As reported by CNETonline shoppers in the US spent $816 million dollars online on Black Friday. This is a 26 percent increase from 2010.
Even I stayed in and enjoyed the online Black Friday deals because where I live, people have to camp out in the freezing cold just go get the best deals. Pneumonia isn’t worth saving 50% on mostly useless stuff to me lol
Bottom line is that more and more companies are offering perks like free shipping promotions, lower prices and people are staying at home instead of burning gas and time at the mall.
Get your online business game up in 2012!
Ok first off I’m not an Apple fan boy and I don’t think Steve Jobs is comparable to Einstein, let alone the deity some people make him out to be.
Mashable wrote an article about a month ago on the Apple co-founder about the simple lessons that any business owner can take from Steve Jobs and apply it to their own business.
I really liked this article because it highlighted how Steve Jobs essentially came back to Apple, trimmed the fat (development on Apple’s least successful products) and focused on making a small group of products outstanding before moving ahead and expanding.
That’s one thing we’ve done here at Final Round, last year most of customers were here for Internet Marketing so we finally dropped our design team and to focus 100% on Internet Marketing.
Many friends and associates often come to me for advice and they tell me they’re reading 20 different marketing books and trying 10 different SEO methods they read about and can’t understand why they aren’t having success making money online. I like to keep it simple and tell them “Become good at 1 thing instead of spreading yourself too thing and being poor at 10 things”. Once you have a consistent income, then expand.
This problem isn’t just limited to friends and associates but many businesses have failed trying to do too many things at once. Most run out of money before anything comes to fruition. So if anyone is struggling out there, re-evaluate what your company does and keep things simple before you move ahead.
What if Danny McBride really took over KSwiss?
Kidding of course but this video is pretty hilarious and a good example of a “viral” video!
A little creativity goes a long way not just in marketing but in life. This is a pretty cool little film that can hopefully help some of you out.
Do you know anyone that owns an online or local business? Doesn’t matter what kind of business it is. Dog grooming, dentistry, clothing stores, massage therapy, whatever.
Why not help them out AND get paid for it?
Final Round Media is offering extremely generous commission packages to anyone that refers us to a new client. You DO NOT need to do any selling for us. Just get us a meeting and we’ll take care of everything else. We do all the selling. You just sit back and collect.
The commission will be 10% of ENTIRE contract. So for example, if your referral signs a contract for the $3997 SEO Blast, that’s a $397 check made out to you, UP FRONT. In another example, a client could sign a $6,000 per month contract, that’s $600 in commission!
If you are an employee of a firm and you refer your boss, we will STILL pay you a commission (and your commission agreement is kept CONFIDENTIAL!)
WHAT WE DO:
Our firm specializes in online marketing and reputation management
These methods lead directly to more business for our clients and pay for themselves within months.
PLACES TO LOOK FOR REFERRALS:
If you think you know anyone who’s business could use these services (that’s essentially everyone) then please get in touch with me to discuss how we can arrange a meeting.
Thanks 
This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend of mine last year who was wondering about local search marketing. He runs a dentist office in Minneapolis and they have been in business for many years so I figured that I could possibly help him out. I know he has a website but has not had any SEO done on it at all. I also know that he spends many thousands of dollars doing local mailers.
He like many people who contact me have virtually no clue what local search marketing is and dread getting bogged down with SEO techno talk so this is what I will call local search marketing for techno newbies.
The email:
So one thing that my company does is we rank other company websites in Google for local searches.
I can see that when I search for your business’ name, your website comes up but if I search for things like “dentists in Minneapolis” or “best dentists Minneapolis”, your website is not even in the first 5 pages. And these are just terms I’m using off the top of my head. What I would do normally is see exactly which relative terms are searched for the most for Minneaplis dentists and optimize your website for those terms.
I know your business has won some local awards over the years which you mention on your website. That’s awesome but if no one knows about them, then their nothing more than trophies on your shelf.
Now let’s just say the term “best dentists Minneapolis” gets 2000 searches a month. The people that are searching for this term are probably either new to the area, visiting Minneapolis or looking to upgrade from their current dentist for whatever reason.
