Month: June 2007

Categories
How-To Guides

How To Use Local Online Advertising

ad_online.jpgInspired Business Growth: Do you own a business that depends on local customers? Most brick-and-mortar businesses do very little online advertising or promotion, thinking that investing in internet marketing would be a waste of time for such a small geographic area.
Think again. Local online advertising can mean big business. Unless your business is the first thing that comes to mind for every person in your local community, keep in mind that approximately 60% of customers use the internet to research products or services online before they make a purchase (according to DoubleClick). And if you need a plumber, you would likely search for “plumber Naperville IL” – in fact, an estimated 30% of ALL internet searches have a local intent.
The various local advertising options you have:
Paid Search Engine Marketing – With PPC (Pay Per Click) search engine marketing, you can target your ads to only appear in a certain zip code. This way you can ensure that your ads are only being seen by the right potential customers.
Online Local Directories – Free options mentions in the above referenced article included the extremely popular MerchantCircle.com(USA), TouchLocal (UK) and Local.com as well as Google Local, Local.Yahoo.com, and Craigslist.
Local Online Media Planning and Buying – There are several very large websites that draw visitors that search for local information, and have the capability of geo-tergeting their ads to your region or zip code. National sites include Weather.com, Zillow.com, and CitySearch.com.
How to Market Your Small Local Business Online [Inspired Business Growth]

Categories
Newsletter

Free Report: 2006’s Best Business Ideas


You’ve always wanted to start your very own business. You dream of coming up with the next BIG thing that will change the way business works. You want to spread your evolutionary idea to the world. If the above describes you, then you may find this e-book report useful.
CoolBusinessIdeas.com, our sister site, is offering all BIZNESS! Newsletter subscribers a free 145-pages PDF report (worth $75) called “2006’s Best Business Ideas“.
This 145-pages report, “2006’s Best Business Ideas“, is a compilation of the business ideas and concepts which made it big in 2006. We’ve included 2005’s and 2004’s hits as well. As you brainstorm of how to start your own business or how to take your existing business a big step forward in the year 2007 and beyond, learn from how the entrepreneurial mavericks did it in 2006. In every industry from advertising to e-commerce, there’ll surely be some interesting new idea or innovation in this report which will hopefully inspire you to your own breakthrough, radical and never-seen-before business vision.
The report is included free with your subscription to our free, biweekly BIZNESS! newsletter. We publish this free, biweekly email newsletter dishing out the latest small business advice, business tips and info, and entrepreneur resources. A must-read for the aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners, it is a good complement to our daily blog.
Subscribe for free now and get your free report!
The current newsletter can be viewed here. More details about the newsletter here.
Important: Instructions on how to download the free ebook report will be enclosed in your welcome email. When you’ve signed up through the online signup form, an initial confirmation email will be sent to you. You need to click on the confirmation link in that confirmation email first before you can be subscribed successfully! The download link will be embedded within the welcome email that will be sent to you after you’ve confirmed your subscription.

Categories
Work Life

Beating Startup Stress

stress.jpgEntrepreneur: If you burn out in a new business venture, it’s the result of intense and arguably greater pressure built up over a shorter interval, and it’s infinitely harder to walk away. It means abandoning your dream, leaving your employees jobless, and facing sometimes dire financial and psychological consequences. I personally know of one suicide and one near-suicide caused by the startup stress trap.
That’s why it’s important to take preventive measures to avoid letting your startup drive you to the brink. Here are a few simple ways to nip burnout in the bud:
1. Build a knowledge base.
2. Adapt your business plan.
3. Make daily lists of the next day’s tasks.
4. Hire a good team.
5. Leave your work at work.
6. Get a coach.
New Business Burnout: Don’t Be a Victim [Entrepreneur]

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Consumer Evangelists

consumer-evangelist.jpg
ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com: Recently, my colleague Max Kalehoff and I put together a list of “Top Ten Principles of Consumer Consumer Generated Ad Campaigns.” Max added a few additional thoughts on top of this list in his most recent MediaPost column. You may also recall an earlier blog post on this topic in the context of Super Bowl advertising. Key message: by all means test the waters, but keep a good check list in front of you!
1. Connect The Program To Larger Business Goals: Ensure that your strategy aligns with well-defined goals and objectives, and create a measurement framework for program planning, tracking, adjusting and evaluating.
2. Keep It Authentic: Leverage the full creative power of the participants and don’t set narrow guidelines on the creative. .
3. Be Transparent: Don’t play fast and loose with the fact that the brand facilitated content creation.
4. Encourage Advocacy: Don’t be shy about allowing entrants to vote for their favorites and encourage their friends and family to vote.
5. Empower Syndication: Make it simple to upload, simple to share, simple to embed on blogs and other community and video platforms.
6. Tap The Long Tail: Don’t hesitate to leverage non-winners for other marketing purposes. Embrace them as passionate and loyal stakeholders, and use the Web site as a repository for their rich content.
7. Capture The Moment: Capitalize on “great brand moments” when consumers are highly vested and more likely to advocate, such as new product launches, purchases, or actual brand use and enjoyment.
8. Be Consistent: If you create an environment of dialogue and interaction, stakeholders will notice inconsistencies across other customer touch points or company silos.
9. Embrace Criticism And Deprecation: You’ve got to take the bad with the good. While a good strategy will acknowledge and plan for detractors, the reality is that everyone is empowered to publish.
10. Move From Campaign To Platform: Campaigns may have clear beginnings and endings, but there may be dimensions of your program that want to live on forever. Prepare a platform to facilitate and leverage sustained engagement and brand return.
Ten Tips & Principles of Consumer Generated Advertising Campaigns [ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com]

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneur Profile: Rachael Ray

ray_rachael.jpgBusiness 2.0: As an eager young buyer for gourmet market Cowan & Lobel in Albany, N.Y., Rachael Ray spent hours spying on customers, looking for tipoffs to new trends. One odd pattern she noticed again and again: Many well-to-do shoppers would bypass the produce section and head straight for the prepared-foods counter. That gave her an idea: Why not run a cooking class for harried consumers, showing them how to make gourmet meals in 30 minutes flat?
To Ray, it was just a small way to prop up grocery sales. But a decade later, that simple notion has turned Rachael Ray into a brand on par with Martha Stewart and created a small media empire worth a reported $10 million. Since its debut in 2001 on the Food Network, Ray’s top-rated cooking show, 30 Minute Meals, has spawned three more Ray-hosted shows on the network, 16 cookbooks, a self-titled national magazine, and even a syndicated daytime talk show.
One-man Brands [Business 2.0]