Byrd's Law #93: The worst sin in marketing is to be boring.

The only thing I have to add is: Boring to the people you are trying to reach! If you are selling fast cars, it is perfectly okay to be boring to little old ladies.

And the only thing I have to add to that is: The only way to know if what you are thinking is going to be boring, is to put yourself in the shoes of the person you are trying to influence.

Byrd's Law #92: Search Engine Optimization is a Marathon, not a Sprint.

After we complete a major SEO project for a client, they normally go on a maintenance contract where monthly we review their rankings and traffic and make adjustments.

Why? There are four big reasons why this is important.

1. Google regularly makes significant changes in their algorithms. Any one of these changes has the potential of dropping your rankings. It is true if you go at SEO in a sound "white hat" manner, you aren't likely to drop clean off the map.

2. Your competition isn't sitting still. If they are improving their rankings, someone else's rankings are dropping... maybe yours.

3. Over time, people change. What may have been a hot search term a year ago may not be now, whereas another term you neglected as unimportant may now be hotter than a pistol.

4. While the project may have achieved its major targets, that doesn't mean it can't be improved on. If 90% of your targetted search terms are on page one for Google, there is still the other 10%. If you are on page one, you can still work on getting onto the top half of page one. And there may be less important search terms that you can now take up and optimize for.

None of this requires an intensive effort, so the cost is relatively small. Over time, the effort can make all the difference in the world.

When we do a website we always include what we call "Basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization."

Almost everyone wants their website to be found through searches. It is part of the whole "get rich online" thing but also a very sensible idea! The fact is, companies big and small are putting more of their marketing budgets into online efforts, a trend that has been going on for years and with no signs of a change anytime soon.

Why? Because every year, more people are looking more online for products, services and information, less to Yellow Pages, magazine and newspaper ads, TV commercials, etc.

As with all marketing purchases, when it comes to buying websites "Caveat Emptor" applies (Latin for "Let The Buyer Beware"). Lawyers and the government can't protect you from wasting your money.

Every web designer claims to be an expert in SEO. That is actually true about 3% of the time. One reason is that there is a LOT to the subject, and it is constantly changing (as Google makes major changes in their algorithm as frequently as eight times a year).

Case in point: A prospective client came to us with an already built website asking if we could optimize it for the search engines, as the designer had failed to get them high search engine rankings.

The site was built entirely in Flash and had very little copy.

First of all, while Google now (as of June) can read some of the content in Flash files, it is only some. Second, if there is little copy in your website, what do you expect Google to munch on? They're supposed to mind read what your site is about?

I could build two sites that looked identical to the visitor. One would be "search-engine friendly." The other would be invisible to Google.

So, when we use the term "Basic SEO" all we mean is that we are building a site properly so that it is search-engine friendly, and will be recognized by Google as to what it is about, because of the content and structure of the site.

That is not a difficult task. But it isn't going to happen if the person doing the optimizing doesn't understand how Google works so he can make the right choices at numerous points when building the site.

So why don't most web designers do it? They are designers, not SEO experts. It's a lot of work to understand and keep up on the subject of SEO.

Of course, that makes it that much easier for our websites to get high rankings since they are often competing against sites poorly optimized, if at all.

So, my fellow website designers, stay ignorant my friends. Stay ignorant.

Something that needs to be repeated from time-to-time.

Deceptive advertising is so common one might get the idea that is okay or effective.

Of course it can be effective in the short term. "There's a sucker born every minute" is all too true. Outside of the moral and ethical issues involved, it is not effective in the long term. Eventually bad word-of-mouth, lawsuits, etc. etc. catch up with you.

Almost all marketing has a visual (graphic) element to it. And it is the first thing that has to work because if the visual element doesn't grab someone's eyeballs, you aren't going to get a chance to get your message across. So this is important!

Of course, a lot of times this is the only thing a marketing piece does right. We've all seen ads which made us go "WoW!" and the next day you couldn't remember what brand was being promoted. But that's no excuse for or reason not to get this right.

