We love acronyms! They make us feel like we know what we are talking about… I know the lingo therefore I must be an expert. The truth is these things are very specific and very confusing if used incorrectly, but fairly intuitive if understood and used correctly.

Like anything, using the wrong terminology is a sign of sophomoric understanding of a subject. If you are talking to someone who does not know the subject you sound like an expert. Men are particularly good at this! If you are talking to someone does not know the subject you look like a complete dork, not to mention dishonest. But we all still do it.

Next time you are at a networking event and feel the need to flaunt your expertise here are some basic concepts on the world of search engines:

SEM – Search Engine Marketing. This is a basic term that encompasses the entire world of using search engines to market a product or service. It generally includes all of the items below and anything not below that is left off or not invented yet!

SEO – Search Engine Optimization. This term refers to the organic section of a search engine that ranks sites by the mantra of search; “relevant content”. It is largely considered to be the “free” advertising component of the internet but if you have ever gotten a quote from an SEO company to optimize your site you know that’s an exaggeration!

PPC – Pay Per Click. This term refers to the sponsored links on search engines that you can purchase on a bid system not unlike the stock market. There is a software application built into Google, Bing and Yahoo, among others, that allows you to manage this process.

These are the 3 King of Internet. For the most part they rule the world at the moment. There are several other pieces that are subsets of these main arteries such as the search content networks and affiliate marketing programs that would technically fall under the PPC umbrella.

There are directories, which are sort of mini-search vehicles (think Yellow Pages, Merchant Circle…) and can straddle the fence between PPC and SEO. Most have free listings that help you optimize your presence on the web but most also have upgrades that you can buy so you get featured listings… Google Places is the ultimate directory and really the only one you should ever pay for. In my opinion, of course. Interestingly enough it has been free forever but is now beginning to offer some paid upgrades. See my blog from 11-10 on Google Boost!

Understanding the game is not just important if you want to sound suave without being stupid at a networking event, but also if you want to learn how to use the internet effectively as a place to do business. There is so much fraud out in this space and there are so many good sales people that it is really easy to be taken in. Spend some time learning what you are talking about and less about sounding like you know what you are talking about. You will get both in the end!
Copyright ©2010 Sales Logik, LLC

Sales Logik advocates for greater transparency in the SEO/SEM/agency community with the intention of creating awareness, revealing the areas in which some organizations have faltered and then offering up solutions to improve business practices.

Sales Logik is officially launching a viral video campaign in the coming weeks and months that addresses many different topics and we hope to generate a strong buzz from our efforts! We believe this can become a movement that other businesses can support and embrace.

Although, we are addressing specific problems related to the internet marketing/advertising industry, our underlying message of transparency and fairness can be applied to any industry and any organization.

To find out more information, you contact us directly through our contact form or visit our dedicated YouTube page at www.youtube.com/saleslogik.

You can follow us on twitter and facebook as well!
Copyright ©2010 Sales Logik

We have become a world that makes decision because of what we are told as opposed to what really works. Television, Movies, Media of all types portray a world we strive to live in but is, in fact, an alternative reality! Who else is glad the damn elections are over. How can anyone even watch them?

Small business owners have one significant advantage over large corporations. They can react more quickly!! This is the most over looked opportunity that exists in the world of small business. However, that advantage is completely obliterated if you don’t take the time to gather information upon which to react.

There are so many inexpensive tools available to small business and the nice thing is that the amount of data being so small makes it much easier to track, and analyze.

Google Analytics is a FREE software that is so easy to put on your web site and virtually tells you the underwear color of each visitor. It is possible to track information that tells you which advertising/marketing campaign delivered the contact.

It is also possible to route people who come from offline sources through the online tracking back to Google Analytics! You can do this with Phone Calls via Keyword Call Tracking and Direct Mail… Even TV and Radio to some extent.

If you follow each contact throughout their visit to your site and track each conversion back to the user and the campaign, voila, you know where it came from. Then it is simple to calculate the return.

