The JKB Marketing Blog

In response to the needs of many of our small business customers, we've created a new program that allows you to make text and image updates to your site for the flat fee of $25 per page.

There's no need to lose potential customers and sales because your site has old information. Now you can keep your basic site updated easily without paying an arm and a leg and know that the work will be done quickly and correctly.

If you're interested, learn more about our web update services.

At a Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, Yahoo discussed some of the details about its fourth quarter change to its ad serving platform.

They will be switching to a system that more closely resembles Google's AdWords set-up than their previous system. By the first quarter of 2007, Yahoo will begin using a ranking system based on a combination of bid price and click rate.

Other new features:
Keyword assists - The keyword entered before a click will be tracked and accessible. So if a person searched for "mp3 players" before clicking on your ad for "ipod" you'll get to see that information.

Geo-targeting - Pulldown menus and a new display map will make it easier to set geographic boundaries or customization to your campaigns.

Keyword Suggestions - Yahoo can crawl your pages and offer suggestions to terms you should bid on.

In addition to the above changes, the new search platform will show expected number of clicks by keyword and bid price instead of your competitors bids. It will also offer new budget capabilities, problem alerts and A/B testing.

All in all, it appears that they are moving much closer to the Google model with a few new features of their own.

Direct has a nice listing of different words that trigger spam filters. According to a study done by Email Reaction, words such as "paste", "organization" and "warehouse" are likely to appear in spam messages.

While Email Reaction also sells a product that supposedly detects these hard-to-guess words, if you rely at all on emailing, it would be worth your time to check out the entire article.

For anyone craving a chocolate fountain of their own, we have started marketing a Chocolate Party Fountain built specially for home use.

It's like the fountains you may have seen at weddings, just scaled down. You can serve anywhere from 1 to 100 people. The Party Fountain is actually strong enough to be used commercially for smaller banquets, ceremonies and lesser traffic events.

Built by the Fantasy Fountain Company, these things are the real deal. The serious chocolate lover is going to need to have one in their own house!

And those serious about entertaining, their parties will never be the same. Besides chocolate, the fountains can be filled with caramel, butterscotch, icing, cheese and barbecue sauce!

ThePartyFountain.com is an extension of the JKBedrin Marketing Group. We're trying a variety of methods to sell the units, beginning with a search engine campaign. We'll let you know how it goes!

Good news if you're thinking of creating a new site, or updating an old one!

You can receive up to $1,000 in grant money from the Northern Tier Regional Planning and Development Commission if you're located in these counties in NEPA: Bradford, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, or Wyoming.

To receive the money, you simply need to send a letter containing a brief description of the project and fill out a simple one-page form. And if you're approved, they'll match every dollar you put in up to $1,000!

You get an instant 50% off the cost of web design.

The program is called the Small Business Internet Business Grant. The only two major guidelines involve:
1. the size of your company--must be between one and 50 employees, and
2. the use of the money--must go towards web design not hardware or hosting.

You can get full details on the program on the NTRPDC site, or you can contact me and I can help you through the process!

I am located in our office in the Endless Mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is most definitely a rural area. Hitwise has just released a report which will be of special interest to businesses located in rural areas.

According to the report, rural shoopers make up the largest online shopping segment:
Rural - 44% of all e-commerce traffic
Suburbanites - 24%
Small City - 16%
Urban - 15%

And here's the best news for local rural businesses: they favor visiting stores and brands which they are familiar with. Though they can choose to shop from any store in the world, they predominantly shop at those with a local presence.

As an example, 66% of the traffic to Dick's Clothing and Sporting Goods' website comes from rural shoppers.

Rural businesses will want to leverage this trend by promoting their sites through their offline marketing campaigns.

Interland recently conducted a survey of 530 small business leaders and found that a large percentage believed that their website helped their businesses gain a competitive advantage (77%), generate leads (81%), and lessened the effects of economic downturns (55%).

Retail companies, business service providers, personal service companies and non-profits were most successful at generating leads for their businesses.

The web has become a nearly universal tool for anyone researching a major (or even minor) purchase. A well-designed site gives you a fighting chance--and the numbers back it up.

And I wonder how many of those surveyed even HAVE a well-designed site...

The growing popularity of TiVo and Satellite Radio (XM and Sirius) each point to a growing trend: people are taking greater control over their own programming and are willing to pay a premium to get what THEY want.

It started years ago with Cable TV. At the time, the question was "Who would pay for something that they already got for free?"

Turns out, lots of people would.

And that trend has only increased. Tape recorders, VCRs and now cd and mp3 burners have all played a role. To cap it off, broadband access to the internet has allowed truly on-demand information and entertainment.

