In issuing the list, the firm said that the best strategies this year have been the ones that are directly related to establishing credibility, eliciting trust and directly targeting a desired demographic.

Credibility Most Important

Credibility is one of the most important things to establish in an online presence, especially in an economically challenging year, according to Ash Buckles, SEO.com’s director of search engine optimization. “When people are watching their money closely, they will only buy from companies and websites they trust,” he said.

Credibility, Buckles said, depends on how well a site is architected, how many other sites and networks link back to your site, how much social media and buzz surrounds a domain, how often a site goes down, how unique a site’s content is and how fast a site loads.

The top 10 list and commentary from SEO.com:

1. Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Websites at the top of the search results are viewed as the leaders of their industry, and more than 80% of web users click on the first listings. Good SEO services will consistently deliver a huge return on investment.

2. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn: Social media marketing engages customers on a personal level, and can rapidly create buzz around a product, brand or business. It can also be more cost effective than traditional forms of advertising and outreach, SEO.com said.

3. Keyword Research: Online, everything revolves around discovering what words and phrases an organization’s customers are searching for online.

4. Video Marketing: This is becoming more important both on-site and off-site. Videos help convert website visitors into sales. In the universal search results, people tend to click on links with videos more than those without -  even if the video link is ranked lower.

5. Online Public Relations: This builds credibility online, in the mainstream media and for potential customers. Online public relations can help create a lot of buzz about your site through bloggers and industry sites, and can boost organic SEO.

6. Link Building: A key element in search engine optimization. Search engines like “popular sites.” From the search engine’s point of view, a credible and popular site will have a lot of links pointing to it.

7. Blogging: Blogs provide additional site content (which search engines like), graphics and other viral content to disseminate information and tie in with social media. Blogs can build credibility by establishing a site as the hub for industry information.

8. Conversion Web Design: A good web design will keep visitors on the site and sell them products or services.

9. Paid Search Marketing: Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an extremely targeted strategy with measurable, immediate results. This enables a more efficient spending of marketing dollars.

10. Email Marketing: This is important to nurture relationships and retain existing customers. It’s much easier to keep old customers than to get new ones. Send good offers and valuable information that’s customized to their needs.

“Companies want to make sure every penny goes to something that produces results,” said Dave Bascom, chief executive of SEO.com. “For that reason, more and more money is being allocated to internet marketing because it’s measurable and has proven to increase ROI,”

You’ve heard it so many times, it has become lost in the blinking lights, drowned in the eggnog and nullified by all the bleak news about unemployment. “Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards Man.” It is this very message that contains an encoded secret on what to do and how to genuinely use the holidays to forward your message, your image and your business philosophy.

And before you think I am just another huckster trying to spin the holidays into some cheap message, Hark! Thee merry gentlemen, called entrepreneurs, may you just take the high ground on this old saying. The word “Goodwill” is defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as, “Friendly or helpful feelings or attitude.”

Now how can this be applied? Just ask yourself, “What friendly or helpful feelings or attitudes could I be sharing or marketing to my potential and/or existing clients?” Let’s take the example of a local Chiropractor.

That local Dr. could share ideas on how to take care of yourself when you eat to much sugar, carbs or intake a little too much of the holiday libations that would make a Roman senator green with envy. That Dr. could share via a newsletter to existing clients, or via his fan page on Facebook, videos on Youtube or all of the above, friendly advice and by doing so being quite  helpful to his patients. Actually, it could be done in such a way as to be very enlightenng with some easy-to-do tips on how to stay a bit more healthy over the holidays.

I see to many business people over the holidays say, “We’re not doing any marketing until next year.”  Yet they are missing out on not only a wonderful marketing opportunity, but a sincere and honest one in sharing helpful and friendly attitudes. Lord knows we could use, as Bob Marley would say, “Positive vibrations” in the world right now.

May Earth find the peace it needs in 2010, and may you merry gentlemen join me in spreading some goodwill to Man.

