July 2009 Archives

Last night's Bay Area Mastermind Business Networking Mixer featured locally based and internationally famed online marketing expert, Srini Saripalli who presented on Web Traffic & Conversion Secrets for Offline Marketers.

The room was packed with standing room only when the meeting got started, and there wasn't a still pen in the room. Srini's presentation was full of incredible stats, facts, resources and actionable items that we'll each be implementing in our online businesses.

I received the news from The Wall Street Journal on one of their ALERTS this Wednesday the 29th, but it looks like everyone was soon reporting it.

What am I talking about?

It is the deal that was agreed upon between Microsoft and Yahoo.   The new venture will have Microsoft power Yahoo's search, while at the same time Yahoo will be powering paid ads on Bing.com.

Despite the fact that all of us are a lot more savvy these days, and we are inundated with information,email marketing continues to be a viable vehicle that is driving some real results.

From time to time here at Bay Area Mastermind we like to feature ideas and products that are innovative and may also be some tools you can use. By taking a look at these simple examples it can give entrepreneurs ideas to help them innovate and expand their business. So let's take a quick look at one forgotten trend and two new products.

As marketer, we work so hard to get a prospect into our business, and have them opt-in, become a paying customer, or try our product. What happens from there, however, is a different story.

Imagine that your business is a bucket. You pour customers into the top, and hope to retain as many as possible. Now image that your bucket has a small hole in the side and customers are leaking out and you have to continually market to put more into the top.

Now image that bucket has lots of holes, and some of them are BIG holes, letting boatloads of paying customers with cash in hand pour out the sides and away from your business. That's what can happen to all of us in our businesses, and it happens to big business, too.

What follows are three marketing campaigns that were excellent at driving traffic to a business, but fell down from there leaving heaping mounds of money pouring out of the bucket.

Those who know me can attest to the fact that I have said , one way to gauge what is happening in your local economy is to look at the traffic in your community.  Want to know if jobs are being lost? look to see how much traffic is on the roads at rush hour.

Of course I did not have any empirical proof of this theory until now.  A report was published today by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M showing that urban Americans spent an hour less in traffic in 2007 than they did the year before.

It is Interesting to note that higher gas prices were more effective at reducing driving in the U.S. than any policy decision has ever been. Not surprising the report went on to show that a similar correlation was found with regards to parking congestion. So in other words, less cars on the road equaled less cars in parking garages.

As part of the Bay Area Mastermind membership we provide our members with an assortment of economic information to help them be able to make sound decisions for their business as well as their personal finances.

Today, we'd like to give a quick overview of where we are according to a series of sources that we have gathered.  Depending on which economic source you listen to we are now either in the 19th or 20th month of the current recession. By many accounts this has been one of the longest and most severe recessions since the Great Depression of the 1930's. So let's take a look at where we are now and what is coming down the economic path.

As the talk about Michael Jackson's passing continues to take priority in most of American media, it is interesting to note how the public has changed their opinion of the late performer.  On July 3rd 2009, Billboard presented some information gathered by Nielsen company that demonstrated the dramatic shift in the public's opinion about Michael Jackson.

The numbers are interesting especially given the short time between the initial findings and the subsequent findings.

I am sure that it is no surprise to anyone that executive level managers are first seeking the internet to get their information when doing research. What was not known is to what extent.  According the "Rise of the Digital C-Suite" study from Forbes Insights and Google, the Internet has become the most valuable information resource for US executives.