There is no going back.

And this is bad news for the large corporations who depend on mass marketing to cost effectively reach their audience. The old methods of advertising are becoming less and less relevant.

How long will it take these giant corporations to change their tactics? How much will they alienate their customer base by still trying to force advertising down their throats in a manner the market has rejected?

TiVo has begun to crumble under the pressurew from the top. It has gone from "TV Your Way" to "TV Our Way" as it tries to find ways to incorporate advertising into the areas where people are fast forwarding through the advertisements!

They are threatening a backlash, much like the RIAA has garnered by refusing to acknowledge that the old distribution methods had become obsolete. The entertainment companies can try to slow the change but they won't be able to reverse the course.

The consumer wields the ultimate power though they may not realize it.

Advertising shouldn't be intrusive. It should be there, easily accessible, for those who are interested. But how do you do that on a massive scale?

Luckily enough, that's not my problem. I am concerned with how smaller businesses can access their regional and/or niche market. It turns out that this is a great advantage for smaller businesses.

You're not trying to reach 100's of different market segments all across the country. You're trying to reach a market you should know intimitately. You know the hot buttons. You know when and where to reach them.

(If you don't, well you know what you need to get working on!)

In the end, the large national chains will find ways to get their message out to the masses. In the meantime, there is a great opportunity for smaller companies to carve out their niche and gain market share by reaching out to their customers in ways that aren't obtrusive.

It's been a while since I last posted.

The JKBedrin Marketing Group has been on the grow. We've recently moved from our Belleville, NJ location and have opened up two new offices.

One office has opened in Hackettstown, New Jersey and is headed by my brother Kevin. He will be servicing the marketing needs of the New York/Northern New Jersey area.

I have opened an office in Northeastern Pennsylvania which will serve the greater Scranton area, including Lackawanna, Susquehanna, Wyoming and Wayne counties.

Now that the dust has settled, you can check back on a regular basis for more marketing updates.

When you are creating an advertising campaign, most agencies will stress the creative aspect. They'll show you eye-catching designs and present truly inventive ideas.

What they may fail to mention is that where you run your ad is run has a 6 times greater effect [PDF] than the ad itself according to research completed by Atlas DMT.

In the big picture, it makes perfect sense. You can't win the game if you're not in the game. And to be in the game, you have to be in the ballpark.

Obvious, isn't it?

And yet, many advertisers spend all their energy on creating a new campaign. They make sure your ad has practiced its swings, has all the latest gear and is wearing the hippest uniform. As long as it looks the part, where it plays is often an after-thought.

Test your message in different media. Look for the best game in town. Only after finding the game should you worry whether your shoes are tied.

The best advertisement in the world won't help at all if it is placed in the wrong context. In contrast, a mediocre message in the proper context will do ok. Once you find the proper vehicle and the right context, now you can focus on the creative to make an even bigger impact.

For the first time, Microsofts Internet Explorer has lost market share. Granted, Ie only lost about 1% of its share and it is still the dominant browser on the market garnering a market share over 94%.

But flashing back to 1997, Netscape had the dominant browser. When Microsoft decided to bundle IE into Windows 98, the writing was on the wall for Netscape. IE dominance has grown ever since.

However, being the big dog makes you a target. The continuing security issues for Microsoft and the rise of the open-source movement have opened some chinks in the IE armor. It hasn't helped that IE has not been significantly upgraded since 1999.

Lately, browsers such as Opera, Safari, Netscape 7 and especially Mozilla's Firefox have been consistently adding new converts.

The benefit for consumers is a host of freely available web browsers. As long as the new browsers are standards-compliant, this is great news for web developers and web users alike.

The amount of whitespace you use in your online layouts affects the reading speed, reading comprehension and overall satisfaction of your content.

A recent study conducted by the Software Usability Research Laboratory showed that college students had greater comprehension of articles with larger (10mm) margins. While they read the text with the smaller (2mm) margins faster by 8 words per minute, they expressed greater satisfaction and less physical fatigue with the larger margins.

And when larger margins were combined with slightly greater leading between lines(5mm vs. 4mm), the overall satisfaction level sky-rocketed. (Leading is the space from baseline to baseline of lines in a paragraph.)

While there were some definite drawbacks to this study -- only 20 students were used, and it only tested a single column format -- I believe it holds true for any copy over a few paragraphs. You can make your site's content easier to read by allowing for margins all around your paragraphs and not condensing the leading between lines.

Web usability guru Jakob Nielson on web users:

After ten years of watching Web users, one clear conclusion is that they are utterly selfish and live in the moment. Giving users exactly what they want, right now, is the road to Web success

You will be greatly rewarded by taking the time to examine your website and look at it from a user's perspective.

