While Google technically is not a “direct response company” they really are a direct response marketing business delivering back to the user the most relevant search results. By delivering relevant results Google can see the responses based on Google Analytics things like on page site time and number of pages viewed and bounce rates. Google uses typical direct response techniques, testing and tracking and then modifying based on the results. This is pure math, if it works they do more of it, if it does not work they change it or cut it. All of use in our own businesses need to do the same thing, test and track and make changes. If something works and we get the desired results or what I like to call MER then we can feel confident that we can roll it out.

In my 2 stays at the Hilton Garden Inn I saw 2 different promotion cards telling me that I could go to a special link HGI.com/Chair and purchase the chair I was using for the couple of nights while I stayed at the HGI. I clicked on the link and guess what I got a surprise. See the surprise in the video below. I think this marketing campaign was absolutely brilliant! I think the execution was extremely poor. But hey maybe it wasn’t and they are selling Mirra Chairs by the thousands! I just know I will not buy one from this link and I wanted to.

I always try and put myself in the customers shoes when I help clients create their marketing campaigns. If you want me to give my 2 cents on your marketing campaign feel free to click the button below or call me at 781-990-8844.

I believe that Google is focused intensely in 3 areas:

Social Media (Google+)
Mobile
Video

In this video I think I have found something Google is working on that they will be rolling out that is significant? Why is it significant? Because they are going to give social media a piece of their most valuable screen SERP real estate, in the upper right hand corner above the PPC ads. Check out this short video and you can try it yourself. Let me know what you think. Do you think this will give Google+ a leg up on Facebook? Do you think this will change the face of SEO? I bet it just might!

But that is not the real kicker. The real kicker is that their update(s) seemed to screw their own company results as well. How can this happen? Easily. This stuff is complicated and you can bet there are engineers working their arses off trying to figure this out. I know some clients had similar things happen as well. So take a deep breath, grab a glass of water and find some other revenue generating sources because once the music stops you better make sure you still have a chair to sit in.

OK we all know them, time wasters. And we have all probably been on both sides of the time waster equation. We can have time wasters in our personal lives i.e. girlfriends and boyfriends and we can have time wasters in business. In this brief article we will only be talking about time wasters in business.

Let’s face it these aren’t ordinary times and it is pretty competitive out there. Everybody is looking for “a deal.” But at the end of the day “the deal” has to be a win – win for both parties. What happens in my opinion and with all good intentions is a prospective client comes along with a grandiose promise of a great project and it turns into a marathon time waster.

“Just do this one more thing, and we’ll get started.” How often have we all heard this? Now Mr. T. Waster did not have the intent of wasting his time or yours but that is how we both fell into the trap. The intentions appeared to be honest, the project seemed to be sound, the fit seemed to be a match and all systems are a go…..but something never happens. Mr. T. Waster never cuts a check. It isn’t about he needs to be “closed” or “we didn’t ask for the sale.”

Here’s the deal about the camouflaged time wasters. Sometimes they come in camouflaged planning their attack; however you can usually spot them when they approach this way. The true T. Waster insurgent comes in with a sweet smile, good intent and a lot of integrity but no ability to execute.

A sale happens when one party provides enough value to another that the agreed upon price for the transaction is a deal and money changes hands. Even if we are experienced in these types of deals we can be snowed over. Remember when Barack Obama was championing for the Olympics to come to Chicago? In the end that was probably nothing more than a big time waster for him and the City of Chicago.

On the flipside it is easy for us to become Mr. or Ms. T. Waster. How often have we strung someone out only to finally tell them that there is no deal? In my case sometimes I can get a little over enthusiastic and optimistic about a project or projects and promise that something is going to happen and in reality it takes forever to complete. Meanwhile, I have set my business partners expectations the wrong way and they were expecting revenue yesterday, so was I, but it didn’t happen.

So it is really essential that we speak slowly and clearly and ask the person to speak back to us what we just said so we have confirmation of their understanding. E-mail sucks. E-mail is a poor form of communication. It is a great supporting form of communication. It is great for covering your ass, CYA.

