The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

Online marketing is becoming less and less about SEO all the time. That doesn’t mean you should give up on SEO. What I’m really saying is that SEO is not the be all-end all of Internet marketing.

In the early days of online marketing, you had directories and search engines. There were these things called web rings, which on one uses any more. And there were display ads and articles, which was mostly about SEO. But that’s about it.

Around 1998, things began to change. Google was born. SEO took on greater prominence – for about five years.

In 2003, things began to change again. Blogs were becoming popular, social media was gaining ground, and PPC was big and strong. PPC was not about SEO It was about reaching your target market quickly and effectively. It still is.

But in the last couple of years we’ve seen the growth of mobile apps, QR codes, e-book readers, and a number of other emerging technologies that threaten to expand the Internet marketer’s reach outside of traditional online strategies like SEO, link building and social media. And I believe these opportunities are going to grow more prominent.

When it comes to online marketing, focus on what’s important for reaching your target market. SEO is important, but it’s one channel. Don’t get wrapped around a tree looking for the forest.

Most people, when they think about doing business online, think of it in terms of online marketing. Of course, you are marketing your business online. There’s no doubt about that. But what you are really doing is building a Web business.

The big question is, what exactly does it take to build a Web business? What components are necessary?

Here are 5 necessary components to building a Web business in 2011.

1. A website – It can be a simple website or a huge monolith. Either way, you need a website. Your first step in building a Web business is to design a powerful website.
2. Search engine marketing - SEM is a multi-component endeavor that includes paid search marketing and organic search marketing. With organic search you could be building links, which we call off-site SEO, or you could be increasing your on-site content value through blogging, articles, or other on-page content.
3. Social media – Promote your content through social media where you’ll build inbound links and your relationship.
4. Video marketing – Video marketing has become a mainstay of building an online business too. If you do it right, it will pay huge dividends.
5. App development – App development can refer to iphone and other mobile apps or social media apps like those you find on Facebook. Either way, app development is becoming a huge marketing channel online.

What ways do you use for building your Web business? Do weigh in.

Prospecting is something that every business has to do. Methods change, but the prospecting continues. In the last few years, many businesses have found it more profitable to perform their prospecting online.

One online prospector likens the process to gardening. Here’s why:

• Prospecting is like “growing,” not “killing” – a reference to the war analogy
• You can’t control everything. Embrace uncertainty because when you are a gardener you deal with Mother Nature and no one controls Mother Nature. You can’t control your prospects either. Nurture them instead.
• Prepare to be disappointed and surprised. Sometimes what you think is a sure thing turns sour while other things you didn’t think would happen turn into huge successes. That’s cool.
• Take out the weeds. These are bad employees, worse customers, and other things that can kill your business.
• Things change. Embrace the change. You can get by without that “necessary” component of your business. Be prepared for the worst and deal with it in reality.
• Be persistent. Gardening is a little-bit-every-day thing. Never give up on it. If you do, your garden will die (and so will your fruit). Your business is just like a garden. Be persistent.

When you consider that prospecting for new clients is more like gardening than war, you’ll spend some time nurturing your prospects and treating them like a harvest.

Internet marketing has grown into a powerhouse. You have so many marketing channels available to you online now that it’s difficult to keep up with them all. Some of them might be for you and others won’t be, but it’s nice to know what’s available. Here are 21 online marketing channels you can use to market your business today.

1. Your blog and website – I’m assuming they’re one entity. Your blog can be on the same domain as your website, but if yours has its own domain, then that’s two channels.
2. Search engine organic listings
3. Article directories
4. Knol pages
5. HubPages
6. Squidoo lenses
7. Pay per click ads
8. Twitter
9. Facebook
10. LinkedIn
11. Google+
12. YouTube – Video marketing has reached its time.
13. Article directories
14. Foursquare
15. Google Places
16. Bing Maps
17. Groupon
18. Forums
19. Niche online communities
20. Website and blog directories
21. Mobile apps

Not all of these marketing channels will be for you, but you can certainly find a dozen or so that you can employ effectively for your business. Your first step to finding the right online marketing channels is to analyze your business and determine where your customers are. Where you’ll find your customers, that’a good place to start.

Get a consultation with a Web marketing expert today. Discover the best online marketing channels for you.

While we are proponents of Internet marketing – pay per click advertising, social media, search engine marketing, video marketing, etc. – we still believe that there are traditional marketing tactics that still work. The question isn’t whether or not you should be using traditional marketing, but which traditional marketing tactics you should be using.

