Every company whether they realize it or not, is putting forth some sort of brand. I think most people think that branding is related only to Nike, Coca-Cola, Apple or IBM, but this is not the case. Every company has a brand. Every business has a brand.

What is that brand? It’s not just the logo, or a trademark, or comprehensive identity package. It’s been described as “a gut feeling as to what your company represents”. (1) Because there’s so much competition in the world today one of the most important things for anyone doing any kind of marketing is to be authentic and real. Even the mere whiff of being inauthentic can lose a sale, the customer or a permanent reputation.

It’s also important to remember who you are. Remember that it is impossible for you to please the whole world or provide everything they need. I have seen numerous companies, large and small, lose site of this issue and cause them to branch out into all sorts of products and services and thereby dilute the message.

One of the latest of these is Google’s new foray into digital telephones. Haven’t they learned the lesson of Microsoft? Microsoft was very profitable once they stuck with producing the software that ran the hardware produced by IBM, Dell and several others. But greed knows no bounds. They’ve now immersed themselves into so many products that profits are way down.

A long time ago, General Motors establish several brands that each meant a specific thing. Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Pontiac, Cadillac, etc. all meant something different and were created for a very specific audience. Over the years this drastically changed and you could hardly tell one brand from another. I presume this was all done in the name of cost savings but it cost them the company in the process.

Never change your brand. I don’t care what it is, don’t change it. You can certainly improve upon it but don’t remove it from its essence, from what it is and who it’s meant to serve. As soon as the company changes its focus from creating something useful into something that is only profitable, a few drops of poison have been added to its drinking water.

It’s that darn word “profits”. Yes of course a business must make profits or it cannot survive, but the way they get profits that will maintain a company for the long haul is a far different strategy than the one that gives some quick profits at the expense of their future.

As soon as the focus changes only to profits its death is certain.

If you’d like some advice on establishing your brand and creating a profitable mark for the future, please fill out the form to the right and let me know what you’re looking for. Let’s build a profitable niche together.

(1-The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier)

This article was originated from FullSail.edu and a class on branding.

I asked to see his website and when I went there I learned all kinds of things about this company. First of all I discovered that they are getting a large amount of traffic (over 282,000 views per month or around 10,000 per day) and a great deal of that is from PPC. In other words they are paying for people to visit their site. Some months they pay over $16,000 per day for these visitors.

But the real killer here is that they don’t have their website properly formatted for SEO and therefore not able to take advantage of free traffic. By just applying some basic principles they could have a tremendous amount of free, regular and steady traffic to their site. I am not sure who persuaded them to just do PPC and forget about basic SEO, but they must have some motive to do so.

I recently heard of a company that did about $10 Million per year and spent about $1 Million with Google PPC per year to accomplish this. But something happened (no one knows why for sure) but they were de-listed by big G and went out of business. A few hundred employees out of work because some bureaucrat didn’t like something and pulled the plug. The management swore that they were not doing anything unethical or illegal and they had no idea what happened or why.

Never put all your eggs in one basket with Internet Marketing! Make sure you have a good footing in many areas and not just one. There is too much power in the hands of some of these people and this is ripe for corruption.

If they would pull the plug on $1,000,000 per year in advertising dollars, they will certainly do it for a lot less, and possibly any other reason they can think of.

Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google. It’s understandable why because it’s not much use being any other page. Nobody goes past page one, in fact 20% of the people don’t even know you can scroll down!

Although that seems hard to believe, it’s true. What’s also true is that the Yellow Pages are dead. I asked someone recently how much they spent per month on advertising in the Yellow Pages. They said about $600. I then asked him how many phone calls they’ve gotten over the past month from the Yellow Pages ad. He said two. So in essence he was paying $300 per lead by advertising in the Yellow Pages.

In the past, about 15 years ago, I also advertised in the Yellow Pages and spent about $1200 a month. I don’t think we ever got more than five calls a month from that ad. But that’s just the nature of things, things change. And things are changing dramatically for those who want to advertise and market their business.

All of the old mediums of advertising are suffering right now. Newspapers, television, radio, direct mail, etc. all have declining revenues because of one main reason: the Internet. Of course there are other factors such as the economy but the Internet is growing dramatically in advertising revenues. Google’s revenue last year was $22,000,000,000 just in advertising. The next closest one was Time Warner, the mega-opulous of traditional media and it had $9,000,000,000 in advertising revenue. And Google’s revenue is up substantially from the previous year.

Internet advertising has one over-arching, overwhelming advantage over all other forms of advertising: traceability. You can track down to the penny how much money a person makes from any given ad. They know exactly where it came from, what keywords they used to find it, what the resolution of their monitor was (I’m not sure why they bother with that one), what documents referred them to it, what domains they came from, etc.

