I love linking my social networking sites, blogs and video sites together using the power of Posterous. The best thing since sliced bread.

Verizon has already pulled the plug on residential phone books in New York, Florida and Pennsylvania and Virginia is next in line. AT&T plans to conduct a similar two-year trial in Jacksonville, Miami, West Palm Beach and central Florida.

Other states that have granted permission to quit printing residential listings or that have requests pending include Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin. And there is little doubt that this list is only going to get longer with time. It makes me wonder if it’s the beginning of the end of the golden phone book era.

Most carriers argue that residential phone books have outlived their expectancy and should be phased out sooner than later. They also use the “environment” factor to pitch their cause to regulatory authorities as lesser phone books would mean less paper and ink. WSJ reports an interesting finding that the number of traditional land lines has been declining for the better part of the decade, and now are being disconnected at a rate of nearly 10 percent each year. While I agree that this number is hardly substantial to support the business case for mass production, still a part of me refuses to accept the inevitable.

There’s no question that the decline in number of phone books being printed every year is great news for the environment. But with regulatory authorities playing into the hands of wireless carriers, what about the people who do not use the internet at all? What about the Baby boomer generation who still prefers to use a landline phone because they find it difficult to understand how a smartphone works? Would newspapers have the same fate? After all, it’s about the environment, right?

Obviously not. There’s more than what meets the eye here. The White Pages are no longer a lucrative commercial proposition for carriers and therefore it’s unsurprising that they are about to be axed. In contrast, Yellow Pages still represent a flourishing business prospect and the Yellow Pages Association says that it’s doing just ”fine” as 550 million residential and business directories are still printed every year.

Carriers like Verizon have adopted a “Please All” approach by saying that they will continue to deliver directories that contain business and governmental listings along with the consumer guide information provided in white pages directories, but the residential listings would only be available by request.

I’m also concerned over our increasing dependency on the internet for just about anything and everything. Though it sounds old school, I’d rather be off the internet for at least some of my daily communication needs. I do not know if Internet “really is running out” but going online for everything doesn’t appeal me.

Time sums it up beautifully that the end of residential phone books is “yet another sign of the analog communication tree falling in the forest of the digital landscape”. What’s your opinion on hard-copy phone books? Do you think that the explosion of internet and social media has splent doom for phone books? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment below this post.

Your North Bay business will benefit a lot from various Internet marketing methods. But you don’t have to spend millions of dollars just to get some decent exposure for your local company. There are ways to make your business be seen and felt without doing overkill with your advertisement expenses.

Make use of your online power – through Internet marketing. Here are simple methods that you may employ to boost the visibility of your business without shelling out more than what you can afford. However, these techniques need patience and some footwork to produce agreeable results.

Firstly, you need a website before you can make use of these low cost Internet marketing strategies. So go create one or hire a web developer. It will display your products and services. This will be used in employing the following Internet marketing techniques.

1. Affiliate Marketing

This is the process of recruiting a network of smaller websites known as affiliates to drive targeted traffic to a website. Ad copy and links will be provided by the advertisers. You will have to pay a certain percentage of the sales profit to your affiliates.

2. Links

One of your goals should be to attain a good ranking with search engines. One way to do it is through link building. This could be done through trading links to other businesses that are related with yours.

3. Newsletters

Sending out newsletters to your subscribers (those who signed up for your newsletters) will help greatly in establishing a good working relationship with your customers or prospective customers. It has to be short, sweet, consistent and written for a general audience.

4. E-mail Marketing

As one of the best cost-effective Internet marketing tools, it stays as a very important method of keeping your customers aware of your products and services. Just make sure to avoid spamming or soon enough you will have to close down you business due to complaints.

5. Articles

If you put quality content in the form of articles in your website along with your products and services, search engines will have to index your website. Getting you website indexed by popular search engines means more traffic for you.

6. Forums

Expand your Internet network is through joining forums that mainly discusses stuff regarding or related to your products and services. Actively posting responses or answers and asking relevant information will build your reputation as that forum’s member and boost your company’s visibility through your signature files. These signature files are those that go with your every post. Links to your website could be included in this signature.

These are simple yet very effective techniques to use when leveraging the power of the Internet to market your North Bay business. You need only practice one or two methods at a time to see results… like anything else, you need to be diligent about your efforts. Stay with it, in this race it’s always the slow and steady that wins. Of course unless you get yourself a MakeFast Marketing rep to put your campaign on a bullet train.

But with millions of websites out there being visited by millions of computer users, how can you make sure that your ad can be seen by your target customers and that your leads will be followed by these users?  Here are a few tips.

