I have owned several companies since exiting the North Carolina public school system, with varying degrees of success; and I have tried just about everything (within my limited means) along the way to get a leg up on the competition. Over the last few years, it seems that everywhere I turn the hot buzz word I hear is collaboration.

Most people that have been around a while will agree that Social Marketing is truly a unique opportunity. It has never been easier to reach so many people with so little investment as with “today’s word-of-mouth.”

But how can you reach the right people quickly? How long will it take to get my friends to recommend me to their friends in order to get an effective following? Social Marketing Collaboration is a great strategy to get started, and we can learn lessons from the past regarding how effective collaboration can jump-start a business.

There are countless collaborative business models to highlight the point, but the one that fascinates me is the keiretsu. The collaborative business model appeared in Japan in the aftermath of World War II.  The mid 1900’s version of it was a closely knit group of non-competing companies that help each other for the collective good. The result was a fast rise to global leadership for participating companies.  Perhaps you have heard of companies like Toyota, Mitsubishi, Fuji, Toshiba, Yamaha, Hitachi – you get the picture.

After these companies established their own wide-scale brand identities, they loosened or left the collaborative model. However when the companies were just starting up, or rebuilding after dismantling from the west, collaborating (and even sharing ownership) with other complementary businesses is what made them strong in a hurry.

If you own a dry cleaning business, doesn’t it make sense to reach out to people who are fans of local clothing stores? If you sell upscale clothing, why not reach out people who follow high-end cars, or follow a good steak house? A keiretsu doesn’t have to be a formal relationship. In the beginning, the companies whose friends you approach may not even know its happening. But if we are both looking for the same customers and we don’t compete, doesn’t it make sense to look together?

Bruce Muir, ReadyLaunch, Charlotte, NC

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A brand is a name, sign, symbol, slogan or anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service, or business. A legally protected brand name is called a proprietary name.

Brand is the image of the product in the market. Some people distinguish the psychological aspect of a brand from the experiential aspect. The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the brand experience. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as thebrand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and consists of all the information and expectations associated with a product or service.

People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management. Orientation of the whole organization towards its brand is called brand orientation.

Read More from Wickipedia. (we couldn’t say it any better)

What is included in Branding your business?

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Marketing is used to identify the customer, to keep the customer and to satisfy the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that marketing management is one of the major components of business management. The evolution of marketing was caused due to mature markets andovercapacities in the last 2-3 centuries. Companies then shifted the focus fromproduction to the customer in order to stay profitable.

Read More from Wickipedia. (we couldn’t say it any better)

Never before has small business or medium business been able to implement marketing strategies on the same scale as larger corporations.  The ability to communicate and listen to the customer, conduct real time research, and provide strong customer value is now available to every business manager and owner.

Unfortunately most small business and medium business owners and managers approach internet marketing as though it was another form of advertising.  They commonly make immediate demands and expect rapid returns on their investment in this new perceived view of advertising. 

Internet Marketing provides the ability to advertise and market your business in one place , at one time, with one focus.

So what can Internet Marketing do for you?

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Brookstone Marketing Group, nation leading and proven online marketing and conversion experts, announces the transition to a new brand name “ReadyLaunch” Online Marketing Campaigns and Strategies for small business.

In a surprise move to provide heightened and easier company brand recognition, awareness, and availability of assistance to small business for 2010 and beyond, Brookstone Marketing Group, after many years in development, has settled on “ReadyLaunch.com” as their public brand name or DBA. “We believe this change will enable our potential customer base as well as our existing customers to easier find and associate our leading online marketing, web design, and conversion expertise with their internet small business requirements.  This change will not only help the way Small Business locates, perceives, and implements our online marketing strategies, but will also set the standard moving forward for all communications and brand recognition across the wide spectrum of small business markets.” stated Stephen Gross, President and CEO of Brookstone Marketing Group.

Read more…..

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This is a good place to be, you have money to fund the creation of your ecommerce site but also a bit dangerous since you don’t have the technical knowledge to understand when people aren’t telling you the truth.

