You can't survey for price points. I mean you can't ask potential buyers how much they would pay for a product or service.

Why would they be honest in their answer? and even if they try, how would they know how much they would pay for something until actually faced with the situation?

So there are really only two things you can do to establish pricing:

1. You can survey to find out what your competitors are charging.

2. You can run A/B tests to see which of two prices (or discount offers) works better.

The best way to do #2 is with click ads. You can run two ads with different offers and see which gets a higher click-through-rate.

That is a fast and reliable way to test.

Did you know you can now do an image search on Google - by drag and dropping an image into the search box?

It's like Google Goggles but works with any image on your computer.

Not incredibly accurate at this point, but I remember when it was a new thing, to speak into a microphone and have it translated to text. No one thought it was ever going to be very good, let alone inexpensive.

Now Natural Dragon costs under $100 and is highly accurate.

Same thing with music recognition. Shazam is amazingly accurate.

Watch for this technology to get better and better and become widely used.

It is widely understood that reviews are of high importance.

Having many reviews will increase the position of your Local listing on Google.

People routinely use reviews to help evaluate a product or company.

There are many known instances of loading up competitors listings with phony bad reviews.

So an important part of any Internet Marketing strategy is to work on getting reviews posted on Google Places and elsewhere, AND to monitor your presence on the Web.

Automated review selection by search engines can lead to some horrifying results.

Here's a good article on the subject (additional info in the comments).

When Google Review Clippings Go Horribly Wrong

A new survey yields answers to how consumers find local businesses, here and now, year of 2011.

One shocking answer is the degree to which the Yellow Pages are still used - if you combine both print and online usage.

Actually I don't entirely believe the numbers. What I do believe 100% is the way newspapers and magazines have bottomed out.

Newspapers get half the usage of the Internet. And magazines half that of newspapers.

So the next time you're tempted to shell out big bucks to advertise in a magazine.... think again.

Article on the study

New reports indicate that usage of Facebook is down in the U.S. and Canada.

There were claims that this isn't accurate, it just represented a change in the way statistics were collected.

Me, I think it is not only real, but it is the first sign that Facebook has in fact peaked and all those predictions of Facebook taking over the world, may be just a tad overblown.

To a habitual Internet watcher like me, it's a no brainer.

Last year everyone had to get on Facebook because everyone else was. Inevitably a large number of those people found out that now they were there, they had no use for it. Nothing about it was interesting.

A lot of the promise has been defeated by bad execution and policy on Facebook's part. Example: Despite continued reports of how wonderful they are, Facebook ads are of very limited utility. For our clientele, Google AdWords are 10x as useful. Privacy issues, random changes in the user interface, spam problems - all are discouraging to users.

What does the future bear for FB? It will remain a force. Probably drift down slowly in usage / membership in the US and Canada while continuing to grow in some other parts of the world. Beyond that it really depends on Facebook.

Are they going to get more on the ball?

It is hard to believe how much marketing numbers vary daily, weekly, even monthly.

FastF runs a click ad campaign for our own marketing.

Day to day, the number of impressions and the total daily cost vary up and down by 50%. The average cost-per-click varies by 20%. The number of clicks is almost double on some days than others.

There is no pattern to this. It isn't that "people shop for websites less on the weekends" or any such.

So NORMAL variation is more than almost anyone would guess.

There are two challenges then:

1. To determine what typical numbers are.

2. To detect when an actual trend is occurring - up or down - showing something you need to deal with or an opportunity to take advantage of.

There is really only one answer.

Time.

Because normal variation is so large, you just have to let a campaign run for a while.

There's a moral to this story.

One-shot mailings, single or short run ad placements, short-term campaigns of all sorts, are almost useless.

They don't build awareness. But mostly, how can you establish any successful marketing if you don't even let it run long enough to find out if it is working, or how well?

There's another point to this.

Don't start a marketing campaign you can't afford to run for a while. Budget something you can sustain for a while. So you CAN run it long enough to see if it is working and to fine-tune it. Adjustments to a campaign can double, triple OR MORE its effectiveness.

Listen to me folks.

A few days ago I posted some key rules for email broadcasts.

I wanted to expand on one of these (quoting myself):

5. Unsubscribe. Very easy unsubscribe, at bottom of the screen. In most cases, they now offer a "partial unsubscribe" such as to receive emails less often, or on fewer topics.

In sales and marketing, if you ever offer people only two choices "yes" or "no" you are going to lose a large number of "maybes" that could become "yesses" with a little work.

This comes up all the time. Example: If the only way to contact someone from your website is a single contact form, the visitor is given only one choice. Communicate that way, or don't communicate at all. What if they want to communicate, but just not in that way?

Don't brush this off as a minor point.

This is VERY common situation.

One of them, which is huge, is email subscriptions. If a person only has a choice of subscribing or not subscribing, you are likely to lose them over anything they don't like.

That can be too many emails, emails on subjects they aren't interested in, other things.

The answer which has become increasingly common is to let people modify their subscription without unsubscribing. You can let them specify how often they want to receive emails (maybe they don't want weekly emails, but monthly is fine). You can let them specify which subjects they want newsletters on.

Of course you have to have an email program that supports these choices.

I just unsubscribed from one newsletter because it wasn't sufficiently fine-grained. Yes, it offered options. But one of them WASN'T to stop receiving advertising only emails. It wasn't worth it to me to be barraged with advertisements for things I wasn't interested in, to get the occasional interesting article.

Think about it.

I know this is way overly simplistic. But read on:

When you are talking to a group of friends, you probably have a pretty good idea what they are going to like or dislike.

