Let’s start with making your campaign relevant. The key to making your campaign relevant is the mailing list. You want your prospects to match your target demographic/psychographic profile as closely as possible. Depending on your company and your campaign goals this may be a list segment of current customers or a purchased list of business prospects. For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume that you need to purchase a list.

There are many list providers and many the specialize in niche markets so be sure to do a Google search. For small businesses who do most of the marketing themselves I suggest using the Experian Small Business Services website - http://www.experian.com/small-business/services.jsp. It provides a great deal of power and functionality, uses quality data, and has the most intuitive user interface that I have found.

You have the option of building a business list or a consumer list depending on your customer base. It will also ask you if you want to do basic segmentation or advanced. I like the advanced version for greater control over your list - and with the step-by-step approach, even beginners should find it easy to use and navigate.

Spend some time looking at all the tabs and segmentation possibilities. The closer you can target your list, the better your ROI will be.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how you can use free internet tools to identify the best time to drop your next direct mail campaign.

Thanks,

Kurt
www.bluecollarne.com

I’m still working on some things in the background but the site is up and ready to be viewed - check it out at www.hancockdana.com.

Thanks,

Kurt

The article will be the first in a three part series entitled “I’ve Got a Website - So Why Can’t I Find It?”.  In the article I will discuss the basics of SEO, common do’s and don’ts as well as the importance of public relations as it pertains to search engines.  After each article is published they will be made available here.

Thanks!

Kurt

www.bluecollarne.com

If you are a bank and trying to rank well for commercial loans in Dallas your competition may not be other banks.  It can come in the form of non-profits who are trying to help small businesses or it could be a government agency that is providing information on commercial loan regulations.  If the examples I listed above are at the top of the key term you wish to rank for - then in the SEO arena they are your competitors and you should take notice of what they are doing to rank well for the term.

In fact, the competition for your organic search results may not be the same competitors you see in the PPC arena.  The point being that before you embark on an organic search campaign or a PPC campaign take a minute to realize who your competition really is.

So many times as businesses we take for granted that we know whom we are competing against.  And, many times we realize much to late that we were never in the competition at all because we failed see with open eyes that our competitors were only a Google search away.

Thanks,

Kurt

Omaha Web Design

These words were spoken by Franklin D. Roosevelt and referred to the irrational fear that was holding the nation back.

I was speaking to my dad the other day regarding fear and it’s place in business or careers. My father told me that it had taken him nearly fifty years to realize that the single greatest item that had held his life in check for many years was fear. To give you some background information on what my father meant - he has dyslexia. He told me that he never excelled in school because he was afraid of failure or of how others might perceive him if they knew that he had difficulty reading. He went on further to explain that this fear also kept him from ever trying to advance in his career. The only goal he had was to “do as he was told”.

This casual conversation with my father made me think about how fear had shaped my career and the careers of others. I have to admit that when I started this business that I was very scared - in fact I’m still scared.

My father overcame his fears out of necessity. After the refinery plant he worked at shut down, my father found himself without a job. In his mid-forties without a college education, a reading disability that few knew about, and a faltering local economy he was having a difficult time locating a steady job. A good friend of my fathers was attempting to start a business utilizing earth moving equipment for local refineries. Since my dad’s friend knew nothing about the industry nor how to drive the equipment to accomplish the job he took my father on as a partner. To say that the first year was rough would be an understatement.

I can remember my mother pleading with my father to get out of the business and try to find work at one of the refineries. My father refused and was more determined to make the business work even after his partner decided he wanted out. They agreed upon a payment plan that allowed my father to buy the business out right.

The first half of the second year was better - they were covering the bills but there was still little left over for the household.

My father caught a break when he met a contractor who had almost built a monopoly in the local economy. GunPar, my father’s company, began subcontracting to work on jobs. As the oil and natural gas refining industry boomed there was more work than my father could handle even when locating other independent equipment operators. Slowly but surely he purchased more equipment, found additional employees and grew the business the old fashioned way.  It was hardwork, and without investors growth was slow but steady.

