In the early days of advertising, brand marketing was “the” way to get your company or product noticed. Every company hoped to have enough budget to buy Coca-Cola scale type advertising to put their product in the face of the consumer. This continues on today in traditional media. With the largest advertisers likely the same ones in the Mad Men years (i.e. Coca-Cola).

The major difference between now and then, is that in the online space, your budget doesn’t determine how much exposure you get online. With social media and networking sites, it is easier than ever to get noticed. It just takes time and creativity to get your brand noticed.

Here are a couple of examples of how companies are getting noticed online:

• Submit your products to be reviewed. Major electronics makers have been doing this over a number of years on CNet and Gizmodo, where they do professional product reviews. The shift that’s occurred in recent years is that now bloggers as well as consumers have gotten into the act. For example, if you searched YouTube for “Flip Mino HD Reviews“, you’d get a whole host of reviewers giving the product a spin. It’s like 1,180, 5-10 minute mini commercials of the product.

• Although many will argue that Email Marketing is a direct marketing tactic (which it technically is). If done tastefully by offering useful content or eye-catching imagery (think of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad), it can also be seen as a brand marketing tool. Think of how many emails you have gotten from Target, Gap, Amazon, etc. where they have been invited into your inbox and their brand is being reinforced on a weekly or monthly basis. Although you may not purchase from them because of an email you had received, their emails are keeping them top-of-mind the next time you look for household items, or jeans or books. All this for pennies per email sent.

• Facebook Ads are notorious for not getting as many clickthroughs compared to other pay per click platforms like Google Adwords. But all the more reason why it can be a great branding tool. Think of it. You get to target your demographic right down to the type of TV shows and city they live in, for less than a cup of coffee a day!

Online marketing  is largely seen as a great direct marketing playing field. But with social media, email marketing and a few other creative tactics you can leverage the online space to keep your brand top of mind and in consideration when it does come time to buy.

Many real estate agents have flocked to sites like Trulia.com to establish their online identities. As you should. It’s a marketplace where home buyers flock to search for the latest real estate listings. Trulia is a great place to make sure you are accessible to the thousands of home buyers and sellers who use the site to begin their real estate search.

Trulia is a great place to let people know you are an experienced agent. You have the ability to answer users’ real estate questions, post your listings, submit your resume as well as publish blog posts.

I’m a huge advocate of blogging by real estate agents. It has a number of benefits. But one thing that agents aren’t aware of when they do blog for sites like Trulia is that it’s a lot like renting. It’s like renting because you aren’t building up equity in your own website with search engines like Google. Let me explain…

Blogging is a tremendous benefit for many website owners because it generates content for their website. With every new blog post that you publish on your website, you increase the opportunity of a person finding your website in Google. Let’s say you publish a blog post on “Advantages of Owning Real Estate”, if you published it on your website you’ve just given yourself an opportunity to appear for search results related to that article. As you accumulate blog posts you are building up equity for your website in the eyes of search engines like Google. You’re site will be seen as an authority in your particular niche and other bloggers as well as other websites will begin linking to your website. Links in the eyes of Google is like a vote of confidence; which they use as a factor in determining who shows up first in search engine rankings. You are working your way to making your website a powerhouse in search engine rankings. You see…equity.

Blogging for sites like Trulia (as enticing as it is) only gives you short-term advantages. You are building up equity for Trulia’s website, not your own.You not only are giving Trulia the chance to be found in search engines based on whatever you post, but on Trulia it’s easier for a potential client to navigate away from your Trulia profile over to the next agent’s. Your blog on Trulia doesn’t give you lasting benefits of blogging. You are renting.

So stop renting and build up your “search engine equity” by blogging on your own website. You’ll be reaping the rewards once your site starts attracting free traffic to your website because of your blogging efforts.

There’s a great book by Donald Keough the former CEO of Coca-Cola called “The Ten Commandments of Business Failure“.

It’s a great book that I highly recommend for any entrepreneur, and it’s premise is that there are thousands of ways to make your business successful, but from his own experience there were only about 10 ways for your business to truly fail.

This is no different in the online world. There are different ways to succeed online, but there are common factors to failing. So as you venture online to promote and market yourself; try to avoid these deadly pitfalls.