The problem is that the “Agency” method of doing business is gone. It was packed with fluff the same way wall-street was and really still is. Agencies don’t want you to track their results. Advertisers don’t want you to track their results. They all want you to believe in the power of the brand. The intangibles, the creative…

It’s not that those things are unimportant, it’s just that they are not as important as they are made out to be. No wonder though, they are being sold to you by people who’s job it is to create an alternate reality.

The truth is many business owners don’t want to track because they are afraid to know the truth. If it is not working then they are a failure. They were “taken advantage” of. They need to admit weakness.

GET OVER IT!

An imperical case study comes from a real life example of an auto dealership in Reading Pennsylvania, where our home offices are. He ran a single commercial on a single channel on a single night for a single car! Every person who came in or called for that car saw it in one place. Unquestionably. The medium for the campaign was a cable TV commercial for professional wrestling match!

Each person who came in was greeted with some reference to the matches and acknowledgment that they were a wrestling fan. 40% of them denied watching wrestling! This is the reality folks. People lie! Wrestling is a guilty pleasure people don’t like to associate with. They do it in the privacy of their home and don’t like to be called out on it, so they give you bad data. Garbage in, garbage out.

So next time someone asks you if you track your sales and you say “yes, we ask every customer how they heard about us” ask them if they watch wrestling!
Copyright ©2010 Sales Logik, LLC

Last week Google quietly changed the world, AGAIN! They have been planning and building their Google Places brand for the last year. Moving it through the annals of Google Local, Google Business and Google Maps until the all converged into Google Places around last May.

Anyone who has worked with Google Places in the past year for local service based companies is aware of the randomness in the algorithms since May. People have been complaining about all sorts of quality guideline violations without any clarity on why they have been rejected. These are not everyday people these are experts.

Google introduced a new $25 per month upgrade for your listing that they promise has no impact on your rating but for $25 I would buy the insurance. We have long been prognosticating that local search is the future of the internet and it’s not because we are really smart, it’s because Google told us!

Google has now capitalized on the trend and turned it’s big machine in that direction almost completely against the grain, mouth wide open just filling it with fish!

Virtually every search you do as of last Tuesday… As long as it is for a business category, generally business to consumer, that can be broken into small local services now has virtually the entire first page of their Google search as Google Places listings. SEO results have been pushed down to the bottom of the page in most cases. Google has wiped out a segment of the market overnight.

I have spoken with a few SEO companies that are a little scared. They can still focus on the non-service retail businesses and ecommerce providers but taking the local search out of the profit game hurts bad!

For this reason AdWords pricing is already starting to jump. We don’t have hard statistics yet but we don’t deal in them anyway. We focus on trend and wait for the statistics to prove us right. With the new Places Pages the sponsored links are now highly valuable, over night! I am seeing my budgets for clients run out at 12PM on accelerated campaigns that used to run almost all day!

So what does this mean for SEO? Is it really that relevant or has Google built in a way to profit from that market as well? Next column!

Copyright ©2010 Sales Logik

Source: Transparency is the key to building SEO trust, according to expert | Search Engine Marketing News

As our technology evolves, it has become easier for many SEO agencies and marketing companies to not tell the full story when it comes to their services. Unrealistic promises and sugar coated results seems to the best way to build your customer base when there is an enormous demand for SEO. The goal is to complicate internet marketing, when in reality it only waters down an inherently credible and hugely beneficial service.

Scott Woodhead, who founded the online outdoor retailer, Loving Outdoors, said it best,

“Never forget that the digital world is at heart also a human world. Treat your customers as human beings, and that includes saying sorry when you get it wrong.”

There is alot of truth in what he says and it lies at the core of what Sales Logik practices. As times goes on, our goal is bring these issues into the light, because in the end they affect everyone in one way or another.

Mallorie D.
Associate Sales Logiker
www.saleslogik.com