So next time if your project is not moving in the right direction fast enough ask for a check. If they can’t give you a check, ask for a purchase order. If they can’t give you either then LISTEN really carefully as to why they can’t, because in that reply probably lays the hidden truth.

Speaking of T Wasting, I invite you to waste an hour of my time and yours. Hopefully it will take a lot less time than an hour to determine if we have a direct response opportunity to assist each other in our objectives. Call Jim Peake @ 781-990-8844 or click the button below.

When TV came along people in radio thought that they were doomed. Now when the Internet came along the argument could be how can people fit more screen time in with the Internet when already 4 hours per day were consumed by television? (We already watch an average of four hours per day of television or 9 years over a life time at 65 years old according to A.C. Neilson). The Internet brings a whole new dynamic in media to the table because of its ability to connect the offline world to the online world. The Internet is so dynamic that it has changed the game of advertising. Advertising has become a lot more segmented and dynamic.
Different Skill Sets Required

Traditional advertising agencies are similar to the Internet Advertising Agency in that agencies are known for their “creative.” Creative concepts and creative advertising copy sells. What is uniquely different about the two different business models are the “output” of the creative and the distribution of the creative. Some of the traditional ad guys embraced the new Internet media and others shunned it. In the print world file sizes were enormous and for the web file sizes are exponentially smaller.

Understanding the technical ramifications for something as simple as preparing a file for a four color sheet fed press versus a blog can get daunting. However today there are tools that make a lot of these processes easier for the designers. Many designers have become quite adept at delivering creative for the web and other electronic formats.

Advertisers are Demanding Digital Solutions

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you want to sell some product you better go to where the people are and the people are going online in droves. Not only are they going online they are also mobile and have their faces buried in their web browsers on their phones as well as their computers. Because of this dynamic of not only delivery on the computer platforms in multiple different operating systems as well as browsers the users have now gone mobile!

Android activations have approached 1 million activations per day! This creates a whole new problem for the “Internet Advertising Agency” because with this type of adoption happening so quickly the agencies need to keep up with the users and it is not easy.

Every Business Now Has a Channel – A Web Channel

Nce the advent of the Internet every business now has their own channel. You can dial up their channel by going to their Domain Name Server, mine is http://speechrep.com. Many businesses have more than one channel or one domains. What is the advantage of having our own channels? We can publish whatever we want and deliver the messages we want our viewers to see versus the media or some other 3rd party.

So now that each and every business can have their own website channel it would make sense for every business to exploit their channel(s) as much as possible. Doing this yourself as a business can be time consuming and expensive. So what needs to be discussed is the Internet a place that makes sense to invest in? Chances are some sort of an Internet presence might be valuable for most businesses but not all. If the Internet is valuable then the business either needs to hire internal resources or external resources (i.e. Internet Advertising Agency) to help manage the projects.

In some cases you may want to hire resources internally and hire an internet advertising agency. Or in other cases you may just want to hire a few freelancers to provide you with web design and graphics as well as hire some writers to fill in the gaps for your website and marketing materials. In any case it may just make sense to hire an Internet Website Consultant to discuss a possible strategy before you make some decisions that you will have to live with for some time to come.

If you have any questions feel free to call Jim Peake at 781-990-8844 or click on the button below.

It seems today that almost all advertising is migrating towards direct response. The reason why is that if you hire a direct response marketing company your chances of success are higher on measuring your ROI because they track everything. In the DRTV world we call this MER or media efficiency ratio. If we spend $1,000 in DRTV media advertisements and we generate enough phone calls that generate $10,000 in revenue we call this a 10:1 MER. It is simply another way to measure ROI.

