A recent story in Advertising Age highlights how newspapers are losing their share of advertisers due to slow adoption of certain technologies including targeting of online ads. Meanwhile, that sector of advertiser spending is rapidly growing.

The same day the story was published, I received the above ad from Gainesville.com encouraging me to install IE8 on my Mac – a no-can-do, as it’s not available for the Mac. For Microsoft’s sake, I hope it is not paying CPM.

Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart!

When Joe Cirulli reached in his pocket for some money to buy a soda and discovered that he had only 12 cents left to his name, he was embarrassed. Then he got angry that he allowed himself to get in that position.

Soon after, Joe wrote down a list of 10 goals. The list included “Save $1 million,” and “Own a Mercedes-Benz like the one driven by the Six Million Dollar Man” and “Own a health club in Gainesville.” (See the full list below.) He read his list every morning and every night. Then, one at a time, he achieved all of those goals.

In this program, you’ll hear the inspiring story of how he did that, and you’ll get advice on how you can too. Continued …

First off, the last statistics I saw said less than 15% of web searchers see the ads to the top or right of the organic search results. (That’s not click on, that is just see.)

Also, this is DANGEROUS! By running a AdWords campaign using the same keyword, a competitor could find out exactly how successful the ad campaign is. Additionally, a competitor could run ads on the page for cheap, possibly highlighting Toyota’s recent quality problems.

Are you interested in a 2003 Pontiac Grand-Am, V6, with about 79,000 miles? Email me at brian.russell<at>gainesvillepr.com.

Updated:

It took about 5 minutes for my ad to show up alongside the Toyota dealership’s ad. I then pulled my ad after I grabbed the screenshot, because I’m not really competing with the Gainesville Toyota dealership. But if I were, I would be cashing in right now on their TV advertisements.

As far as content for your email, I think this is something a lot of people over think. I find that usually the best stuff to write about is the stuff being talked about around the watercooler. You’ll know what that is for your business more than I can know.

For the gym, it’s the trends we saw from 2009 and the trends we expect to see in 2010. It’s the tips to follow if you want to start a New Year’s fitness resolution that you can stick with (clip on Youtube). It’s the members’ success stories – however big or small.

For you, it may be writing about that watercooler talk, or any current news that highlights being prepared for the unexpected (by the way, have you seen this video of the dog sensing the California earthquake).

Weekly may be a lot to start off with. Monthly may be a better beginning goal.

And No. 1, keep in mind what your goal is for your email strategy. For the gym, it’s to keep us positioned as the experts in our members’ minds.

And once you start, you’ll be able to see what is working via whatever bulk email service provider you choose. (I must say, I’m pretty keen on MailChimp right now, regardless of the name).

If you have any additional questions, I’m here to help.

Best,
Brian Russell

P.S. I just checked out your Web site, which has a very solid appearance. One thing you may want to look at is setting up a free Google Analytics account (http://www.google.com/analytics/), so you can track how folks get to your Web site, use your Web site, etc. Once you’re tracking it, then you can better know what works, what doesn’t, and where to improve.

I found this to be an interesting video that caused me to rethink how I communicate.

This was from a 12:40 p.m. email today.

Disturbing, still, is how you can ever promise to protect private data when “human error” is involved.

The apology may be done, but Google’s team still some explaining to do.

Assurance comes from the details.

How long is “shortly after,” when it took more than 14 hours to get out an email apologizing?

What kind of human error?

Just how widespread was this?

Where did my information end up?

Without this type of detail, it’s still a confidence-shaking issue.

You’ve taken the first step of crisis management, Google, now your public relations team should proceed to stay in front of this story.

It’s crisis management time for Google’s Public Relations team.

The extent of the goof isn’t known yet. I just know that I received another business’s update.

XYZ business appeared in Google local search results:
1247 times
Users clicked on this listing:
43 times
Clicks for more info: 12
Clicks for driving directions: 7
Clicks to your website: 24

And I’m left to wonder if my information made it into the hands of others.

This mistake could have pretty far reaching effects for the business that wants you to trust it to catalogue the world’s information, especially yours.

Now is the time to get in front of the story. In short, do everything Tiger Woods didn’t do to save his image.

Mea Culpa time.

Explain what went wrong, how many people were effected, and say how it will never happen again. Make a big public statement. Also, make a private statement to all the folks this happened to, whether they know they were effected or not.

It’s better that they hear the error from you now that someone else down the road.

For free, you’ll get to create a list of up to 500 contacts, segmented how ever you’d like. Then, you can send up to 3,000 emails per month, which is quite a lot.

The sign up process was easy, as was designing the email.

It offers a heat map of what’s been clicked on in the email, and a lot of other easy to use and very useful metrics.

Once you enter pay territory, though, it looks like it’ll just get better. There are other extra services you can purchase, like the ability to see who clicked on what.

I’d highly recommend it to non-profits and just about any other business getting started with email marketing.

I’ll post more as I discover more about the service.

Believe you’re immune to the Internet age at your own peril.

What do these businesses/industries have in common?
-newspapers & magazines
-consumer electronics
-book stores
-music industry
-travel

Each has already been profoundly effected by the Internet in the last decade. The businesses that prepared for the change are prospering. The businesses that believed they were immune or too powerful to be changed have failed or are failing.

It pains me to see small businesses I care about not preparing for this change.

Mom and pop, you’re not immune, no matter your business.