THEN make sure your headline interests people and the rest of your copy is compelling and really speaks to the person you are trying to reach.

This has nothing to do with marketing. It's just a really cool graphic. Every street in the continental US.

Since our first post on this subject was so popular, here is another in what will now become perhaps an endless series of posts.

Today, let us discuss wasting money with excessively diluted marketing campaigns.

What do I mean by that?

Let's say you have a marketing budget for the year of $30,000.

A cable network salesperson contacts you and pitches you on spending $3,000 a month on TV commercials. That sounds exciting, especially when they tell you they have a special deal, this week only, where they will produce the commercial for free and you get four 30 second spots a day. 120 spots per month! We gonna get rich!!

Not.

Four spots a day means one every six hours, across probably several channels. How would anyone even notice that you are communicating?

Repetition is an essential factor to successful marketing. The average American is exposed to some 3,000 marketing messages per day. It takes repeated exposure before a new message even rises above the noise level (a technical term) to a point where someone starts to notice your message.

You might as well have taken that $30,000, tied a brick to it and tossed it overboard. It'll cause just about as much affect.

This isn't theoretical. I've had more than one client come to me who did exactly that ($30,000 on TV commercials, not thrown overboard). In one case there was no measurable effect on their stats. In the other case, they had better track of where their inflow came from, in that entire year, they got exactly one new patient from the TV commercials (both of these were in health care).

There are many other examples possible of this marketing error. Direct mail campaigns sent once or twice to a list, then move on or give up. We've seen tremendously successful campaigns that mailed to the same list month after month for years. We documented one case where a person responded to the 24th mailing piece they received.

I know of a business owner who when he first started advertising, ran an expensive ad twice with almost no response. He ran it a third time and got buried in calls. He ran that same ad with minor variations for years, until he sold the business for a 7 figure price.

The moral of the story is when planning a marketing campaign, don't count on instant results - and match your marketing channel to your budget.

You're welcome.

Since I'm sure all of you have money to burn and are looking for ways to waste money, I thought I'd help you out.

I'll limit this to "How to Waste Marketing Money" since that's what I'm an expert on. You'll have to go to other sources to find out how to waste money buying clothes, jewelry or shopping for computers.

Today, let's talk about how to waste money on a Click Ad campaign.

Click Ads - the sponsored links you see on Google and other search engines - are a fantastic marketing tool, mainly because you only pay for your ad when someone actually clicks on it and goes to your website.

Imagine that! You only pay for an ad when it is effective!

Despite that, there are multiple ways you can waste all or much of your click ad budget. Here are my favorites:

1. The winner is: running your own click ad campaign but not spending enough time learning the ropes to do so well. There are a lot of wrinkles to running one and if you don't learn what's what, chances are you are going to waste anywhere from 25% of your budget on up.

2. Poor choice of or no geographical targeting. If you are a dentist in Largo, why would you want to pay for clicks in Alaska?

3. Poor choice of keywords. This can lead to many useless clicks from people not really looking for what you have to offer.

4. Poor ad wording. This can kill you two ways. One, by encouraging useless clicks, and secondly, by getting a low CTR (click-through-rate) so you have to spend more per click to hit your budget target.

5. Bidding too much for a keyword. Ideally, you bid the LEAST amount that will hit your daily budget. Otherwise you are paying extra per click only to have your ads shut off before end of day.

6. Another personal favorite.... poor landing page or website visitor experience. Once someone arrives on your website, if they aren't well handled, you've just wasted everything you've done to get them to your site. That's true no matter how they got there, but what a waste if you just paid $1.98 to get them there!

You're welcome.

Cute title, eh?

I do have a point.

Websites are often designed to look good whereas they should be designed to accomplish a purpose. Aesthetics can help accomplish that purpose but that isn't automatic.

This article gives a great example of a website that couldn't be plainer - and prettying it up wouldn't be a good idea. Note: I don't agree with everything in the article, but the main point is valid.

