Marketing, Strategy, Content Creation, Public Relations

What's New in Marketing? News from Marketing Professionals

Jon Burgess — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 22:39:00 GMT

Our clients ask us all the time, so do our students, so we put together some of the latest marketing news and information that we as marketers are looking at.

What's new in marketing?

Brands are acting like humans. See how Coke used the "Share a coke" campaign to bring the people closer to Coke.

Pigeon's, yes the rats of the sky, and how Google is improving local search results, and how businesses should worry about mobile.

Zetabytes are lots and lots of data, how much content is being built?

Facebook is listening to you.

Summer Social Media Trends in Google & Facebook

Jon Burgess — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 18:34:00 GMT

I (Jon Burgess) had the pleasure of presenting to a business expo in June on the "Social Media Trends" that we are seeing here at RedFusion. So much is changing, growing, shifting, it is almost impossible for us to keep up with, let alone for our busy clients.

What’s Trending in Social Media

You Will Learn:

Zettabytes
Google Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird
Google Authority and Expert Content
Being Human, NOT a Machine
Handshakes and Relationships
2 Reasons to Embrace Google+
The Death of Facebook Pages for Brands
Using Facebook to Advertise
Facebook is Listing to YOU
Klout - Are You Engaging?
What you should pay for Social Media services
Amazon, What you should watch

What’s Trending in Social Media from Jon Burgess - RedFusion Media

The Mystery of Why People Buy: It’s The Perceived Value

Ron Burgess — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 22:38:00 GMT

By Ron Burgess

For the small business owner it’s the universal question: Why do customers buy from one company instead of a competitor? Each seems to have an answer when queried, but does one really know? Sure, the basics are understood. “I had what they wanted when they wanted it,” is certainly true, but why didn’t the customer buy across the street or online?

Many factors are included when the buyer makes the decision; most don’t really understand themselves all the reasons they buy, and this has been proven time and again by behavioral marketing researchers. Yet with all the abstractions, logic and mystery about buying behavior, one benchmark is clear enough for business strategists to start with: Perceived Value.

This is the universal measure for why buyers choose one product over another, or select one service and not another. It is so important that companies should (but rarely do) use it as the guiding beacon for everything that is done.

One notable exception demonstrates this bold statement; it is that of the second largest private company in the world, Koch Industries. Every decision they make is based on increasing value for customers and the company.

Defining Perceived Value

The word “value” is so overused by marketers that one must step back and understand the elements of value in order to make any useful discussion about it. First, however, another word must be reinforced: Perceived. In marketing only the perception of a product or service matters. The mind makes decisions (consciously or subliminally) based simply on perception and almost never on fact.

The Four Elements of Perceived Value

Value includes three elements that few ever argue with. They are Quality, Price and Service. But if one compares the same general product from two companies on quality, price and service, the outcome does not match the actual buying decision. One would think that if the quality and service were better and the price was the same that the decision would always be based on the consistent. But this is never the case.

Therefore, a fourth element must be in play: Image. Image includes brand, reputation and visual elements not easily analyzed. When you consider a buyer’s judgment or perceived quality, service, price and image, the outcome usually matches the buying behavior.

When competitors are compared, the higher value is usually the one with high marks for all of the four elements. Weak value, on the other hand, is exposed in each of the four value elements.

Visualizing Perceived Value: Value Mapping

One can more easily visualize this by mapping these four elements. Download our white paper that explains the Burgess Value Diamond.

Finding Your Crack in the Market

Jon Burgess — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 19:40:00 GMT

by Ron Burgess

May 1st - Release of the Book.

Finding Your Crack in the Market:
Secrets to Marketing Niche Dominance and Small Business Success.

www.findingyourcrack.com

The secret to small business success is not what Fortune 500 companies or highly paid business coaches say. It isn’t that your company is simply better at something. It isn’t that you are bigger than your competition. And it certainly is not that you have a pretty logo, or great tagline.

Success comes from finding an unfilled crack in the market, filling that crack and defending it.

So the question is, how do you find a crack or niche in the market place?

As a long-time business consultant and owner of three businesses that outlasted the statistics, Ron Burgess has spent twenty-five years studying highly successful small businesses. Throughout his career, Ron’s work with other management consultants, his intense understanding of each client, careful observation of markets and a lifetime of research began to speak to him. What eventually emerged was a completely new paradigm of thinking.

It turned out that almost all greatly successful businesses dominate very small market niches. They had found a crack in the market. For differing reasons, whether recognized by the owners or not, these businesses exist in small markets where the competition is minimal, or they have done a good enough job in the niche to have become one of the top three in that market.

Finding your crack in the market is the secret sauce, a place where you can do what you do well enough to have customers that want or need to buy it. With little competition it’s like selling water to the thirsty in the desert. Anyone can do it.

But businesses still need to recognize when they do not own the niche market, or if starting out, where to look for the crack, and how to position the company to create a crack. Burgess calls this new approach “market emplacement.” These issues and more are found in his book “Finding Your Crack in the Market.” Packed with insights based on sound business and marketing principles, this is a must-read for anyone who owns or manages a small or medium sized business.

The book will be released May 1st, until then grab a free chapter.

The Marketing Gap for B2B and Manufacturing Companies

Jon Burgess — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 21:04:00 GMT

What your company is not doing... The Marketing Gap. Inbound Marketing Tactics for B2B and manufacturing.

RedFusion helsp B2B and industrial companies position themselves in their niche. We know marketing, we are expert and our clients grow.

RedFusion is a HubSpot VAR, and can help you build Inbound digital campaigns that grow your sales funnels.

SOURCES

http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/file-44938771-pdf/StateOfInbound_V31.pdf

http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

http://www.redfusion.com

Created by Jon Burgess, RedFusion Media

2014 Inland Empire Manufacturers’ Summit - Millennial Presentation

Jon Burgess — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 22:19:00 GMT

Inland Empire Manufacturers’ Summit

February 21st, 2014 - Presentation by Jon Burgess of RedFusion Media

Breakout Session Highlight - Click Here to Download Slides.

The Millennial Workforce Transition Discussed at Inland Empire Manufacturers’ Summit

The Millennial Generation (also known as the Y Generation), as every new generation comes of age, is a topic of some angst for business executives responsible for finding qualified and responsible employees. Born starting in the early 1980s, the leading edge of the generation are now in their early thirties.

Employers have noticed a change in work attitude different from the previous X Generation. Statements like, “I don’t have time to coddle these kids,” “They think work is supposed to be fun,” and “They always want approval from supervisors. We’ll tell them when they screw up,” are not uncommon from the Baby Boomers, and Generation Xers who manage them.

Exacerbating the problem is the economy, which has delayed entrance to the workforce for many and created many college graduates with no work experience at all.

This is the subject of one of the 6 break-out sessions offered at the Manufacturers’ Summit on February 21, 2014 at the Ontario Convention Center. Jon Burgess, V.P. of RedFusion Media and District Governor with the American Federation of Advertising, opens the session with an overview of Millennials. Betsy Lamb, Vice President of Organizational Planning with CalPortland Company, will then relate how CalPortland Company is experimenting with ways to adapt to Millennials. Ms. Lamb said “our intern program is a way to get young people thinking about manufacturing, while we learn how to adapt to them.” The company is working on ways to incorporate “smart” technology devices such as iPhones and iPads into the task stream, hoping to relate work to the technology they find so necessary.

Go to the Presentation Resources:

The New Public Relations - Inbound Digital PR

Jon Burgess — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 17:40:00 GMT

Story by Jon Burgess, MBA

The public relations and press release game has changed drastically in the last decade. The first, most obvious change is that the Internet has taken over, causing the second, a crisis in the local and regional newspaper business. In short, what has happened is that marketing and digital Internet companies have given clients access to target markets like never before.

Traditional PR outlets such as print were late to notice the Internet as the driving force of how news is gathered and reported. As the rift in the print market increased, so did the firing of journalists, leaving local paper a shell of what they had been in the early 90’s.

The modern public relations game has changed, so what should you look for in an Inbound Digital Public Relations agency?

Six Things NEW Public Relations Agencies Need

Data. Pure and Simple. Marketers have a hard time working without data. Conversly, most professional PR types come out of communications, writing or journalism, so they are more comfortable telling a story. Too often, they don’t emphasize or track data and struggle to connect to what data does to build and drive business. We now go beyond "Reach" and report on actions taken as a result of the message.