No other form of advertising has this capability. Everything else is just guesswork. The Nielsen ratings, as good as they try to be, are never as accurate. And that’s the advantage of the Internet.

Not only does it track it all, in many ways it’s free. But free is a bit of a misnomer. Anyone now can write a blog or an article and have the whole world able to view it. Whether they do it or not is an entirely different issue and that’s where the problem with Internet marketing lies-it’s so easy that it’s become very crowded.

To print a newspaper you have to have massive expensive machines and elaborate distribution channels. Much of the same things are true regarding television and radio. But with the Internet, all you have to have is a connection. You can even access it from your phone nowadays. And I predict even more dramatic changes in the near future.

But the Internet has also come of age because now local search marketing is the new rage, or at least a fairly new phenomenon of the last two years. The ability to target a specific industry in a single zip code, town, city, county and/or state has never really been viable before. Now it is and it is very cost effective.

You can easily target a few specific phrases for your business that you think people are typing in the search for you. Because that’s where people are going to search for you anyway. They’re not going to the phonebook anymore.

So the key question here is not IF you will become involved in local search marketing, but WHEN? It will be a rare business that survives in the future without using this technology. You simply must have a website and it must be properly formatted. But you must also drive traffic to it because it’s very very difficult to be found on its own. Most people don’t have the time, energy, or money to to compete with the big boys and their elaborate websites.

But a simple, SEO-friendly and optimized website is an absolute necessity and as long as it’s effectively marketed, it can be your best lead generator possible.

Its also a lot less expensive than the Yellow Pages!

Contact me when you’re ready to increase your sales and find new customers. Just use the form on the right or call me at 702-726-2427.

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Here’s one of the things I see that definitely needs to be looked at: functionality. Some websites are beautifully done. They’re a masterpiece of visual subtleties and intricate designs. Flash images and excellent photos adorn their pages.

But they are on page 49 in the search!

Google can’t read photographs. All it can read is text. In fact I am currently working with one customer right now who is suffering from the same problem. They hired a designer to create an elaborate webpage and so that’s what they got-something beautiful to look at and impossible to find.

This is only one of approximately 30 very specific and important areas that websites need to fulfill in order to achieve a decent ranking. I say approximately because believe it or not, every market is different. While some things are not disputable in this discussion, others are.

I recently presented a detailed website analysis to a company who had spent a lot of money on a website. They were highly suspicious of what I was able to offer them until they saw my final product. To say they were blown away is an understatement.

If you would like me to analyze your website and show you a number of things that need to be done to help it in its rankings I am offering this service to you for a $150 minimum investment (I will let you know if that will work for your site once I see it). You will receive a detailed report outlining specific areas that need to be addressed. In my previous example I found that by doing one simple thing it moved them from page 2 on Google to page 1 overnight. Doing some of the other things I suggested they will probably be in position 1, page 1 very shortly.

Do you know how valuable it is to be in position one? There is one study that suggests that someone who is in position 1 received 8 1/2 times the clicks as someone in position 5! How much would that be worth to you? And I’m not guaranteeing anything, no one really can in the world of Internet marketing. Even if they did promise something that most likely will change and need to be re-addressed soon thereafter.

But that’s the nature of the Internet. We are creating it as we go. The future of the Internet is probably far different than most of us can even imagine. Things are happening right now in the Internet world that are changing the world in more ways than one.

I believe that eventually every company that does not have a full-time person or staff to regulate the positioning of their website regarding specific key terms, will go out of business. The amount of money associated with Internet traffic has only begun to scratch the surface. Web 3.0 is just around the corner but don’t ask me to explain what it is-that’s almost impossible to do. Why? Because we are creating it as we go along.

And who can decide which direction a crowd goes anyway?

If you want to take advantage of my website analysis program just click on the PayPal logo below and send me your information along with five keywords you are trying to target. If you want to get left behind, don’t bother.

The funny thing is that it has nothing to do with a websites “page” but was named after one of the founders of google, Larry Page.

Anyway there is still some value in having a high page rank and so if you want to know how your site ranks, just put in the URL of your website and see what it tells you.

If you care to see how popular your site is just go here:

See who links to your web site.

To have your site submitted to the very important DMOZ.org site, please follow these instructions:

She continues on to express the notion that once people have established a particular behavior, in this case going to Google to do their searching as the vast majority of users do now, will they change their behavior from that established habit?

In my opinion it really depends on only one thing-human behavior. But I’m not talking about the behavior of the searchers, I’m talking about the behavior of the management of Google.

Historic examples of human behavior have shown that once someone reaches what they consider to be the pinnacle of success, they slack off, get lazy, become arrogant and try to live off the fruits of their labors and spend all their time trying to destroy the competition. They act like spoiled Kings and eventually lose their empire.

Let me give you a prime example (I am leaving out names to protect the guilty): in our Reno Sparks area a large mall was built several years ago on the outskirts of town. We will call it the “Newer Mall”.

