As a small to mid-sized business owner you probably do all your marketing in-house.

Think of ways you might be able to advertise a neighbor business on the bottom of one of your flyers, like a coupon offer that he or she also places for your business on their own in-house marketing materials.

This cross-advertising or, pass-it-on marketing doesn’t cost either of you any additional monies and it really goes along way to building a strong neighborhood business community.

Buy Local is big. With chapters of various buy local organizations springing up around the country you might think this must be something big? Is there something to be said about buying local?

What is buy local? Typically it is a conscious thought before buying any product or service, like getting your carpets cleaned, or selecting a jeweler to create that exquisite engagement ring. Instead of choosing the national chain, look for a local outfit who can scrub those dingy carpets clean, or a local jeweler who might be more personable than your national mall chain clerk.

Are national chains more expensive, or cheaper than the local guy? That depends on the service or product but when you consider that more of your dollars stay in the local community when you buy local, cost isn’t always a weighing factor.

As a business, you must rely on your local consumers. Make sure they know you appreciate their patronage by participating in your own communities buy local movement or organization.

You like many online web companies have an overall goal of monetizing their vertical, that is they want to make money off what they do and or sell.

Often, many companies flip and flop while trying to develop an online identity, not really knowing who to reach out to for help and guidance, what to focus on, metrics, traffic, ROI the list is endless.

The best place to begin, whether in marketing, design, or traffic is to let the creativity fly. Don;t bottle it up, let the staff throw out the most imaginative ideas they can.

Sure, most will be unreachable or not really feasible but I guarantee that one of those ideas could be your million dollar idea.

Want to mix it up even more? Ask a group of kids about 7-10 what they would do to your website or product. You will be surprised at the answers.

Re-visit creativity often as you grow your enterprise!

Social media is the darling of the new SEO verticals, but, is it really worth the time and energy you put into it?

You could calculate the rate of return based on how much an hour you or your staff spend in managing your online social media, or using analytics you could delve in even deeper.

Social media need not be the drain on staff or budget resources you may think. Built as part of your on-going marketing strategy social media is but one element in an overall plan.

Many clients plan their social media campaigns months in advance, using their other ad spends as a base for developing any social media campaigns and or plans.

Don’t forget to make sure that your social media (Facebook and Twitter) are branded across all your offline advertising and marketing materials. Letting your customers, and potential customers know the many ways they can reach out to you is half the battle.

One of my first online ventures involved information services. I was already engaged in the information services market, we just did most of our advertising in the nationals section of the Thrifty Nickel and phone number tear-offs on payphones.

We entered the online market selling our services for a slightly increased price, advertised online using Overture an early search engine PPC that eventually became Yahoo Search. Things were moving along great, we saw an immediate increase in responses until, someone copied our program and was offering the same service (and even our exact service list mind you). It was before the DMCA act was around and it was too expensive to go the lawyer route.

After a fruitless game of cat-mouse in bidding wars, we decided the only way to combat this guy was to give away our services absolutely free, rely on affiliate commissions from e-mail subscriptions and drive him out of the market.

Did we fail, or was free a key part of our eventual turn-around strategy?

What is the Purpose of Free?

Being free doesn’t guarantee you online success; however it has some very attractive aspects seriously worth looking at. Offering free content attracts a larger audience. If you can garner the trust of your visitors, you gain access to them in a more direct method example through an e-mail newsletter or direct mail.

A Free Model

For free to work you have to have a constant stream of new readers, ample ad inventory space and advertisers willing to fill it. Many publishers rely on services like AdSense, Bidvertiser and thousands of others but the real money is in a direct relationship with the advertiser. A free model also works if you are able to “sell” something later on.

So is Free the Perfect Business Model?

I would say “maybe”. Despite apparent current profitability of select free models, the rush to find a micro-payment model for some if not all content of some publishers is just too enticing to ignore. That along with increased operating and development costs pushes many publishers and website operators to at least explore the options as they are developed.

Oh, and that guy who copied our program eventually gave up competing directly with us, so for us it was the beginning of what is today the Blue Bayou Network of web properties.

Investing in your website, whether by money, time or both while we’re in a downturn is probably one of the single best and most affordable ways to invest in your business.

The best way to invest in your website is in content creation. Devoting 80% of your time and resources into content creation will pay off in multiples. See our earlier posting on the value of content creation for more.

Investing in your website now will keep you in the top of your field or propel you there sooner and prevent your competition from usurping your rightful search position.

Other ways to invest in your website:

- Show Google you mean business and register your domain or extend your current domain registration to 10 years or more. This demonstrates that you are committed to the success of your venture. Of course this is one of only hundreds of factors that Google utilizes to rank your website, but it is one that you can lean in your favor.

- By default dedicated servers are limited to 10mbit speed. Request that your provider increase this to 100mbit. This will allow more visitors to squeeze in your doors and can usually be accomplished for no additional cost.

- Increase or add meta tags to your website. Again only one factor but search engines, other than Google use meta tags and even Google has been known too incorporate their wording into their search results earning you a better customer viewing experience.

As we talk to a number of prospective clients, we invariably will get the “I can get unlimited server space and RAM for $insert some low price here$, why would we pay twice to four times that amount?” question.

First let’s discuss the unlimited space and RAM question. The companies who extend these offers do not intend to provide you with unlimited speed and space on a virtual server. What they are offering is space, limited to no more than the average user on that server. RAM speed, if it denies the other users on the server access you can bet they will be placing limits on your website or denying your access entirely.

Who does the company want to hear from?, one user who needs more server resources or 100 that can’t access their websites because your website is placing too much demand on the server?

Server space, like a retail storefront has to have enough parking spaces to get the customers in, you have to have enough registers open to handle a rush and the doors have to be big enough to get the merchandise in and out of the establishment. Placing your website on a shared server environment may work if you don’t anticipate more than 1-2 visitors an hour but if you expect more you will encounter more growth pains than you will with a private or dedicated server.

Finally let’s discuss price. Our prices are based on fair-market value for what is provided. We offer 24 hour server support and one of the best up times in the industry. You may find cheaper web hosting services but we will be there for you 24-hrs a day, seven days a week and that kind of peace of mind is worth the money.

Who do you want working for your company? A lackadaisical teen thinking more about what he’s doing next weekend?, or an experienced company interested in your own success as much as their own? If you answered the latter, Blue Bayou would like to speak with you. Contact us today at 404-567-6095 for a no hassle quote on any of our services.

As the year-end nears, alot of website owners become nervous. It’s at this time of year that Google has been known to update its algorithm shuffling many search results and making website owners pull out their hair either in anticipation or relief from what does or does not materialize.

Google is supposedly postponing the release of the next update until after the holiday season. Though already live in one data center it won’t be moved into more data centers until the end of the 4th quarter. This is good news for most but I am eager to see the effects of caffeine (code update name) and the inclusion of more social networking results.

Stay tuned for more on the Google caffeine update after its rolled out further.

If one thing is for sure, the U.S. economy will rebound only after the seeds of innovation have been planted and had a chance to prosper. It won’t be corporations that propel us out of this economic downturn, it will be hard-working individuals who have as they always do, arrive to rescue our economy and provide the real opportunities for job growth.

I highly suspect that we will see another technology and Internet boom as more web-based applications become reality. And as is the case with the last two recessions, even more service oriented businesses and product choices.

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