#1 – Launch a Bad Website

There’s no excuse to have a bad website. It’s almost better not to have a website than to have a bad one.

Thousands of new websites are cropping up each and every day. According to Domain Tools, a website that tracks domain name information, there were approximately 70,000 new .COM domain names registered per day. Although not the perfect indicator of how many new sites are launched daily, it gives you an indication of how many people want to get online. But most importantly it gives you an indication of how competitive the online space has, is, and will be.

Really good companies will put their best foot forward and have a professional looking website that is organized, pleasing to the eye and follows the best usability practices. Having a sub-par website cripples you right from the beginning. It’s your home base. Your face to the online world. Although content is still king, no one will eat a prime rib steak off of a garbage can lid. Also keep in mind that having a great looking website can be had with less than a couple of hundred dollars if you are tech savvy and use open source software like Wordpress (which is being offered as a free installation by most web hosting companies like GoDaddy) with a really good looking theme that’s free of charge.

#2 – Avoid Measuring Website Traffic or Activity

Just like your balance sheet and cashflow reports are critical to your business, so are web analytics. If you don’t track and review the data that exposes how your website visitors are getting to your website and what they do once they get there. You’re running your website in the dark. You won’t know about critical info such as:

• Which campaigns drove the most users to your website
• Which campaigns yielded the most leads
• Which pages have the highest likelihood of driving someone away

Services like Google Analytics are free, so there’s really no excuse to not track this kind of data. Unless you like the thrill of not knowing.

#3 – Ignore What People Are Saying About You or Your Company

What your clients or competitors say about you online:

• Is easier to publish via their own blogs, review websites or forums
• Can be easily found by prospective clients
• Is more important than what you have to say about yourself

With this in mind it’s important to track your online reputation so you can mitigate any negative feedback. (Hint: Use Google Alerts to track website mentions and Yahoo Sideline to track real-time Twitter messages)

#4 – Don’t Respond to Inquiries or Criticism

This rule applies to inbound emails, comments on your blog posts or even online feedback that you find on other websites. Not responding is the equivalent of saying “I don’t care”. We’ve all experienced it at one point or another. We contact a customer service email address with no reply. Or post a critical comment on a blog post. Or send a Tweet to someone…and not even an acknowledgment.

Your silence speaks volumes, which in turn will come back to you in bad online Karma in the form of diminishing user engagement with your Twitter account or a decline in readers of your blog. Or simply bad word of mouth…”Oh ya, I contacted him but he never got back to me…”. It always come back to you in one way or another.

#5 – Stop Testing New Marketing Techniques

You’ve found a great way to drive leads, and your done? This is a great way of stifling any forward momentum or progress. But before you pat yourself on the back, remember that what works now doesn’t necessarily mean it will continue to work at the same peak level continuously.

The biggest gift that the web has given us, is the ability to fail really fast. Why not use this to your advantage and keep testing to improve upon your last best effort? Testing is what will help your marketing campaigns innovate and incrementally improve. To avoid this blunder start small by testing different variations of your email marketing or the pages that you send people to. See which marketing copy increases your inquiries.

#6 – Don’t Use the Web to Promote Your Website

This may seem like an obvious one, but you’d be surprised how many companies fail to recognize this. You may be putting your website URL on your advertising billboards, direct mail, business cards and flyers. But if that’s your only traffic generation strategy you’re missing out big time.

It’s too far of a reach to expect a majority of your clients to read your website URL on a billboard, remember that URL, recall that URL when they actually need to look for your services, and hopefully type in that URL without any typos.

To crank up your website’s traffic research tactics such as:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Pay per click (PPC) advertising
• Email marketing
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Etc.

Or just continue reading this blog

#7 – Ignore Google in Your Marketing Strategy

For a large majority of successful businesses that operate online Google represents the largest contributor to their website traffic. People use Google as their starting point to anything they need to find online. Google is also the most dominant search engine in North America.

So suffice it to say, Google should be a big part of your strategy to increase your online leads. (See #5 about SEO).

