The JKB Marketing Blog

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!

Today we lauched our latest site redesign. It is our fourth version in two and a half years.

Boy has our site gone through some changes over the years!

Our first site was flash-based and loaded with graphics. It looked like a typical web design firms site--looked great, was flashy but low on content. As our original target market was heavily involved in the entertainment industry, the site matched our typical customers expectation.

As we eveolved as a company, we started serving more B-to-B customers. Version two eliminated the flash and had a more corporate feel but still was light on the useful content.

With version three we experimented with a content-heavy stripped-down approach. At this time were beginning to push other marketing services more than our web design because of the downward pressure on pricing from out-sourced Indian programmers and out-of-work US free-lancers. We never quite got the results we were looking for.

Version 4.0 brings us nearly full circle, as once again the emphasis is on web design and driving traffic to your site (or office or bricks and mortar store.) The site is content-heavy, looks good and loads fast. We think it finally captures most of the aspects of what we offer our clients.

As a start-up two years ago, we thought we knew it all. After many successes and failures, we realize we know a lot less now than we did back then. It's interesting to see how much we have changed in just a few years. And yet, we never really changed our core values and the soul of the company. It has taken some time to find, define and grow comfortable with our company's voice.

It's an ongoing process. I will keep you updated...

Gary Halbert is publishing a daily Halbertism on his site. They include tips on email and snail mail marketing, thoughts on being successful, and whatever comes to his mind.

WARNING: What comes to his mind is occassionally very coarse and rarely politically correct. If you are easily offended, do NOT go to his site.

For the rest of us, Halbert offers strategies learned from years of experience in the direct marketing game.

As an example, today's tip mentions that sending an email campaign on Tuesday between 11am and 2pm gets much greater results than an email sent at any other time.

His tips are specific and highly recommended.

A recent MarketingSherpa article [available until June 20th] details three coming trends in email delivery:

1. Authorization -- You are going to have to prove that your email is from who it says it is from using either SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and/or Yahoo's DomainKeys.

2. Pay-to-Play -- Whitelisting Services may expect you to pay to ensure delivery.

3. Communications -- ISP's would prefer to hear from you before there is a problem. Contact them and find the best times to mail their customers, and consult with them before launching a major campaign. ISP's don't make it easy for you to reach them.

All of the above trends seem to be a natural step in the maturation process of email delivery. Your broadcast vendor should be on top of all of these changes. If not, you will need to find a new one.

Media Daily News recently ran an article detailing the dangers of fraudulent search engine optimization practices. An unscrupulous provider can temporarily get you a listing, but you risk being dropped from the engine.

Common illegal practices include:

Doorway Pages -- These are pages that are meant to drive traffic normally through the use of multiple keywords without any meaningful content. A "Search Engine Specialist" may create and host many of these pages that redirect the user to your actual homepage.

Cloaking -- When you serve a search engine optimized page to the search engine spider, but a different page to actual visitors.

Link farms -- Link farms artificially inflate your site's link popularity by creating a ring of people exchanging links with other participants.

Invisible Text -- Hiding keywords by printing them the same color as the background, or printing them in tiny font is considered spam to all search engines.

So how do you get a good search engine ranking without running the risk of getting dropped?

Standards-compliant pages are easy for the spiders to read. Include important keywords in your title and headlines give your images meaningful alt tags.

To get a good natural ranking, go after niche keywords where the competition is not as fierce as the more generalized terms. For example, "auto parts" is much too generic. However "'57 Ford Mustang parts" is a realistic and worthwhile term to target.

Another large factor in generating good rankings is the number and quality of the sites that link to you. You can improve the link popularity of your site by starting a blog, participating in online discussion groups and forums and including your web address in your signature, and getting your site listed in as many relevant directories as possible.

Regularly updating the content on your site will keep the search engine spiders coming back.

As usual, the best methods involve creating a good plan and puttting in the effort needed to complete the plan.

We've had some of our clients pay SEO companies good money to do nothing but change some meta-tags and probably create illegal doorway pages on their site.

For more information on search engine optimization visit Search Engine Watch.

Microsoft will be releasing a major security update to Windows XP and Internet Explorer in July. The new IE will include a pop-up blocker by default. If your site uses "window.createPopup()" to launch new windows, you may need to rewrite your code.

IE will also block dhtml elements that create overlapping content on the page and modal and modeless dialogs. The technical summary is not very specific on these issues. If your site contains any of these elements you would be advised to download a beta version of the service pack and test.

