20 Marketing Tips

1. The most important order you ever get from a customer is the second order.

2. In direct mailing, spend 10% of your budget on testing.

3. Understanding and adapting to consumer motivation and behavior is not an option. It is an absolute necessity for competitive survival.

4. A well-designed catalog mailed to a qualified response list will probably bring a one percent response.

5. Processing and fulfillment costs incurred from the time an order arrives until it is shipped should be kept below $10 an order.

6. Know the power of repetition. Be sure your message is consistent.

7. The two most common mistakes companies make in using the phone is failing to track results and tracking the wrong thing.

8. Marketing activities should be designed to increase profits, not just sales.

9. It costs five times as much to sell a new customer as an existing customer.

10 Selling what your customers need, instead of what they want, can lead to failure.

11. Don’t think that product superiority, technology, innovation or company size will sell itself.

12. Don’t neglect or ignore your current customers while pursuing new ones.

13. People don’t buy products, they buy the benefits and solutions they believe the
products provide.

14. Any decent direct mail campaign will cost $1.25 per piece.

15. The average business never hears from 96% of its dissatisfied customers.

16. Fifty percent of those customers who complain would do business with the company again if their complaints were handled satisfactorily.

17. It is estimated that customers are twice as likely to talk about their bad experiences as their good ones.

18. Marketing is everyone’s business, regardless of title or position in the organization.

19. Exaggerated claims can produce inflated expectations that the product or service
cannot live up to, thereby resulting in dissatisfied customers.

20. Get to know your prime customers – the 20% of product users who account for 80% of the total consumption of that product class.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
MadViral online since 2005, MadViral Enterprises, LLC can help you market your business with Email Advertising,  Professional Unique email design services
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Guest Post: by Kevin Getch

Everyone’s buzzing about the new social media launch from Google dubbed “Google Buzz.” While millions of people are checking out the great new features it brings and new worlds of communication it has literally just opened up, all of us in the search engine optimization profession are asking, “How Will it Affect Local SEO?”

Let me first point out a few all but obvious strategic advantages Google Buzz has over its competition:

* Google is darn near synonymous with search, what I am saying is they control the gateway!

* Google Maps is by far the most used maps application on smart phones

* All Gmail accounts were automatically enrolled in Buzz

* Oh Yeah… and all new smart phone users that use Android automatically set up a Gmail account

I know you are thinking, they are devious geniuses… and I would have to agree!

With that said I don’t see Google Buzz taking over Facebook or Twitter in the near future in the social media realm but from a Local SEO perspective Google Buzz in the very near future will provide more Local SEO benefit than Facebook or Twitter will. I will clarify the prior statement in just a second, but first I want to share some of my experiences so far to help you get an idea on how Google Buzz may impact your company’s brand and online presence in the near future (yesterday).

I have been “buzzin” since they launched Google Buzz. First jumping into it from Gmail I was seemingly unimpressed. It wasn’t until I jumped on from my mobile phone through the updated Google Maps application that my brain started reeling! You can set a layer in your Google Maps application that allows you to see all of the other people who are “buzzin” in your local area. Though this does bring up many privacy issues (that we are not going to discuss right now, but you can choose not to share publicly), it is really cool!

When you search for businesses in Google Maps and you go to their mobile place page there is now a button that says “Buzz about this place”. You can Buzz about a business you like, you don’t like, etc. This is an area where Google is leagues a head of Facebook or Twitter as people who are using Google Maps to search for local businesses will be able to see what other people are saying about this business, much like a review.

So how is this all going to affect local SEO? Good Question!

First let’s discuss what is already in place and then let’s speculate about possible next steps by Google. Deal? OK, so we already established that Google Buzz is built into Google Maps Mobile edition, that people can buzz about businesses and that other people can see theses posts on their mobile Google Map, so it is pretty obvious that we want as much positive buzz as possible, right? Makes sense. Also, if someone posts negative buzz about your business, you may want to reply to their post to help bring them back in and salvage whatever went wrong, this also will tell other people that see this Buzz that you are concerned about your customers and that this is most likely an isolated incident. Yes, if you thought you were avoiding social media, your not anymore!

Now, let’s speculate what a few next steps for Google might be. I was writing an article on the future of search and what is interesting to me is that what I was speculating would come about in the next 3 years is partially here with the launch of Google Buzz and much more will follow in 2010. But, back to our speculation… It seems obvious to me that standard Google Place Pages will soon incorporate the “Buzz about this business” feature (Feel free to share your thoughts below if you agree or disagree). I believe they will also have a section on the Google Place Page which says something akin to “What’s the Buzz about this Business” and lists public Buzzes about the business (Again think of these as reviews). I would also think that Google would want to add a layer in their desktop Google Maps which allows Buzz users to add that same layer.

My last speculation! I promise!

I have been participating in one of Google’s lab studies with Social Media & search, but haven’t been super impressed by it and actually stopped participating a little while ago. The premise was that search results would incorporate information from your friends on social networks in the search results, so your friends posts from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc. What is all but obvious to me now, is that they were running that lab test to determine how to best serve Google Buzz results along with “the other” social media platforms in search results most effectively. So, I believe in the very near future we will start seeing this lab released as a full blow feature or at least one that can be selected to show local social information on what you are searching.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Kevin Getch is the President of Evolve 24/7, a Portland Web Design and SEO company which has a proven track record of providing small to medium size businesses with exceptional service and results. Learn more about how Google Buzz will affect SEO on our blog

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Advertising, Opt-in Leads, Email Marketing service helps small businesses market their products more effectively. We provide everything you need, http://www.madviral.com Phone: 256-778-8350 (9am-5pm CST M-F) MadViral Enterprises, LLC 171 Early Rd. Hartselle, Al. 35640