What makes their business model head and shoulders above those of similar companies.?

Why can they continue to grow and succeed while other companies are reducing forces and cutting losses?

What let’s Google continue to develop new technologies and fund countless projects while your company is cutting benefits and taking away overtime?

With companies like Google, MSN and Yahoo, PPC is the name of the game. The Price Per Click model has taken over the search engine industry and made Google 23 billion alone in 2009. A true ROI model, companies are only charged if their sponsored links are clicked, the innovation comes from the way the results are created. This where Google AdWords come into play. With Google AdWords, you can create and run ads for your business, quickly and easily. Run your ads on Google and their advertising network — no matter what your budget, you’ll only pay when people click the ads. If a customer sees your ad engages it, it’s recorded in your account as a click. Monitor your clicks to see how many people choose to enter your website from your ad. With cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad, making the model very efficient and cost effective for businesses of all sizes.

It’s no wonder Google can afford an on-site masseuse…

-Anonymous

Most business cards whisper. They attempt to impress with colors and designs, but they never truly say anything to the prospect. In the 10 seconds that your prospect takes to look at your card, all it’s doing is reinforcing your initial greeting, but providing no additional value, and because of that, a potential customer never learns about your award-winning service department, or your extended hours, or your playroom area for the kids. Instead, your card is tossed out while a competitor’s card is carefully tucked into a Rolodex because it provides something of value.

Business cards should do more than convey the information that’s printed on the card. A card that’s ugly, full of corrections or flimsy tells the consumer that you’re an amateur. No matter how many wonderful services you offer, if your card brands you as unprofessional, you lose business. A clean, creative, professionally printed and visually attractive card, on the other hand, conveys a positive first impression that lingers long after your initial meeting. Still, a savvy businessperson knows that adding valueable marketing-oriented information to a business card in addition to contact information can pay dividends.

One strategy is to add text that gives specific customer benefits. Better yet, turn your business card into a marketing tool that actually asks for your prospect’s business. Asking people via your business card to visit your store or log onto your website is a great idea. But in order for this strategy to be effective, you need to be specific, and you need to give people a reason to do what you request.

The key is to evaluate what is being said by the card. You should be able to use the card as not just a contact tool, but a little billboard. Whats the point in leaving the back empty, add some text to your services, your perks, your unique selling points. Make it a vehicle from which to create new business.

Your business cards can be the most portable, affordable and versatile marketing method you use, but only if used intelligently.

The Dos Equis campaign has remained successful for about two years now. Its peak search volume of 270,000 per month is still impressive, but pales in comparison to Old Spice’s “Smell like a Man” commercials which launched in February. Its related searches have already peaked at more than 1.8 million searches per month. Old Spice’s success lies in their search engine optimization techniques. Old Spice had two primary differentiators from Dos Equis: a robust search engine optimization (SEO)/paid search strategy on traditional search engines, as well as a dedicated channel combined with paid search inside of YouTube.

YouTube, the second largest search engine in the U.S. after Google, allows consumers to re-experience the campaign over and over again. TV commercial campaigns that go viral are truly worthless without a strong YouTube presence. Old Spice clearly took this into consideration, creating an Old Spice specific YouTube channel and does paid search marketing within YouTube to further promote their videos. This coordinated effort has helped drive more than 950,000 old spice based searches on YouTube per month and over 18 million video views.

Dos Equis, on the other hand, doesn’t have a dedicated Dos Equis YouTube channel, and relies on fans to upload versions of their videos on YouTube. Without a dedicated channel, Dos Equis is also unable to promote the brand via the “promoted videos” feature on YouTube, thereby limiting its ability to control its brand message and positioning, and ultimately resulting in a just 65,000 YouTube searches a month. With Old Spices’ paid searches, their videos come up along side Dos Equis’ on youtube searches, increasing their market base even though they aren’t competing brands.

The impact of a brand advertiser’s campaign can be maximized using a coordinated search strategy. While both Old Spice and Dos Equis have seen fantastic viral growth due to their  TV campaigns, Old Spice has done a better job utilizing all available digital media channels in conjunction with its TV campaigns to optimize its impact. These efforts are generating staggering results, with reports indicating that Old Spice sales have more than doubled (107%) since the campaign launched while Dos Equis sales were outperforming the category average, but at nowhere near the same rate. This snapshot into today’s branding strategies truly shows how to effectively manage a social viral campaign and build off its success.

-Anchorman

For many, statistical justification are just useless quips that one hears almost everyday. 4 out of 5 dentists, 8 out of 10 mothers, 66.7% of voters. A quick statistic gives a little bit of a punch to any point that is being made, but for most it’s just an empty statement. In that sense, many disregard the famous (infamous?) 80/20 rule [Pareto's Principle for those fans of Italian economists] as a coincidence or an old wives tale, but as far as statistics go, the 80/20 is a good way to determine where to focus the majority of a company’s efforts. Take a look at your company, you can see many situations where the 80/20 rule comes into effect. For marketing, the golden rule is that 80% of your money comes from 20% of your clients, so you should be spending 80% of your time with your most profitable 20%. It’s a good way to re-prioritize, and reorganize efforts to make sure you are working effectively to increase the profitability of your company. Remember, in marketing, it’s about who works the smartest and most efficiently, not the hardest. If you’re getting beat in sales and running your resources thin; re-prioritize and focus on what is getting you the results, the 20%.

• web hosting
• email addresses
• website development
• customer ordering/inquiry forms
• website maintenance

Now most small businesses do not have (nor need) a full IT department dedicated to maintaining and developing these solutions. In all honesty, in many small businesses, the job may usually just fall into the lap of the  employee most comfortable with a computer . Without a dedicated IT department, building web solutions from scratch (which can be incredibly costly), businesses must seek the help of third party providers to obtain their desired web presence.

Like any open market for products and services, the web development industry is very competitive. Lacking experience in this field, just like being a first time car buyer, is  to your disadvantage. At least when buying a car, you can see your purchase. Often, the untrained eye does not fully understand what they are buying for their web presence.

I cannot tell you how many times we come across this issue at Dreamscape Marketing. We often discover issues with customers because their web situation is extremely complicated, and often completely unknown to them. I will give you an example of a recent project we worked on in our Maryland office:

A customer requested a new form be developed for his website. This seemed like a relatively simple request until we peeked into the IT environment. This customer had all five services listed above performed by different organizations. In fact, when using multiple web developers, the customer also began hosting their website in TWO places! We estimated that the customer had utilized ten businesses to develop their web presence over about four years. After centralizing this customer’s IT solutions, we were able to save them over TWO TIMES the cost of the order form we built for them. In addition, by canceling their unnecessary hosting and focusing everything else they had in a single location, we also significantly reduced the time it would take for this customer to solve future issues with their website.

Centralizing your web services can save you time and money. Understanding what you are actually using may sound rudimentary, but is often overlooked and could cost you when a problem occurs.