Tag Archives: Online Marketing

Don’t Let Your Accounts Be Held Hostage

Linda Buquet at Catalyst eMarketing recently posted a story about hundreds of Google Places listings marked “Awaiting Removal.” A commenter did some sleuthing and discovered that these listings appear to be held hostage by a company called 411 Locals (link to ComplaintsBoard.com). What Went Wrong This isn’t the first or last time we’ll see something along these […]

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Using hReview on Your Website

Google scrapes reviews from other websites for Google Places. Traditionally, these came from large local review websites. But now you can get reviews from your site onto Places. Google is starting to include hReview formatted reviews from other websites – and even some from small businesses using hReview. Read on for an hReview how-to. What Is hReview? hReview […]

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Getting Started With Email Marketing

Email marketing is cheap and extremely effective. But there are plenty of areas where you can make mistakes. Read on for ideas as to how you could use it, and how do it right. What’s It For? Email provides a great ROI for many companies. They’re doing things such as: Bringing People Back – Email […]

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Who Should Manage Social Media Accounts?

You run a business. You’re busy. Handling your company’s social media presence takes time. So what do you do? The Problem Social media is still relatively new, and many companies don’t have anyone deemed responsible for it. No responsibility = it’s not done well, or even consistently. Some businesses haphazardly allow an employee to setup […]

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Marketing Your Business Online: Fundamentals

As a small business owner, you’ve always had to know a bit about everything. It’s time to add online marketing. The goal of this article is that when you finish reading, you’ll have enough knowledge to read more in-depth guides (or talk to a salesperson) without ending up lost. There’s a lot of information here, […]

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5 Things Businesses Can Learn From Affiliates

I got started in online marketing as an affiliate, creating websites to market products sold on Amazon, movie rentals from Netflix, and the like. They pay commissions to websites that send them buyers. The goal of an affiliate is pretty simple – drive more sales for less money. It taught me some lessons that many […]

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Calculating the Value of a Click, Lead, and Customer

Why bother with improving conversion rates? How can companies bid $xx.xx per click on Adwords? And why do people get all hot and bothered about “viral” businesses? All these questions are related to the value of a sale – which I’ve created some calculators to help your company better estimate and understand. One of the […]

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Which Daily Deals Site Is Right For Your Business?

Local deal sites are sprouting like weeds. Probably because Groupon is making more money than you can imagine. So the question is, what are the differences – and which one is right for your business? The Local Deal Sites There are far too many sites to cover every one here, so we’re going to look […]

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The Guide To Google Boost

Google’s local ad options come and go all the time – in just the last couple years they’ve tried all of these: Google Tags Google Local Listing Ads Google Offers Google Location Extensions Google Boost The first two are discontinued, the third is in testing – just #’s four and five are widely available now. […]

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Groupon – Too Much Of A Good Thing?

Groupon has brought a revolutionary advertising model to the local business market, and is making a fortune in the process. The company has a website, Groupon Works, which details successes companies have achieved by working with them. But there are also numerous horror stories describing how using Groupon was a disaster for small businesses. So […]

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