Digital: PR Firms are innately NOT digitally focused. There is a gap in understanding the new tools they could be using online, or what tools they don’t even know about. So, look for agencies that love and embrace digital to tell stories, becuase crafting your message to each digital channel is essential.
Multi-Purposing: Creating content is the most expensive thing that most marketing companies do on behalf of clients. Building one good story and sending it to media outlets is not longer acceptable. A digital marketing company will see the story as a tool to create and leverage more content, creating multiple versions of the story to be reused and re-targeted in the various media outlets online. Content is king, and it should never be used one time, because it is the context of the content you need to constantly work to achieve.
Evergreen: Being “Evergreen” means that you write content that doesn’t expire; you create content that makes you expert across your niche, not just for one point in time. “Evergreen” is a huge tool in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) battle, web page creation, and telling Google you are expert.
One to One Relationships: Public Relations in its own definition is “Public,” or mass media driven. It is about effecting change on the public’s perception, and generally that means it is about reaching the broader market, not a tight niche market. Modern Public Relations should change its name to “Personal Relations,” and that is what One to One relationships are. So, don't look for mass marketing, but personal marketing.
Inbound Marketing: “Pushing” the message out to the public is the classic advertising and public relations tactic. New media, blogs, press releases, social media should all be used to “PULL” people to your message. Inbound marketing tells a different side of the story, using content that attracts people to you. Inbound marketing is hard because it takes the first five things I mentioned; Data, Digital, Multi-purposing, Evergreen, and One to One Relationships.

Start Telling a New Story

We all know that the media, especially local outlets have downsized, so your handy journalist is no longer there to pitch your story. So, the story now falls on you to tell, which is actually more effective. Why? Well, you can tell your own story without any outside pressure to change it, or better yet, miss-quote you.

So what does that new story look like?

You can now tell a targeted story with expert content, which “Pulls” people to more of your message on your website or social media outlets.
Once people come to you, you begin a conversation to nurture the new prospect.
You reuse your content, repurposed for different outlets.
You also track everything website visitors do from their IP address and email.
You are notified, individually every time a prospect comes back.
You continue to chat while increasing the volume of expert content.
You build an increasing relationship, trading your asset like ”white papers” for the person’s content, like their address or phone number.
You begin to move the person through your sales funnel, from prospect, to lead, to qualified lead, to customer.
At each level, you change the conversation to fit the relationship level.
You nurture all your levels of target market, tightening your relationship.
Again, you look at data and access where your tactics worked.

How does the new PR resemble the old PR?

There are still some tasks that the old PR practices carry into the new practices. Writing content like press releases is still essential, keeping up-to-date lists for press contacts are still valuable, and shaking hands is always important.

So, the old PR is really now just being augmented by new PR. Here are some things you need to consider:

Writing press releases now has the added task of understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Keyword Mapping.
Press releases now need to be released specifically to target media outlets. You can’t just blast out the press release, you need to send them to “hilltop” outlets first, then to the large groups.
Understanding the “ASK” is really a sales idea, but you need to give the reader a reason to visit your site, so you can collect data.
Relationships are totally essential. You need to know who is reading and posting your story. Creating a media database where you know which outlet read your story and used your resources is essential.
You own your media contacts, not the public relations agency. As the owner, you need to control how to properly use and target your contacts.
Press releases are only a fraction of your overall public relations campaigns.
Shaking hands. That may be the most important task. Now, with data and tracking, you actually know which hands you need to shake. You don’t just go to the mixer hoping to meet contacts, you go knowing your contact will be willing to listen.

Boy, seems easy, and I just told you how to do it. Why even hire my marketing team?

Well, it sounds easy, but it is actually very hard, because it takes a whole team of people to accomplish these news tactics effectively. It takes the traditional pieces of a PR firm, namely writers. It takes strategy from the top down to understand the ins-and-outs of the media outlets and your target market. It takes developers and webmasters to help navigate and execute the plans, track the data, and build digital content. It takes editors to review and re-purpose content, changing it for each media outlet. It takes systems to give you executable data, not just tons of data, but the kind of data that helps you win the battle.

In this new public relations world, you need to look at your team. Do you have webmasters, writers, designers, and strategy people on staff? Do you have the right digital tools? Are you using an old school PR team, who knows how to tell the story, but you can’t get the mileage out of your content investment?

Do you even know the budget to have all these people on your team? Well, the budget to have them on your staff is probably $12,000 to $30,000 a month, not including all the costly benefits you have to pay them. It is another $1,000 to $5,000 in online digital assets to scratch the surface of the power. Which means you will probably pay another $2,500 to $10,000 in consultants to make it work.

So, that means, for you to build this campaign in-house, I would think it is a $180,000/year commitment, on the LOW end.

How do you get around that huge price and run a better campaign?

Well, you can outsource it to a digital marketing company; One that has the team already built with the tools and knowledge it takes to execute the campaigns. They also work on inbound campaigns all the time, so you know they are not novices, but experts.

The big bonus, they have a lot of clients, so when you were looking to find funding for $180,000, they only need 20-40 hours a month to work on your account, and your bills look more like $35,000 to $50,000 per year.

Story by Jon Burgess, MBA

Marketing for more than a decade and a half, Jon focuses on helping companies find value, tell their story, and building positive relationships between companies and customers. Jon sits on the American Advertising Federation National Board as the District 15 Governor (Southern California and Southern Nevada). Jon is an instructor at the University of Redlands and he also speakes regularly on integrated marketing, advertising and social media.

Find Jon at Twitter, Google+, Linked In.

Consider the Privilege of Working

Molly Burgess — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 23:13:00 GMT

By Molly Gardner Burgess, President, Redfusion Media, Inc.

Often, friends and relatives react with comments of extreme sympathy when they learn that I am working on the weekend or a holiday. ‘That’s terrible!’ ‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ and ‘You need to take some time off for yourself,’ is the resounding cry.

But, I consider it a privilege. People in small business get the privilege of working whenever they want to – any 12 hours of any day.

I think back to our grandparents and beyond and realize that I really have a wonderful way of working. I have a pleasant office near great restaurants that is air conditioned and heated. Plus, I can listen to fabulous music as I work. None of my ancestors had all of that.

I think of my grandmother, Hattie Hyde Gardner, who was one of the first women to graduate with a degree in mathematics from the University of Oregon. She worked with her children and husband building bridges in Alaska and Washington. She helped grandpa with the engineering math, then did all the cooking for the work crews in the camp. She had a small camp cook stove, fueled with wood that had to be chopped, and she worked from before dawn until dark in tents with none of the amenities that we have.

Grandma, like most men and women before her, worked hard all their lives, taking some time off on Sunday for church. That’s the work ethic our country was built on. You worked to eat, to survive, and to get ahead.

Even if the work is hard, hot, and boring, workers can take pride in their accomplishments. They built something, fixed something, or helped someone. Progress is made through workers’ efforts.

I recently saw an interview with an intern of Fox News. She wanted her unpaid internship so badly that she was willing to commute from her home nearWashingtonD.C.to her job inNew York City, daily. She rode the bus 4 hours to work and 4 hours back—then worked as a restaurant server to pay for the privilege.

Exactly 150 years ago, on October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the proclamation which set the precedent for our national day of Thanksgiving. The Proclamation came at a time of great suffering due to the Civil War. Families were often separated, many had lost their homes and possessions, and people were mourning the injuries or deaths of loved ones due to the events of war.

In the midst of these burdens, Lincoln could still see reasons to be thankful. He mentions the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies and considers it remarkable that peace had been preserved with all foreign nations, order had been maintained, and laws had been respected and obeyed. And so the last Thursday of November became our national day of Thanksgiving. (To read Lincoln’s proclamation, visit www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm.)

Many people will celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional way (with family and friends, a feast and football). Others will have the privilege of working on Thanksgiving.

Those of us at RedFusion are thankful for the work we do: for the privilege of doing good and helpful work for our valued clients. Despite the hurdles that small businesses face, (you know the list of complaints) it’s still a privilege to work.

Outrageous Bill in the Works to Tax Marketing and Advertising Expense

Ron Burgess — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 20:46:00 GMT

by Ronald L. Burgess - Business Consultant

Outrageous Bill in the Works to Tax Marketing and Advertising Expense

Since the introduction of income taxes, the money spent in order to do business was a cost of “doing business” and was not taxable. In other words, it was deducted as expenses before calculating if a business made profit or not.

Now, congress is working on changing this long standing principal (Read Bill, MCG13833 Page 104-107). It proposes to treat a company’s marketing and advertising budget as if these expenses were actually assets, like furniture and not real expenses.

The idea is that a desk or computer will last several years, so only a part of the cost gets “used” each year. It’s an asset that is written off over several years because it is used over several years.

Under the new legislation, marketing and advertising would be treated like a desk! A business couldn’t take the full advertising expense in the year it was charged but would have to depreciate it over six years.

Here is the problem: the benefits of advertising are largely consumed immediately. Advertising, printed material, price cards, catalogs, and coupons are intended to develop business as soon as possible; they simply do not last six years. The new legislation dictates that when a business spends $100,000 on marketing, it can only expense $50,000 the same year. The next year (or certainly the following year) the complete value is gone. Then in the following five years, just $10,000 can be expensed each year. By the time the last $20,000 to $30,000 is expensed, the marketing campaign is long over and forgotten.

This represents an accumulating cash hog.