Ok so now imagine how many more potential customers you could have if your website showed up when they searched for “best dentists Minneapolis” and all those people saw your awards. Or how many potential customers your business is LOSING by not having a good ranking.
If even 1% of those 2000 searchers became customers, that’s 20 new customers a month. I think you once told me that you make around $1000 net from the average visit. That’s $20,000 more in your pocket per month and that’s just from 1 keyword.
That doesn’t even include the lifetime value of that new customer. What if they come back for more appointments? Or better yet, what if they bring their family? That’s pretty big money and again, that’s a real modest estimate. 1% from 1 keyword.
So that in a nutshell is what local search marketing can do. The best part is it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or where you’re located, same rules apply.
I hope this clears things up for some of you reading this and if local search marketing sounds like something that could benefit you, contact me today.
You can’t watch these great selling scenes and not be at least a little inspired.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – If you told you that you haven’t seen this movie, I wouldn’t believe that you’re in sales and/or marketing. This movie is that big.
Boiler Room (2000) – Not really a Ben Affleck fan but the motivational sales meetings he gave in this movie were EPIC. So much so that they’re probably the only memorable thing about Boiler Room.
25th Hour (2002) – Wasn’t the greatest movie in the world but it had a few great scenes.
At Final Round Media, we don’t just say we can build pretty sites and market your business. Those skills are also apart of our daily lives and many of our staff members put those skills into action.
Last month the team over at Digital Access Pass had an affiliate sales competition. The affiliate who could sell the most copies of their incredible WordPress membership software would win a shiny new iPad.
And the winner is…
One of our very own. We just want to congratulate Adam for always working so diligently. You deserve this one. We’d also thank the team at Digital Access Pass for hosting the contest. You guys make it easy to make sales with such a high quality product and low refund rate.
A month ago I had the chance to work on the website of a client. He was the owner of a local sushi restaurant. We started talking about promotion and I was shocked to find out that when he mailed out coupons through a local distributor, each mailing cost nearly $5000. The owner admitted that it was very expensive but he always ended up making a profit from the mailings so he was okay with the heavy price tag.
I had personally been playing around with Twitter marketing the past few months for my own projects. I asked the owner if he would be interested in a Twitter marketing campaign. Since this was a new endeavor, I said that I would start a campaign for him at no charge and we agreed that I would receive a commission at the end of the month for all the customers that came to the restaurant and mentioned my special “Twitter” coupon.
I fired up my Twitter marketing software, Tweet Attacks and started adding all users within a 5 mile radius of the restaurant. By the end of the first week, I had a list of nearly 300 users. I set Tweet Attacks and post my 10% off coupon every 30 minutes so the users on my list would be sure to see it. The next week I decided to expand the radius to 10 miles and only follow users who mentioned the word “sushi”. While this didn’t turn up nearly as many new followers, the ones I got were obviously very targeted. I continued tweeting about the 10% off coupon as well as a tweet with a link to the full menu. After 2 weeks, I had 402 followers. The owner called me at the end of the second week and he was very excited. He said that there were 6 new customers however one of them shared the 10% off coupon at their local office so one of the new parties was a group of employees which came in to try the restaurant for lunch! I continued adding users and tweeting the same tweets until the end of the month.
My totals for the month were 22 new customers or orders. The average order was a $67 so if you do the math, you can see that equaled over $1400 in orders just from Twitter. The other part of this is many of these customers will come back and spend money at the restaurant over and over again so the initial $1400 isn’t really the story. It’s still early in the year but if trends continue, this could be an extra $10k for the restaurant or more if you consider how many new customers will come in by the end of the year and also the return customers.
Now imagine if you did the same thing for your local business if you were a doctor or a dentist where the average customer spends over $1000. Twitter can be a very powerful marketing tool and the best part is it’s very easy to use and as far as marketing expenses go, it’s very affordable.
You can grab the software I use at: http://www.tweetattackscoupon.com and save $20 off the professional version which is what I use. Thanks for reading!