1.  Place an ad on the websites frequented by your target customers.  Before doing this, you need to define who will be your target customers.  Placing an ad on sites that they usually visit will increase the possibility that your ad will gain the attention and will be followed by local customers.

Also, consider the website’s search engine placement, traffic, external linking and the other ads placed on it.  External linking will determine if there are other sites that link to this site.  This will mean that people can get to the site where your ad is placed, even if they are browsing a different site.  Check if many of your North Bay competitors have ads on this site.

2.  Placing ads on some sites cost some money.  However, there are also sites that can place a link to your site, product or service in exchange of having their link being displayed on your site.  This is also true about the newsletters sent by site owners to its mailing list members regularly.

Also, having helpful links placed on your site and having sites link to your pages help in boosting search engine ranking.  This is similar to making a statement that your site’s content is important that other sites have links to your web pages.

3.  Pay-per-click (PPC) is also a good method in Internet marketing.  You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked.  If you prefer this method of advertisement, make sure that you are using services that set limits on daily expenses.  There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor the PPC results.

4.  Choose your domain name wisely.  It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement.  Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5.  Make sure you have useful content on your sites.  While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer’s confidence in your site.  It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines.  So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6.  When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers.  What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site?  Also, use specific keywords or key phrases.  Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

7.  Track your ads.  Always check how much you have spent on placing links on frequently visited sites and on PPC.  There are services that allow you to monitor PPC transactions and how many of these end in sales.  You always need to consider if the ads that you have placed on these websites are getting you to your target consumers and if these ads can lead to revenue.

One final tip on marketing products and services, sell the benefits.  It will help your marketing strategies a lot if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product specifications.  Product specifications may not mean much to customers, unless they know what these stand for (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Many people say getting to the top of search engine results is difficult since millions of websites exist, which can be using the same keywords.  While this is true, this doesn’t mean that your website has to stacked under your competitors’ websites when presenting search engine results.  Strategic advertising and linking, together with useful content, can also get you to the top of the search results.

If all this seems very complicated…it’s because it is. Thats were me and my staff can help out… we’re trained visious marketing dogs… we eat the competition. Just make sure you’re the one to hire us, and not your competition.

Grrrr….

It’s not always easy to grasp what exactly new tactics and advertising methods can do for you. Hell it may even be hard to grasp exactly ‘what’ these new methods are. I’ve decided to post an interesting case study to illuminate the point in question, but first let me shine a light on the most important detail…the prospect…the customer, in reality, the online  “searcher”. By far the most important part of the equation.

If for example the searcher is looking to make a high ticket purchase, lets say a kayak. In today’s market the searcher has the world at his fingertips, literally, he is able to shop on the spot he stands with portable hand held devises such as an I-Phone. Even the eldest generation have become comfortable with  “at minimum” comparing prices online. The searcher types into the search bar what he or she is looking to purchase in this case “kayak’s”… the searcher soon realizes they have gotten results back from all around the world. So the searcher refines they’re search term to include the city they are presently shopping in, and “Bingo” a list of all the competing kayak shops in town…how convenient.

Stick with me here…now lets say your a kayak shop owner and lucky to be one of the 10 or so listed on the first page of results. Not bad…right? Now what if you were able to push all of you competitors off that page of results? How effective do you think that type of advertising would be?  I thought so. Here’s the case study. I did a small test in the “Tanning” market,  I did some marketing magic and voila… now when a searcher is looking for the best place in town to get a tan there’s a pretty clear choice as to who’s the best or in their eyes the most popular. Here’s the results…when you type in “North Bay tanning”… keep in mind these results are “fluid” and change constantly, but always remain showing my friends business in the best possible light.. Click Here For The Case Study Results

Geodomains are highly used in the tourism industry.  For example, if a person visits “North Bay”.com, they will see a site that offers information on what a tourist can do if they are planning a trip to North Bay.  However, this should not dissuade other markets from centering in on a geodomain.  As long as a product or service can be distributed outside of the webmaster’s location, they should not be afraid to use geodomains that target national or even international audiences.

This is not to say that geodomain marketing isn’t better for some industries than it is for others.  Why?  It’s because the areas that people live in have their own cultural and sociological needs.  Even if one markets in their own country, people living in one state or province may not have as much of a demand for a particular product or service.  For example, consider a website that is marketing private boats.  If they use a geodomain that encompasses an area that is lower-income, naturally, their efforts won’t result in many sales.  This is why it’s very important that webmasters investigate the general characteristics associated with the location they would like to create a geodomain for.