Best, Edwin Dearborn

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/business/smallbusiness/12guide.html

Best, Edwin Dearborn

I hear quite often that they are no longer doing any marketing or that they are going to wait it out. While health needs are not going away from a patient’s perspective,  too many doctors are counting pennies and not contemplating on how to make more dollars.

In fact, I have found a few doctors that clean up and INCREASE new patients and revenue during the holidays, as they know that too many of their fellow colleagues are pulling back, hunkering down and waiting out the storm. Many patients do not use up their annual benefits and so these few smart doctors take advantage of their clients lack of usage of benefits, as well as their competition’s sleeping at the wheel. November and December can be boom times because of these two crucial factors.

Without giving away the full story on my upcoming white paper, I can tell any business owner or doctor who has his own practice, that recessions are the best proven time to market heavily. This is not propaganda to sell you my services. This is statistically backed research that goes back almost an entire century. Needless to say, those who market in bad times make their own future great times.

When you focus on saving versus making more, you pull back. Not only your resources, but your creativity, ingenuity, industriousness and your demand for better results. When you let the throttle down in business, it can takes months – even years – to regain back former levels of production, revenue and profits.

Best, Edwin Dearborn

Best, Edwin Dearborn

Amid the endless pronouncements about social media — often shortened to “social” these days by consultants trying to sound like they know what they are talking about — is the reality that social media is not a solution, or a sure bet.

Social media can’t:

1. Substitute for marketing strategy.
   A Twitter campaign or a Facebook page that announces your weekly specials is not a marketing strategy.
2. Succeed without top management buy-in.
   Social media requires a way of thinking that includes willingness to listen to customers, make changes based on feedback and trust employees to talk to customers.The culture of fear (of job loss, of losing message control, of change) is ingrained in corporate cultures. Top management has to want to change.
3. Be viewed as a short-term project.
   Social media is not a one-shot deal. It’s a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation and change that requires time to bear fruit.
4. Produce meaningful, measurable results quickly.
   One of the complaints about social media is that it can’t be measured. But there are many things that can be measured, including engagement, sentiment and whether increased traffic leads to sales.Those results can’t be produced or measured in the short term. Like PR, social media marketing often produces its best results in the second and third year.
5. Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies.
   A successful social-media campaign integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital and PR. Opinion and theory are no match for experience and the best social media marketers now have more than 10 years of experience incorporating interactivity, blogs, forums, user-generated content and contests into online marketing.You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience — a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.
6. Provide a quick fix to the bottom line or a tarnished reputation.
   Social media can sometimes provide quick results for a company that’s already a star. When a well-loved company like Zappos or Google employs social media, its loyal fans and followers pay attention.However, there’s a lot of desperation in a lot of corporate suites these days, and many companies seem been convinced that a social-media campaign can provide a quick fix to sagging sales or reputation issues. Sorry, nuh, uh.
7. Be done without a realistic budget.
   Building a site that incorporates interactivity, allows user-generated content and perhaps also includes e-commerce doesn’t come cheap from anyone who knows what they are doing.Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, incorporating e-commerce and creating style sheets that integrate with the company’s branding, takes more than time. That takes skill, experience, and money.
8. Guarantee sales or influence.
   Unless your effort can pass the “who cares” test — and most simply can’t — your social media efforts will fall flat.And unless you know how to drive traffic to your contest, video, blog, event, etc., you’ll have little more than an expensive field of dreams.
9. Be done by “kids” who “understand social innately”
   You can climb Mount Kilaminjaro without a sherpa guide, but why would you? Experience and perspective can make the trip easier, or even save your life.Companies trying to run social media without experienced consultants waste time, money and reputation on their efforts. And then, sadly, many decide that this new-fangled approach doesn’t work.
10. Replace PR.
    No matter how great your website, video contest, blog, Twitter strategy, etc., you still need publicity. Or you may end up with a tree falling in the forest and nobody hearing it.