The truth is that there are quite a few companies out there that can help you create a very robust, SEO friendly, and highly scalable ecommerce site including Volusion, MondeVertInc, ShopVisible, Zoovy, Datafeedr, PopShops, and of course Google Checkout and Amazon Stores, etc.

Each of these companies have experience in building the ecommerce store, helping you understand the implications of the technology and in general handling most of the business from the technical side…but for a price.

The kicker here is that each of these companies specializes in helping you run your business but seldom do they actually make sure you know how to run it without them. They are in business to gain recurring revenue from your interaction with them and not in the business to show you how to code the system, or create great features without someone paying for them.

With that said if you are an existing business and have an existing brick and mortar world that you are already managing then these are the folks for you because they take a majority of the work off your hands.

Keep in mind they help design, build and deploy your new ecommerce presence but they do NOT run it for you. That is up to you and your staff…you do have staff to run your ecommerce business don’t you? You might want to think about that, there are hundreds of ecommerce sites languishing in despair for lack of someone within the company that is charged with the sites’s success and understands how to run an online business.

So in the Capital but no Technical world your main problems will be:

1) Understand what you are asking for and find vendor that does it

2) If you don’t have the ecommerce or technology background hire someone to manage the process designs, development and deployment of the site for you or you WILL get bitten, this is simple reality.

3) Be sure whomever is designing then look and feel of the site KNOWS what that means. You well wishing marketing and art departments need to understand usability, interface design, and any number of other aspects of this business to be useful. If they don’t HIRE someone that does and have them do the designing.

4) Throughly understand the features of the system you are buying and keep asking for training till you do. Most of the features of these high end ecommerce systems aren’t used by most customers. You need to be engaged in the your own business and understand how the platform can make you money.

5) Remember, and this applies to all ecommerce websites, traffic to your site doesn’t not mean sales (conversions), yes you need to drive traffic to your site but that means qualified traffic and traffic that is there to buy not to look. Remember the retail model, window shoppers don’t buy and buyers seldom window shop.

So in the next entry we’ll cover the middle ground, We’ve got the Technical but funds are tight, this is an exciting area but requires you know how the plumbing of your new ecommerce site really works!

Dan Horn & Noh Limits is a member and contributor to StephenDGross.com and BrookstoneMarketingGroup.com

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Being independent of “the man” and being able to work from anywhere in the world is quite an appealing prospect but most of us have no idea how to do it or the innumerable problems in our path.

One of the primary things to think about when opening an ecommerce store is how much time you have to actually spend working on the store operations.

Keep in mind all the things you would do if you owned a brick and mortar storefront apply to the ecommerce site.

Even though you don’t have to deal with a lease and hard furnishing you still have all the equivalent issues with the ecommerce site lease equals hosting, hard furnishing equal pay per click and SEO marketing costs.

Over the course of this series I’ll be helping you understand not only the various ways to create a successful ecommerce store but also how to do it to fit into your lifestyle.

Lots of Capital but not a lot of Technical

As an example if you have time and financing you could certainly build the site from scratch, rent a warehouse, buy and store products and ship them from your warehouse. You certainly can buy these website development from any number of companies at any price range and they will happily hand you a fully operational ecommerce site that is fully customizable, at a fee, and you are in business…if you know how to run an ecommerce business.

We’ve got the Technical but funds are tight

In the middle of the spectrum if you only have time but not much capital to run the business you might want to consider using one of a number of ecommerce shopping carts, find a few drop shippers to do your fulfillment and use your sweat equity to design, develop, and deliver the ecommerce site to the web using organic SEO techniques and some of a number of shopping cart systems.

No Money and No Technical no problem

At the far end of the spectrum a recent trend has come about that is called an affiliate ecommerce site which is all about putting together a website that you drive traffic to and then as people buy products they are sent to the company website that actually sells the products and do the transaction there. This process alleviates a number of the onerous tasks associated with running an ecommerce store because you don’t have to deal with inventory, credit card processing, customer service and returns since they company one the other ends deals with that and give you a commission on each sale.

In my next article I’ll be taking each of the three methods, and all the variants and discussing the pros and cons of each. Over the next few weeks we will look into what can be done and how much time, effort, and expense if involved in each method and how you can be successful running an ecommerce business yourself.

