It seems like there has been a lot of people asking me this question lately.  Since this is a somewhat loaded and complex question, I thought it was worth explaining in basic terms.

The short answer is, How much is your budget?

Internet advertising like all advertising is relative to ROI. What you can spend of course is unlimited, but that should depend on your calculated return on investment.
In the old days, pre internet boom, I would hear you can expect a 1-2% return of a direct mail campaign if you mail out so many post cards, letters or whatever…blah, blah, blah. That’s called guessing now a days.
With the analytics and metrics available to us today, we are able to make better calculated assessments of our advertising programs.

Online advertising ROI assessment should begin with looking at core areas. These are a few of the pre campaign areas to consider when thinking about spending any money online.

1. keyword competition of your product or service.
2. keyword development strategy.
3.landing page and conversion design.

The great thing is that there several tools available, to calculate and evaluate your on going advertising process.

So again, How much does internet advertising cost?

I tell people to start with a budget of at least $500. This budget will give you, in most industries (that are providing consumer products and services) at least a minimum online sponsored link presence in Google. I am speaking specifically of Google ( although there are several other search advertising programs) because they own 70% of the search market and most people are familiar with term google ad words.

Your online sponsored link presence is essentially the amount of time your sponsored ad is on the first page in Google. Keywords are a bit like the commodities market. As your specific keyword demand increases so does its price. The number of clicks and visits to your site will be a variable of this and your monthly budget. But just to keep things simple, think of your AD costs in terms of how much you can afford to spend daily. Then the important part, consider your target market, your visitor and the likely hood of them taking action from your website sponsored AD link.

If you have a created good call to action AD copy, a relevant web landing page with a good consumer friendly process for action (conversion) then you are way ahead of the game and your online competition.

This of course is where the ROI comes in.
The better the visitor conversion process, the more dollars, (or products & services) for you on your AD campaign. While this a simple explanation it essentially covers the basics of online sponsored campaigns. If you are spending money online think about returns because after all any money spent on advertising is related to how much you think you will make on that budget. Do you expect a 2-1, 4 -1 return or more.

Of course there are lots of details and nuances and tracking tools for managing an Sponsored AD campaign but that’s another topic I will cover later.

If you have any thoughts or questions, please let me know in the comments below or email me.

More information on the internet advertising process is available on our website.

Do robots like your source code?

I was searching the other day for a robots.txt file  example and it took me a few minutes to find some fragmented samples in forums. So here is a quick post for you wordpress bloggers who are managing your own Search Engine Optimization..SEO.

Joomla fortunately, automatically sets up a robot.txt file when you do your install through cpanel.

With wordpress for some reason, you need to do it manually. I find this a bit bizarre especially since WP espouses to be very search engine friendly right out of the gate. Anyways here is a a basic robot.txt sample.

Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: */trackback
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /*?
Allow: /wp-content/uploads

# Google Image
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow:
Allow: /*

# Google AdSense
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:
Allow: /*

# digg mirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Copy and paste this into a file named robots.txt;

You can use notepad, word or any text program will work. Then, upload the this to the root level of your domain. Another way is to just add a plugin to your wordpress blog. There are several robot.txt plugins to choose from, some will add a meta robots tag to your wordpress pages.

Here is another more comprehensive wordpress robots.txt example.

For more tips on robot.txt and search engine optimization you can post a question in the comments section.

Note, if you are a building blog, wordpress has the best user interface and is great for fast preformatted content development. However if you are building a website with several different types of content that need function, I would check  out Joomla 1.5 and it’s joomla seo extensions.

What CMS platform do you prefer for building the best search engine optimization into your website, Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress?

What is your time spent on building new business? What are your new business social media marketing percentages?

Clearly these days there are many ways to take action for building business; some are more proactive and some passive.

With the immense amount of new information available to us today, it seems that the decision-sales cycle has gotten longer. Why,.. perhaps for the need to get all the information before moving ahead with a decision.

