Marketing Consulting Blog

This coming Thursday (1/24/08) marks the last "Bauer Pauer Hauer" I'm doing with Voice America for this particular round. I hope to renew the show down the road, but that depends greatly upon sponsorship and how far SMB Consulting progresses on the growth path.

That brings me to the main point of this post--have you enjoyed the radio show enough for me to seek sponsorship or set aside some of the company's money to cover the show's cost in the not too distant future? Would you continue to listen in if I were to do a podcast series or switch to something like BlogTalkRadio?

If you didn't enjoy the show, let me know what you would do to improve it. What guests would you like to hear interviewed? What would you like to learn more about?

I'm reaching out to you in hopes that you'll return the favor by sharing your perspective.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts.

PS--If you missed any of the shows, hop on over to our sales and marketing radio site and click on the past shows link then head on back and share your thoughts.

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim fame joins me today on The Bauer Pauer Hauer where we'll discuss online reputation management. You don't want to miss this episode especially if you're concerned about your online profile.

Here are some of the topics Andy and I will discuss:

• How businesses can monitor what is being said about them online and which tools are available.
• The things companies and individuals should monitor.
• The steps to take when you discover your brand is coming under attack.
• When you Google my name, something negative shows up, how can I push it out?
• I've screwed up and need to repair my reputation--HELP!!!

In just a bit (2 PM ET), Ted Demopoulos will join me again on The Bauer Pauer Hauer where we'll discuss podcasting for your business. Last week Ted and I discussed blogging for your business, and it was a really fun show packed with some great tips.

Won't you join us today? It's a live show so feel free to call in and lob us a question. The toll-free number is 866-472-5790.

To listen in on the broadcast, click here.

With nearly 150 million domain name websites registered (source: NetCraft) and a phenomenon known as the Google Sandbox, where new sites are placed into a moratorium of sorts until they have proven to be legitimate sites, getting a new site to quickly appear within search engine results is an enormous challenge all webmasters and site owners face when launching a new site. According to Nielsen Netratings, there were approximately 8 billion search queries performed in the month of October 2007 which means search engines are a popular tool to discover websites. Based on the total US population of 303.5 million (US Census), that equates to 26 searches for every single person in the US in October alone.

Leading organic search engine optimization firms suggest that it can take anywhere from three to six months to achieve a top 30 ranking in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN dependent on the competitive online search landscape. Additional statistics from NetCraft indicate there have been over 40 million new sites in 2007 so the search ranking challenge is becoming greater and greater each month.

Recently, I developed a new site (http://radio.smbconsultinginc.com) dedicated to my marketing internet radio show as a sub-domain off of our main company site (http://smbconsultinginc.com). The site went live on Sunday, December 2, 2007 and was indexed by Google and Yahoo within five days. Furthermore, the site ranked within the top 20 search results for “marketing radio show” according to Google (#9) and Yahoo (#16) on December 7, 2007. Taking into consideration the number of competing pages within Google (5.48 million) and Yahoo (112 million) for that particular phrase, this is an accomplishment that many webmasters and site owners would like to duplicate so let’s take a look at how it was achieved.

• Special attention was paid to the title and description tags for each page of the site with the main page getting the lion’s share of keyword focus. The keyword tag wasn’t even utilized for this site as a test to verify its dwindling importance to search engines.

• A link to the new site was placed on our main established website homepage which gets indexed regularly by all crawler based search engines.

• Placing strategic comments on very popular and heavily linked to blogs improved the odds of the site being indexed and created a little awareness.

• Signing up for a directory submission service that submitted the site to nearly 500 online directories for around $100 saved tremendous time. This ploy was implemented to speed up the indexing process while also creating permanent links back to the site which focus on targeted keyword phrases.

• A sitemap was created next and submitted directly to Google in order to improve the odds of getting more pages indexed once their crawler discovered the new site through one of the strategically placed links from any number of sites targeted in the first few steps.

• Since the site’s true purpose is to focus attention on the great guests featured on the show, an e-mail was sent to each guest to alert them of the site and encourage them to promote their own individual page in any way they deemed appropriate.