Next up we’ll cover the process where you or your business has money to invest in the ecommerce business but not the technical chops so you hire a company to do your ecommerce site: Lots of Capital but not a lot of Technical next!

Spending the same amount of money, and yes more time, on data mining and analysis might just benefit your revenue and profits in a far greater and more sustainable way.  How would you like to actually decrease your traffic and, at the same time, double or triple your online business?  Making more out of less is always a strong part of any good business plan.

Dan Horn & Noh Limits is a member and contributor to StephenDGross.com and BrookstoneMarketingGroup.com

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In addition to the obvious benefit of using these Google tools for directly growing your revenue is the tremendous benefit of data mining.  Data mining, used correctly, can grow your business faster and more profitably than any online marketing strategy.  That’s right!

The professional Internet Marketer should know the value of this well known but seemingly elusive method for reverse engineering your online marketing campaigns.

So what are the benefits of data mining?

We’ve experienced overall conversion rate increases of 100′s of percentage points.   Bounce rates, specification page exits, and navigation detours tremendously decreased.  Customer loyalty and re-visits have been increased up to four-fold.  Other side benefits include the ability to incorporate better customer services practices and inventory control.

What is the result of this sometimes painstaking and often tedious work?

Spending $10-20,000.00 on marketing online expense will certainly bring additional traffic.  However, you may end up pouring more water into a large bucket with many holes.  The increases in traffic might snare additional revenue but can you afford the expense drain and lower profitability?

Spending the same amount of money, and yes more time, on data mining and analysis might just benefit your revenue and profits in a far greater and more sustainable way.  How would you like to actually decrease your traffic and, at the same time, double or triple your online business?  Making more out of less is always a strong part of any good business plan.

Once you have honed your website into a fine tuned engine and have verifiable results then and only then might be time to ramp up your online marketing budget.  Use the lessons learned from data mining to create better metrics and a more sound online business.

Check out ReadyLaunch for additional assistance.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your views on Google Adwords and Analytics.

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Many popular websites have hundreds if not thousands of backlinks.  However, care must be taken when creating links, not to violate some very important rules the search engines use to value and/or discredit your website in its ranking.

First off,  Backlinks are a signal of the popularity or relevance of a website. Backlinks play a valuable role in SEO because search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing award value to websites in terms of quantity of links and quality or relevance of the backlink.

Search engines use many methods to determine the quality of the backlink.  Here is a simple list of do’s when constructing backlinks:

1. The linking site should have high relevancy to your site.

2.  Make sure the links or page do not have a “no-follow” command.

3.  Make sure the linking site allows anchor text links.

4. Try to link from pages with a Google Page Rank of 3 or higher.

5.  Look for sites that have been around a while.

In addition to following the do’s listed above, make sure you adhere to the following don’ts or your do’s will be negatively affected.

1.  No “free-for-all” links.  Sites that allow anyone to post an un-reviewed backlink.

2.  No “link farming”.  Pages with little value that contain 100′s of links.

3.  No “triangular linking, reciprocal linking”.  getting together with your buddies and only linking to each other or sharing the same IP.

4.  No “no-follow, robot.txt” attributes and meta tags.  Sites or links that contain a link or robot meta tag that tells the robot to ignore your link or page.

5.  No “broken links”.  Website and links that contain broken links.

The opinions, art, and craft of backlinking is a wide and various matter.  Research into backlinking may in fact leave you confused and dismayed.  However, by instituting a methodical and planned approach you should see a quick return on your investment.

Don’t forget that backlinks will also help to create a sense of authority and trust in the eyes of your visitor.  Try to use visible and apparent links to or from websites that offer your visitor high relevance but low competitive value.  For instance, if you sell bicycles, try linking to or from a site that offers advice about riding or maintaining bicycles.  Try using Blogs, Articles, and Press Releases with content about bicycles in general to “kill two birds with one stone”.

From a conversion standpoint, when linking to an external site, try opening a new window when developing the external link.

Check out Brookstone Marketing Group for additional assistance.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your views on backlinking.

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