The update will also block the launching of ActiveX controls unless they are signed with up-to-date signatures. IE will also block automatic downloads of files. File downloads should be initiated by the user, and file types need to match their file extensions.

Finally, sites dependant on Microsoft Java Virtual Machine will need to review their code as those applications may not work unless programmers tweak the code.

Many of these changes are long overdue and will help make browsing the web more enjoyable for the many people who are not interested in becoming computer experts. Because JKBedrin already codes our sites as close to standards-compliant as possible and has avoided the use of javascripting and activex controls, these changes will not affect any of our clients.

If you are an industrial supplier, the answer is yes.

As reported in the June 8th Chief Marketer Newsletter, a new survey by the Thomas Industrial Network of opt-in users shows that 85% of industrial buyers use the internet to purchase products.

Respondents report that over half the time they cannot find adequate product or pricing information at the company sites they visit.

I know when I am researching a potential product on the internet, I hate when there is no pricing information. I realize that many prices cannot be determined without more definite information, but there is no reason not to give a typical example to at least give a starting point. While price is rarely the determining factor, it is a very important one. When there is no pricing info, I am forced to assume the worst.

And if there is inadequate product information, I quickly click back to the search engine or directory and head to the next listing.

I deal with a lot of B-to-B clients. Many potential clients could greatly use a site overhaul or an expanded web presence. Unfortunately, these clients find it hard to see the benefits of a well-designed site and strategic plan to drive traffic to that site. Owners often use faulty logic to resist change: because I am not getting any business through my site, my clients must not use the internet much to purchase my product.

Little do they know that it is their website that is causing the lack of response.

The web provides a convenient, efficient method for buyers to compare many products quickly. Buyers are saving money and increasing their ROI. If you would like to take advantage of these facts, you need a website.

I recently came across a great tool to help analyze the download speed of your web pages. Web Page Analyzer is a free website speed tester and analyzer.

You simply enter a URL and the Webpage Analyzer measures your page in many different categories. It also offers brief recommendations to improve your speed based on best practices of usability gurus HCI Research.

After measuring several of our sites, I found most of our sites within the best practice standards for number of page elements, size of html and use of only a few stylesheets. Unfortunately, many of our stylesheets run a little bit long. I will have to pay a little closer attention to optimizing the length of our CSS files.

Download speed is incredibly important for anyone who is trying to attract and keep visitors. Google is the greatest example of trimming all the fat and leaving just the bare bones behind. The other end of the spectrum is espn.com which is exceedingly slow to load on our broadband connection.

As a courtesy to your slower-connected users, keep your large images and flash files seperate from your main pages and only serve them when they are requested.

Here are a product and service that really stood out to me for both their usefulness and uniqueness at last week's trade show:

MSS-Standby manages newspaper ad placement at standby rates. They work with a wide assortment of papers all over the US and can save you 75-80% on the cost of your advertising.

With a Z-Card you can put a map into someone's pocket that folds down to slightly larger than a business card. The example I have folds out to show a map of the NYC Subway system. Potential customers will USE your zcard time and again.

At this time last Thursday, I was attending the DM Days NY Expo at the Javitz Center in NYC. DMD is geared towards direct mailers and catalogers.

Three thoughts on the trade show displays:

First, it was remarkable to me that a show geared towards Direct Response would have so many displays where it was nearly impossible to figure out what exactly each company does. As it was the final day of a three-day Expo, the crowd was small and it was easy for me to get to the booths and speak with the vendors. But if it had been crowded, I would have skipped over many exhibits because I wouldn't have known what they had to do with me.

Second, because the trade show was geared to Direct Mailers, there were many list brokers and fulfillment services. But 90% of the vendors simply listed the services they provide--the same services every other company had listed. Only when you directly spoke with a salesman could you found out that they specialized in large runs, or small customized jobs, or filled the niche in-between.

Where are the good headlines to draw in the right prospects? Without the proper headline, I end up wasting my time and the salesman's time.

Finally, cell phones! I am walking through the trade show and I see a booth that is offering a service I need. I go to the booth which has only one person manning it. And, of course, that person is hunched over in the corner jabbering away into his cell phone. Nice. I move on. Another booth is selling a funky custom printer. I introduce myself and the salesman's cell phone rings. And he answers it! Good-bye, nice talking to you.

So if you are going to have a display at a trade show, please make it clear what you do and who you do it for. And turn your darn cell phone off!