Web Marketing Consultant

Improving Processes and Client Communication
It's not often I feel like improvements in the way we handle clients and projects are fodder for our blog ... but truthfully, we face many of the same challenges our clients do. We have really improved the Creative Research portion of our design process and rolled-out a new approval system. It's very cool.

I am going to be putting a "demo" together for our prospects and all of our blog groupies to see, but it's going to take a few days ... I certainly can't cut you loose on our actual system ... you hackers :-) Stay posted.

LocalAdLink (Part 2)
Well, I'm convinced! The LocalAdLink service delivers as promised. These guys allow you to "target" certain zip codes for online advertising. They read the IP address you are accessing the web from to determine your zip code, then deliver ads targeting your area. They have an impressive list of partner sites and their ads are even being picked up by Google. So this is one of the rare cases where you get even more that promised. What a nice change of pace that is! We are going to see a major shift in the way advertising is done online, I believe. "Local" advertising is a great value. Their plans start at onle $49.99/month - maxing out at $199.99/month. These are significantly lower rates than you see with Google Adwords or other competing services. I am so excited a way to broaden your reach AND save money at the same time ... I love when that happens. Anyone who is on our mailing list is going to be getting information about this new service for search engine marketing directly, but to learn more you can go here.

LocalAdLink
So you can imagine how many different services we review for online advertising, search engine ranking, etc. Mostly, it has been a "necessary" waste of our time. Frankly, most services don't deliver what they promise. Of those that do, the prices or timeframes are unreasonable or impractical for many clients. So when we recently reviewed yet another new service for search engine marketing called LocalAdLink, I was less than excited. Well, it looks like I may have been wrong. These guys seem to be bringing tremendous value to their advertisers. Stay tuned ... I have a meeting later today to get more details ... but it looks promising! The samples and examples they sent were impressive, so far.

MTANJ Conference
I spoke at the MTANJ Conference (Marine Trade Association Conference) yesterday. It was a good event, attended by over 100 members and another 20 or so vendors. The response from the group was very positive as I spoke about Internet Marketing. We met a lot of nice people and I believe many of them went away with useful info. Several folks went out of their way to tell me how much they enjoyed the presentation. Yea! I love what I do, and I love it when it helps people. I will be interested to see if we get a chance to work with any of these guys ... only time will tell. I have a few leads and a bunch of websites to review. Time to get busy! Here's a link to the presentation.

Speaking "Gig"
On Thursday, I will be speaking at the MTANJ (Marine Trade Association) Conference. I anticipate over a hundred businesses to be represented. I have put together a practical, real-life "Guide" to getting more out of your web marketing. It is no secret that I think most websites suck. It's also no secret that I think most web designers have no vision, no talent, and are doing their clients harm by proporting to know a heck of a lot more than they do. It's sad really. These small business owners are living and dying with every dollar ... they spend a fe whundred or a couple thousand and get ... NOTHING but a worthless, crappy website that doesn't even meet the MINIMUM requirements of professionalism or effectiveness.

Wow ... didn't mean to rant like that ... this post began as an announcement for my speaking gig later this week. I'll keep you posted!

Self-Serving BLOG POST
Well, we all know that Google is a big fan of CONTENT. So every once in a while, I will pepper-in some self-serving content designed to get some keywords into our copy. Being from New Jersey, we want, first to dominate the New Jersey Website Design market. Since we are, without question, one of the leading web design firms in New Jersey, we feel confident that we will regain our top ranking in Google, soon! Many years ago we ranked in the top 3 on Google for nearly every term relating to website design in NJ. Since then, we have gotten so busy, we took our eye off the ball. Now, we are barely showing up. No worries ... we're still so busy, it's really more a source of pride more than anything. I mean, have you seen how lame some of the companies are that are outranking us for terms like "New Jersey Web Design Company"? It's weak!

The other problem is that we don't really fancy ourselves as a web design company as much as we are a web strategy company in New Jersey. Designers com a dime a dozen, but quality web strategists are almost impossible to find.