The days of the sales guy just making the phone call is becoming much more expensive for businesses. It takes time to make sales calls. While it may be the most direct way to build business… is it the most effective way today to build relationships and business?

Perhaps it is now most effective to meet in person, and solidify relationship foundations, once initial connections have been made through one of the many new search marketing vehicles.

Building Business the New Media way

I hear a lot of people in business, small and enterprise level, discount twitter for its ability to drive sales. Well maybe it’s because the scope of how twitter is used needs to be thought of in a broader sense.

Allocating time and a strategy with other search marketing choices may be needed to help your audience/target market, reach the excellent service, products or resources you offer!

In other words, from the view point of open source model, what are you working on and how can I help you move forward? Instead of just looking at the immediate solution people are looking for great value first or as Seth Godin might say the Free Prize inside!

Big business with larger overhead may want results immediately. But instead of management expecting that new marketing work like the “old sales call system” they might be better off rallying more diligently around new marketing to discover a short term and long term game plan that will yield foundations for new business; Foundations that use new media and marketing tools that will be platforms for in person meetings and discussions.

As an example, an accountant friend of mine is in the first spot on the first page of Google for a competitive and relevant key word search term. He does not participate in social media or any of the new search marketing ways. Results = “0” leads, “ 0” calls. What can this tell us?

Clearly, just ranking in Google is not doing it for his business. Most of his business is generated from word of mouth, old school. My question is, by being more involved in search marketing and social media, could he perhaps build more relationships and more word of mouth and possibly more business.

What do you think? Let me know your experience with social media marketing and if it has helped you build more business.

Attending Internet conferences can add real value to your bottom line. While ROI may not seem  apparent in the short term it is likely to add to your business in the long term. The very least you can bet that others in your industry are going to these conferences to see what the playing field looks like now and what to expect in the future; i.e for building business online and accessing consumer expectation.

While there are a lot of conferences springing up these days, here are a few we attend that lay down valuable information for open source and search marketing.

CMS Expo
Featuring speakers on the 3 key open source (CMS) content management systems frameworks today. Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal.
For: Developers, Web Designers and Business owners.
Takeaways: Tools, lot’s of how to’s, great connections and key insight into the future development and growth of these core platforms.

Search Marketing Expo
Sponsors and speakers from the current industry leaders in search including Google, Yahoo, Bing and many more. This is a fun show produced by Third Door Media. They put together a nice balance between the need to know ( analytics, seo and security) and the excitement of the growing developments in the search marketing business. Not mention they put on a pretty good after hours party.
For: Developers, Web Designers, Search Marketers, Affiliate Marketers, and Business.
Takeaways: Tools, new relationships, education, and strategic insights from industry thought leaders.

These are few more worth checking out:

Webmaster World -Pub Con
Straddling web development and search marketing you will find many of the main industry leaders here.

Search Engine Strategies
The founding fathers of everything search engine. The search industry gurus home base.

Blog World
For more than just blogger’s. Many businesses are becoming aware that new content and quality content is integral to your business brand and presence on the web.

If you have any open source and search industry conferences that you have attended and found valuable, worth the investment and fun let us know so that we can spread the word.

These are 4 simple steps to developing an online marketing program using open source and free online marketing tools. Beware this may become addictive!

4 Simple Steps to Online Marketing

1. Map your search marketing program laying out your objectives and strategy. Using visuals helps to keep things simple. Simple is the point especially with the internet. There are lots of ways to make things complicated and create grand structures but, hey you have to get things done right. Besides with internet marketing it’s going to change and often quickly as will your ideas and strategies.

2. Build your website using an Open Source CMS -content management system. Joomla, wordpress and drupal are 3 most well developed and supported platforms today. They are used by large and small companies; Citibank, Richard Branson, and the White House just to name a few. They are free to download and use.

3. Install SEO and Tracking analytics. SEO – search engine optimization will make it easier for search robots to read and index your website. Installing Google tracking will help you see what is working in your site and marketing program as you grow. Ultimately it will help you make better sales and marketing decisions. The days of throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall, (direct mail) and seeing what sticks, are slowly going way.

