I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired of all the doom and gloom in the news. Recession. Inflation. Stagflation. Is it time to crawl under a rock and hide…just let your business wither away?

Of course not! It’s time to step up your game.

We are all guilty of riding the big bubble and now have to find a way to sail through a “correction” as the industry pundits call it. So how do we not only survive this wave, but grow and prosper? Here’s 4 things you can do to jump start the ride…

1. Dust off your “UVP” – Your Unique Value Proposition, sometimes called Unique Selling Position, is where all your marketing and messaging starts from. It’s how you differentiate yourself or company from your competition. If you can’t tell the difference, your customer won’t be able to either.
2. Market Where Your Customers Are – Seems simple enough. But where are your customers? I can pretty much guarantee in this day and age they are ONLINE! If your website is still the one your extremely smart and talented nephew that had a computer and Frontpage built for you, it’s time to make a change. Your website IS MARKETING and likely viewed by more customers and prospects than your Yellow Page ad or that ad you ran in a business journal once or twice last year. It’s time to put together a comprehensive marketing solution that includes Internet Marketing and social media marketing along with traditional marketing and branding.
3. Clean Out Your Sock Drawer – What? You mean procrastinate? NOOOOoooo. I mean look at what you have, what works and what doesn’t. Those fuzzy argyle socks you bought a few years ago really don’t go with your business suit. And those socks with the holes in the toes, you were going to sew up the holes? If you haven’t done it already, you won’t. They’re taking up space. Get rid of them. Stick with what works and make room for new ideas, or even new staff members.
4. Learn and Train – Now’s the time to improve your skills. Attend a sales training or marketing seminar. Read a few business, sales, or marketing books. There’s plenty of old concepts you’ve yet to master, and certainly new ones waiting in the wings.

If I were adding a fifth item it would be stop wasting time. The 4 items above are Business 101. If you haven’t considered them, you’re already behind. But the good news is you can always start today and play catch up. So what are you waiting for?

-C

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At a recent BtoB NetMarketing breakfast (note: a highly recommended event!), one topic that came back to life was site “stickiness.” Yes it sounds messy, and it can be just that if the intentions of stickiness are misplaced.

Stickiness is essentially your site’s ability to retain viewers. That can mean their average visit at the site is longer (lasting several minutes to hours); or they are viewing more pages of the site (which can also increase their time at the site); or they simply return often and regularly.

These are all good things and often difficult to achieve. However, several different delivery methods have emerged, such as blogs, podcasts and email marketing. Each of these can help a viewer to obtain the information they are looking for and make it easy for them to come back for more.

The biggest issue with stickiness is content. You need to ensure that you have carefully planned and executed a content strategy to ensure you give viewers a reason to come to the site - and then come back for more.

There’s more on this subject in my latest blog on ReveNews.

Once again, Single Throw’s Caryl Felicetta looks at search marketing and search results giving her own spin of a “perfect world” in SERPs.

Felicetta notes how many results simply do not provide what searchers need.

How many of you are frustrated when you are trying to find a new vendor, or a new product, and you instead are fooled by spammy link farms, or simply sites that do not really suit your needs?

Organic search results - those that are indexed by the search engine spider, then run through a series of formulas, or algorithms - are generated by content found on a site, as well as Title and META tags. By including the content searchers are looking for, you are serving on of the formulas requirements: relevancy.

Relevancy is the key to generating qualified leads, bringing you that much closer to the sale. It is the connection made between you and the searcher. If that connection is not made, or broken, you will likely lose the sale.

Understanding the basics of relevancy and customer need combined with tailoring our sites and messages can help to improve the quality of search results - and business! I know it’s not like saving the Earth, or global warming, but it’s a start to making information, communication, and maybe even the economy, better.

I do A LOT of reading. There’s books (remember those paper blocky things). Then there’s online news websites. And blogs. If not reading, there’s my iPod, filled with audiobooks from Audible or CDs. Then there’s Podcasts. Point is, we are surrounded with media and information. We - myself included - should be BRILLIANT! Overwhelmed with fresh ideas and insightful - for lack of a better word - insights. And we should use all of these different mediums to share these ideas. And for the most part, that happens. However the land of blogging and such user-generated content, and the chase to get links to and from other sites has simply lead to tons of comments that comment on someone else’s comments. And of course, there’s the SEO angle to getting links always in the background of someone’s mind.

When does the linking stop or when should we stop following the links? For example, in Seth Godin’s blog today, he pointed out something he read at a site. It was interesting enough. Two other people (at the time of this writing) linked to the blog, commenting on what Godin said. (It wasn’t that interesting.) I read all 3 posts and followed the links. There goes another 15 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. What did I learn? Nothing beyond Godin’s original post. Yet, I found it all compelling enough to mention here. And you likely followed the links as well.

Point is, we feel almost compelled to read on and learn more. It seems as though various user-generated media and content has made information even more accessible than I thought it was when I first fired up my 1200 baud modem and hunted around on various bulletins boards. Then AOL’s graphical interface took that a step further, making the quest for information exchange that much easier. Then the power of websites on the Internet went the next yard. And it keeps on going…

In an email exchange with a client the other day, we discussed the value of blogs. It certainly has brought upon a whole new stage for idea exchange. In reality, the ability to share ideas on the Internet is not new. It’s just become - once again - easier. Easier to access and easier to publish. And now that it’s easier, everyone’s doing it.

So in the 5 minutes it may have taken you to read this, you’re hoping for some takeaway. It’s not a biggie. It’s common sense. Just like in the early days of the Internet, there’s a ton of junk to sift through to get to the good stuff. There are plenty of people out there, like Godin, that do that for us and share some true insights. Then there are others that just sail along for the ride. It’s your time; spend it wisely.

OK, I have to go now and check out the Google Video of the Day. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, search engine marketing, marketing, sales lead generation, Blog, Blogging, Weblogs