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It’s likely that you have heard of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and might even possibly be an accredited business.  But what does being an “Accredited Business” of the Better Business Bureau really mean?

#1 Branding- Businesses and consumers trust other businesses that have good ratings with the BBB.  The mere act of showing your BBB Accreditation tells other individuals that your company has high ethical standards and Integrity.

#2 Business Resources- the Minnesota BBB offers several luncheons and seminars throughout the year that businesses can attend for a nominal “BBB Member” fee.  Which are typically hosted by well recognized experts in the field and Minnesota’s business community.

#3 Paper and Electronic Advertising- the BBB of Minnesota now offers a new paper and electronic publication entitled the BBB SmartSource that has circulation to over 700,000 households in the state of Minnesota and North Dakota.  In addition, they offer a free ND & MN Business Directory for consumers and businesses so that they can easily locate other BBB accredited businesses.

For more information about how the Better Business Bureau can help your business, check out the below video (produced by TMA E-Marketing) or visit http://www.thefirstbbb.org.

In the good old days, buying advertising was as simple as calling a media buyer to find out how much inventory was available.  Advertising could be purchased by length and frequency where simple pricing rates could apply.

In the online realm, a creative executive soon finds that the model is not only dissimilar, but it’s nearly non-existent.  This especially becomes apparent when considering the world of search engine optimization and social media.  Do these questions sound familiar?

How much does it cost to get my site ranked #1 on the top of Google?
Can you get my company into facebook, twitter, etc.?

If you have been asked these questions in the past, you likely go into “repeat mode” where a 10,000 ft. education overview is required to explain your consulting rates.  And even if you are lucky to have a prospect that is willing to hear your entire pitch, the whole thought of having to wait for results is not the advertising norm and will typically spawn a negative reaction…even among seasoned executives.  For those that find themselves in this situation, I suggest you may want to view social media and search engine optimization like strength training.

1.    It may look like a big job- no one said that it was going to be easy.  In contrast to purchasing advertising, disciplines like search engine optimization and social marketing take time to grow and harvest.  Everyone would love to have instantaneous results, but this is not realistic

2.    It takes continual practice- to be successful with most online media, you’ll need to continually try new things and perfect others.  No one has a magic formula for success.  If it were an exact science, it wouldn’t be marketing.

3.    Frequency is key- just like building muscles, you need to continually develop your online presence, grow your social footprint, talk to industry professionals, and keep reading.

4.    Think holistically vs. too narrow- too much of anything is typically not a good thing.  Like strength training, focusing globally is better than just doing one thing.  In addition, taking time to rest certain areas will allow you to rejuvenate and worth those areas from a new perspective.

5.    If you let things sit, they lose strength- if you’re serious about managing a certain channel, you can’t “get it to a point” and decide to drop off without incurring some consequences.  This isn’t to say that you can’t pick it back up, but as a general rule of thumb, continual maintenance is needed to keep things at status quo.

The idea that marketing promotion takes time to build strength is not a totally new idea.  The fact of the matter is that most advertising channels do not translate into instant success by merely using them.  Every advertising medium needs time to work their magic, measure results, and tweak.  Social media and search engine optimization should be treated no differently other than it will typically take more initial invested man-hours to build momentum.  Everyone wants to see results overnight, but in many cases is not possible given the medium’s characteristics.  An experienced online consultant should be able to set realistic expectations and milestones that are required to achieve your business objective.  Advice your prospects to be patient and build strength, the results are just around the corner.

I have been searching online since 1999.  The search world is an amazing realm that has capabilities no other media available can compete with and is geared toward both businesses and consumers in the same capacity.

Imagine a world with out internet.  All businesses and consumers would have is the phone book and push ads such as; radio and TV.  We would have to manually find phone numbers when we are hungry for take-out and mail letters through the post office.  Businesses would be throwing more money into direct mail and TV with no track-able ROI.  Although the Internet has been around for only a short time it has been integrated into everyone’s lives and is now a normal daily ritual for almost all of us.  The vast amount of information that we all have at our finger tips has benefited the masses as a whole.

Business and the Internets

Marketing and ad efforts via the Internet have been growing exponentially in the past 5 or so years and there is no sign of stopping.  A business website is the first step in becoming current with the times.  The second step is search engine optimization which will allow Google, Yahoo, MSN and the others to list your site in the engines. The third and final step is creating links to your site.  Link building shows the search engines how relevant you are and therefore will raise your listing higher on the page.

If you implement the three above steps you are on your way to a happy online life!

My professional background is 25 years of broadcast sales and marketing, not IT.  As a recent 3-year-old internet sales/marketing professional, I want to share some observations about selling the internet as a source of revenue or to address public relations challenges versus traditional media.

Traditional Media
The internet or the company website can be included under the umbrella of the traditional media in the context that it shares the same goal of improving revenue and communicating with current and new customers.

Many business and industries owned or managed by human beings are familiar with the technology and terminology associated with television, radio and print campaigns.  We all know what a tv/radio set is, we all know what a newspaper is.  We are familiar :10, :30: or :60 second commercials and can maybe even ballpark their cost.  We know commercials need to be produced.  With print we know about print size, placement, etc.  We are familiar with the importance of “targeting” a demographic.  We don’t understand the technology behind implementing the above media but we use it because we know it “works”.  (After 25 years of selling broadcast media, I still don’t know how it worked. I just know that it did because my customers were happy about the results = $.)

The Internet
Now throw in this thing called the internet, a new technology and new terminology.  On top of this is the challenge of learning how to use it as a source of revenue.  A common response I get when I first walk into the front door of a company and inquiry about internet marketing opportunities is, “Talk to our IT department”.   If I were to walk in to discuss tv or radio advertising I would be directed to the marketing department.  I have run into very few IT persons who have sales or marketing experience.