When it comes to looking up phone numbers and addresses, many people today will go online before consulting the traditional Yellow Pages. And a website, of course, is a wonderful thing to have for lots of reasons.

Traditional marketing collateral like business cards, brochures, billboards, and radio and television advertising are still very effective in reaching the right market. But often, the most effective off line marketers are marrying these tactics up with successful online marketing campaigns that include but not limited to

• PPC advertising
• Website development
• Video marketing
• E-mail marketing
• Search engine optimization
• and social media marketing

When you combine effective traditional marketing efforts with effective Internet marketing, you increase your own branding and marketing power exponentially.

Many TV advertisers, for instance, plug their websites and social media profiles in the ad. You can do the same in your radio spots and other offline marketing materials.

Don’t give up on traditional marketing just yet. Just add it to your online marketing efforts for greater effectiveness.

Direct mail marketers have enjoyed a long hey-day of success and profits thanks to the U.S. Postal Service. But Postmaster General Patrick Donahue is predicting that mail delivery will move to three days a week – within 15 years. That makes me wonder, how much will postage cost then? Probably over $1 per delivery.

With postage expected to go up to 45 cents at the end of this year, direct mail marketers can’t afford to cling to the paradigms of the past. It’s high time to move into the future.

And what is the future? Well, I think we can safely say it is now.

Internet marketing is here to stay, and it’s replacing the old paradigms. If you wait 15 years before you start on your plan for marketing online, then your business will be as dead as the U.S. postal service. You should be online right now, and you should be marketing your business online right now – even if you still use direct mail marketing.

Smart marketers measure the times as much as they measure their own efforts. It is clear that the U.S. postal service, and direct mail, are moving into the past. The question is, what are you going to do about it – for your business?

There are different ways to skin a cat, as they say. But when it comes to kicking off a brand new Internet marketing campaign, there are certain things that you definitely want to include in that effort. Leave them out at your own peril.

Here are the steps you need to take in your online marketing campaign. Some of the steps can be performed in any order while others should be performed in the proper order stated. I’ll let you know when it’s OK to veer into a different direction or rearrange the order.

• Competitive research – Start with understanding where your competition is and what they are up to. Someone was in your space before you. Find out who they are and what they’ve done and are doing.
• Keyword research – You should include keyword research along with competitive research, but it does extend beyond competitive intelligence. You want study the competition’s keywords, but you also want to do your own independent research.
• Pay Per Click – PPC advertising will be your first test of your keywords. It’s fast and gets you the information you need quickly, plus you can drive instant sales with PPC.
• Search engine optimization – Next, take what you’ve learned from your competitive research, keyword research, and PPC and build a solid SEO campaign. You can do SEO before PPC, but I recommend performing PPC first so you can us it to test your keywords.
• Social media marketing – You want to save your social media campaign for later in the game. It’s a lower threshold type of marketing. It’s good for branding and building relationships, but you want to get your SEO and PPC going first so that you can use them to test your keywords and strategies.
• Video marketing – With videos, you can market with them before social media or after. It makes little difference, but you don’t want to start your video marketing campaign before SEO or PPC.
• Link building – Other forms of marketing like articles, blogs, and link building efforts are ongoing. Start them as soon you get your SEO campaign going and don’t ever stop.

If you’re used to doing a lot of offline marketing, or traditional marketing, then you’ve likely noticed that it has become quite expensive in the last few years. Oil prices have driven up the cost of paper and everything else. The economy taking a downturn has caused many businesses to stop advertising altogether, or diminish their marketing budgets.

But there is hope. Online marketing is less expensive and, if done right, is much more effective. That’s why so many businesses have transferred their marketing and advertising budgets to online.

Here are 5 online marketing methods that are outpacing their offline counterparts:

1. Pay Per Click – Pay per click advertising is the online equivalent to some forms of print advertising. The difference is you pay only when a desired result takes place. It can be less expensive and deliver a higher ROI.
2. Social Networking – Offline, you go to business functions. You often have to buy dinner, pay for transportation costs, business cards, and other incidentals. Online, you just show up. And talk to people. Make friends and contacts. Sell them stuff. The time commitment is higher, but it’s a lot easier on the budget.
3. Video Marketing – Liken it to TV advertising. Do you really want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on 30-second spots that disappear with the money? Instead, pay for one video and it stays live online forever.
4. Website Design – Call them online billboards. Just like outdoor advertising, you have a limited space – your prospect’s browser window. Unlike outdoor billboards, that space can be expanded. And you can build many websites for less than the cost of a handful of billboards.
5. Search Engine Optimization – Sorry, but there is no offline equivalent to search engine optimization. Yet it’s still the most effective online marketing money can buy.

