As most people know, printer companies don’t make anything off the actual printer itself. That’s why they are usually given away free or at a substantial discount. Where they get you is in the re-purchasing of the ink cartridges which sell for obscene amounts of money; you can easily pay $20 for a cartridge that you know cost them a couple of bucks to make.

Today at Office Depot I decided to try a refill kit marketed for the price of an actual cartridge, but they claimed to refill the cartridge up to five times. That means it would only cost 20% of a replacement cartridge! Brushing off my wife’s skepticism, I bought it and hurried home to give it a shot.

One hour and two sets of permanently stained hands later, I came to the realization that doing-it-yourself sometimes ends up costing you much more time and money than the alternative.

This applies to many things in life. That’s why we hire experts to take care of things we might otherwise wonder if we could do ourselves.

One of the most frequent questions I hear is, why should I pay you to do our PR/SEO/Google AdWords when I can do it myself? After all, it doesn’t seem like rocket science.

Often times what these companies will find is that they end us spending too much time working on something they don’t fully understand. They may end up spending more money to undo the mistakes they made than if they had just hired experts to do it right the first time. And they may damage their company image and sales if they make mistakes while trying to do it themselves.

Penny wise, pound foolish? It does often apply in marketing.

The amount of control and reporting given by Google is astounding, with the ability to control your campaign in real-time and instantly reach a potential market of millions.

What’s made Google AdWords so successful is the relevancy of your ads popping up beside search results just as someone is looking for what you may have to offer.

But the simplicity of AdWords is also its danger. The vast majority of Firecracker’s clients have tried, unsuccessfully, to manage their own AdWord campaigns.

And you can be sure of one thing. If you aren’t paying attention to AdWords, you will quickly find yourself in negative ROI territory. Stories abound of companies who are disillusioned with AdWords as the cost of advertising skyrocket for little in return.

The secret to succeeding with Google AdWords is actually very simple to know, but difficult to implement.

The secret is, you must constantly test test test.

While this secret holds true for marketing in general, no other means of marketing has the instant statistical feedback and the ability to slice and dice data in so many ways as Google Analytics does.

If you do not test, you do not know what to do to improve your results.

What should you test? In a word, everything. Test headlines, test inserting dynamic keywords, test ad copy, test capital letters, test call to actions, test landing pages, test offers.

Without a solid understanding of multivariate testing (testing multiple variables at once), at least start by doing Split A/B tests (fancy way of saying hold one constant, change the other and see what the result is).

Unfortunately in this day and age, few people have the time to test and measure AdWord campaigns. That is where a firm such as Firecracker can come in handy. We do it so you don’t have to.

Remember, start testing and tracking results. Success is consistently doing little things right over time. If you persevere, the results will follow.

First off, some don’ts:

-DON’T use acronyms. Acronyms are impersonal and unoriginal.

-DON’T use a name that is too generic like “Strategic Development Initiatives Group”

-DON’T pick a name that is too similar to an existing product or company

-DON’T pick a name that is likely to be misspelled

-DON’T settle on a name without first Googling it or running at least a preliminary check with your Secretary of State

Now, what you should do:

-DO pick a name that evokes a strong reaction, either a mental image of brilliant color, action, smell or something contradictory

-DO use the availability of the URL web address as your main determining factor of name selection

-DO go against the grain. If your competitors use dry acronyms, use explosive words. If your competitors use technical jargon names, use something with no relations to jargon.

-DO try and pick as short a name as possible. The best names are powerful and to the point.

-DO run full checks on the legal availability of your name before incorporating it, registering it as a DBA or trademarking it

Good luck and happy brainstorming!

Ed

The law is this: as time goes on, the interest level of the lead continues to go down.

The way it works is similar to the half-life decay of radioactive materials. On Day 1 just after a prospect has submitted a lead, they are the most radioactive or keenly interested in your product/service. If you get hold of the prospect on Day 1, your chances of moving them along the sales process is very good.

Starting from Day 2 on, every day that goes by where you do not speak with a prospect means that the likelihood they remain interested continues to deteriorate.

After about ten days have gone by, you might as well move the lead to your “cold” pile. If you hadn’t gotten hold of them by now, it’s unlikely they’ll still be interested UNLESS your product or service is so unique that your competitors are few and far between OR your sales process is extremely long (years).

