Starting a social media marketing consulting firm

I suggest creating mini-packages based on the services you provide and with a separate monthly management fee at 2 to 4 levels (project management, account management, analytics management all together fee–the analytics management assumes you provide insights vs. information from the analytics). I would try to stay away from strictly hourly, but my fee schedule would likely be based around a loose version of what I thought I was worth so that if a client asked me, I could provide an estimate.

Likely small business verticals:
1) Real estate
2) Lawyers
3) Recruiters
4) Financial services
5) Consultants (Speakers, Trainers, Consultants, etc…)
6) Creatives/Marketers
7) Wedding Photographers/Wedding Vertical

8) Plumbers

9) Doctors
Each has a separate strategy that seems to apply to it. I would obviously try to focus on the 2 or 3 that made the most sense from a strategy and passion perspective.

Social Media & Digital Marketing Firm Business Model (Version 1):
* Content Strategy
* Online PR/Blogger Relations
* Content Creation
* Listening strategy (including analytics)

Social Media Firm & Digital Marketing Business Model (Version 2):
* Landing page to list-bait and/or Sale page that converts
* Email content (aka autoresponder)
* Listening strategy (including analytics and CRM)

Social Media Firm & Digital Marketing Business Model (Version 3: More options):
* Training/Educational programs (WordPress, online copywriting, community building,  Linked In, B2B strategies, collaboration & productivity, time management, video, podcasting, linkbait strategies, etc..)
* Social media for internal communications and other functions
* Other online marketing functions & integration with offline campaigns

I think charging one fee doesn’t quite make sense unless you speak to a specific industry you are serving, because thats when you can really understand what the specific value proposition & ROI is.

Benchmarking versus firms can be helpful, but a solo practitioner is really providing a different service is 95% of cases intellectual capital wise. Although its certainly nice to be able to say that these five small business firms charge X, while I charge Y–suggesting to potential clients that the alternatives are more expensive.

Pay Per Click Management in Nashville, Tennessee | Music City PPC

I’ve decided to finally invest more energy behind my pay per click marketing at Creative Fusion. Why choose pay per click vs. the alternatives

• A/B Testing helps make your marketing scientific
• Pay for performance-like model. This helps optimize ROI for marketing dollar.
• Quicker turn around timeframe 6 hours vs. 6 months with social media or paid search.
• Hyper targeting to your customer (web marketers call this the long tail of search marketing)

PPC Services We Offer

• Paid search management to optimize your click through rate & your ad spend
• Targeted keyword research
• Landing page copywriting & design
• Strategy set up for closed loop marketing
• Whitepaper & List bait creation

We do the work, you reap the profits. To find out more or to get started today call us 9am to 7pm at (615) 974-9662. We look forward to talking with you. We want to help you reach the customers you are missing every day and to optimize your spending for optimum return on investment.

What does Conversion Optimization va A/B Testing Examine?

What else can you add to your website to optimize conversion?

• Call to action (including deals)
• Button size & copy
• Pricing
• Visuals
• Highlighting key words
• Guarantee
• Deals or Premiums
• Customer Testimonials
• Media Testimonials
• Remove clutter

You can see many more at Conversion Rate Optimizers mega-list of conversion optimization tips.
• Layout

Website Conversion Optimization Tools

Beyond Google Website Optimizer there are a host of tools to help conversions for your website. I’ve included a handful of short video demos from some of the more prominent low-cost conversion optimization applications.

Paid Landing Page and Conversion Optimization Tools

Here is a demo for Visual Website Optimizer. ($49 to $249+ per month)

Here is a demo for Optimizely ($19 to $399+ per month):

Here is a demo of Unbounce. ($25 to $500+ per month)

You can also check out this Mashable article on A/B Testing which focuses on 7 players in the A/B testing marketplace (Optimizely, Performable, Unbounce Visual Website Optimizer and others).

For price and function, the 3 tools I’ve listed are probably the top tools available (and I believe they all have a free trial for 30 days). If you’re on a budget where the above are out of range, the Google Website Optimizer might be helpful.

Also both Kiss Insights & the Hello Bar allow for direct messaging to user.

What website conversion tools would you recommend?

Fundamentals of Local Search Marketing in 2011

One of the main problems of small business is getting affordable local marketing. Local search marketing is one way to accomplish this goal.

What you want to know.

List of vertical search engines (or directories) for citations in local search.

To find additional citations in your specific niche, use the local search toolkit. You will find a video which explains the local search toolkit here.