In six years, with an ad expenditure of $100,000 per year, just $450,000 can be deducted, creating a tax increase on $150,000 over the period. This would eventually even out by year eleven, but the $150,000 tax liability never goes away.

Perhaps the biggest issue, however, is the concept that real expenses to run a business cannot be deducted in the year they were incurred. In my experience, this is a completely new concept. And like other things that creep, if this expense is not deductible, what else will be removed? Paper? The electric bill? Employees? Sure you say, that’s stretching it, employees?

In fact, the draft bill includes reporting all internal and external costs to produce said advertising or marketing materials. This means that the marketing salaries, the designers, the webmasters, copy writers, secretaries and anyone who contributes as an employee or contractor to a corporate brochure must be measured and reported. Yes, really.

I’m sure you see the mess that this presents. Exactly how much time did the owner or manager spend on the re-write for the new brochure? What about the paper that was used to print all those proofs you went through? How many were there? What percentage of the paper was it compared with correspondence (which is deductible)?

Ah yes, the government’s law of unintended consequences strikes again.

All this is what the impact to every business will mean. But in addition, the marketing and advertising industries will be impaled. Advertising and marketing activities will drop, and many will lose their jobs as a result.

The American Advertising Federation states “Advertising – local, regional and national – generates $5.6 trillion in total economic activity for our country and helps support 22.1 million, or 15% of all jobs in the U.S. economy. The stimulus generated by advertising brings jobs and sales to every state and to every community. Even a modest reduction that limits the amount a business may deduct of total advertising spending could have a devastating impact on jobs and economic activity.”

Some report that every one dollar in advertising generates another twenty dollars. While I have never seen this substantiated by an economist, clearly communicating an offer to a customer does stimulate the economy more than simply putting product in the warehouse and hoping someone will buy it. If this supposition is just 20% correct, then the lack of marketing money in the economy to any degree will surely cost business and jobs.

All business owners and presidents must not sit on the sidelines on this one. This is just the start of government manipulation of which real expenses you can deduct, and it clouds the natural business decision process. We already pay sales taxes on many printed materials. Let’s not have to pay income tax on it, too.

What to do about it?

Read a full account of what to do here, Tax on Advertising? Why you should care! And what you should do about it.

Write to your senator and congressperson, and tell them to completely remove the advertising clause from the draft tax reform legislation by Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Do it now and conviction as if your business depended on it, it does.

Tax on Advertising? Why you should care! And what you should do about it.

Jon Burgess — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 20:29:00 GMT

Tax on advertising? “There’s no tax on advertising” you say!

Well there may soon be, and if you run a business or even have a job, you should be very concerned. Read the proposed bill, MCG13833 Page 104-107.

What is the Story?

For 100 years the Tax Code has rightly permitted businesses to deduct the full cost of their advertising expenses, just as it permits the deduction of other business costs like salaries, rent, utilities and office supplies. It is not a special preference or deduction. It is a normal and necessary expense that a business must pay to communicate with customers and generate sales. You can read more about the story on "AdAge."

The Coming Storm

You should be concerned with both sides of congress, and both parties, because there are two bills being written that would only allow 50% of advertising expenses to be deducted in the current year, with the remaining 50% amortized over the following 5 years.

Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee released draft tax reform legislation that takes direct aim at advertising (section 23, page 104).
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich. is continuing in his attempt to draft major tax reform legislation.

There is a fundamentally wrong idea behind this proposal, the misconception is that advertising builds “brand,” and that “brand value” is a tangible asset. But brand value can’t be quantified, calculated or written down on your balance sheet as an asset. Thus, the government is proposing that if you advertise one time on the radio or on TV, that the value of the advertisement last for years. Just advertise one time? That does not make for good business or good government.

Who will be Affected?

When you read the draft bill, you will see that every activity, media, and output would be taxed, both internal and external costs. Thus, all businesses would be affected.

In the bill the following definitions are made:

The term ‘advertising expenditures’ means any expenditure (whether made internally or externally) paid or incurred for the development, creation, or placement of advertising, or for any similar activity with respect to advertising.
The term ‘advertising’ means any message or other programming material which is broadcast or otherwise transmitted, published, displayed, or distributed, and which promotes or markets any trade or business, service, facility, or product.

The Aftermath - Businesses Would be Dramatically Affected.

Advertising – local, regional and national – generates $5.6 trillion in total economic activity for our country and helps support 22.1 million, or 15% of all jobs in the U.S. economy.
Making advertising more expensive would only cause a decline in ad spending and cost jobs, since every $1 spent on advertising leads to $20 in economic activity.
The proposal also does not consider that companies buy new advertising each year and would feel the brunt of this write off of expenses annually.
Cash flow restrictions caused by paying taxes on advertising costs.
Accounting headaches of tracking new regulations

Why is This so Crazy?

Government is increasingly detached from business, and this bill is another poorly crafted reform meant to raise money. But in fact, it would shrink business and the economy. From the idea that “Advertising is a big pot of money to tax” to the fundamental change of an expense to a depreciable asset, this is not a solution to raising more government revenues.

Would you like to pay $5.00 to an employee to send a Tweet out to the world about your business, and then only get to deduct $2.50 as an expense, and the then get to deduct $0.50 per year for 5 years? That is simply ridiculous to do. But that is what this accounting and cash flow nightmare would truly look like regardless of their service or product.

What to Do?

It’s simple. All business owners and employees have a stake in this issue. All organizations that are involved in marketing, public relations and even social media should act!

The sooner you act, the better chance this provision will be removed from the bills before they are formally introduced to the floors of the House and the Senate.

Contact your congressional representative. http://house.gov/representatives/
House Ways and Means Committee members http://waysandmeans.house.gov/about/members.htm
Contact both of your senators. http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Members of the Senate Committee on Finance http://www.finance.senate.gov/about/membership/

What to Say?

“Preserve the current standard business deduction for the cost of advertising.”
Any tax on advertising would be devastating not just to the advertising industry, but to the national economy as well.
I do NOT support a tax on advertising.

Spread the Word.

Tell other businesses, your local chambers of commerce, your sister organizations like; American Advertising Federation, American Marketing Association, Public Relations Society of America, American Association of Advertising Agencies.

Read the whole bill MCG13833 Pages 104-107.

Story by Jon Burgess, MBA

Find Jon at Twitter, Google+, Linked In.

Give BIG Today!

Jon Burgess — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 17:37:00 GMT

Today is 11-12-13, your day to give to our local community with Give Big Riverside (http://www.givebigriverside.com). Give BIG Riverside is a 24-hour web-a-thon that raises much needed funds for local nonprofits.

For 24 hours, starting at midnight on November 12th, area nonprofits will rally their supporters, current and new, for a massive effort to raise $300,000 and awareness for needs in our community through this online webathon.

There are 139 Non-profits to give to this year, and here are a few we have worked with in the past and hope you may want to support.

Or, search for a cause that is near and dear to your heart, http://givebigriverside.razoo.com/search

Marketing

This year, Jon Burgess was a part of the Give Big Riverside marketing committee. He had the pleasure of working with a great team of professionals along with a team of students from the Art Institute-Inland Empire.

"I think the inspiring thing about the project was the students' enthusiasm for getting involved in a giving event. The team of 8 really looked at how their millenials' generation could be engaged and encouraged to give," said Burgess.

Andrew Oaks of Green Acres Design was the students instructor and helped mold their designs and thoughts into some great branding.

You can see some of their branding here, www.givebigriverside.com/resources or at www.facebook.com/givebigriverside.

Watch how "Giving Is Infectious"

RedFusion Media Wins Public Relations Award for Client Communications

Jon Burgess — Mon, 28 Oct 2013 16:19:00 GMT

10/28/13—Redlands, CA—Molly Burgess, President of RedFusion Media, announced that the local marketing company received a “Capella Award" in recognition of the newsletters they create for Longmont Dairy Farm of Colorado. The 48th Annual Polaris Awards and Dinner was held by the Public Relations Society of America, Inland Empire (PRSAIE) Chapter.

“Mooo News” is the title given to farm’s newsletters. Over the past 21 years, Longmont Diary and RedFusion Media have produced more than 250 printed ‘Mooo News’ newsletters, delivered each month to customers’ milk boxes.

Jon Burgess, Marketing Consultant at RedFusion, remarked, “Mooo News evolved from the original black and white newsletter with a note from the owner, Susan Boyd, and a couple of milk recipes to today’s colorful newsletter, reporting on health and fitness, and other customer retention themes, such as their 19th annual “Poetry Contest” and their 14th annual “Eggnog Bottle Design Contest.”

The newsletters are designed to engage customers with delicious pictures and recipes, to inform parents with up-to-date information on dairy health, and to involve families with activities for kids.

“Mooo News was developed to create branding with customers and maintain constant contact. Longmont Dairy wants customers to see their brand as being nutritious, locally sustainable, and eco-friendly. Through surveys,” says Jon Burgess, “we are constantly evaluating our work and encouraging customer feedback. Based on the survey collected for the year 2012, 87% of our customers read Mooo News.”