For the last few years my father has grossed over $150,000 a year. He is by no means wealthy, but he has a comfortable life style that affords him time off and allows him to take those caribean vacations that used to allude his pocket book.

When the oil and gas industry began to tank - my father was still doing well.  He saw many of the Johnny Come Lately companies that attracted investors and financed everything they owned fall by the wayside.  They had grown too big too fast - and without the huge paychecks they were accustomed to, many went bankrupt.

My father is still making a go of it and all though times are tough, I’m sure he’ll make the best of it.  Despite what others may think, I believe that the rough time he had reaching the “promise land” prepared him for the lean times that are sure to come.

Starting a business on your own is scary and it’s easy to let the fear squash your dream before it’s even had a chance to be realized. I don’t know whether your business, my business, or my father’s business will continue to grow and be successful but I do know that if fear grips you so tight that you choose not to make a go of it - it will never succeed.

I asked my mother to read over this to ensure accuracy and obviously to ask if it was okay to publish.  Of course, she said it was okay and quickly reminded me that having a support system to encourage and believe in you is just as important in good times as it is in helping you make it though the tough times.

Thanks for allowing me to share this story with you and please let me know how you plan to make your business a success.

Kurt
Blue Collar Design Studio

I ran across an article in Inc. Magazine the other day that was discussing the new Google TV ads tool. The article reported how a company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was using the tool to stretch their broadcast budget.

Now, I’ve never used this tool nor do I know anyone who has but having worked for a company who purchased quite a bit of broadcast I can tell you that this tool certainly offers you a low cost solution. It is definitely a difference of full-service vs self service but with so many small businesses having that DIY mentality I think it has its place in the market.

Below I’ve provided Google’s video demo:

I hope you find this tool useful. If you decide to give this service a try, let me know your feedback so we can share it with others.

Thanks,

Kurt
Blue Collar Design Studio

Anyway, lets talk about your competitor’s PPC campaigns and how you can use Spyfu.com to help you learn more about what your competitor is doing. So what is PPC? PPC stands for pay per click advertising and usually refers to the paid ads you see on google or yahoo during a search. They are located at the top of the results and also on the right-hand side.

Companies will utilize PPC campaigns to drive targeted traffic to their site for keywords that they don’t rank well organically. The process for procuring a PPC ad is usually a bidding process. You bid “X” amount per click for a certain keyword and depending on how much higher or lower you are than your competitors determines where your ad shows up. This is over-simplified, but you get the picture.

When you land on the Spyfu home page you can either enter a keyword or a specific URL for which you want to gain analytics. Below I’ve provided a screen shot for a search I did on Spyfu of www.rescomm.com. You can see from the screen-cap the daily ad budget, total clicks per day, average cost per click, average ad position, etc. It also provides the top organic keywords, the paid keywords, both organic and paid competitors.

This allows you to gain critical competitive analysis for a given keyword or competitor so you can spend your PPC budget more wisely and produce a greater ROI.

I hope this post was helpful and would love to hear any feedback on how you utilize PPC campaigns in your business.

Thanks,

Kurt

Here I’ve attached a screen capture of Google Trends for the search term Coke Zero. It’s very evident from the search information Google provided that most people that perform searches for Coke Zero are from the south eastern portion of the United States. As a marketing manager, I could use this information to geo-target direct mail campaigns or events to maximize my ROI.

In the example, Google Trends also shows the top search results for a given term. Obviously, Coke is using sporting events as a primary vehicle to market Coke Zero. In this manner, a competitor could identify Coke’s marketing strategy and determine the best way to respond.

Basically, Google Trends gives any business a tool they can use for market research. With the economy the way it is, everyone can use a free tool that helps create a greater ROI for their marketing dollars. I personally use the tool to identify the regional craigslist.com site that will likely have the most web design job postings.

I hope this post has been helpful and would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,

Kurt
www.bluecollarne.com