#8 – Being “That Guy” in Social Networks

Chris Brogan termed it best. So I’ll let him explain:

#9 – Let Your Web Designer Lead Your Online Strategy

Web designers are great. If you find a good, reliable designer that does great work for a fair price, keep her. But not all of them know online marketing.

There are many facets to succeeding online, great design is just one of them. Use other resources at your disposal to create an online marketing plan and to help you execute them.

#10 – _________ (Fill in the Blank)

What have you found that’s a one way ticket to failing online? I’d like to hear what you’ve learned from your own experience…

The recession is upon us and the general outlook is gloomy at best. But that doesn’t mean that you have to accept it. There are ways to thwart the effects of a recession and even thrive in one.

Many experts have chimed in on how businesses can keep steady during these turbulent times, and they basically boil down to these three common elements:

1.    The ability to execute efficiently with a mindful eye on expenditures
2.    The agility to be able to change swiftly to meet new market demands
3.    And most importantly, the foresight to invest in marketing when others are cutting back

If your organization were a living breathing being, marketing is the air it needs to survive. With cost being a major factor in any decision making during this recession, internet marketing is becoming an attractive option for budget conscious businesses.

Leverage Internet Marketing to Beat the Recession

Competitors may be scaling back on their marketing initiatives. With fewer ads and less noise, now is a good time to let your marketing message shine through and capture a larger share of the market. Once the economy rebounds and begins to lift you’ll be well positioned as the new market leader.

Here are a few ways we can use internet marketing as a tool to succeed during this recession.

It’s All About Perspective – Reposition and Repackage

There is still demand for your services and products; but likely in a different form. Let’s take it from the perspective of a hotel or tourism attraction business. Families who typically would have gone on an extravagant vacation overseas or across the border will probably still plan to go on a vacation, but will opt for one closer to home.  To capitalize on this type of shift, target vacationers within a short flight or driving distance with a Pay Per Click search marketing campaign. Travelers benefit with a vacation within their budget and you are able to attract new clientele to replace the ones who would have come from abroad.

Customers are Out There Searching for You – Leverage Search Engines

It’s easy to overlook the path to least resistance. But if you have a website, there are customers using Google and other major search engines searching for products and services just like yours. Leverage the internet to the fullest extent by launching an SEO or Pay Per Click Advertising campaign to increase your leads & sales. It’s highly targeted and much more cost effective than the majority of traditional marketing methods such as print, radio or outdoor ads.

Make Your Website Work Harder for You – Improve Your Website’s Conversion Rate

Do you know your website’s conversion rate? You should, it’s the best metric to determine how effective your website is at contributing to your revenues.

Let’s assume that each sales lead from your website yielded an average of $500 in sales. If you have 1,000 visitors to your website daily and you receive 3 inquiries per day, your website’s conversion rate (converting visitors into an actual sales lead) is only 0.3% (Sales of $1,500/day). That means that 997 potential clients left your website and likely contacted one of your competitors instead. Now consider this; a modest 1% increase in your conversion rate could mean an extra 10 sales leads, which could be an extra $5,000 in sales/day. Imagine what that could do for your bottom line!

Invest in your website by working with a professional to perform a detailed review of your website analytics and the usability of your website. A few key changes and tests could be the difference between $1,500 and $6,500/day.

Get Ahead of the Curve with Market Research

Innovation is necessary to stay competitive. There are many online tools such as Google Insights and the Google Keyword Research Tool to gauge the demand for a new product. Before investing in a time and resource drain such as product development, invest your time in market research using these free tools. They are updated daily with new data and will likely help refine your research even further, allowing you to focus your marketing dollars on the right market segment.

Tap Your Existing Client Base with Permission Based Email Newsletters

Everyone has an email address and so do your clients. Tap into your network of current clients with email marketing newsletters. Vertical Response, Constant Contact and Emma are just a few of the email newsletter services that cater to businesses like yours. They are easier than ever to create & implement and can cost less than what you spent for lunch. You can also gain valuable insight to improve upon for your next newsletter and the next one after that.

It’s easy to take the power of the internet for granted because it seems cliche to make money from the web. But before you consider slashing your marketing budget or worse yet just stick with traditional media alone; remember that an internet marketing company can probably help outperform your direct mail, print or radio campaign while at the same time keeping your accountant happy.