The biggest danger of doing email broadcasting, is not running afoul of the law (that is, the CAN-SPAM act). If you are a legitimate business that is easy to comply with.

Internet Service Providers have a MUCH lower threshold. While it is legal to send unsolicited email under CAN-SPAM, it violates the Terms of Service of pretty much every ISP and email subscription broadcast service in the country. Also most ISPs have limits on how many emails you can send per hour or day.

This is a subject you MUST address to run a successful email marketing campaign. If you do not, your are likely to get black-listed and shut down by your ISP.

You don't want to come in to work one day and find out you have no Internet connection or your website's been taken down.

Or find out you've been listed in Spam Data Bases and your email traffic is all being automatically junked at the other end.

There are basically two solutions:

The first is to use only "double opt-in" email lists. That means no matter how you obtain an email address, you then send the person an email to CONFIRM that they want to receive email from you. If they don't reply positively, you don't send to them.

This is the only method that actually, fully complies with the Terms of Service of ISPs (so long as you aren't trying to send too many emails in too short a period of time), and of subscription email broadcast services such as Constant Contact.

However, it has a major liability to it. You lose by far the largest percentage of your email addresses. Even if someone would welcome your email, they may not notice or reply to your "opt-in" confirmation email.

So what is a person to do?

Read on in part 2....

(This is part two of an article on how to do email broadcasting.)

Door #2 says, knowingly violate the rules but do it in such a way that you never come up on their radar screen.

I strongly recommend Solution #2, and it isn't hard to accomplish. There are basically two ways to do this.

If you are sending to a list of people who really do know you and the list isn't too large, go ahead send it out through your ISP. Or you can use a subscription service for larger lists. Either way, chances are the percentage of people who complain or ask off is likely to be so low as to not trigger labelling you as spam.

There is an alternative, which works just fine even with huge lists from dubious sources. You send the emails out from a domain other than your regular one; and you send out using an "SMTP service".

If your emails are all @fatfreds.com, also register fatfred.com (without the "s") and send your broadcasts from "newsletter@fatfred.com". That way it can't come back onto your main domain hosting service.

An SMTP service is simply a barebones emailing service. We use one located in England. If they get complaints, they simply send them to you to unsubscribe.

The problem with any other system is your ISP, if someone complains, will probably NOT tell you who is complaining. They'll just tell you to knock off the spam. It is so easy for AOL users to report your email as spam, you are going to get complaints. So you have to have a way of finding out who is complaining.

All this adds up to a system which is a bit complex. It is also more expensive than just broadcasting through your ISP or a subscription service.

It is still WAY cheaper than any other form of marketing, and if the list is any good at all, and your email is well designed, it will be VERY cost effective.

(At Fast Forward we have a turnkey email broadcasting system based on the above. We've been using it successfully for almost two years. Call for more information.)

About 3-4 years ago spam became such an issue that Congress stepped in.

One reason was because states were starting to pass laws - and they didn't necessarily agree with each other. You can imagine what it would have been like with 50 states having different rules, since email is by its nature, national or international!

The result was the CAN-SPAM act. Kind of a funny name, since in a way it is what it says: It tells you how you can legally send spam.

It is vital to know the rules if you are sending commercial emails, since this is a real, live, Federal law - it even has criminal penalties for violation. You can go to jail (of course only the worst offenders get that).

Contrary to what some people think, it is NOT illegal under this law to send unsolicited commercial email (it is in violation of Internet Service Providers' terms of service. But that is another story).

You can send all the unsolicited email you want without breaking the law, as long as you follow a few simple rules. I am not a lawyer, but this is a good general summary of the rules:

1. You can't falsify sending email addresses or otherwise try to pass yourself off as someone else.

2. You have to include your actual company name and address (can be a PO Box).

3. You need to include some kind of notice that this is advertising or a solicitation of some sort, if it is.

4. You have to provide a simple, easy way for people to request to be taken off your list. You can't require them to provide anything more than their email address in order to be unsubscribed.

