Far too often companies ignore key elements of search strategy and only focus on a single piece of the puzzle. Ignoring research can leave you missing out on valuable keywords and with unclear expectations. You can’t move up in the search engines without passing another site so understanding where you are and who is above you is vital.

Once you know where you are it’s important to look at your goals and budget to develop a realistic strategy of where you want to go. If you have a new site and want to immediately rank for competitive keywords PPC will definitely need to be part of your strategy. Does that goal fit with your budget?

Many companies will focus on only one element of search strategy while ignoring another. If you are focusing all of your budget to offsite optimization through link building or PPC but aren’t also developing strong landing pages or quality content then your strategy becomes unbalanced and your ROI will suffer.

No strategy is complete without solid metrics and review. Understanding the importance of metrics and what to look for is vital to determine success, problem areas and what elements of your strategy should be adjusted.

You may sketch something out, send links to other sites you like and don’t like or send emails trying to describe your vision. Well there is a much better way!

A wireframe is essentially a blueprint of what your site will look like. And now Mockingbird has developed a very easy to use web based tool for creating and sharing your wireframes.  Simply drag and drop the different site elements you need (maps, videos, text, toolbars, buttons, and more!)

Here is a screenshot showing a wireframe mockup that we made in about 2-minutes!

• No web design knowledge needed!
• No software to download, work in your browser!
• All the user interface elements and web apps you need!
• Create multiple pages and links!
• Easy to share with your designer or colleagues
• It’s FREE!

When developing a  website design for our clients, we spend a lot of time on the creative brief and ensuring we develop a site that meets and exceeds our clients vision and expectations. If you have a design or layout in mind, this is the perfect tool to develop and share those thoughts. Try it now.

It should be fair to say that existing customers have more interactions with your brand than potential customers. Yet, why is it that when we think of marketing (which really is just about managing brand interactions and perception), we so often only think of ways to get new customers?

There are two ruts I’d like to point out that hopefully you can avoid in your marketing strategy:

1. Marketing only to new clients and not marketing to your existing customers
2. Treating potential clients better than existing clients

Now nobody sets out to treat their existing customers poorly or worse than their potential customers, but it’s an easy trap to fall into.  I like to think of these two problems as fishing with a hole in your net. You may get a lot of fish to swim in, but they’ll just swim right out before you can eat them. Now hopefully you aren’t planning on eating your customers, but sometimes when companies only focus on new customers, their existing customers can definitely feel like they’ve been swallowed up.

3 Ways to avoid these ruts:

1. The most obvious solution is to literally market to your existing customers. They already believe in your business so chances are they would do more business with you. Often times clients may not even realize you offer an additional service that compliments the one they already purchased from you. Email marketing is great way to stay in front of your existing customers and remind them of other services you offer.

2. Don’t make marketing all about discounts and free stuff. Not only can this often degrade your brand and lower your margins but it can also offend your existing customers. I have personally experienced this with phone and insurance companies who have “new customer rates” that are far better than existing customer renewal rates. To me this seems backwards. We address this issue with of one of our clients that we do a print catalog design for and email marketing for. When a catalog hits the mail and customers start to place orders, we don’t want to follow up with an email offering a discount on something they may of just recently purchased. With this client, we offer a handful of “web only” products and are careful to only offer email discounts when a catalog is getting close to the end of its season.

3. Another big way businesses can fall into the trap of treating new customers better than existing customers and letting those fish swim right out of the net is through their support and service.  I can’t tell you how many times I have a seen a company offer both phone & chat support for sales but only offer chat for support. What that tells a customer is that you are willing to do everything you can to get their business but then once you have it you’ll only use part of your resources to keep them happy.

So keep marketing to your customers, keep them happy by offering them the same great support and attention you do your prospects and don’t make it all about new customer discounts just to drive in some new business. Focus a little more on the customer you do have and you may find that you don’t need as much new business as you thought!

We met with the Governor and discussed online video, social media, twitter and Texas!  We were pleasantly surprised how hip to social media and online video Governor Perry is.  He even ‘tweeted’ during our meeting about us and as you’ll see in the photo below the Gov uses a MacBook Pro.

Ryan Short (MODassic Marketing) with TX Governor Rick Perry

Discussing online video, social media & Texas!

Here is mine…. That’s me arriving on my first day at Stanley Cooper!

How many times have you walked into a place of business, only to be greeted by a sign taped to the window like this one? Forget the content of the sign for a moment, we’re simply looking at the display of the sign itself:

There are several problems with this particular sign. We could talk about the wording of the sign, the fact that capital letters make it seem like they’re yelling at their customers, why “italic” font isn’t the best for readability, and why the image of the padlock should be replaced.

But the first problem I notice with this sign is the invisible tape used to hang it up.