Try just one or incorporate them all into your marketing plans, but online marketing is where it’s at.

When you build your website and put it online, you’ll have to decide whether you are going to target a local audience or a global market. It’s one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make.

It’s not as simple as it may seem. Local online marketing and global marketing actually have a lot in common – online, at least.

For instance, both employ search engine optimization. You can also market both a local business and a global business through social media. You can also drive traffic to a local website as well as a global reach website through pay per click advertising. Virtually any type of online marketing tactic that can be used for one can be used for the other.

All of that said, however, local businesses do have other options that global businesses don’t. Online Yellow Pages is one example of an opportunity that local business have that global businesses can’t leverage. Craigslist classifieds is another marketing tactic that seems to work better for local businesses.

And there are global marketing tactics that can be used for local online marketing but that may need a little bit of creative tweaking for effectiveness.

When you’re ready to build your website and take the online marketing plunge, find a consultant who can help you decide whether local or global is more appropriate for your situation.

Al Qaeda is back in the news and this time it’s not Osama bin Laden. But it IS about Osama bin Laden. This story is useful because it has something to teach us about video marketing.

The first lesson is that you can use negative news to make a positive statement. What is Al Qaeda’s “negative” news? Our leader is dead. And the positive news is? Even in death, he’s going to stick it to the enemy.

You don’t have to agree with the message to note its effectiveness. The evidence of its effectiveness is the fact that it made international news.

When any organization has something to say about public events, that’s effective marketing. And the fact that this message was delivered by video makes it even more powerful. Note: Video marketing can be ten times more effective as traditional content marketing.

Another lesson we can pull from Al Qaeda’s attempt to remain in the public eye is that you have to act fast. It hasn’t been that long since the U.S. killed the terrorist leader. Ayman al-Zawahri wasted no time in getting his organization’s message out to all who are interested.

Finally, keep telling your story. No matter what. Al Qaeda could very easily have hung up their hats when their charismatic leader was vanquished. Instead, they’re continuing to tell their story. You should too.

Yesterday was Earth Day. I’m sure you heard all about it. So what did you do to show your green side?

You don’t have to go far to be green. Eco-friendly marketing is one of the most important ways a business can prove its commitment to the environment. And anything you do online is eco-friendly.

Got a website? You can say you’re involved in eco-friendly marketing. How about a blog? Call yourself the “Green Marketer.” Using pay-per-click advertising? That’s environmentally friendly too.

All you have to do to prove yourself eco-friendly in today’s terms is to stop using paper. Instead of printing out all those brochures, create a website. Instead of passing out your business cards at a networking function, take up social media marketing. Instead of buying that full page ad in a magazine, market yourself through PPC advertising. All of these are green marketing trends.

From search engine optimization to video marketing, online marketing is about as green as you can get. It shows that you care about the environment, but it also shows that you are willing to be a citizen of the 21st century.

Companies on the go today seek and find the best ways to market their business that don’t destroy the environment.

Ask anyone who has been around for 40 years or longer and you’ll find that the ways of marketing a business have changed. What worked in 1960 was different than what worked in 1980 and what worked in 1980 isn’t what worked in 2000. Even the marketing strategies used today aren’t the same as what worked in 2000.

Here are 7 online marketing strategies that work today and that will likely work ten years from now.

1. Search engine optimization – Build a website and make sure each web page is optimized for search engine traffic.
2. Pay per click marketing – Spend your money on clicks for a speedy response to your message and watch your income rise.
3. Social media marketing – Use social bookmarking and social networking to connect off of your website, then drive that traffic to your web pages.
4. Video marketing – Online video marketing has arrived in full force. Engage with your audience on YouTube and other video marketing websites.
5. Start a blog – Write to your blog every day. The search engines love the fresh daily content.
6. Article marketing – Write articles and distribute them online to websites within your niche. You’ll build your reputation and build links to your website.
7. Claim your local business listing – Each major search engine has a local business listing associated with their Maps feature. Claim your listing if you are a local business.

There is no substitute for these 7 online marketing strategies. You can do more, but I wouldn’t dare do less.

An article at WebProNews has an interesting take on marketing online. It says that effective marketers do four things well:

1. Reach their target audience through traditional media
2. Use digital new media well
3. Promote by being a media company
4. And spread their content by social media

Two things are interesting about this approach: No 1, search engine optimization isn’t mentioned at all, and, secondly, you’re being asked to become a media company.