Chances are you are trying to amuse, entertain, interest or inform them. You want them to like you more. Maybe get their help or help them.

Is it really so different when you do marketing?

I don't think so.

You're doing it to large numbers of people at once, and sure, you don't know their faces and names.

Think of each prospect out there as though they are a friend. Envision their likes and dislikes.

Decide what you are trying to accomplish with your communication (your marketing).

It isn't just to sell them. It is to sell them by _______ (amuse, interest, educate, build "like" or trust, etc. - fill in the blanks).

This will make your marketing more effective.

Google has launched the "+1" button - their answer to Facebook's "like" button.

Will this fare better than Google's previous Social efforts (like Buzz, which flew like a lead balloon)?

We'll see.

In the meantime here are a couple of the best articles about it:

10+ Points About Google +1

It's Here: Google +1 Button for Websites

and Google's official announcement:

The +1 Button for Websites

There were literally hundreds of new things - expected and unexpected - in Apple's announcements the other day at its annual WWDC developer's conference.

There was a lot about iOS5 - the soon-arriving next version of Apple's Operating System for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch. A lot of nice improvements, which do not, sad to say, include support for Flash.

Probably the most significant announcement, which extends far beyond mobile platforms, is iCloud.

You've probably heard the word "Cloud". It's a big buzz word that has at least two very different meanings. I'll discuss "Cloud Hosting" in another post.

In Apple's case, it refers to any service or capability that is platform independent. Meaning you can access the same service, flies or applications from different computers or devices. Often this just refers to what is known as "SaaS" - Software as a Service, meaning you subscribe with a monthly or yearly fee, and access the program on the Internet through a login. That would be instead of buying and installing it on your computer.

The huge big deal about iCloud is it is completely invisible to the user. It is built in at the application level.

You'll be able to access your iTunes on different devices. And they will know what you were last doing on another device. So you could be listening on your iPhone to a tune, walk into your house and pick up where you left off on your computer without any effort on your part.

As Steve Jobs said repeatedly in talking about this at the conference, "It just works."

This continues the long-term philosophy of Apple of making things easy for users, and leapfrogs Apple over Google and others in this area.

Article about the announcement:

It Just Works

But I still want Flash on my iPhone.

Here's another inevitable instance of making things easier in the world of Social Media.

Since tweets are limited to 140 characters, you pretty much need to shorten a URL if you are posting a link.

Hence the rise of URL shorteners such as bit.ly and goo.gl.

Twitter now does it automatically. Not only that, it will show your tweeps the destination URL. Which solves this issue.

Here's the full rundown on it:

Twitter Adds Automatic Shortening for URLs

Can you sell happiness?

A lot of advertising is trying. Sometimes very overtly.

My question, is it a good idea? Does it work?

Like salt, a little bit adds flavor to the meal. A lot makes it inedible.

The reason is it simply becomes unbelievable. Unreal. No one's life is going to be transformed and they live happily ever after because they wear Dr. Scholl's insoles in their shoes.

It's a basic marketing point. A claim either won't work or will get you in eventual trouble unless:

1. It is wanted by a large percentage of the people you are trying to sell to.

2. It is believable.

3. and Oh yes, it needs to be true about your product or service.

Will the next version of Apple's mobile operating system, support Flash?

I don't know.

Apparently Adobe and Apple have buried the hatchet. But, nowhere in the article does it say anything about Apple changing their mind:

Adobe CEO Has No Beef

19 out of the top 20 cell phone manufacturers support Flash. Can Steve Jobs hold out? You betcha!

On the other hand, Steve Jobs is not forever....

How long does it take a typical visitor to complete a purchase?

For low-priced items, is purchase on first visit usual?

This study finds even for an item under $10, it is still on average a 21 hour cycle. That rises to 25 hours for $50 to $100 purchases.

Size Does Matter

So that means even a $10 purchase usually takes two visits (most of the article's conclusions are bogus).

"Re-marketing" is becoming huge - promotion specifically addressed to someone who has been to a website but didn't purchase.

Think about how you can apply this to your site, whether an online store or not.

When Google started heavily rolling out personalization, people started writing articles that it was the end of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There's even a new book on it, The Filter Bubble.

How can you optimize a site when everyone is seeing different results?

What do rankings even mean in such a world?

Of course that was vastly overblown. There is only one situation where Google serves up vastly different results: If it looks like you are searching for something local.

In that case, even if you don't include a location in your search phrase, Google will assume it and serve up results at least partially based on your location.

Search for "plumber" and chances are you're looking for someone nearby (though you might just want to know what a plumber does or be looking for a photo of one). That presents no issues for optimization at all, if you are optimizing a local plumber's website.

There are some other differences for sure. For example, In your usual browser, and especially if you are logged into a Google account, your own website is likely to show artificially high in searches. Google knows you're more likely to click onto your own site.

But mostly the differences are rather small, one or two differences in rank depending on who or where you are.

Google's Chairman, Eric Schmidt made the same point recently:

"The differences are pretty small, he said, saying the personalization aspects are a small component of the rankings. “I think that’s a little bit of an overstatement to make a point,” he said.

(Quoted in this article.)

As usual, our servers were extremely reliable last month. None of our premium hosted websites were down for more than 10 minutes over the course of the entire month.

QUALITY of hosting continues to be a huge issue out there.

We often end up recommending to our clients that they move their websites to our servers. You can get cheaper hosting, but why?

Slow page loading, outages and problems with email aren't worth saving a few bucks over.