What’s wrong with using invisible tape to hang a sign on your entryway? I see three main problems:

1. Invisible tape doesn’t work as advertised. Namely, it’s not actually invisible. Most brands of invisible tape are actually fairly cloudy looking, and the closest-to-true-invisible brands tend to gather finger oil and bubble up while being applied.
2. You’re making a first impression, and the tape isn’t helping. Unless you run a “hole-in-the-wall” restaurant or a government agency, the tape contributes to an image of “junky, thrown together crap”. Especially if your sign is well-designed and printed on nice cardstock, the tape effectively cancels out your efforts on the messaging itself. Consider the example above — it’s bad enough that some people’s first experience with this restaurant will be that it’s closed, the presentation of the message should help assuage that problem, not exacerbate it.
3. The tape is just lazy (and / or cheap). There are plenty of ways to hang a sign without resorting to invisible tape. Suction cups, wire, pushpins, magnets, all kinds of simple, efficient ways to keep your messaging while improving your image. If you simply must use tape, try rolling the tape (to make it faux-double-sided) and sticking it on the back of the paper, out of sight.

I understand this may sound incredibly nit picky. But when you’re developing a brand identity (and if you own a small business, you’re doing just that), all these little tiny details actually matter.

Especially when the first encounter some people will have with your brand is right at your front door.

BING is Microsoft’s recently rebranded search engine. They changed things up in an attempt to compete with, or at least slow down, the increasing dominance of Google. The jury is still out as if it will gain any market share, but it still pulls enough traffic that it is important that your site is well represented.

One of the main focuses of BING is comparison shopping.

Bing is focusing a large of part if its million dollar ad campaign and functionality on their tagline “Bing and decide”.  If you have an eCommerce  website or have shopped on an eCommerce site then I’m sure you understand the importance of user reviews in making purchasing decisions. In an effort to make BING the search engine of choice for comparison sh

opping, they include REVIEWS in the search results.

IMPORTANT: BING is pulling their user reviews directly from these 3 sites:

• CitySearch.com
• Judysbook.com
• Yelp.com

These review sites are not just  important for BING.  These review sites (especially Yelp) are referenced on numerous sites and iphone applications. So, be sure that your site is accurately listed on those sites and encourage your customers to leave positive reviews. If you get positive feedback or a great testimonial in person or over the phone, don’t be afraid to ask that customer if they would mind posting that online where it can really do you some good!

And I’m sure you will all start hearing a lot about another SEO-ish acronym DEO (Decision Engine Optimization)

Using an image as part of a business name, logo, trademark, design mark or service mark.

The whole point of having a logo, business name or design mark is so that it will be unique in the marketplace. How can your logo be unique if you’re using a royalty-free file that millions of other people could have downloaded? Besides violating the iStockphoto Content License Agreement, using an image in this way also infringes upon the rights of the artist who created the file. If these aren’t reasons enough, good luck trying to develop or enforce rights in conjunction with a logo that uses a royalty-free image.

Reselling an iStock image on t-shirts, pins, posters, apparel etc. without an Extended License

If you plan to use an iStock file to sell any kind of product, you need an Extended License. Downloading a royalty-free file from iStock does not mean that you are free to do anything you want with it. Extended Licenses exist for the rare instances where you may need to use a file above and beyond its original licensing intention. An Extended License provides greater usage freedom for the files licensed from iStockphoto and properly compensates the artist for extended use of their file. Extended Licenses are also subject to some restrictions, so read the Extended License Provisions.

Redistributing iStock files for free or as complimentary gifts without an Extended License

Downloading files with the Standard royalty-free license (automatically included with all files) does not mean you can give it away for free on something such as electronic wallpaper. The moment you want to sell or redistribute your work which includes an iStock file, you need an Extended License. Find out exactly what you can do with an Extended License on the Extended License Provisions page.

Depicting a model in a sensitive way or with falsely attributed information

Would you like it if someone took your photo and then an advertiser or political group used it with text that attributes a sensitive statement or endorsement to you, for example: “I have a mental illness” or, “I voted for Ferrets Against Furs”? No, you probably wouldn’t like it. That’s because it’s a violation of the rights of both the model and artist. Neither iStock’s Standard or Extended License allows you to use any iStock file in a way that depicts a model in a sensitive way i.e. mental or physical health issues, substance abuse, criminal behavior, sexual activity or preference. Even if you need an image to promote a good cause please be careful not to violate these sensitive licensing permissions.

The new reporting dashboard shows statistics about your business listing, like how many users saw your business as a local search result, zip codes where driving directions requests come from, and the top search queries for which your business appeared.

Here is a sample of what our site’s local search data looks like:
Business: MODassic Marketing
Impressions in the last 30 days: 1498

Google Local Search Reporting - Dallas SEO