So, how can a person find a geodomain name?  Well, chances are state-based or country-based geodomains are taken at least for the most common domain name extensions.  If they can’t get these types of geodomains with lesser known extensions, they can consider combining a geographical term with something else or look for a more specific geodomain.  When looking for something more specific, webmasters will need to consider making geodomains based off of cities, counties and even popular neighborhoods.  They need to do this both for their own country and for other countries, provided that their website can meet the needs of an international audience.

In conclusion, a geodomain can be a good method for marketing, if a webmaster doesn’t mind trying to appeal to a local audience.  Research will still be required to make sure a geodomain properly fits what is being promoted, but overall a webmaster will find that with the right geodomain, they will be able to generate more sales with less advertising expenses.

This is because the keywords used in geodomains are not highly focused on in the Internet marketing world, especially those that are very specific.  And when this scenario happens, a website has a greater chance of ranking higher in search engine listings.

For more information on how you can use Geodomains to tap into more targeted leads and consumers in your area, get in touch with us… it’s how we roll

In today’s business world, there are two types of small business marketing consultants:  Traditional small business marketing consultants  and Online small business marketing consultants. A traditional small business marketing consultant can help you create a marketing strategy using traditional tools. They understand how to advertise your business. They understand the importance of branding. They can help you write copy, and create dynamic promotional pieces. In short, they understand how to marketing your business well in the traditional environment. But if someone has been in the marketing field for a number of years, and understands traditional marketing venues well, what they may not be good at is making the transition to the online world. And there is a world of difference between traditional and online marketing.

An online small business marketing consultant understands the same strategies used in traditional marketing. They understand advertising. They understand branding. They understand the importance for creating dynamic promotional pieces. But from there is where the differences begin. An online small business marketing consultant realizes that you sell differently online than you do off. It takes different strategies, different copy, and different promotional materials to succeed online. Not only should a consultant provide you with traditional methods, but they should make sure these methods feed the online world as well. For example, a postcard sent out direct mail has always been a successful tool. But if you send out that postcard asking for the reader to take one action step – heading to a website to sign up for a free report – you success rate for that postcard will improve dramatically. While this technique may seem simple, there are many techniques just like this that can bridge the traditional and online world together, and make your business stronger and more profitable. It’s all in what you know – and whom you ask to help make it a possibility. Ask me I know…ironically.

Anthony

Whether your a network marketer wanting to take your networking online, a small business owner looking to create an online presence or maybe your interested in creating an income for yourself and want to develop a wide variety of marketing sites. We all face the same challenges. I intend to build this new blog as a definitive resource to face that challenge. Be sure to bookmark us below and subscribe to our rss feed, as we are sure  to be posting as many resources as possible.

See you out there..

Now days it seems that everyone and anyone almost always consults the all knowing Google before buying a pair of Bamboo socks. Even my mother now shops around on Google before making decisions about almost everything. Recently I found a great number of “regular” folks searching online to find the best of what their searching for locally. Yup… now it seems that even the “mom and pop” shops need to be listed in the search results if they want to have any chance at staking their claim in the local marketplace.

I’ve spent most of my time learning how to compete with other advertisers on a global scale. This means that on a good day I might be competing with over a million other possible results when someone searches for my clients product. It takes some pretty savvy web voodoo to end up in the top ten listings with Google with that kind of competition. That was something I had become particularly good at.

Not long ago I came to wondering about the local business’s and what the average “brick and mortar” business was actually up against when it came to putting together a “web presence” and trying to get listed somewhere on the first few pages of Google for their particular service. After asking some local business owners I soon realized the task was near impossible for the every day entrepreneur to accomplish.

Which brings me back to the Yellow Pages. What If ten years ago you could pay someone to take a black magic marker and go to the homes of everyone of your potential customers, in fact everyone in your surrounding area and black out your competition in the Yellow Pages. Thereby eliminating your customers ability to even “look up” the competition or get any idea of what they might have to offer in contrast to your product or service. How much would that kind of “solo” advertising be worth? Pretty close to priceless right?

That”s exactly what we’ve been doing with our breakthrough techniques. We’ve been using our “magic marker” to eliminate the competition for our clients in their local markets. For example…If your a plumber from “Kalamazoo” and you’ve hired us to do our “web voodoo” for your service in your area, you can expect some pretty dramatic results. Within a day or so, anyone in or around “Kalamazoo” that does a Google search for plumbing in their area will see that our client isn’t just listed on the first page of Google’s results, they own 8 out of 10 of the top ten spots.

In fact we can’t keep up… seems there’s more than a few business owners that like that kind of edge.

That being said we havn’t turned away a paying client yet.

Be sure to let us know if your in the mood for a little “VooDoo” in your particular advertising field and let us “MakeFast” your marketing.

Cheers.