This is the second time RedFusion Media and Longmont Dairy have won a public relations award. Last year, Longmont dairy was featured on the Jay Leno Tonight Show’s segment of “Hilarious Headlines,” which turned into a 2012 Polaris Award.

The Public Relations Society of America - Inland Empire (PRSA) is the premier organization of public relations professionals in the U.S. at both a local and national level, it provides professional development, sets standards of excellence and upholds principles of ethics for PR practitioners and firms.

The Polaris Award is presented for projects with an average score higher than 90% as judged by independent PR professionals. This year’s judges were from the east coast. Awards were made October 24th at the 48th Annual Polaris Awards and Dinner 2013 held in Rancho Cucamonga.

RedFusion Media™ is a leading marketing firm focusing on brand strategy, content creation, public relations and Internet marketing. Located in Redlands, California, the company acts as a “marketing department for hire” and has about 200 clients in Southern California and the U.S. The firm’s clients include companies, governmental agencies and non-profits. For more information about how to find your crack in the market and how to execute your marketing plan, go to http://www.RedFusionMedia.com.

A Conversation with An eCommerce User Experience Expert

Jon Burgess — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 15:09:00 GMT

RedFusion has built hundreds of websites over the years, but only a handful of eCommerce sites. We know shopping cart design and developement has become a very niched skill, so we thought it would be great if we interviewed an expert in the field.

Heath Meyette
Think Tank Designs

Today we have the privilege of interviewing local eCommerce User Experience Designer Heath Meyette. He has extensive background in creating and maintaining Cross Media Identities and, in recent years, has focused on User Experience for eCommerce.

Heath is a partner at Think Tank Designs, a Chino Hills based Web and Graphic Design Agency which has been operating in Southern California for the past 13 years. During that time, he has worked with numerous high profile clients including Chapman University - Chapman Fund, Victoria Gardens and, most recently, Yorba Linda Public Library (view design work).

RedFusion: Is SEO dead?

Meyette: Wow. I get that question all the time. Everyone's asking whether or not they need to pay someone to perform search engine optimization (SEO) on their website. In short, my answer is, "It's pretty much dead... in its original form." What we once knew as traditional SEO is no longer. Gone are the days of stuffing pages with repeated use of keywords, search engine submissions, etc. Sure, there is still room in the "new" SEO for time tested methods like proper page names, relevant keyword usage and well thought out page descriptions.

SEO has now (thankfully) evolved into being all about the content. So content is truly king. When I give that answer, most people just reply "Thank God. I'm so tired of having to play that game." Many people are already performing SEO on their sites unknowingly. They generate consistent, well thought out content that's helpful to their audiences, whether it's in the form of a blog, or just a very informative site that becomes the authority on its subject. That's what will attract the search engines nowadays.

There, I said it. SEO is dead... well kinda.

More about RedFusion's thoughts on SEO.

RedFusion: You've been doing a lot of Website Audits recently to help online retailers create a more positive user experience. What problems do you see most?

Meyette: They run the full spectrum, but the most common problems are things like poor navigation, confusing shopping carts and especially poor product imagery. There are many things that can act as a barrier to conversion, but these seem to be the most prevalent. Find out more about website audits.

RedFusion: What's working best for online stores nowadays?

Meyette: Although the answer to that question depends largely upon the market being served, and the types of products being sold, there are a few things that really stand out in my mind as being especially relevant at the moment:

Unique Product Offerings
Conversion Optimization
Product Listing Advertisements (PLAs)
Remarketing Campaigns
Properly Segmented Email Marketing
Content Marketing

RedFusion: What do you see as the biggest problem for online store owners?

Meyette: Overall, I'd say it's a lack of proper business planning. For some reason, many of the people who open an online store simply haven't done their homework. They still hold onto the myth that all they need to do is buy a cheap website template, add some product, and the money will start rolling in. That may have briefly been the case in the 1990s, but we are living in a very different virtual world now. The landscape has definitely changed, and if you are not serious enough about running your business to do proper planning, allocate funds for marketing, and work with the right experts, you will fail.

Many people do not grasp the importance of unique product offerings that allow for strong positioning of their eCommerce website. Not only do you reduce the amount of competition by doing this, you also help insulate yourself from the dreaded price comparison shopper. In that scenario, there is nothing very unique to your products which encourages shoppers to simply find that same product at the lowest price possible, using only price as the sole differentiator. That usually means they wind up buying from large online retailers like Amazon or eBay who can easily beat the prices of smaller retailers.

RedFusion: Are there any "hot button" topics in eCommerce right now?

Meyette: Everybody is asking about online sales tax. With all the budget shortfalls we are seeing in our country now, the online sales tax debate has once again come to the surface. Currently, online retailers are only responsible for collecting sales tax from customers who reside in the same state where they are doing business.

The new debate will involve collecting tax for online sales in a very similar way to collecting sales tax for physical purchases made in traditional brick-and-mortar stores. In fact, many of the brick-and-mortar retailers are championing the collection of online sales tax in an effort to level the playing field. They feel like they are at a distinct disadvantage when todays' shoppers use their stores for "showrooming." Currently a common practice that involves shoppers going to the brick-and-mortar store to browse and inspect products, then finding it and buying it online, thereby leaving the store without the purchase. In this scenario, the brick-and-mortar retailer just becomes a showroom for their online competitors who have lower operating costs and are more increasingly offering free shipping and no sales tax.

RedFusion: What do you see as the future of eCommerce?

Meyette: Mobile. With the advent of Smartphones and tablets, it's become more and more important to control the user experience across all devices. The obvious answer for many eCommerce stores would be responsive web design, which utilizes one website that adjusts to the device on which it's being viewed. At it's core, responsive web design is not complicated. The main concerns for eCommerce are functionality and navigation which are usually more complicated than the average website. That's when you should start thinking about consulting a User Experience Expert who has specific experience guiding visitors through the shopping process. They can help you with: information architecture, wireframes, designing screen mockups, storyboarding of the checkout process, and creative, persuasive content.

RedFusion: What are the elements of an effective call-to-action?

Meyette: Some may argue this, but I'd say an effective call-to-action has four main parts:

Tell shoppers what to do and what will happen when they click on your call-to-action.
Use the same terminology that your customers are using.
Speak in terms of benefits not features.
Create a sense of urgency.

RedFusion: What do you see as an often overlooked facet of running an online store?

Meyette: I really think that creating and maintaining a positive cross media identity is most often neglected. Vision plays a very important role in our lives today. Repeated exposure to a strong cross media identity definitely helps consumers make a strong emotional connection to a company, including their services, products, and values. Unfortunately, too often business owners decide against using an experienced identity designer, opting instead to create visuals that have more to do with the owner's personal interests instead of the best interests of their target audience. Most of the time, it results in decreased customer engagement and poor brand recognition across devices and experiences.

RedFusion: What usually catches online store owners off guard?

Meyette: Being hacked. Let's face it, it happens to all of us. There's no way to guarantee that it won't happen to you. But there are some precautions you can take to decrease the odds of it happening. I would first recommend frequently changing logins and passwords. The more often you change them, the less likely it is for someone to hack into your website.

The other thing I would recommend is regular website maintenance which allows you to stay on top of software updates related to your online store. This includes everything from updating the shopping cart itself to all the plugins and extensions that are used in your online store.

The time to do this is not once you've already been hacked. It's too late at that point. We get a lot of phone calls from people in this situation. More often than not, they are completely aware of the need to keep things updated, but have tried to save money by failing to allocate an ongoing budget for these types of updates and general website maintenance issues. Once you've been hacked, it becomes more expensive than regular maintenance. Not only do we need to stop and undo the damage, but you will also be paying to have all those neglected software, plugins and extensions updated, thoroughly tested, then redeployed. That doesn't even address the down time for your online store. While everything is being fixed, you will generally be without your eCommerce website and, therefore, be unable to continue generating revenue.

RedFusion: Any last words of wisdom for all those eCommerce website owners out there?

Meyette: Pay close attention to the user experience. Everything starts (or stops) there. I've got a top 7 list of best practices that directly affect user experience and can increase eCommerce conversion rates.

Make sure your website is easy to use.
Give the visitor "actionable" content at just the right time.
Get the visitor to what they're seeking in as few clicks as possible.
Answer all questions a visitor may have.
Have appropriate"brand personality."
Have copy written specifically for the web, presented in scannable format.
No splash pages or Flash Intros. There's a time/place for this. It was 10 years ago.

If you don't know how to accomplish the above 7 tasks, hire a User Experience Expert who does.

RedFusion: That was very informative. I'm sure you've given all those eCommerce website owners out there a lot to think about. If anyone is interested in increasing the effectiveness of their website, you can contact Heath Meyette or his partner Robin Lindblom by calling (909) 393-6363, or visit their website at www.ThinkTankDesigns.com

Your Business Has to Capture the Mobile Screens

Molly Burgess — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 18:09:00 GMT

Capture the Screens

by Molly Burgess

Survival and success on the Internet is always being redefined and is certainly one of the fastest moving targets out there. Here is a little understanding of Internet reality, as of this moment..