Social Shopping & Discount Sites Like Woot & Groupon: Alternatives, Clones, and Killers

Here is a list of Groupon and Woot clones and copycats which are created around group-buying, coupons, or discount offers (although some of them are quite innovative, so to call them clones or copycats may not be entirely fair. In the case of some of them they are competitors or alternatives to Groupon. Also, I believe some of them actually predate Groupon which would mean they weren’t copycats or clones):

1) Woot
2) Ideeli-exclusive and (aka by invite only) and for upscale fashion
3) Shnoop.com-looks to be discount consumer products (primarily brands)

Shnoop.com is a daily deal website, that offers a deeply discounted product everyday but gives you a second chance a 2nd day on “yesterday’s shnoop”. Everyday a new deal is introduced.

4) 1saleaday
5) Stuffbuff
6) New Deal a Day
7) Facebooks’ Buy with Friends
8] Google Offer (Google’s new so-called Groupon Killer)
9) Deal Pulp
10) Daily Steals-a little cheezy IMHO
11) On a Day Buys

Other Social Buying and Discount Websites
1) Groupon
2) Living Social
3) The Deal Map
4) Offer Mint (unavailable)
5) Cheap Today (focuses on Sears, Kmart, Target, Kohl’s, Calvin Klein, and Walmart. )
6) Deal On (Saavy Circle)
7) Offer Matic
8] At Cost-city by city
9) Groupful (not available)
10) Appsumo-is internet application and sofware deals.
11) Brads Deals

(source for info)

In addition there are a range of coupone sites like Love a Coupon, Coupon Tweet, Coupon Graavy, Coupon Printster. For further info on discounts and coupons you can find info at Deals.Alltop. You may also like this list of Woot Clones.

Google 2011: Impacts on Local Internet Marketing

Google Product Search Overview

Google Merchant Blog and Google Base

How to create a real estate website

Social media and the internet is exploding these days. With the advent of web 2.0 technology and platforms, businesses, including real estate agents can easily get an affordable website.

There are several platforms available. Initially, flash is one option. However, flash doesn’t give you the ability to control the content and also is incredibly hard (or rather nearly impossible) to rank in the search engines. Its not surprising then, that most flash based websites are forced to rely on pay per click advertising, instead of natural search results for their rankings.

Other platforms include Ruby on Rails, Drupal, Django, and WordPress. Increasingly it seems the real estate community, like the larger small business and entrepreneurial community is picking wordpress to host their websites. Why are real estate agents making this shift?

1) Content management–the ability to quickly and easily publish to the web. The user experience of WordPress is nearly second to none.
2) Customer satisfaction–Wordpress makes an effort to please and even delight their customers. They take their customer base from the New York Times to CNN to the local real estate agent very seriously. In fact, a host of Fortune 500 companies are using wordpress to host their content.
3) Search engine optimization–Wordpress makes it much easier to rank in search engines for key terms in Google and other search engines. They’ve done alot of the heavy lifting (or rather heavy coding for you). Even Matt Cutts of Google has remarked about the ability of WordPress driven websites to rank in Google.

How to get started:

1) Pick a developer.
2) Contact your chosen developer to see how they work.
3) Pick a look or style for your website.
4) Get your webpage designed and delivered.

WordPress is one of the best platforms for anyone wanting to publish on the web–including you, the real estate agent. I hope this has been helpful as you make decisions about the furture of your business online. If I can be of any further service in your real estate design, development, strategy, or marketing–feel free to contact me.

Google Website Optimizer How To

Google and Wider Funnel explain conversion optimization via the Google Website Optimizer.

Basic Advertising Optimization Using the free Google Tools

Why small businesses should choose WordPress as a blogging platform

I just answered a Facebook Questions question about what blogging platform or tool small businesses should use. Here is the answer I provided

I personally use WordPress and recommend it:

1) Ease of use. (Not much more complicated than email or Facebook)

2) Flexibility (the back end interface allows you to adjust settings easily)

3) It has a great community of developers and creatives behind it.

4) Some Fortune 500 companies even use it (New York Times, CNN, Nikon, Nokia, Intell, Wall Street Journal, SONY Playstation, etc..)

http://wordpress.org/showcase/tag/fortune-500/

5) The online support community is fantastic

6) If you host on your own domain–you can get a reasonably priced, but well designed theme which you can then customize.

7) In general the themes (templates) for wordpress are nicer than other platforms. For instance as a photographer or designer these premium themes at Smashing Webs are professional:

http://smashingwebs.com/2010/04/49-amazing-premium-wordpress-portfolio-themes/

8) Local support through regional Wordcamp events.

Easy decision.