An analogy – A car dealership

Sales and marketing professionals do not fix or repair cars and the service department (IT department) does not sell or market the cars, but both are needed with one goal: keep and maintain happy, satisfied customers so that each gets paid.

The point of this maybe self evident by now… It is not necessary to totally understand the technology and terminology before a internet campaign can be implemented.  It is however, important to acknowledge it as a powerful sales and marketing tool (just as tv, radio and print are) to talk to new and current customers, to increase revenue or address public relations challenges.  Finding a person in the internet industry that you trust… now that is another topic.

In my last post, I began the discussion of where you could promote your website for free in spite of our tight economy.  Some of the resources I covered ranged from free website directories to popular social networking sites that any website owner could potentially get their brand in front of thousands of visitors.  In this post, i would like to discuss some additional media outlets to push your company’s brand, however may take a little more time on your part to take full advantage of each channel.  As they say, nothing is truly free, but with a little hard work on your part, I believe that you will find the below resources extremely valuable and ultimately translate into new business for your company.  So lets get the the brass tacts as they say!

Shopping Comparison Sites- up to this point I have discussed free Websites that you can submit any Website to.  Shopping comparison sites on the other hand, are typically only for company’s that sell products or goods.  Although many shopping comparison websites charge a fixed fee to get listed in, there are many excellent free websites sites (including Google) that you can submit a product datafeed that will list your products for free. However, there is a very comprehensive list of shopping comparison sites worthwhile to submit to, but don’t be discouraged by the word “free.”  Just because some shopping comparison websites charge nothing to get listed, doesn’t mean that they don’t provide excellent results.  (Note of interest- if you are interested in going beyond the free shopping engines, my favorite “Paid” shopping channels are PriceGrabber and Yahoo Product Submit…I have had best ROI experience from these paid sources.)  Anyways, here is a short list of free engines that I believe any an e-commerce owner should submit to:

• Google Product Search (formerly Froogle)
• The Find
• MSN Live

Video Sharing Sites- as video has revolutionized the way we share and disseminate information, online video gives your visitors the kind of content they can easily digest and share with others.  Additionally, if you produce a video about your product or service, you can add it to your website as well as submit to virtually 100’s of free video sites that will give you worldwide exposure to millions of viewers.  Best of all, most video sharing sites will give you a valuable link back to your Website, thus increasing your sites link popularity.  If you are new to video sharing sites, I recommend the following to start with: YouTube, Blip.tv, Google Video, Vimeo, Yahoo Video.  If you are still hungry for more, here is a list 180 video sharing sites for reference.

Free Photo Sharing Sites- if you don’t have videos to promote your company, the chances are that you already have a digital photos that you may want to consider sharing and adding to some of the Web’s favorite free photo sharing sites.  As many of you may already know about Flickr, I would also like to recommend one of the best-kept secrets of a free photo sharing site called www.PhotosYourWay.com.  I’m not sure exactly when this Website launched, but its obvious that they are serious about giving you even more for less.  What I find truly great about PhotosYourWay is that its not only a great site to upload and share your photos, but you can also opt to sell them on their sister site ImagesYourWay, which follows a similar format to iStockPhoto.  I’m not sure why many others haven’t taken notice to this site, but its not at as all commercialized (filled with ads) and has more features than the others put together.  Getting an account is free and only takes a minute or two to set up.

Press Releases- for some reason, many companies either forget about public relations or don’t fully realize the benefits that PR offers.  For search engine marketers, PR (press releases in particular) are a great tool to maximize the great linking potential that ultimately helps Websites rank better in the search engines.  In addition, public relations give companies great exposure and branding that other advertising mediums lack.  There are many paid press release distribution networks on the Web that would be happy to publish your press release for a fee, however there are also many free resources available to get the word out.  Keep in mind that although though press releases are great to get your company’s news out, PR distribution sites are not a dumping zones for junk news, general articles, or non newsworthy content about internal affairs.  If you are new to issuing or submitting press releases, I suggest contacting a company such as TMA E-Marketing that knows the ins and outs of the media outlets to get the most of your news story.  Here is a short list of some distribution sites to consider

• PR.com
• openPR
• 1888PressRelease

For more a more comprehensive list of free places to submit your press release to, please see Naked PR, written by Jennifer Marten (a very talented PR specialist) whom gives a very comprehensive overview of the ins and outs of what PR professionals are looking for in delivering a news pitch.

Articles- last but not certainly least on the top of my list to promote your Website for free are article sites.  As the old saying goes, content is king, and there are literally thousands of free article sites on the Internet that are ready to accept free articles to publish.  But just as I finished stating about press releases, your articles should be creatively written and offer something substantial to your prospective audience that’s worth reading.  In any respect, free articles are great to add to your Website and allow others to read about your industry and company.  When executed correctly, you can gain significant exposure over your competitors and win over prospects that are interested in doing business with an established company.  Again, there are literally hundreds (if not thousands of Websites on the Web ready to accept free articles), but the below are some of my favorites:

• Ezine Articles
• GoArticles
• Article Alley

As you can see, there is light at the end of tunnel to promote your business even if you dont have a dime to spend.  When clients ask me about how they can quickly increase their exposure online and their search engine rankings, I recommend many of the above resources to jump start their promotion efforts.  Although many of them may not sound “ground breaking,” they are proven tactics that even the largest companies in the world use to increase their company’s online exposure.  Some may appear easier than others, but if you are truly serious about getting the most output from your website, i sugest that you review each tactic carefully and make an effort to execute each of them in a well planned media planning schedule.  Should you come across any road blocks, dont hesitate to drop us a line.