Business Growth Services
For those of you from previous classes & past web marketing projects, I have a new website that provides free marketing tips for growing sales leads for small businesses and manufacturing companies. The site is Marketing for Manufacturing and it provides multiple tips available through e-mail or blog feed.
Take a look at Marketing for Manufacturing and let me know what you think.
If you have any questions or need some marketing tips, just leave a comment on the new site.
Joe
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This is a posting copied from a recent chamber of commerce newsletter article I wrote.
Many of you spend money to be listed in the Yellow pages and similar tree-based materials. The search for products and services is rapidly moving to the Internet and you might be missing some great opportunities to get new customers.
Did you know you can have a free online listing and drive sales leads by using search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN? At a bare minimum, you should enter your local business listing into Google Maps using www.google.com/local/add. An even better solution I found in January is GetListed.org . GetListed.org automatically checks to see if you are listed in the major local search listings. It will then guide you on how to get listed. I have done several of these and and have seen some good results.
I would love to hear how well your company performed. Were you listed on most of the major search engines? Did the change bring in some new sales leads, calls, or website visits?
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There is another new website marketing article titled Website Marketing Questions from Class (Part 2 of 2) . The article answers important questions from class like:
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After much juggling and domain (website name) hunting, I have gathered most of the material from our class into a single website . There are still 3 small postings that I plan to list before Tuesday June 24th.
The new website is called Website Marketing Workshop and is designed to provide a self-guided overview of Website Marketing. Eventually, I may even considering offering onsite workshops through leads generated at this website. I am currently talking with another chamber of commerce in Arkansas who has asked if I would provide the free 2 hour session and I believe that I will be able to.
Again, if you missed a point in class or something was a bit fuzzy…
I hope you find it useful.
Several of you in the Website Marketing class asked for contact information for Melody Harshbarger of Multi Media Connection Studios and Kirkham Systems. The full Kirkham contact information can be found on the Kirkham Systems website.
If you have a project where you need some strong marketing and advertising expertise, you can call Melody at (479) 478-9303 or e-mail her through the form shown below:
If you haven’t already heard, the new version of the FREE FireFox internet browser is set to be released June 17th (Tuesday). If you want to be a part of history and help set a new record, click on the link above or go to the main FireFox website .
FireFox is the most popular browser that does NOT come pre-installed on all Windows computers (over 20% of U.S. internet users use FireFox). It is fast, stable, easy to navigate, easy to customize, and is so much more enjoyable to use. Most everyone who discovers FireFox and tries it ends up using it instead of Internet Explorer.
After you have downloaded FireFox and start the installation process, there are 2 things you want to do. First, consider making FireFox your default browser. Second, allow it to import all your Favorites from Internet Explorer.
Get FireFox, but keep Internet Explorer for browsing poorly designed websites. Unfortunately, there are a few websites that were designed without good web standards and they will not display properly. In my experience, about 1 in 300 sites I use will not work as well in FireFox. By the way, the only reason that Internet Explorer 7 had tabbed browsing was because of the growth of FireFox – competition is GOOD.
I look forward to sharing the "Most Downloads In One Day" record with you!
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Just a quick note to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed our sessions at the Van Buren Chamber of Commerce on Friday June 6. We had two different sessions near capacity for a total of 32 participants.
Several of you requested contact information for Kirkham Systems and Melody Harshbarger of Multi Media Connection Studios. I will list those in the next posting.
I am currently finalizing details for a website that is exclusively website marketing information. I will let you know on this website when the new site is ready. I will include postings that provide additional detail for several of the elements we discussed briefly.
Thank you all for your participation and questions.
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Seth Godin (web marketing guru) has come up with an email check list that you should share with those people in your address book (you know who they are!) out of mercy for all the rest of us in their address book.
If you ever got too many FYI emails or OD’d on CCs, you will love his list of email rules. Just think of how much you could get done without emails that you don’t need. Click "read more" to see the list.
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Yes, your email address on your website is killing you. Your organization is getting spam , missing sales leads , and aggravating customers because of it.
Can it really be that bad?
I thought listing my e-mail on my website was a good thing! I want to serve my customers & partners effectively and reach out.
Yes, the mailto link approach really is that bad.
Well, the problem is how the email address is done on your website. Most site designers still use the mailto link approach to gather feedback. There are three critical problems with this method:
First, do NOT just remove your mailto link from your website without having a fix in place.
Here are the steps to fix the mailto link problem. The solution is to develop a form that customers can use to interact with you.
OK, but you don’t have to use the mailto link. You can use a picture of your email address that links to your feedback form. This allows people to write down your email information and still contact you without being exposed to all the problems.
By the way, if you plan to use FrontPage to develop your forms, keep in mind that they will likely NOT work properly. Microsoft no longer supports FrontPage extensions needed to make forms function. FrontPage has other issues, but that is another (several) posts.
Our Website Marketing Class is fast approaching at the Van Buren Chamber of Commerce (June 6, 2008).
The class is filling up fairly quickly and we have added a second session in the afternoon.
Here is the official brochure content:
Have you ever thought:
Then this seminar is what you are looking for!
June 6, 2008 (Friday)
Two Sessions:
Location: Van Buren Chamber Office – 510 Main Street
Registration: FREE for Chamber members and anyone signing up as a new member, $20 for non-Chamber members.
One person (for each session!) will receive a free website assessment ($250 value)
This seminar will be presented by Joe McCoy of Best Progress.
Call the VBCC at 474-2761 to register. Seating is limited to the first 20 registrations.
You will discover:
This seminar will be presented by Joe McCoy of Best Progress.
Call the VBCC at 474-2761 to register. Seating is limited to the first 20 registrations.