You thought having a website was essential for your business. Then you learned that SEO was essential for website success. Today, your business or organization has to capture as many screens as possible. Sounds like a game of capture the flag to some of us, and it’s similar in a number of ways. The game (the physical one with kids playing all over the neighborhood until dark) involves a large territory running along a street block and every backyard you have permission to climb over or under the fence to get to. Two teams (or competing companies) are formed with kids who are familiar with the territory. They each have a flag (the physical indicator that they have won - success). Their goal is to capture the other team’s flag and return to home base without getting caught.

You may not realize that you too are playing a game of capture the flag (substitute screens) until it’s too late and you discover that they (your online competition) stole your success in online business, and pulled everyone’s eyes and business right back over to their own camp. How did this happen?

Defining Screens

First, let’s define “screens.” We have known them all our lives. We fell in love with them when we started with the first one: the T.V. screen. We stole as much time as we dared in front of it and advertisers grabbed our minds, and often our mom’s pocketbook.

Move to the late 1980’s when many of us started using computers for work, games and home bookkeeping. That was the second screen we fell in love with and we stayed up all night playing Pong.

Believe it or not, the development of the mobile telephone began in 1918 with tests of wireless telephony on military trains between Berlin and Zossen, but that’s another story. The first prototype handheld phone was built by Motorola in 1973. It offered 30 minutes of talk time and took 10 hours to recharge. (Just think how much money we could save on that plan!) Jumping ahead, it wasn’t until about the mid-2000s that 3G technology allowed the kind of usage we now enjoy with Smartphones (screen number three). And boy, are we addicted to them.

The fourth screen belongs to tablets. Incredibly, the first patent for an electronic tablet used for handwriting was granted in 1888. (Yes, I got that number right.) Jumping through the long history of pen computing technology, in 2000, Microsoft coined the term Microsoft Tablet PC. This tablet was targeted for businesses, and used primarily as a note-taking device for field work and data capture in the health care sector. But, most of the population fell in love with the 4th screen in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad by Apple. It gave us a light-weight screen for the consumption of media through web browsing, emails, photo sharing, videos, music and e-reading. And, boy do we love to consume media.

Across all four screens, televisions to tablets, screens capture 90% of all media interactions today. Most of us use all of them, often together. Picking the one to use depends on where we are, how much time we have, and what we want to know or do. Only 24% of our media interactions occur on a computer, in part because we consume media when we are relaxing and are away from activities that are better suited to a lap-top or desk-top such as business applications.

We spend an average of 4.4 hours of leisure time in front of a screen. Television usage is still the winner at 43%, followed by computers at 39%, tablets at 30%, and Smartphones at 17% according to a study published by Google Think Insights.

Mobile is Available

Mobile search is always available. My family used to have a dictionary next to the dining table so that we could look up something we were arguing about. Now, when there’s a question, six people around the table all whip out their Smartphones and their fingers race to find the answer.

Accessing content (we talk about creating content constantly at RedFusion) remains the primary Smartphone activity at 93%. The most popular searches are 1.) the weather, 2.) the news and 3.) sports. (Who would have guessed?) Smartphones, seem to be used more on the spot, during an activity (to find directions, to compare prices in a store), and tablets are used in a relaxed way, typically on the couch as you watch TV. Mobile is also hyperlocal content, searching for content near you.

Interestingly, Google reports that 3 out of 4 mobile searches trigger an average of two follow-up actions. Those actions include: further research, a visit to a store, a phone call, a purchase, or a text or word of mouth sharing. And they happen quickly. Conversions (store visits, phone calls or purchases) happen within an hour in 55% of inquiries.

You can begin to see the importance of planning your marketing to not only involve interesting content that searchers want or need to find (stories, white papers, solutions, dates, data) but now, you have to format that content for not only the traditional website, but for at least two other screens, because all those screens have taken over the way we learn, decide and shop. You have to capture the interest of your target market by capturing all the screens.

You (and Your Business) Should be Expert in Just a Couple of Things

Jon Burgess — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 18:03:00 GMT

Be Great at a Couple of Things in Business, and you can be Great Online.

Being relevant, being found on Google has been very important for ten or more years. A big part of having a healthy Google Pagerank is being “Expert,” and I have preached to my clients about the need to act expert in real life. And in my humble opinion, being expert at just a few things in business is how you separate yourself, grow your business, and win online.

We are in a transitional business period with technology, mobile, outsourcing, a poor economy since 2008, and the y-generation coming into the workforce. This convergence has started to show some interesting traits among those businesses who succeed. One of the things I have noticed, and talk to my clients about, is the actual practice of being expert, or being the best at just a couple of core business competencies.

I often run into young webmasters or designers who have no idea what it takes to be found on Google. Many SEM professionals or webmasters still think that pre-panda black hat tactics can work. On the other side of the coin, I talk to seasoned business owners weekly who have no idea what to do with search.

So, after more than couple of years of refining my company’s SEO and SEM tactics, I figure it is time to shout out the plan.

One: be expert in one or two things.

Two: act like you are expert in these traits and show the world.

Three: by being expert (acting and showing the world) you become the accepted authority.

That’s it, not too hard on the face of it. The funny thing about my simple three steps is that it has nothing to do with Google. It is really about your business. Do these 3 things in your business while coding a reputable website and Google and Bing will make sure you win online.

While the steps are easy, there is something extremely hard about executing this 3 step plan. First, it takes years (10,000 hours) to be the expert in your niche, and for your business’ brand to reflect being an expert. Second, most businesses fail in the time period it takes to become an expert.

50% of business do not survive to 5 years, and only 30% make it 10 years, and the 2011 Small Business Administration (SBA) shows us the market turn-over:

How many businesses open and close each year?

About 10-12 percent of firms with employees open each year and about 10-12 percent close. http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf

Your business can be average at a number of things, but very expert in just one or two things, and your business can still thrive against competition if the market is large enough. And over the past 15 years of consulting with hundreds of businesses, one thing has become very apparent. Businesses want to win, and when you look at internal segments of business (accounting, management, sales, marketing, production, people, service, etc.) and compare them to competitors, it is surprising to some that only a couple of winning traits that pull your business ahead in the competition. These traits fly in the face of management, team building and CEO Coaches, who are always pushing a holistic mantra of total business improvement. The fact is, you can’t be good at everything, and due to competition you need to be great at just one or two things.

Another great fact is “The 10,000 Hour Rule,” explained by Malcom Gladwell in his book, “Outliers.” The book does a great job of showing how all great figures in our society didn’t get there just by luck, but by hard work. And if you work hard for 10,000 hours, at some point you become an expert in that practice. From music to sports to business, you find leaders who are experts in their field, and that experts are made from hard work. Good businesses and good search results follow the same rules of hard work.

A technology startup company, while flashy and innovative, is NOT expert, because they don’t have the experience. I often hear things like “look outside of the box,” as Steve Jobs did, and your business will grow. I say, Steve Jobs didn’t look outside the box; he looked at the box and made it better. Steve was an expert in building and marketing products that make consumers happy. It started as a geeky Apple computer for geeks, and later, it was geeky phones for geeks that he then made so cool, the masses had to have them. I think Steve chuckles at the fact he made millions of people into mobile geeks. So, don’t look outside the box, but be an expert like Steve Jobs on the part of business that will grow your business.

The Donut Niche

It is 6:00 a.m. as I write this. I’m thinking about donuts right now. Donuts are all the same are mostly produced by small business owners. Donut stores win on being hyperlocal or having good service. They don’t win on price or selection really, and they probably don’t lose on how bad the business manages its employees. But once in a while, someone shakes up the donut market. We all remember the rise of Krispy Kreme who brought a simple glazed donut to market that was produced right in front of your eyes. Watching your donut being made was new. It felt overly fresh, and people flocked to the nearest Krispy Kreme store to buy one. They were expert a production and, to some extent, the promotion of the “freshest” donut. But as we saw them expand, build stores and get placed into supermarkets, we found out they were pretty bad in other areas, which didn’t balance out with the areas they were expert in.

Most people point out that Krispy Kreme was bad at financing this new growth; but I would counter that what caused their market retraction, was bad marketing. They simply didn’t understand that their market niche wanted “fresh” donuts right off the donut production line and they ignorantly pushed into supermarkets. This push was into a new market niche, and too often businesses that are winning in a niche, want to expand beyond the limits of this niche into a niche that they are NOT expert in. Niche-extensions can be the death of companies, and it is usually the most pivotal decision CEO’s make in the life of the business, because businesses are almost never expert in two niches. I remember buying a box of Krispy Kreme donuts from the grocery store, and thinking this was great because we didn’t have a Krispy Kreme store in town. But it was also the last time, because I quickly realized that the cold, day old donuts were not better than my local donut store. The rest of the market noticed, and the downfall of Krispy Kreme was quick.

