Short Term Summer Profits For Struggling Companies

Hello collegues, marketers, CEO's and associates. I wanted to share today what I am seeing out in the marketplace. I see many companies that are committing slow suicide and that bothers me. They hunker down hoping the "economic weather" will change as they become leaner and leaner. They ignore the kind of seasoned marketing advice you will find on this blog and have gone into reactionary mode, into pulling back instead of pushing forward. Or, to say it another way, any promotion they do is so half-hearted, resigned and tiny, that it is doomed to make any meaningful financial impact.

Companies with a superficial grasp of marketing will react by thinking "money is tight; I will not spend money and horde what I have." Companies that position themselves to score big think "I need to market myself more than ever, but need to be careful about the right marketing investment to target my best prospects more effectively than ever."

It is time for a reality check. If you have NOT been marketing consistantly, you too will likely find yourself, in the Summer business slowdown, in a cashflow crunch. This post are for the increasingly desperate.

1• Don't Panic. Strategize. Get our of reacting into proactive. I realize there are many half-baked ideas out there that can distract you from solid marketing, with tempting scams or confusing rabbit trails. Well forget all that and read on...

2• You need short term cashflow. I will make that mean 1-3 months.

3• Do keyword reasearch and SEO your company website, quickly. This can be done usually in 3-4 days. Then, based upon the reasearch, you may find very popular and relevant search terms for which your site is not specifically addressing. Build landing pages for these -- one page per term. Your organic page rank will improve in the search engines usually within 2 weeks, better positioning you for more visibility, attention from prospects and profits. But depending on your marketplace and service area this by itself may not be not enough.

• Keyword Research Costs: $895 flat fee.
• SEO each page of your site based on the keyword research results: as low as $20 per page.
• Web Site Analysis for your specific marketplace and service area: $300-$2,000 depending on how involved your website is.
• Build SEO-Friendly Landing Pages for the best terms: $120 per page. I usually start with the top 5 terms and expand from there.

4. The next step is to create a strategic blog for your company if you do not have one. A big reason for this is to create blog posts which are geared to link to your corporate website. This is an inexpensive and fast way to futher boost your web site's visibility in search engines in 24 hours! The secret sauce for getting this kind of quick-but-lasting boost is all in the strategy behind the setup of the blog. To setup a blog is simple. However, to setup a blog that best promotes your company in the search engines requires a strategic series of steps.

We know 2 ways to do this right and 200 ways to do it wrong. If you don't have months to experiment and refine your blogging in a strategic business way, oursource it to us knowing it will be done right.

Cost: $400. With subsequent blog posts as low as $25 each.


5. The next most valuable thing that will get fantastic shirt-term results is to create simple web videos. There is a lot that could be said her about how and why, but just look at my other blog posts on Dallas video production. One primary value lies in distributing your video -- putting it on your Corporate Website, Your Strategic Blog, and many Social Media Places including YouTube.

All this creates more links that reinforce each other and raise visibility in the search engines and put your products and services in front of new prospects.

Cost: $800 and up.

6 • Activate a Google Adwords campaign. There are many ineffective and expensive ways to do this, but again the foundation of accurate keyword research will be the key. Pick only the juiciest key terms -- ones that are relevant with decently high search volume. Then spend only what you can afford, but we recommend $50-$150 per day or there may not be enough visibility generated to impact your cashflow significantly.
By the way, "significant" to us means specifically that a small business can target a local area and make an additional $8,000-$17,000 per month. Targeting profits less than that is not worth our time.

We are aware of 107 tips and techniques to get the most out of your AdWords account, so if you are serious about results, call us at 214-703-0360 to manage that for you. However, even a novice can expect some cashflow gains by (a) targeting the most relevant terms, and (b) not overspending on those terms while you learn how your market and prospects respond to your ad and can establish a ROI from the results. Remember not all traffic is profitable traffic. Don't throw mad money at Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click, instead keep it controled, monitored and strategic.

Cost: $895 to $2,000

One tip: take the profits you make from this and invest 25-33% straight back into your marketing, including your AdWords spend.

All the above is achievable in less than 3 weeks, if you commit to it and recognize its value.

6. From there, limit your focus to marketing activites you can follow through on and perfect.

• Make ongoing blog posts in a strategic way, each targeting specific key words. Create these posts in the order of the importance of the key words and link them to your corpoate web site.

• Monitor your AdWords account for effectiveness, look for click rates of 1-3% or more. Make sure you are selling items that make you enough profit to justify the cost of gettting those customers.

• Expand into more Social Media Marketing outlets (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. etc. ) and link all these activites to each other as much as possible.

• Look for ways to better understand your customers needs and meet them.

There are a lot of good businesses that are sadly headed for extinction because they are not adapting to the current marketing landscape. Yes, we know times are changing quickly, but we humbly do have the answers and are willing to share them with you. Change = Opportunity. You can be crushed by a wave or surf that very same wave – your next actions will choose which outcome will be your experience.

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Promise Productions provides marketing experts in many media including Print Marketing, Direct Mail Marketing, Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Video Marketing. We have distilled the strategies that work for today's business.

All you need is the willingness to change and embrace success, along with modest financial investment to activate the profit strategies with the most leverage for your marketplace. How big do you want to succeed? We welcome your inquiries at our Dallas offices at 972-822-3587.