5. You have to remove people from the list within 10 days or your being notified.

That's it.

These rules DO apply to non-profit organizations. If email is being sent by a third party, the rules apply to both the third party and the organization for whom the email is being sent.

Simple enough? So make sure you follow these rules (Note: If you use any of various subscription emailing services such as Constant Contact, iContact or Mail Chimp, compliance is automatically taken care of).

I am frequently asked about purchasing email lists. Here's the straight dope on the subject.

Three or four years ago, you could pay a company $1000 or so to send out 1 million emails to a targeted list.

Those days are gone, killed by spam and the CAN-SPAM act.

If someone is offering to sell you an email list at ANY price, it is almost certainly a scam. There are essentially no legitimate lists for sale. There are certain circumstances where you can get a legitimate list for free (see below).

If someone is offering to send out email on your behalf, to their own list, for less than about 35 cents PER EMAIL, it is almost certainly a scam. That's right. Email lists are considered so valuable, they charge as much to send an email as it costs to mail a postcard.

Legitimate organizations that will broadcast your email to their list are usually magazines or associations. They will have to approve your email before sending it - and may have severe restrictions such as on size or content.

With rare exceptions, the ONLY legitimate ways to obtain email addresses for your own use are:

1. Compile them yourselves, such as from lists of your own customers or prospects, or newsletter signups.

2. If you exhibit at a trade show, you will often get an email list from show attendees and/or exhibitors - sometimes with strings attached on their use.

3. If you are a member of a trade association of some sort, you will often get an email list of other members - sometimes with strings attached on their use.

Of course, no matter how you obtain emails, in broadcasting you have to follow the CAN-SPAM act rules, AND make sure you don't get on the wrong side of Internet Service Providers (labeled as a spammer). More about these issues in the next couple of days.,

If someone is telling you anything else, they are preying on your hopes and ripping you off.

So what do you do? Get busy and find ways to build lists using 1 to 3 above! Because email marketing IS one of the most cost-effective methods of marketing that exists. IF you can get or build a useful list.

Since I mentioned it and didn't completely cover the subject, here's the full story on "the other Web PR" - "Page Rank." For those who don't know the history of Google, there were other search engines and ways of navigating the web such as directories that were important in 1996 when two Stanford graduate students - now billionaires of course - came up with the idea that became Google.

"Page Rank" is at the heart of that. Those two geniuses - and geniuses they were - reasoned that a search engine needed to be able to figure out what a web page was about - which basically comes from its content - but also how IMPORTANT it was. They decided that the best judge of a page's importance is what other people thought of it.

How do you know what people consider important?

By links.

If other websites link to a page, and those links agree with page content - and if those links are from web pages which are themselves important - well then, that page is IMPORTANT.

That idea is implemented in part through "PR", "Page Rank", a number from 0 to 10 assigned to each page that Google indexes. A page with a PR of 10 is of the highest importance. A PR of 0 is the lowest.

Google then uses these PR values as part of its overall formula ("algorithm") for determining search engine rankings. In short, the higher your PR, the higher your search engine rankings are likely to be.

Different pages in a website will have different PR's. Usually the home page has the highest PR.

How do you increase your PR? You get links - but not just any links (see above).

To give you an idea of the scale of PR, Microsoft's home page is a 9, as is Yahoo.com and the home page of the New York Times. The Drudge Report is an 8. United Airlines is a 7. Tampa Florida's website is a 5.

For mere mortals, 0 to 3 is easy and not worth much. A 4 is not bad (our home page is a 4). If you can get a 5 or a 6, you are really cranking.

"PR" has two completely different meanings in relation to the Internet and websites. There's "Page Rank" which is a number from 0 to 10 Google assigns to each page of a website, as to how important that page is in the scheme of things. 10 is the highest, 0 lowest. It is one of the important elements to achieving high search engine rankings.