Winning Offline

The biggest key to winning online is winning offline. Google and social media are making it increasingly hard for you to suck in business and somehow win online. Just like it is hard to win online and run a bad business, they don’t go together and they are not natural. EBay, Yelp, third party recommendations, and word of mouth now flow to consumers at light speed, and if you are not a good and honest business, you are out of business.

Winning in Google is easy, as long as you are winning in business. Clients are sometimes shocked when I say, but it is the truth. SEO is NOT how you win. SEO should be a dead business tactic today. It should be Business Optimization (BO). Some of the basics of SEO, like coding your page correctly are fine, but that is no different than you writing a paper for your 11th grade English teacher. You teacher expects you to be clear, spell correctly and write in complete sentences. 11th grade English is not a tactic, but an expectation, so why continue to think SEO is tactic, but think of it as an expectation for online content distribution?

SEO has been pushed down to the level of a part of good business processes, not a business focus that some try and make you believe. Even SEO industry leaders acknowledge this. Moz.com just dropped SEO from their name, sighting that “SEO” was less relevant for today’s search engine marketing game.

What is relevant is that you run a business. Find a niche. Be an expert in that niche. And then show the world what you are great at that niche. You’ll see great results in business and in Google.

Getting on Page One of Search, Hyperlocal Basics

Ron Burgess — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 17:40:00 GMT

by Ron Burgess

Hyperlocal—The Basics

As the term implies, hyperlocal is extremely local information on a search or in a mapping application, especially on a smart phone. Therefore, your business might show up on page one of a search when someone is interested in your town or neighborhood. Google is clear: the number one priority is “We believe users come first. Search is about giving people the answers they’re looking for – whether it’s a news article, sports score, stock quote, video, or map.” You will not be on the search results if you are not located in the town that someone is searching in. Nothing can be done about this, and nothing should be done.

The user has the desire to filter your business out because they are asking for “local.” Google puts weight on the address of your office location, but may, or may not, give a list of cities you serve much weight in a search just because you list them.

Mobile

The newest and most important change to the term "hyperlocal" has evolved from the increasing number of searches on smart phones. Because your location can be identified, Google will know which neighborhood you are in, so it can provide better hyperlocal search responses.

If your business is a restaurant, retailer, tow company, or other local service provider, you want to be found by both locals and travelers. Smart phones are enabling this new ability to match where you really are with hyperlocal businesses you need now. This is a revolutionary development that is gaining steam fast.

Currently 77% of mobile searches occur at home and 17% on the go. But shopping queries are twice as likely to be actually in the store! What does this do to the actual transaction? Well, three-quarters of all mobile searches cause some follow-up action: a new search, store visit, phone call, interaction with a friend, or the final purchase. The average follow-up action is two, and 55% happen within an hour.

One might think that people would use a PC for search, but three-quarters of the time that a computer is available to the searcher, they use a mobile device instead.

Another emerging behavior of mobile searches is that they tend to be in context. For instance, shopping searches occur mostly in the store, while restaurant searches happen on the go. The context here reflects the interest level and intent to buy or participate, making many mobile searches more valuable for creating engagement and business. The highest outcomes are in the beauty industry, followed by the auto, travel, food and restaurant, and technology industries. See Google Think Insights for the full stats.

If you still are not convinced, smart phones are now more plentiful than all other cell phone. The smart phone will continue to grab a larger share of search activity.

Page One of Search

So what does hyperlocal have to do with getting on the first page? First, some kinds of businesses will need their websites to be search engine optimized. In addition, capturing multiple screen sizes must be considered, or visitor bounces will increase. But in addition to taking advantage of the follow-up actions of smart phone users, you need to make sure your site addresses what they are searching for and enables further engagement. The pages also need to be carefully written to the appropriate key phrases.

Carefully study your sales cycle from the customer’s point of view. Understand what hurdles the customer must overcome before making a decision, and design your website in this way. For example, if you are a restaurant (the location will be automatic), make sure to be clear on each page that you have an "Italian restaurant." Next, list further specialties and price ranges. Then, if you have a good Yelp rating, link to that. Finally, for those who have not made the decision, be sure the website matches your theme, décor, and image. If this is done well, Google will give you a shot in your town under your specialty.

Many searches for some of these categories are being replaced by directory sites, such as Yelp, Google, and Facebook. In the restaurant category, they collect information and photos to display along with their rating systems. On a smart phone, the bottom two-thirds of the list are difficult to see unless you are unsatisfied with the results. If your friend rates a restaurant high in that town, it might be on top of the results in Google because you have personal results turned on.

In this case, you need a good website with information easily found and copied by directory sites. In addition, you must “claim” the directory site and add your information to be sure it is accurate. Work hard to get your happy customers to rate your business so you do not have a random despoiler rule your new business.

If all this is foreign to you, get professional help. It is just too important to the future of your business. One day, you may wonder why all the customers are across the street. It's because you forgot to tell mobile customers where you are.

Market Intensity: One Characteristic of Marketing Strategy

Ron Burgess — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 18:27:00 GMT

Finding Your Crack in the Market –

Market Intensity

Marketing strategy varies based on the different kinds of markets a business operates in. One characteristic is the intensity of competition. Intensity includes the number of direct competitors in the niche, as well as the effectiveness of differentiation in the niche.

The example I love is Abdul, who owns a desert oasis next to a caravan route. Since Abdul owns the only water in a hundred miles, he needs no advertising. His customers will seek him out at the risk of death. They will also pay any price.

Contrast Abdul with Yutu, the Eskimo who sells igloo snow blocks. He and the rest of his market live on the snow pack where all can cut their own blocks. Therefore, selling packed snow blocks is difficult . . . a little like “selling ice to Eskimos,” the old cliché. This phrase is still used to celebrate the best sales people, indicating they could sell products to those who do not really want them.

A market such as insurance includes many competitors, and to most people, the differences in insurance are rarely apparent. The local town niche has many local sales people after the same business, much closer to Yutu than Abdul.

On the other hand, even in competitive markets, companies can be highly specialized, such as selling insurance to religious institutions. This tactic creates a (state) wide market so specialized that the local broker is at a large disadvantage due the very real specialization needed to properly insure a church versus an individual. In this case, differentiation and specialization actually create a separate niche, which moves them closer to Abdul.

When you look for your crack in the market, it is better to act like Abdul, looking to less competitive markets. In addition, each niche market usually has even smaller cracks in the market, which eliminates competition and lessens the need to hard-close prospects. Differentiation of products, and creating new products for niche markets, reduces the intensity of competition.

Your business goals should revolve around niches where you can occupy and emplace your brand. In the ultimate win, your market should be so protected that your competition doesn’t even consider entering the market.

Leveraging New Technologies and Killer Content to Succeed in Marketing

Jon Burgess — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:39:00 GMT

Tomorrow, I’m honored to be speaking at AMA, addressing a very challenging subject, “Leveraging New Technologies and Killer Content to Succeed in Marketing.” Seems like a daunting task and maybe too much to bite off, but there is a compelling story already written, and a path to follow.

So, the real challenge in my mind is, “Have you captured your market online yet?” I believe we, as marketers, need to accept that we are standing on a bluff, looking at what may be the last online land grab, where “Information Based Marketing” is king. I believe the window is closing. It may be a couple of years: it may only be months: it may be that you already lost and don’t know it.

So, I’ll answer a lot of questions, and probably seed more questions in your head; but you must accept the online market place on its own terms.

Your marketing department must find its direction now! So join me tomorrow, I’d love to see you.

I’ll leave you with some evidence to ponder, and give you the answers in my presentation.

Marketing Evidence A.

By their own acknowledgement, greater than HALF of marketers lack resources to handle new marketing technologies and tactics.

In a February 2013 survey in “Marketing News,” the official publication of the American Marketing Association, the question was asked, “Is your marketing team equipped to succeed?”

Only 22% strongly agreed that they have the people to meet the organization’s marketing objectives.
Only 17% strongly agreed that they have a marketing team that was well equipped to handle new technologies and trends.

So, that means 78% somewhat disagree or strongly disagree that they have the team to meet their online marketing objectives, and 83% somewhat disagree or strongly disagree that they have the technology expertise.

Marketing Evidence B.

Market Leader! By definition, if you lead your market, you win. And, the fact is, if you don’t lead online, you may not be the market leader at all in the future.

Profit Impact of Market Strategy (PIMS Principle) states that market leaders have proven that they were able to:

Charge more for the same goods
Grow 2x as fast
Pick up 6% market share/yr
Show 12% higher returns on sales

Profit impact of competitive strength

Market leadership pays: be number one or number two in your served market.
Competing on quality is better than competing on price.

Marketing Evidence C.

Online it is simple. Google tells us to be two things.

Be expert
Be authorities

So, our challenge as Marketers:

Build Content, Expertise, Context, Technology, People, Analytics!
Understand the market and tactics.
Dominate your market, today!