If you have any sort of sales automation software or even if you track prospects in Excel, simply create a column for “Date Submitted” and “Date Contacted”, along with “Date Closed”. You’ll find that leads with a large difference between “Submitted” and “Contacted” are rarely closed.

So what does this mean? It means that you must do everything in your power to make first contact with a lead within the first 24 to 48 hours. Sometimes it is out of your control in terms of their availability, but we’re talking about what is under your control.

Don’t waste your marketing budget on generating leads only to let them sit and decay.

But through my years of dealing with editors and reporters, I’ve come to the conclusion that if you do not follow this tip, most of your PR efforts will be futile.

So here it is. If you want to be successful in PR, you need to think like the press does.

That’s it?

Yup. But trust me, it is easier said than done.

That’s because we all suffer from “me-itis”. This is a syndrome where we love to drone on and on about how great our companies are, how wonderful our new products are, and how important our mission statement is.

The truth of the matter is, no one really cares, least of all the press.

After all, why should they? Their job isn’t advertising, it’s news. And in news, they have to find stories that are newsworthy.

Are you paying attention? That is the secret right there. Newsworthy.

Every time you contact an editor or reporter, ask yourself “is this newsworthy”? If I was an editor or reporter, would I care? How can this be positioned so it is of interest to the readers of the newspaper, magazine, web site or blog?

Again, this sounds easy, but in reality it is much harder than it seems. It requires a fundamental shift in how you think. A shift away from “me, me, me” towards “you, you, you”.

Next time you begin any PR efforts, remember: always think from the press’ point of view and ask yourself, “how is this newsworthy”? You’ll find this one tip alone will help you secure much more coverage.

That’s an axiom that holds true in almost all walks of life, and it should apply to those who see ads that guarantee Page 1 placement on search engines.

Think about it. Without even asking what industry you’re in, a company is guaranteeing that you will have Page 1 ranking. Oh really? In say even the real estate vertical? Or the weight loss vertical?

If you read the fine print, and so few do, you’ll find that their guarantee either uses what’s called “black hat” SEO (in other words, shady stuff) or they guarantee it on pages with very narrow or specific terms. Either of these are not beneficial to you in the long term.

Likewise, think long and hard before going with a PR firm that guarantees your article placement. The press has long bastions of impartiality, or so the saying goes. What does that tell you about the media outlet that guarantees placement in exchange for…what?

You are far better off putting in the effort of getting coverage in respected journals and blogs whose reputations aren’t those of paid-off shucksters, similar to certain consulting firms that will issue positive official-looking analyst coverage for fees of over $10,000.

There is an analogy on SEO and PR guarantees that might drive this home.

In poker, you can study your opponent’s tendencies. You can learn to calculate pot odds on the fly. You can play position perfectly. You can manage your bankroll. You can adapt to suit the evolving playing style of the table. But in the end, you are not guaranteed to win.

Similarly, you can do everything correctly in SEO and PR, optimizing your site for keywords, tagging everything correctly, generate quality backlinks, build relations with reporters, write a brilliant pitch. But in the end, you are not guaranteed a Page 1 ranking or press coverage.

What you want to do is to maximize your chances for success. There’s no substitution to knowledge and hard work. Avoid shady guarantees of the easy path.

Online search has become so efficient that most Internet users are now impatient with anything less than great results.

The finding emerged from the iProspect-sponsored “Blended Search Results Study,” conducted by JupiterResearch and The NPD Group.

Nearly seven out of 10 respondents said they clicked a search result within the first page of results, and 92% clicked a result within the first three pages of search results.

More search engine users surveyed clicked the first page in 2008 (68%) than did so in 2006 (62%).

At the same time, fewer search engine users surveyed were willing to click results past the third page in 2008 (8%) compared with 2002 (19%).

Respondents did not abandon the hunt altogether. Instead, nearly half of search engine users who continued their search process after not finding what they wanted changed their search terms and/or search engines after reviewing just the first page of search results. More than nine out of 10 respondents did so if they did not find what they wanted in the first three pages of search results.