It became much better and bigger than previous Older Mall that was inside of town, and after many years of competition, the old King disappeared and It was razed and flattened to the ground and is currently a vacant property.

The Mall is now a Vacant Lot

The managers of the New Mall had a monopoly and used that power over their tenants in ruthless ways. They kept demanding higher and higher fees. They kept making more and more restrictions and requirements on them. The poor tenants suffered miserably and started to leave. For a time it didn’t matter because everyone was anxious to be a part of this main revenue source and purchasing traffic and quickly filled the gaps.

But a new mall sprung up on the outskirts of town called The Summit (the Newer Mall is no longer on the outskirts anymore). Another new mall is springing up on the opposite end of town called The Legends at Sparks Marina.

The Legends Mall at Sparks Marina

The Legends Mall Sparks NV

Scheels Sporting Goods at Legends Mall

Many of the higher end stores have moved to these two new malls and revenues at The Newer Mall have started a rapid decline. It is currently filled with junky kiosks and hard pressed street vendors and you feel like you are a tourist wading through the markets of a foreign country where everyone is trying to get you to just “try it on!” High pressure tactics at its worst. It is following the same path of The Older Mall, 10 years previous.

A nice little novelty store that was once in The Newer Mall had left several years ago because of the ruthless behavior of the management. For four years they tried to get The Newer Mall to change its policies. They refused to listen. The only alternative was to shut down the business and leave for good.

But guess who is now calling the novelty store begging them to return? Guess who is offering them an entire year of free rent if they will open their business again? Guess who is now extremely humbled and on their knees?

And guess who has turned them down and refused their demeaning offer?

In reality, similar stories like this have been repeated over and over again in life, business, politics, religion, etc. and it will not change even with large companies such as Google and Microsoft. Just look what happened to General Motors? Their own arrogance caused the Japanese to replace them. Their creation of the Chevy Vega and the equally disastrous Ford Pinto opened the doors for competitors. The same thing can happen to Google, Microsoft, Apple or any other company, large or small. It may take many years but it will happen if they don’t recognize it and change their actions.

As an example of something done right (and sticking with our theme of “malls”) there was another mall near the Older Mall called Shoppers Square but it had a different mentality. It took care of its customers and because it tended to business, it is still around, even though The Older Mall is gone and The Newer Mall is on the way out.

It isn’t the location of the mall that matters, but the business tactics of the management that makes all the difference.

SHOPPERS SQUARE MALL

Yes, human behavior must definitely be considered when thinking about the future of these companies but it isn’t the searchers behavior that matters most; it’s the leadership and management of the companies that makes the most difference. As long as Google keeps up its technology, remains aware of the latest trends and vows to keep up with them by delivering the most relevant content, then they will remain the King of the search engines. If they don’t, they will leave the door wide open to Bing or anyone else that wants to take over.

This article was written in response to a discussion at FullSail.edu.

Universities that teach Internet marketing programs require you to sign a Global Professional Standards (GPS) form. One of the most important items of this professional standards agreement is that you won’t plagiarize what other people have written on the Internet. If you want to sell an affiliate product or do something with Google Adsense you may have purchased an Internet marketing program from some of those big-name gurus. I don’t need to name any names here, there are too many to list.

But almost everyone that I’ve ever seen who claims to be a guru in this industry teaches people to write articles to create back links to your products in an unethical fashion. I can’t tell you how many of them say something like this, “Many people have a hard time trying to find information about what to write. Just go to _ _ _ _articles.com and look up your subject. Just reword each sentence so you aren’t plagiarizing, and there you have it! Voilà an instant article!”

This is clearly against the Global Professional Standards that should be maintained by anyone in this industry. No wonder there’s so much junk out there that you have to wade through when doing a proper search for something you’re interested in!

It’s one thing to do research on a product you are selling but it’s another one just take an article that someone has written and rephrase it, line by line to fit your needs. I know that there are people that have made a lot of money in Internet marketing and there are those who want to make a lot of money in this industry, but this isn’t right.

And here’s something you may want to consider, a standard by which you may judge whether something is right or wrong: anybody who claims that you can make instant cash, and then teaches you an unethical method to get it, should be avoided.

If you have purchased a program from any of these big-name gurus who openly flaunts an unethical method of reaching the goal, I would send it back and demand a refund. Remember the 10 Commandments, at least the one that says “thou shalt not steal?” That’s what plagiarism is-stealing.

Every commandment given has a blessing and a curse associated with it. After 3500 years you would think that we would see the wisdom of following all of the 10 Commandments. But alas, we only think about today and a quick buck would sure make a nice change in our life. “To heck with the Commandments, I need to pay the power company.”

And so our society slips a little bit lower and we wonder why we feel like were being cursed.