Join me - http://www.ama-ie.com/events.html

Take care,

Jon Burgess
Digital Marketing Consultant

Spring Speaking

Jon Burgess — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 23:17:00 GMT

April 17th - Key Success Factors for Small Businesses. - Ron Burgess
An overview of what really makes highly successful businesses work. Wednesday, April 17th, 8:00-10:00AM. Click here for more details.

April 18th - Leveraging New Technologies and Killer Content to Succeed in Marketing - Jon Burgess
Today, we are in the midst of the biggest and possibly last marketing land grab of “Information Based Marketing,” where content is king. Today, as marketers create their content, we know know if we succeed or fail, because data and analytics are now cost effective, and marketers have more tools than ever to improve their campaigns and bottom line. But, are marketers staffed and trained to take advantage of this before their competitors? 11:30am - 1:00pm, Victoria Club 2521 Arroyo Dr, Riverside, CA 92506

April 24th - The Business Website; How to Build it and Why. - Ron Burgess

Today only a hotdog vendor can get away without a website. How to start and manage a website that will work. Wednesday, April 24th, 8:00-10:00AM.

May 1st - Three Small Business Time Traps and How to Eliminate Them Forever - Ray Anderson
Too much to do with too little time and help. Attend this information seminar and improve your productivity. Wednesday, May 1st, 8:00-10:00AM.

May 8th - Internet Marketing Overview; What is available and when you should do it. - Jon Burgess
A look at social networking, PPV, SEO and email marketing. Friday, May 8th, 8:00-10:00AM.

May 14th -Advanced Online Marketing Fundamentals - Jon Burgess
An overview of the latest tools to grow your business. Tuesday, May 14th, 3:00-5:00PM.

Organizing Your Business for Growth - Business Seminar

Jon Burgess — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:59:00 GMT

Join our RedFusion business consultants for a 90 minute presentation on Friday April 5th, "Organizing Your Business for Growth."

Presented by Ray Anderson, Senior Consultant.

He will be speaking on;

A look at the keys to getting your management organized
An overview of the QuadStrat Assessment Strategy
A no-cost seminar to discuss free business consulting services available from SBETA
Part of a 6 session series to help your business grow
8:30 – 10:00 (Check in and coffee at 8:00) Friday April 5th
Register now

The QuadStrat Assessment is a tool that helps assess the health of your organization, and now it is available as a service to small businesses with over ten employees. This unique opportunity to work with seasoned business consultants and use the QuadStrat tool as the center for developing strategy and working plans is complimentary, thanks to SBETA. This session discusses planning strategies to get moving in the right direction, and illustrates the tool and how it works. Applications to engage additional free SBETA consulting service will be provided.

Registration:

Friday April 5th
600 Arrowhead Ave., Suite 300
San Bernardino
SPACE IS LIMITED, Register now.

Marketing Landscape - Keywords Don't Matter As Much As You Thought

Jon Burgess — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:54:00 GMT

The use of keywords, long-tail keywords and on-page search engine optimization of words has been a pretty established tactic for more than a decade. I still remember with websites used “Monica Lewinsky” in their business website, thinking they would get traffic off the hype of a scandal.

Like every marketing trend or tactic, it takes longer than expected to catch on with the business owners and CEOs. And so, more than ever (a decade late), I hear questions about keyword-this and keyword-that.

I am going to say something shocking, in a couple of paragraphs, about how ridiculous the keyword question is, so I’ll do my best to tell a nice little story to put keywords into the proper marketing landscape.

My two sons love Legos. They collect and build all sorts of forts and vehicles, then they break them, get creative, and rebuild something new. A keyword is like one Lego block; we’ll just call it the standard black, 8 pegged building block. All the creativity, all of the creation that a kid can create out of Legos never started with a 8 pegged block. They never looked at a block on the ground and picked it up and said, “I can make a cool X-wing fighter out of this black, 6 pegged standard block.” And I never said, “Wow that black, 8 pegged block really made your off-road vehicle perfect.”

Well, let me answer the first question as bluntly as I can.

Keywords don’t matter as much as you think.

Just like one Lego block does not matter much. Yes, they are part of the creation, but they are not the key to the story.

That may be shocking to some, and a relief to others, but let me elaborate with some actual business reasons.

Content matters, context matters, consistency of message matters, and yes the building blocks of your story and content are words.... but in no way are keywords the “KEY.” The actual key is writing authoritative content.

For my kids, the Lego creation matters, the final product matters, not a specific block they used. It is the totality of the Legos, not a “key block.”

So, the challenge with my comment about “keywords don’t matter,” is that in order for search engines to classify your content, they have to break it down into bite-sized snippets. This data can then be combed through by servers and classified to be found. Well, that was ten years ago... and the people at Google are way smarter than the rest of us.

So, while Google does look at words in your content, they are more able to classify your content as it relates to context that just one word. Google’s algorithms look at hundreds of keys to come up with the best results. But, I would argue more than ever, that the “keyword” should not be your focus.

So, the “key” is writing great content, and yes include some important words, but don’t write to the word. So, stop worrying about keywords. Worry about producing regular amounts of great content, you’ll find that the creative process will include plenty of your ideas and “keywords.”

Get started. Write a 400-600 word story about every product or every service you offer. Be the expert about your business, and the authority about your story, and you’ll find that the black, 8 pronged Lego was not the key to your success, but one of the building blocks. Sometimes it helps to create a master keyword list, or even long-tailed keywords to help spur some creativity; use it to sprinkle in words into your story.

Only after your website contains great content, and you are tracking your results through analytics and inbound marketing tools should you go back and worry about keywords. Because when you have the data, you can make little tweaks to your copy that really help your keywords pop to the top of search, and Google loves that. Tweaking the keywords when are close to the top of a search term can matter, but it can only matter within the context of your larger story.

Just do like my sons do: they finish their creation, play with it a bit, then realize that a pirate would never have a light-saber, and they take the light-saber off their creation and replace it with a pirate sword... making their creation just about perfect in their dad's eyes.

Social Media Marketing 101 For Businesses

Jon Burgess — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:08:00 GMT

Learn Social Networking 101 this Friday at the Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce. RedFusion Media’s Jon Burgess will be one of the speakers, and focus on how businesses can use social media techniques to nurture and pull visitors to their site.

This seminar will show you how to take advantage of the resources available with social networking. You will learn effective techniques to accelerate your marketing strategy, enhance customer relations, and reach out to a larger customer base. This experience will help you and your business succeed in a technologically savvy business world.

Don’t miss the opportunity to improve your marketing execution, learn more about the marketing landscape, and grow your business.

Friday, February 22, 2013, 7:30 am to 9:00 am | Chamber Bourns Boardroom, Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, 3985 University Avenue, Riverside CA 92501

Live Interview at 2:00pm - Today with Ron Burgess & a Review of the Digital Marketing Conference

Jon Burgess — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 21:41:00 GMT

"Listen Live" with Ron Burgess,

click here, http://rockstarradionetwork.com/shows/brilliantmobilemarketing

If you missed the AMA-Inland Empire Digital Conference last week at UCR, you can get a condensed version at 2:00pm on 2/5/13.

Ron Burges, who spoke on digital marketing at the AMA conference, will be featured on "Brilliant Mobile Marketing" hosted by Mary Barnet.

The AMA-IE just held a successful conference on digital media marketing. This event, which was co-sponsored by UCR Extension, featured keynote speakers from Google and eBay as well as local marketing experts. The topics raised by our presenters are timely information that will benefit anyone who is interested in the latest digital media trends in general and user experience in particular.

Marketing In Tough Times - Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Jon Burgess — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:06:00 GMT

Search Engine Optimization - Marketing In Tough Times

Part 4 of 8 by Ron Burgess & Jon Burgess

You just cannot write too much content for the web. So don’t stop with just one page, do one every week (or month at least). We build 2-5 pages a week, and share everyday on social media channels.

So, as simple as it seems, if you have been following what we suggested in posts 1 to 3, you have started down the road of marketing online. And the secret is the content.

Most people today don’t like to be “sold”. They want to investigate and research purchases, and make the decision themselves. Of course, much of this is psychological. Most people don’t really understand the real deep-seated reasons for their buying behavior. So it’s your job to help them complete research about your company and products, then, in a subtle way, help them choose your company to do business with. We call this tactic, Inbound Marketing, where we are pulling prospects to you.(That is part of what we want to do here, but with the motivation being your business first.) Keep writing.

Today, we’ll talk more about Search Engine Optimization and online advertising to use your new content to it's fullest.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of writing expert content that Google will match with users' search terms. Some of you do not think of yourselves as experts, but you are an expert on your business and products. You wouldn’t be in business if you weren’t.

Now, think of the search terms your prospects and customers would use to find this information. What search tools do you use to find your competitions sites?

Lets think about Keywords

Start with "Core Keywords". What are the handful or dozen words that make your organization money?
Expand your core keywords to have "Longtail Keywords". This list should be hundreds of words.
Build a "Keyword Map". This is helpful in tying your keyword themes to pages on your website. Every page should have about 3 core keywords.