Now, wait a minute, you say, I never intended on doing that! Now, not so fast. All that means is you think outside of your own website.

Here’s what it really means: You set up one or two, maybe even three or four, online media websites that reach a different target audience or that provide a different publishing service. For instance, it could be a blog or it could be a community wiki. Maybe it’s a forum. It could be anything as long as it gives other people a platform for their voices. In other words, become an owner of media resources and not just a consumer of them.

There actually is a lot of wisdom there. Besides the profit that can be derived from these media websites that you own, there is also a branding element. You can spread your brand out in more directions and reach more people, which leads to more business. It’s just something to think about.

Oh, about that SEO – let’s assume that any community or media sites you build will include a healthy search engine optimization plan. It just makes good sense.

The key to effective online writing is to have your readers click a link and read your story, blog post, etc. Headlines are the tools that writers use to make that happen. Here are some of our best tips for writing great headlines.

1. Keep it relevant – Your headline should tell your reader exactly what to expect from your article. If your article is about bobsledding, then your headline should make it clear that’s what the article is about. Readers don’t want to click a link and find out your article is about something else.
2. Make a promise and follow through – Every good headline makes a promise. “100 of the best restaurants in Chinatown” is pretty specific. The reader knows what the article is about and expects to be told what the best restaurants in Chinatown are. It has a promise. The hard part is delivering on the promise, but it’s also the important part.
3. Show how easy it is – Some headlines do this better than others, but if the reader thinks it is easy to get the benefit of reading your story, then they’ll read it. “3 ways to jump a rope,” “1 simple tweak …”, and “5 ideas to spark …” all tell the reader that the answer to their question is just one click away. It’s really easy.
4. Don’t try to be clever - You may think it’s cute to play with words and offer a double entendre. Some of your readers will too. Others will be turned off by it. But the real reason you want to leave the clever out of your headlines is because it doesn’t sell the story. A reader might laugh at your clever headline, but she likely won’t read the story.

Follow these tips to successful headlines and you’ll watch your readership grow.

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With PPC marketing, you can test your keywords before you use them in your organic marketing. It’s a great way to test new keywords and keyword groups. Why spend countless hours building landing pages and promoting them through social media and articles when you aren’t 100% confident of the keywords you are using? You can be confident in less than 24 hours just by testing them in PPC ads.

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Rumors come and rumors go. Occasionally, they stick around and actually become fact. The latest story doing the rounds involves the possible purchase of Twitter by either Facebook or Google. We know that Facebook had a dab at buying Twitter earlier on, but would they try again? And what of Google? We’ll leave others to surmise about these possibilities. What interests me is what effect a sale would have for online marketing activities.

If Facebook were to take on Twitter, I am not sure we would see too many changes in the way Twitter operates. We may see a little more in the way of sponsored tweets, or perhaps even on-page advertising, similar to what we currently see on Facebook. Of more interest perhaps is the possibility of Google making a purchase.

There are any number of possible outcomes should Google win the day. SEO experts would immediately start to look for signs that tweets were having a bigger role in search rankings; they would also look to see if there were changes in the ‘follow – nofollow’ attributes on links. It would certainly be interesting days in that area of the online world. Can you imagine either Facebook ads, or Adwords ad units appearing on Twitter? It would certainly change the face of Twitter.

Who ever gains control of Twitter, monetization is going to be one of the key areas that will be investigated. Neither Google nor Facebook want to take on a loss-making machine, so getting Twitter into profit will be one of the first areas they will look at. Whether or not this will open the door for more sponsored tweets will be interesting. Of more interest will be whether or not more traditional onsite advertising appears.

What are your thoughts? Would a buy out of Twitter by either Facebook or Google affect Twitter’s appeal for online marketing?

There has always been a sad truth about marketers – they care little for ROI. This has always been the realm of managers, particularly finance managers. Their mantra is always – ‘how much will it cost and what sort of return will we get’? When it comes to marketers, they are always interested in how far and how well they have delivered their message.

Is there a meeting place? There should be. There is one startling fact that business managers and marketers should always have at the back of their minds – it is easier to sell to existing customers than it is to acquire new customers. So my question to you is simple – what are you doing with your existing customers?

For many businesses, a customer comes to their website, buys, and disappears, often never to be seen again. Online marketing has one special difference to offline marketing, a website is not in your face everyday. Offline, your store front is there. People walk past it everyday. A website is different. If your customer has not bookmarked your website, and can’t quite remember the URL, they will visit whichever website catches their eye the next time they want to purchase.