Does your site have a clearly defined purpose?
Is it easy to scan?
Are there any unimportant elements where important elements should be?
Is your content in its proper context?
Does your site load quickly?
Does your site's appearance match the image you are trying to send?
Is your site out-dated, or contain out-dated elements?

The web is a consumer-dominated media. When visitors become frustrated for any reason, they can simply click a button and be done with you. You have to have relevant content in an easy-to-understand form. You need to have intuitive navigation with explicit labels. You need to direct the user to do exactly what you want them to do.

By taking a fresh look at your site and making some minor modifications, you can lessen your bounce rate and see increses in your conversion rate.

If you're going to have a site, you might as well get the most out of it. Right?

I greatly dislike intro pages, whether they're long-winded flash intros or graphical splash pages. I am not alone. Nearly 80% of consumers stated that they HATE Flash intro pages.

Wow!

Now, there are some Flash advocates that don't buy this result. So MarketingSherpa went to one of Macromedia's own usability expert who summed up all that is wrong with splash pages perfectly:

When we have clients who are thinking about Flash
splash pages, we tell them to go to their local supermarket and bring a mime with them. Have the mime stand in front of the supermarket, and, as each customer tries to enter, do a little show that lasts two minutes, welcoming them to the supermarket and trying to explain the bread is on aisle six and milk is on sale today.

Then stand back and count how many people watch the mime, how many people get past the mime as quickly as possible, and how many people punch the mime out.

That should give you a good idea as to how well their splash page will be received. That's the crux of it.

Sure, there are always exceptions to the rule. But they are few and far between.

Flash should not be imposed on the unsuspecting web browser.

Use Flash to create some great visual effects and interactive games. Flash is also great for creating real-time web applications. You can have customers customize the look of your product and see the results instantly. Using Flash in this manner benefits everyone involved.

A recent survey conducted by the Software Usability Research Laboratory investigated the online reading habits of 330 respondents.

You may want to consider that 30% of the respondents print out and read product information offline. Is your site easy to print? What does it look like when it is printed? You could be losing customers by not knowing the answers.

While most of the respondents (72.7%) read their newlsetters online, that still leaves over a quarter who prefer to print out their newsletters.

The size of the document and its purpose are two major reasons why someone would choose to read offline. People read online if the copy is short (under 5 pages) or for entertainment purposes. While they like to print out longer or more important information.

There exists a great demand to print out your site's information. You should test to make sure your key pages print out correctly. You can do this using by designing your page from the beginning with printing in mind, using a print-specific stylesheet, or creating a link that points to a separate printable page.

Otherwise, you could be alienating 25-30% of your visitors!

The search engine competition is really heating up. As Google prepares for life as a publicly traded company with a whole slew of new concerns, a couple other major search players stand ready to gain share if the leader should begin to slip up.

Yahoo is currently testing a new interface. It may look somewhat familiar to you. I like the simple, uncluttered new design.

Microsoft is about to enter the fray. Currently MSN serves results from third party vendors Yahoo and Overture. However, MSN has been aggressivley conducting its own crawl and is testing its own algorithm. You can try the new MSN Search for yourslef. When I briefly tried it out, I found it gives relevant results, but often repeats the same site over and over again. Their algorithm seems to favor the clean style of coding we use for our sites, and places high weight on the text in the title bar. We'll see where it goes from here.

It's been a long time, but search engine companies have found a model that finally allows them to post a profit. If there's money to be made, you can expect greater competition. As search engines learn to juggle the needs of searchers, advertisiers and webmasters against those of spammers, we will see a continually improving product.

Yahoo's Overture has "local Match," a new service for businesses interested in reaching local searchers.

Instead of paying for a plethora of local search terms, businesses can target searches based on radius. The radius can be from 1/2 mile to 100 miles and can work off of different parameters like zip code, city, address and even ip address.

The service is pay-per-click and works as you would expect. There are no minimums or set-up fees. When searchers click on your listing, they are taken to a branded landing page that contains your address, hours, payment options, map and link to your site if you have one. There is no charge to create this page.

Local Match is worth trying if you can only sell to a restricted area, perhaps because you run a specialty shop or service business. Local Match is designed for small local businesses. There should be high-growth in this area in the future. If you have been thinking about beginning a paid search program, you might want to begin now while the costs are low. As you experiment and see what works best before it really catches on, you'll have a tremendous leg up on your late-arriving competitors.

Local Match follows on the heels of Google's AdWords which also lets you select by location, and the more traditional online Yellow pages.

Local Match is used by Yahoo, MSN, ESPN, MyCity, switchboard, infospace, dogpile, webcrawler, metacrawler and excite among others.