On Page Keywords

Be sure to use these words in the title of the page, in the discription title and three more time in the body of the copy. Google “reads” your page to figure out what it is about, so don’t mix subjects (except on main category pages). Focus on in-depth work on a narrow subject.

The more "longtail keywords" you have, the more blog posts or landing pages you should consider creating. More content equals more chances to be found on search engines.

CONTENT PLUS - Build & Nurture

New approaches to Search Engine Marketing are developing. We will walk you through some of these so you can take advantage. Remember that only about 5% of all websites are really effective, so even if you are substantially behind your competitors, you just have to write more than they do to eventually win. Here is another way to do this.

Part of writing for the Internet includes blogs, emails and social networking. While social networking has not lived up to the mass media hype, there are cost effective uses. Email is effective at creating traffic for blogs and landing pages, and gathering email from new visitors is important for growing your list. A landing page is an unlinked or hidden page on your website that answers a basic question (longtail keywords), or responds to an offer on an ad. The page is not accessible through your website's navigation unless the offer or question is asked on an appropriate page in the website. The only links to the landing page are the appropriate search pages, blogs or emails. (Direct mail and print are more frequently being used to push people to landing pages as well.)

The landing page offers something they would like to have, in return for their email address. The offer is immediately returned to them via email. An example might be: Birdhouses. If you sell birdseed (and other pet supplies), you might write about fun birdhouse designs, how the feeders work and what to feed different birds, etc. That page provides a free set of plans for a birdhouse. They choose to give you their email to get it, and you then put them on your mailing list specifically for bird seed and other birdhouse plans. Each email then has a link back to your website where they can buy the birdseed.

So, you see that if you know about birds, this is not a very difficult assignment. Just a page and plans (you must have the rights to distribute them). The technical stuff? No worries, we’ll do it for you.

The really great part? This little ad or offer, and the opportunity for a dialog with customers, costs you less than half of one single newspaper ad. AND it will be online for the world to use forever, for NO cost, (as long as you keep your website up.)

Now, the next time your ad salesman comes in, check out the price for that ad, and imagine running it every day for a year. You get it. It’s ridiculous compared to what you can do, mostly on your own, by writing about your expertise.

This is the way the hot websites do it. Imaging having a hundred offers like this, or five hundred. It takes time to get this working, but the effect is cumulative. This is what the successful online marketing efforts look like. And all you have to do is write down what you already know!

MARKETING ACTION ITEMS:

Create your Core & Longtail Keywords
Keep writing. Work on 12 new pages, then start on your product offer.

Marketing in Tough Times Series

Part 1. Prioritize & Innovate
Part 2. Building a Marketing Budget
Part 3. Review Your Website & Communications
Part 4. Search Engine Optimization

Marketing In Tough Times - Review Your Website & Communications

Ron Burgess — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:21:00 GMT

Marketing In Tough Times - Review Your Website & Communications

Part 3 of 8, by Ron Burgess

You have resolved to prioritize time and money for your marketing budget next year. Good. Now we’ll prepare to move your business forward.

Executing the entire marketing process is somewhat daunting, which is why so few small businesses get it done. This short blog will not fully discuss the process, although if you have the inclination to learn more, we will provide resources each week to cover the full process.

What we will do instead, directly in this column, is provide guidance on getting the essential things done, and focus on long term and shorter term changes on how to promote your business.

First we must discuss your website

While we have built over 500 websites, we also print hundreds of thousands of pieces for clients each year. We do hundreds of press releases, and dozens of direct mail programs and email blasts. So, while you may see us as a website company, this is not at all accurate. We are more like your marketing department for hire.

We do not have a bias toward the web. Our one motivation is for our clients to grow and prosper.

Back to the web - specifically your website.

A decade ago, having a website was essential, as it is today. But now, with billions of websites and blogs around the world, just the existence of a website means little more than having a brochure on your front desk. The only people who see it are the ones who already know who you are. The most efficient marketing thing most of you can do is to add content to your website (building your PageRank). But of our customers, more than 50% percent of you have not made a change or addition to your website in several years!

Half of you have only made a few changes or added a page. And only about 10% of you are constantly reviewing, updating, and (most importantly) adding new content each quarter. If you are not growing, updating, communication (part of innovation to your customers), your site is dying.

Google actually downgrades your search results if you don’t make additions to the site! Building pages on your site helps you improve your SEO. Despite our efforts to inform you of this need, that “Content is King”, so far we have not changed your priorities on this. If this sounds self serving (us trying to increase our business), recognize that all businesses must build content online, period. Our goal is for your business to grow and prosper. We built our business making website changes, and dozens and dozens of you have content management sites where YOU can do it yourself, but it still isn’t happening. We can help.

(We can generally post a new page for about $25. At this price, it’s not a big money maker for us and your content management system will never pay for that capability you bought, unless you really start posting new content.)

Action Items:

Review your website for accuracy, email the changes to us.
Review your website for completeness, and make a list of what you need to write or prepare.
Write ONE new page on a topic that relates to your specialty. Note - we will edit for you, if you need it. If you are not confident in your writing skill, hire a writer or send it to us.

Optional Reading:

Build content through public relations

Marketing in Tough Times Series

Part 1. Prioritize & Innovate
Part 2. Building a Marketing Budget
Part 3. Review Your Website & Communications

Marketing, Strategy, Content Creation, Public Relations

What's New in Marketing? News from Marketing Professionals

Summer Social Media Trends in Google & Facebook

What’s Trending in Social Media

You Will Learn:

What’s Trending in Social Media from Jon Burgess - RedFusion Media

The Mystery of Why People Buy: It’s The Perceived Value

Defining Perceived Value

The Four Elements of Perceived Value

Visualizing Perceived Value: Value Mapping

Finding Your Crack in the Market

May 1st - Release of the Book.

Finding Your Crack in the Market:Secrets to Marketing Niche Dominance and Small Business Success.

The Marketing Gap for B2B and Manufacturing Companies

What your company is not doing... The Marketing Gap. Inbound Marketing Tactics for B2B and manufacturing.

2014 Inland Empire Manufacturers’ Summit - Millennial Presentation

Inland Empire Manufacturers’ Summit

The Millennial Workforce Transition Discussed at Inland Empire Manufacturers’ Summit

The New Public Relations - Inbound Digital PR

Six Things NEW Public Relations Agencies Need

Start Telling a New Story

How does the new PR resemble the old PR?

Boy, seems easy, and I just told you how to do it. Why even hire my marketing team?

How do you get around that huge price and run a better campaign?

Consider the Privilege of Working

Outrageous Bill in the Works to Tax Marketing and Advertising Expense

Outrageous Bill in the Works to Tax Marketing and Advertising Expense

What to do about it?

Tax on Advertising? Why you should care! And what you should do about it.

Tax on advertising? “There’s no tax on advertising” you say!

What is the Story?

The Coming Storm

Who will be Affected?

The Aftermath - Businesses Would be Dramatically Affected.

Why is This so Crazy?

What to Do?

What to Say?

Spread the Word.

Give BIG Today!

Marketing

Watch how "Giving Is Infectious"

RedFusion Media Wins Public Relations Award for Client Communications

A Conversation with An eCommerce User Experience Expert

Your Business Has to Capture the Mobile Screens

Capture the Screens

Defining Screens

Mobile is Available

You (and Your Business) Should be Expert in Just a Couple of Things

Be Great at a Couple of Things in Business, and you can be Great Online.

So, after more than couple of years of refining my company’s SEO and SEM tactics, I figure it is time to shout out the plan.

One: be expert in one or two things.

Two: act like you are expert in these traits and show the world.

Three: by being expert (acting and showing the world) you become the accepted authority.

The Donut Niche

Winning Offline

Getting on Page One of Search, Hyperlocal Basics

Hyperlocal—The Basics

Mobile

Page One of Search

Market Intensity: One Characteristic of Marketing Strategy

Market Intensity

Leveraging New Technologies and Killer Content to Succeed in Marketing

Marketing Evidence A.

Marketing Evidence B.

Marketing Evidence C.

So, our challenge as Marketers:

Spring Speaking

Organizing Your Business for Growth - Business Seminar

Marketing Landscape - Keywords Don't Matter As Much As You Thought

Keywords don’t matter as much as you think.

For my kids, the Lego creation matters, the final product matters, not a specific block they used. It is the totality of the Legos, not a “key block.”

Social Media Marketing 101 For Businesses

Live Interview at 2:00pm - Today with Ron Burgess & a Review of the Digital Marketing Conference

"Listen Live" with Ron Burgess,

Marketing In Tough Times - Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization - Marketing In Tough Times

SEO

Lets think about Keywords

On Page Keywords

CONTENT PLUS - Build & Nurture

Finding Your Crack in the Market:
Secrets to Marketing Niche Dominance and Small Business Success.