• The content generated for the site will lend itself well to naturally attracting links as time goes on which will further improve the site’s rankings for various keyword phrases.

Now that the site ranks well for a few keyword phrases within the search engines’ organic rankings, show popularity and guest awareness will increase which help all parties involved better attract their desired target audience which is one of the key values of organic search engine optimization.

The next time you produce a new website and want to improve the odds of your site getting indexed quickly, follow the steps outlined above and hopefully your site will rank well in the process.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roger Bauer is founder and CEO of SMB Consulting, Inc., a nationally recognized sales and marketing consulting firm specializing in revenue growth programs, search engine optimization and strategic initiatives. To learn more, point your browser to http://smbconsultinginc.com or e-mail info@smbconsultinginc.com

Over the weekend, I cranked out a new site dedicated to the radio show. On the site, you can get background information on each guest including scoping out what they look like, download a podcast of the show, ask questions, or provide feedback.

I hope you'll check it out as that will become the main avenue for the radio show moving forward. Here's a link: Sales and Marketing Radio Show or http://radio.smbconsultinginc.com.

As always, let me know what you think.

Date: October 25, 2007

Episode Title: Defining Value & ROI

Guest: Michael Nick, Author of “ROI Selling” and “Why Johnny Can’t Sell”

Expressing value in your sales and marketing messages can be a huge challenge for many organizations. More often than not, our own needs and focus working IN the business vs. ON the business overwhelms us to spread messages that are self serving and not customer centric. My guest, Michael Nick, will talk about ways you can express true customer value in your messages in an objective manner to better serve your customers.

During the show, you will learn such things as:

• Establishing measurable goals
• Developing “why buy” calls to action
• The 5 rules for creating effective business issue statements
• Crafting realistic ROI metrics
• Discovering true customer needs and attaching a value to those needs

You don’t want to miss this show! Tune in Thursday at 2 PM ET (11 AM PT) for another power packed marketing hour on “The Bauer Pauer Hauer.”

Increasing sales is a goal of just about every single company out there today but far too many don’t know how to grow their sales effectively.

My guest 10/18/07, Michael Boylan, author of "Accelerants" and "The Power to Get In," will share ways you can grow your company as a sales representative, marketer and/or a business owner including how to:

• Target new revenue opportunities more efficiently and effectively
• Compress and make more efficient your existing sales process
• Craft stronger, more persuasive value propositions that create urgency to act
• Identify and gain access to the real decision makers faster and more effectively
• More accurately assess and scope the likelihood of each opportunity’s probability to close earlier in your courting process
• Compress closing cycles and reduce your cost of sales by up to 25 percent

To join us for the show live @ 2 PM ET (11 AM PT), please visit The Bauer Pauer Hauer. If you'd like to call in and ask a question, the number is 866-472-5790. To have a question answered (on or off air), please e-mail radio@smbconsultinginc.com, and I will see to it you get your question(s) answered.

This Thursday (October 11, 2007) @ 2 PM ET Marcia Yudkin, author of "6 Steps to Free Publicity" will join me on The Bauer Pauer Hauer.

Here are some things you'll learn from the show:

• What publicity can do for your business.
• The dos and don'ts of dealing with reporters, producers, and other media folks.
• How to spread your message in an objective manner.
• How to increase traffic to your website.
• Establishing credibility and "expert" status with your target audience.

Guest: Barry Feig

Topic: Hot Button Marketing

Radio show number one is in the books, and I feel pretty good about how everything went. At first, I was very nervous but that quickly dissipated and the show took on much more of a telephone conversation that everyone got to listen in on. Thanks to Barry Feig for being my first guest and being very easy to talk to and informative (as he always tends to be).

On the show, Barry and I discussed his book “Hot Button Marketing” and how a marketer can tap into various combinations of the 16 hot buttons he outlines in his book. There are rational reasons people buy, and there are the real (emotional) reasons. We may rationalize something extremely well after we’ve bought it, but emotions drove us to make the purchasing decision.