But that is not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about "PR" as in "Public Relations" as in what does the world think of you?

If you are successful, people are going to start talking about you on the Internet, and if people start talking about you, some people are going to say BAD things about you. Maybe even lies.

Oh the horror! What is one to do!!

It is pretty unpleasant to read a pack of lies about oneself on a website and realize that it is OUT THERE for anyone to read.

This is the down side of celebrity.

Well, first of all, realize that doesn't necessarily mean anyone is reading it. But they might.

The good news is it is possible to do something about it.

With rare exceptions you can NOT get the bad PR taken down. What you can do is to make it harder for someone to find the (as it is known) Black PR. How? Most of the time, the Black PR is found, if at all, by people doing searches on your name (or perhaps company name). If you add more high-ranking pages to the Internet, you can drive the black PR down onto page 2 or 3 on a Google search - where hardly anyone will find it.

Of course there's more to it than that. But the basics of it are that simple.

Marilyn Monroe, with and without makeup:

http://www.miss-vintage.com/marilyn/makeup.htm

This information has moved to http://www.fastf.com/knowledge/marketing-isn't-working.htm

It's a great day in America when a black man can be elected President.

What made it happen was brilliant marketing. Marketing Guys have been writing articles and talking about the Obama campaign for months - and will undoubtedly do so for years to come.

This article by Al Ries, one of the true gurus of modern-day marketing, is the best I've seen yet on the subject. Here are lessons for all of us to learn:

What Marketers Can Learn From Obama's Campaign

Me and Shakespeare, we have a way with words.

In a slow economy, business owners and executives fall cleanly into two categories:

1. Those who have decided it is going to be bad, cut expenditures to the bone (including their marketing budget) and wait for the storm to pass.

2. Those who have decided they aren't going to have a recession in THEIR company, and so increase their marketing budget and/or work on improving the effectiveness of what they are doing.

There doesn't seem to be a middle ground on this. It is one or the other.

I'm not faulting anyone who takes Road Number One. I just strongly recommend Door Number Two. The companies that come out of this downturn bigger and stronger are all going to be in Group Number Two.

One of the truest truisms in marketing is just because you wrote it, published it or posted it doesn't mean anyone is going to see it.

That is certainly true of the Internet in general and blogs in particular.

The whole idea with a blog is to generate repeat visitors. But you have to get them there the first time somehow.

So here are a few tips on how to traffic to your blog.

1. Make it a part of your website and with a prominent button to visit your blog. Of course, you aren't going to get more visitors that way than are visiting your website.

2. It may sound silly to have to mention this, but it is amazing how often it is forgotten: TELL PEOPLE ABOUT YOUR BLOG. Whether that is by sending out mailings, mentioning it to the cashier at the local diner, or hiring a plane to do skywriting, get the word out.

3. Add other blogs in your subject area to your blogroll. Don't have a blogroll? This is the list of blogs YOU like and read which usually is located along one side of your blog. If you list a blog, you are linking to that blog. Some of these will notice, check out your blog and may write about YOUR blog on theirs. And some of their visitors may check you out.

4. Visit other blogs in your subject area which allow comments. Comment when you feel like it. Some people will find their way back to your blog.

5. Do something worthy of grabbing attention. Of course not everyone can always do that. But if you have original reporting or a very well written opinion piece on a hot topic, or something so unusual (especially pictures or videos) as to be a real eyeball grabber, this can spread virally.

6. Make sure your blog shows up in indexes and directories and social networking sites (more about that in another post)

You can see from some of these points, such as #3-5 why I've said don't bother blogging if it isn't going to be fun, if you even do manage to grind out some posts, no one is going to be reading them.

When blogging started about 5 years ago, blogs got read by at most perhaps a few thousand visitors a day. They (especially the political blogs) got a huge boost during the 2004 presidential elections. Now top blogs regularly get 100,000 or more visitors a day. But they all started out as labors of love and that is what made them good, interesting and worthwhile.