So I ask again. What are you doing with your existing customers? Are you capturing their email addresses for email marketing? Are you inviting them to follow you on any of the social media sites? If you are not maintaining contact with your existing customers, then perhaps your internet marketing strategy needs a review. Existing customers can be pure gold so if ROI is important to you, make sure you get the maximum return from every one of them.

It’s amazing how a few words can trigger a train of thought a mile long. Seth Godin has a short piece on the art of juggling. So what does juggling have to do with reputation management? Plenty really. To quote from Seth’s blog:

Throwing is more important than catching. If you’re good at throwing, the catching takes care of itself. Emergency response is overrated compared to emergency avoidance.

Of course, it’s the last sentence that caught my eye (that’s his italics, not mine). You can apply the philosophy that response is overrated compared with avoidance to reputation management. Operating online with a policy of providing good products with a good service and you will develop a reputation for excellence.

However, what had me thinking was human nature. We do make mistakes, and they can sometimes be blown right out of proportion. Imagine a juggler that has been distracted for a moment – there’s a good chance they will drop the lot. And that can happen to reputations as well – take your eye off the game for a moment and suddenly your name is mud.

Unlike a juggler, you can protect yourself to a certain degree. By building a strong reputation early, it becomes harder to undo. Those that believe in you and your products will doubt any negatives until they can prove for themselves that what is being said is true. What is important in the reputation management process is to build a strong reputation in all the places you operate in.

This includes search results, social media, and your own websites. If you can develop that reputation from day one, you will lessen the chance of any stray incident or a disgruntled employee (or customer) starting a negative campaign against you. In simple terms – reputation management starts with your activities. Like a juggler, it takes constant concentration to ensure your business is doing everything possible to build and support your reputation.

One of the biggest trends in recent years has been the adoption of online technology by offline professionals. Real estate, law, medicine, insurance, and education have really grasped the benefits of an online presence and they are using that presence to very good effect. The focus over the last eighteen months on local search by the search engines has taken their presence to a new level.

Internet users are increasingly looking to the Internet to provide information on offline services in their area.  Professional services have a rather unique standing online today, because users are not only looking for a professional to perform some role in their lives; they are also looking for in-depth information related to specific services.

A good example is the legal profession. If someone is contemplating bankruptcy, for example, they will research as much as possible about this subject before deciding to proceed. Once that decision is made, they will then look for a professional in their area to complete the process. So rather than simply obtaining the details of a local professional, users are also looking for detailed information on their services.

The lesson for professionals is very clear – a single page with your business details won’t cut it. A user may well arrive on your site and see these details, but in many cases, that is not what they are looking for. An online presence for professionals must include facts and details related to the range of services you provide. They need to be written in plain English, and be written in a style that is easy to understand.

For professionals developing an online presence, your online marketing starts with the quality of your content and the ease with which it is found while being supported with details about how you can help the user. Do it well and the user will stay on your site, probably bookmark it for a return visit, then call upon your services to complete the task.

If you’re a professional looking to develop and online presence, then talk to another group of professionals who have a clear track record in helping others develop an online presence.  We can help you develop a quality website, claim your business through local search, develop content related to your profession, then complete the process with a quality Internet marketing campaign. Our aim is to make you the authority in your profession for your region.

Recommendations have long been one of the most important driving forces in a businesses success. Often dubbed “word of mouth advertising”, that same principle that was so precious offline is now even more important online. The only thing that has changed is the name – online recommendations – and the viral nature of these recommendations.

A recent report clearly underlines how important this has become online.  The power of moms online has long been recognized and this is now delivering for those who can make use of their voice. According to the report, 79% of all moms with children under 18 are engaged in some way with social media.  More importantly, 23% of those moms purchased a product for their child based on the recommendations of others.

You don’t need to be a mathematician to realize that those percentages equate to millions of sales, all based on recommendations. Around 40% of recommendations came from Facebook while 55% came from recommendations on blogs.  The question for most marketers is how to capitalize on this trend. Unfortunately, there is only one way – you have to leave a positive impression on the moms that count – and hopefully they will recommend your products.

Moms have become a very picky group over the years. Gone are the days when you could send them a product and expect to see a recommendation on their blog. Instead, what you will now read is an honest appraisal of your product, warts and all.  Of course, the upside is that a recommendation from those respected moms is almost a guarantee of traffic to your sites, and perhaps sales.

This can be extrapolated across a range of niches. Online recommendations are becoming one of the mainstays of online marketing.  Convince those who influence others and you have won half the battle. The other half is meeting the expectations of customers coming from those recommendations.