The primary key to uncovering hot buttons is asking questions. That sounds very simplistic, but so many marketers miss the boat by talking about their product or service at length without learning anything helpful about the customer or prospect. Think about it—you have two ears and one mouth so you should use them in that proportion. Barry and I shared a chuckle about that.

People want status and belonging frequently when they purchase something, and Barry touched upon some ways to tap into those particular emotions when marketing a product or service.

We also talked about sex of all things on air. Sex is one of the “hottest” hot buttons, and just about any marketer can tap into that to improve their results. Whether you use the allure of possibility or blatantly utilize a very attractive person to peddle your wares, sex sells!

During the last segment we talked about Barry’s Hot Button Marketing training program. In fact, we may partner to teach this via seminars, boot-camps, and webinars as time progresses. To learn more about the program, you can visit http://barryfeig.com or e-mail Barry directly at feig@barryfeig.com.

Thanks again to Barry Feig for joining me on the air for my first show. If you’d like to listen to the podcast for the show, here’s a link: Bauer Pauer Hauer Show #1: Hot Button Marketing.

Please join me October 11, 2007 @ 2PM ET when Marcia Yudkin will talk about her book “6 Steps to Free Publicity” and learn how you can attract valuable publicity to improve your marketing reach.

I’ve gotten the radio show on VoiceAmerica.com setup for the month of October. Below you’ll find the guests along with the topics we’ll discuss. I hope you’ll join me each Thursday @ 2 PM ET to learn from the gurus.

October 4, 2007—Barry Feig, author of “Hot Button Marketing”

Naturally, Barry and I will chat about the “hot buttons” of marketing and how you can push them to attract more customers.

October 11, 2007—Marcia Yudkin, author of “Six Steps to Free Publicity.”

Learn various ways you can gain free publicity that will help attract more customers and increase awareness of your business.

October 18, 2007—Michael Boylan, author of “Accelerants” and “The Power to Get In.”

Learn how to prospect better along with ways to improve your organization’s sales performance and decrease cycle times.

October 25, 2007—Michael Nick, author of “Why Johnny Can’t Sell” and “ROI Selling.”

How can you better express your company’s value proposition and decrease sales resistance? Michael and I will explore a few ways to accomplish this goal and increase revenue.

If you have any questions you'd like to ask one of the guests, please e-mail radio@smbconsultinginc.com. To learn more about VoiceAmerica's Business Channel, check out http://www.modavox.com/VoiceAmericaBusiness/ or click the link.

As some of you know, and just as many may not, I have been asked to host a weekly one hour marketing radio show on Voice America's business channel starting in early October. As of this e-mail, I am 99.9% sure this will happen, and I already have six guests that have agreed to do the show. Among the guests:

Marcia Yudkin
John Jantsch
Tom Antion
Michael Nick
Michael Boylan
Debbie Allen

Some of the folks I have requests out to include:
Mike Filsaime
Rand Fishkin
Andy Sernovitz
Joe Vitale
Danny Sullivan
Stephen Pierce

I'm not listing the ones I have requests submitted to put any pressure on them, but I'm very hopeful each one agrees to do a show as I believe they have great stories and information to share that would benefit the audience. Same with the ones that have agreed to do the show--a star studded guest list to be sure.

If you have any questions you'd like to have asked to any of my future guests, please e-mail radio@smbconsultinginc.com. The show doesn't start for a couple months, but it's never too early to start planning great shows. If you have connections to a potential guest, please share them as well. Anyone who helps me land a great guest will receive a complimentary copy of my first book "Cost Effective SEO: Attract Your Target Audience Through Online Search" (a $67 value).

Speaking of the book, I am working on the companion videos that should be completed no later than month's end, but I may introduce the book for purchase online very soon as a separate product. Once the videos are done, they will be packaged with the book and several bonuses. Stay tuned for more details on that.

I also have additional product development plans in the works which I'll definitely keep everyone posted right here on the blog. It's an exciting time, and I'm very encouraged about the direction of SMB Consulting as we're moving forward very quickly.

To learn more about Voice America and their show lineup, visit http://voiceamerica.com.