Mr. Joe died over the weekend.

Joe was actually his first name, but I have always known him as Mr. Joe since I was a kid visiting my grandmother's house. Mr. Joe lived next door to my grandma.

He seemed old to me even then.

Twenty years later, I am renting the bottom floor of my grandmother's house and still next door is Mr. Joe.

Recently he's been spending a lot more time in Florida getting treated for cancer (and probably other maladies of old age.) When he could, he would drive himself to and from Florida. Occassionally he would fly and I would print out his boarding pass on my computer.

About a week ago he had come back from Florida after receiving his latest batch of treatments. He was trying to turn over his garden but didn't have the strength. I went over and turned it over for him--a much smaller patch than usual.

He was also working on a lawn mower. He must have about 50 scattered throughout his yard. He was always tinkering with cars, or lawn mowers or whatever. Everything could be improved and wasn't right until it was how he wanted it.

At the end, though, he was only able to plant five tomato plants. And the lawn mower is till in pieces. He wasn't feeling well and wasn't getting better so he went back down to Florida.

It will be his last trip.

I planted another couple of rows of tomatoes to fill up the patch.

I am going to go water them now.

Here are two more keys to success for recent graduates...

Yesterday I talked about the importance of action and time.

Without action, nothing would ever get accomplished. Products would forever remain just be an idea or a dream. But there is an aspect of action I failed to mention yesterday: The act of trying to make your ideas or dreams real is not easy.

In fact, you will fail many times as you try to physically create something worthwhile. However, if you have persistence and learn from your mistakes you will eventually achieve greater success.

For example, many people try to learn an instrument. You probably know a bunch of people who have a guitar sitting at home collecting dust. I have one at home that I've started to play about ten times over the past three years. Starting out is hard. When you start learning to play you realize how much you don't know and how difficult learning to play will be.

So you play for a week or two, then skip a day of practice. Then skip a week of practice... then a month. Then you either quit entirely or start all over again in six months. If only you had stuck it out for those six months, you'd be that much closer to being a good guitar player.

And it's like that for everything. Learning is difficult, frustrating and filled with a lot of failures and only small gains at first. But if you have the persistence to stick it out through the tough times--if you understand that there is a price that needs to be paid for anything that's worhtwhile--you'll make your dream a reality. You'll learn to play the guitar. You'll get your Master's Degree. You'll learn a second language.

To keep from spinning your wheels as you try to accomplish your goal, you should make a plan and stick to it. Break down your goal into pieces and set a schedule to learn those pieces. This is what we do when writing a computer program for some problem. We break the seemingly overwhelming problem into smaller and smaller parts until we come to small enough chunks that are easy to solve.

I'm doing the same thing for the guitar.

Break up your goals into these smaller goals and set up deadlines to reach them. You may have to change some deadlines as you go, but the important part is that you have a manageable plan. You'll be able to see the progress you're making.

With enough persistence and discipline you can achieve a certain level of success in ANYTHING!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Notice I didn't speak about talent, or genius, or education. All of these attributes help greatly, but they aren't the keys to success. And they could, in fact, harm you if you believe the world owes you because of your innate greatness. You've got to go out and make it happen yourself.

Late June means its time for High School Graduation parties. It's also a time to impart wisdom on the recent grads to help them avoid the mistakes you made. Of course they won't actually listen to your advice until they've made the same mistakes themselves, but at least you tried.

As of now, I think there are two key elements to success--time and action.

People will judge and remember you by what you do. Not by what you think, how you feel, what you like or what you believe. In the end, your actions always speak louder than words.

It seems to me that the truly happy and successful people don't talk about what they'd like to do--they talk about what they are doing, or have done, or will do tomorrow.

And if your actions make life better for those around you, you will be rewarded spiritually and monetarily.

Human Action by Ludwig von Mises discusses economics as praxeology, or the study of the logic of human action.

Mises summarizes action as purposeful behavior. If you were perfectly satisfied, you wouldn't have to do anything. Therefore, "to live implies imperfection and change." So an action is done to create a better situation for a worse one.

Mises gives real meanings to the a host of economic terms including trade, value, costs, and prices. His description of economics just seems right to me. And understanding human action and the logic behind economic theory will help you achieve your own goals.

The second key element of success is understanding that the most valuable resource is time. No matter how much money you have, how smart you are or what contacts you have, your day is only 24 hours long. Your life expectancy is under 80 years.

Spending the limited amount of time you have wisely will make you a much happier person. To do so probably means cutting back on the amount of TV you watch.

You will be amazed at how much you can accomplish when you focus on what you want to do--and then actually do it!