head out of town, though, and the midwestern heartlanders are appealed to based on the benefits of ethanol production to communities based on farming. Exit the midland flyover country, and the marketing skews towards the environmental protection benefits and energy independence anticipated from ethanol use.

So what does this mean for you? Let's go back to beverage basics. I like the wacky flavors of Jones Soda and their unique, quirky marketing focused on beverage individualism. "Soda" is my term of choice for this, so I don't have any mental incongruence searching for Jones soda. But what if I'm from upstate New York, trying to find out where I can get that funky Green Apple Pop that I had on a business trip out West. If I Google "Jones pop", I see "Jones Soda" results. Am I looking for an ice-cream float? No, so I skip it, perhaps. (Now, in reality most Americans are much more aware of the soda/pop/coke synonym than was that soda-jerk I met years ago.)

But if your product or service goes by different names in different markets, check it out and see if you can customize some pages or ads towards that distinctively geographic name. Can you position your faucet as a spigot? Your gym shoe as a sneaker? How about selling your bag as a poke or sack? Try it, then measure the conversion rates and let the numbers tell the story - the tools are there with geolocation and local advertising to target the customer and lead them to a customized landing page.

Are You a Fantasy Business Player?

2008-09-19T03:23:18Z

by Frank Reed

It's that time of the year. Fantasy football is just really getting traction with those of us who like to spend too much time doing those things. Each week you change your lineup and jockey for position to pick up some of the best bargains that no one identified yet. You constantly examine the competition to see where there are strengths, weakness, threats, and opportunities. You occasionally talk some trash to stir up the league and make sure that you are viewed as the lead dog in the "dog eat dog" world of fantasy football competition. You look at those teams ahead of you and wonder just how they go there. You are totally immersed in finding a way to get to the top of the heap so you can be the victor. Sounds intense right? If only you looked at your business or job the same way.

How often do you change your lineup with your business? Whether you are a business owner or an employee, there are areas that can always be spruced up a bit. Sometimes it's a change that can give your business that shot in the arm that is needed to get over a hump or to get through a slow period. While it might seem silly to equate fantasy football with business, they are fundamentally the same with respect to change. Every week brings a new set of circumstances, like market forces in business or injuries in football, which completely change the competitive landscape and require quick action for success moving forward. If you fail to adapt to the changing competitive environment each week, you can be passed up and forgotten. How often are you changing, and what is the cost for just staying the course?

Are you constantly looking at the competition and seeing how you shape up when you perform the ol' SWOT analysis? Many business folks get so myopic that they forget to survey the land, so to speak. Many think that if you have found a groove or a niche that it will always be there. That's the business equivalent of taking your eye off the ball. You get so confident that you will score that you forget to do the basics. Then the competition comes up and cleans your clock. Ask any quarterback how much fun it is to be blindsided. No one likes it. Well, when you have not paid close enough attention to the competition in your business, you end up on the injured reserve list. It's when you are on the sidelines that the competition will take it to you.

Are you telling people about how good you are? There is a difference between talking trash and just getting some attention. While it's often a thin line between the two, many business folks don't even try to ride it and it just leaves room for someone else to get mind share. Let's face it, in our society of the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" you have to make some noise whether you like it or not. Oftentimes, just the shear act of "stirring things up" (e.g., blogging and other social media...hint, hint) can get you recognition even if you are not the best. I am not advocating being a dolt and going out and screaming about how good you are. If you decide to tell folks, you better be able to back it up. Don't be the last place team that thinks it should be in first but has had some bad breaks. If you're good, you should talk about it a bit but do it so you don't look like Terrell Owens.

Are you analyzing the competition to see exactly what they are doing right? If someone is ahead of you then you should be working real hard to see where they succeed and you stumble. This has to be done week in and week out just like being in a fantasy football league. If you just sit back and say "Oh well, it's not my week" or even worse "My team is OK as is and will bounce back next week" then you are essentially throwing in the towel.

As I look back on these different points I see how it applies in my business of search marketing. I better pay attention to what keywords I am playing and if they are performing for me or my client. I better be looking at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that my clients face on each playing field (such as the search engine result pages for each individual keyword phrase). I better make sure that my client is telling the searchers the benefits of working with them. I better be looking at how those who are ahead of my client in the search results, identifying why they are there and what I need to emulate or change on my client's behalf.

That's how to be a fantasy business player. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get ready for my next game. See ya!