4. Set up a Search Marketing and Social Media program to build your search presence, page rank and online word of mouth. Why because search marketing and social media (facebook, twitter) is a good way to help build word of mouth about the good stuff you do.

If you have any thoughts or comments on how you create clarity, simple processes and results in your search marketing program please share them here or twitter.

If you work in Joomla CMS , at some point you may want to set up a banner in your website.  Below is short video done sometime ago when we had a social small business training community named QuestSocial.com. This community has since been reshaped and re branded as eMediaPlace; a community for Search Marketing and eMedia people to connect.

I had some feedback the other day that suggested it may be a good idea and useful to some to add more training videos to this blog.

If you work in joomla or word press and are have some challenges let me know and I may put up a short training video that addresses those focus areas.

Your comments or remarks will help give suggestions as to future training videos. Thx C

This is a list of SEO Blogs written by some of todays foremost SEO experts. A good place to start and keep going back if you want to stay up on the latest search engine optimization news, strategies and practices.

SEO Blogs that provide daily online marketing training.

If you have more great SEO resources or notable people to add please let me know.

If you’re blogging and trying to accomplish an online objective it’s useful to look at some of the common elements of pro bloggers that are apparent in making a successful blog. Here is a short list of key elements:

1. Write a lot – be prolific.

2. Be concise – get to the point and use short posts. Seth Godin is great for this.

3. Analyze – track and analyze your blog stats to find out from whence your readers are coming.

4. Keep learning – in blogging as in marketing, things are always changing so keep exploring and moving forward.

5. Be focused and consistent – have an objective for your blog and set a schedule for your post. (1,2/week etc.)

6. Plan – Think about where you are now and where you want to go. Write it down. It will change, but that is good.

7. Intention – set up your intentions for the blog, then sculpt, reshape, develop..it’s a journey and part of the fun.

8. Initiative and discipline – you’re the champion of your blog. It’s up to you to keep the energy alive.

Well I may have taken the concise part a bit too literally, so if you have an thoughts on this, please expand on these points or add your perspective.

This list of links to Free Google webmaster tools provides the essentials for small and medium size business to build ROI into the online marketing programs. If you are at the enterprise business level you may want to consider WebTrends but their a little pricey for small business budget.

1. Google Webmaster Central
A webmaster resource for help with crawling and indexing questions.
To increase your site traffic.

2. Google Analytics
For analyzing and tracking your website traffic and marketing campaigns.

3. Google Webmaster Central Blog
Official news and advice on indexing your site for Google.

4. Google Webmaster Tools
Provides detailed reports about your web pages visibility on Google

If you have other tools that your using that are useful and free, let me know. If your using Google tools now for your business, would you say that it is a good tool to evaluate online marketing ROI?

R2D2

I attended my first Megacon – comic and gaming convention last month. It was quite an experience and certainly out of the norm of the regular trade shows and conferences I attend. Our objective was to meet industry professionals, illustrators, software developers, independent film people and others in order to help us advance our knowledge and build some relationships for the New Visions Interactive Art project and startup.

While it seemed like more of a consumer show there were some great panels featuring people from DC and Marvel comics to celebrities form star trek and the terminator.

Their were a lot wild and elaborate costumes. One excellent favorite was a “Beattle Juice” (Michael Keaton) impersonator. One of the best though was a kind of round guy with wild hair walking around with a plain card board sign that said “Free Hugs”. I just about fell over laughing. I’ll bet he was having a good time.

Over the 3 days, Maurice, Michael, Chris and myself  met some very talented artists which we may possibly collaborate with in the future.

Next up this month, I will be in Boston for the comic con and then to Anaheim for Wizard World comic con. “I want to meet the man behind the curtain”. Should be a good opp for finding that elusive Wizard T-shirt.

Some fun photos to follow.