The power of measuring MER is significant because if we can generate a 10:1 MER in New York chances are we can also generate a 10:1 MER in Los Angeles provided we are not selling snow shovels. When evaluating a direct response marketing company make sure that they are “eating their own dog food.” What I mean by this is if they specialize in DRTV media production do they rank online for DRTV media production as a keyphrase on Google? Are they using direct response advertising in other spaces like direct mail and search engine optimization to market their own businesses?

The reason why this is important is because your clients will find it important. For example, if you hire a direct response marketing company to produce a DRTV Ad to sell blue suede shoes the user might see the ad on TV. They do not take action on the TV Ad but they watch the Grammy’s and see an actor with blue suede shoes and want to find the company that made the blue suede shoes. Chances are they will go to Google or some other search engine to find the company that was advertising the blue suede shoes.

In the world of SEO and blue suede shoes you want to make sure that you rank for blue suede shoes on the first page on Google, preferable in the first 3 positions if you are going to be running a large DRTV Media Buy. The first 3 organic search results are where 80% of the clicks happen, above the fold. So while you are spending a decent amount of your budget on TV you want to tighten the fishing net so that you capture the residual demand after the ads have aired when people are searching on the internet for blue suede shoes.

Direct Response SEO

I like to use the term direct response SEO because I don’t believe many companies are doing it all or if they are they aren’t doing it well. For example, in the creation of a really good DRTV Ad for blue suede shoes you are going to have to capture the interest of the viewer in the first 7 seconds or else you have lost them. On a Google search results page it is even less than 7 seconds that you have to capture their attention. So how do we capture their attention in a few quick seconds? We use direct response principles in creating our meta tags. The mea tags will show up on the Google search results pages and are the links that the users click on.

In this example we want to rank for “blue suede shoes.” The title tag in the web page needs to be something like this if you want to get the user to click and see your blue suede shoes web page:

Blue Suede Shoes – Mick Jagger dancing in blue suede shoes

We have the keyword we want to rank for in the first three words in the title along with an interesting visual for the user to take action on [Mick Jagger dancing in blue suede shoes]. If you want to see what Mick Jagger looks like in blue suede shoes YOU HAVE TO CLICK ON THE LINK!

Next is the description tag:

This is where Google shows you a little more of a description or a snippet of what the web page is about before you click on the link. So you want to entice the user even more by telling him something in the description for example:

“Order the same blue suede shoes at 40% off that Mick Jagger has as he lights up the stage in the Rolling Stones Jumping Jack Flash Tour at Madison Square Garden.”

What is happening here in the description is we are telling the user they too can have (ORDER) the same blue suede shows as Mick Jagger and at a 40% discount. This direct response technique will get you a higher click through rate then if you just have some generic copy in the description.

This direct response SEO marketing technique is often used in PPC or pay per click advertising however you have even less room for which to work with as far as writing titles and descriptions. So providing direct response SEO solutions with a DRTV Advertising campaign can add a significant difference to your bottom line.

While this whole direct response advertising business is a moving target experienced professionals can help set expectations and guide you through the process. If you want some ideas or want to learn more about what is direct response marketing call Jim Peake at SpeechRep Media, Inc. at 781-990-8844 or click on the button below.

Customers want to know “who is Apple and what does Apple stand for?” Basically tell your customers who you are, because who you are is the brand you/we are!

The best information I got is the following: (See Slide)

Good info to get seen in Facebook it is all about news feed. Concentrate on the newsfeed more than anything else. Fan page tabs are a wasted effort.
Yup it makes sense Facebook faces similar problems as Google. Too much info junk. Facebook comments trump “Facebook likes” by a lot from what I hear.
If you look up in the upper right corner of the photo Edgerank is to Facebook what PageRank is to Google They also said that personal pages carry a lot more weight than business pages in terms of being shown in the feeds. Average posts only show up in 3-7% of your fan/friend base in almost all cases. And in most cases is is in around the 3% range and less.

Facebook is challenged with the overflow of information as we all are. Their new platform is designed to curate a lot of that content just like Google has done with 2011 Panda. What do you think? If you have any other Facebook marketing tips please do share them.