SUMMARY: If your company relies on search engines for traffic, start taking SEO seriously.

-from www.eMarketer.com

I’d like to offer three reasons why I believe it’s wrong to cut marketing during a recession.

First, one of the main goals of marketing is to generate sales. And isn’t that what’s needed the most during an economic downturn? Rather than focus on laying off staff, how about looking over all marketing personnel with a fresh eye to make sure that everyone is focused on sales and ROI. Examine marketing spend and delay or eliminate items that aren’t directly related to the main goal. Is that sponsorship of the golf tournament really necessary? Do we really need that large a tradeshow booth, or could we live with a hospitality suite and divert the saved budget towards a direct mail campaign?

Second, since your competitors will most likely be cutting back their marketing spend, you may find marketing costs lower during a recession. Magazines and web sites may be more willing to bargain and offer you some hot deals on placement and packages since their sales people will be hurting. Negotiate hard, and even look to lock up some long-term packages that might carry over even after the economy rebounds. In other words, be the company that buys the Christmas tree in January.

Third, sometimes the way to succeed is to zig when everyone else is zagging. When will a better opportunity come to hit your prospects harder than when your competitors are cutting back their advertising, marketing or public relations? I say use this against your competition. Take this opportunity to blitz the market, and watch your momentum carry over into the good times.

If done correctly, you can make wine out of water by spending judiciously but aggressively during a recession.

Shameless Plug: Firecracker has extensive experience with technology companies and would love to be the one to help you aggressively spend during this recession. Get better bang for your buck, and enjoy our rates which can be up to 40% less than our competition.

The first example is the recent color scheme change to Bank of America. At least in Southern California, I’ve noticed that the BofA signs and ATMs have all gone from predominantly blue with tinges of red to predominantly red with tinges of blue. Communist jokes aside, what is the point of all this? I’m sure it’s based on some study that they paid consultants umpteen thousands of dollars to conduct, but my bone isn’t with the seemingly frivolously change in color scheme (although that alone could be debated). It’s with the fact that BofA’s customer service is so horrendous. There are blogs and blogs out there dedicated to horror stories of BofA’s notoriously poor service, and I myself have been subjected to a nightmare of a situation that made me personally switch to another bank.

But not getting into the details, the point of this is that the millions of dollars being spent on flip-flopping from blue/red to red/blue could have been more wisely spent on improving customer service. After all, what is going to have more of an impact on if I choose Bank of American, a red ATM or a red face from dealing with poor customer service?

While it’s considered best practice to use a form to generate leads from marketing efforts, be they landing pages from search engine marketing or simply from your contact page, be very careful in how you treat the leads coming in or it could end up doing more harm than good.

What’s the first thing you think about when you see a form on a web site?

Likely it’s “oh crap, I bet no one is going to get back to me.”

You see, we all have this sneaking suspicion that when you click Sumbit, the form you just filled out goes into a black hole…the same black hole where all our single socks disspear to from the laundry.

So Form Rule #1 – make sure you follow up on leads or inquiries fast. Do it as fast as they come in ideally. If that’s not possible, absolutely within 24 hours. In fact, it’d be helpful to put a blurb under the form “We’re committed to replying to your inquiry with 24 hours” or something to that effect.

What’s the consequence of not following Rule #1? Simple. You confirm your prospect’s worst suspicion, and your firm’s reputation just took a serious ding.

Form Rule #2 – keep the number of fields to a minimum. Less is always better. There is a direct correlation between the number of fields and the likelihood someone will finish filling out the form. If it looks too overwhelming right off the bat, forget about it. Try just 3 fields, their name, company and email address.

Form Rule #3 – put reassuring copy under the Submit button that you will never ever ever ever reveal their information to third parties. People are antsy enough about giving their information to a stranger. Make them feel a tab bit more comfortable.

Form Rule #4 – some people just hate forms period. They hate them more than they hate the sound of nails on a chalkboard. So try and put your company’s contact info on the same page as the forms page. Offer an alternative with a phone number and email address.

Shameless Plug – Firecracker PR has extensive experience creating killer landing pages and can help you in all areas of your marketing and PR. We’ll help you generate more leads so you can learn firsthand how to implement these Form Rules.