Internet Marketing, Football and Poker: What We Can Learn from 2 Minute Warnings, Sudden Death, Flops, Turns and Rivers
Posted by Salem Global on Dec 28, 2009
Did anyone see the NY Giants football game yesterday? I didn’t. But between Facebook and my poker game last night it was hard to avoid hearing how terribly the Giants fell. This week is your last chance to make things happen in 2009. This is your 2 minute warning, your sudden death and your RIVER card all in one. Huh? What am I talking about? Read on marching soldier…
A 2 minute warning is footballs way of saying there are 2 minutes left in the game so you better move faster, stronger and get your head in the game because at this point you don’t have any more time to strategize. It is now time to act. It’s now or never.
Sudden death takes place in overtime and means that the next point wins. If the 2 minute warning didn’t get your head in the game, sudden death should.
In poker you get a chance to see community cards three times. First comes the FLOP where you get to see the first 3 community cards. Then comes the TURN that can make or break you. The RIVER decides who wins and what will be the best hand on the board.
Internet marketing can be compared to football and poker amongst many other things. Basically you need to set up a short term and long term strategy. You will not get results overnight. You have to be patient, budget your money and time accordingly and then strike when the iron is hot. Many companies lose faith in their marketing. This can be compared to the football players that give up in the second half when they are down in the first. They still have a chance during the 2 minute warning but psychologically they might be finished. Similarly, people lose when they fold pre-flop, after the FLOP or TURN even though they might have the best hand at the RIVER. They lose faith in their cards, themselves and get bullied out of winning the pot. These people need to learn the odds. They need to learn that long term thinking wins.
So my message to you for this last post of 2009 is not to ever give up hope. Keep on truckin’ as we used to say. Next year in 2010 we will all be doing a little bit better. One of the first poker lessons I ever learned was that poker winners do not win every hand. Warriors do not win every battle, but they DO win the war. Superbowl champions don’t go 16-0 during the season (ok ok there is 1 exception to this statement).
Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0UzG-Gc7II
or Thelma and Louise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z88U915uq8
…be more like Jackie Chan in “Young Master”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiyJkIn1Nn0
And remember, not to lose faith in yourself, your family, your friends, your company, the economy… you get the picture.
Want to know more about Internet marketing, football, poker or martial arts movies? Give me a call at 212-993-5828, send me an email at raphis@salemglobal.com or visit www.SalemGlobal.com. Next week we get back to the 21 basics of Internet marketing. Evaluating your website for improvement.
Happy New Year Everyone!
Raphi Salem
The End of the Year Special: Last Ditch Marketing Efforts of 2010
Posted by Salem Global on Dec 28, 2009
My gym sent me a bunch of coupons in the mail for free drinks and guest passes to be used before the end of the year. (They SHOULD be collecting emails all year round and then blasting out weekly newsletters but they haven’t hired me so this is the forum where I can tell them what they should be doing on their marketing front). Toys R Us sent me an email wishing me Happy Holidays and Happy New Year and items that were 50% off. So did eCost, Buy.com, eBay, PayPal and a bunch of others. They all had the same message. All had the same tone and they all made me realize that I should be doing the same thing for me and my clients. Oh - and of course I am going shopping to take advantage of these deals…
For the non-profit I do work for (at a discounted rate of course), we strategized to send out emails to past donors and supporters to send in their end of the year tax benefit donations.
So whether you are big or small, corporate or not for profit, there is still time to act. Each year I try to hand deliver gift baskets to my clients throughout the month of December. In one case, I actually made a donation to a charity I know my client is involved in. He really appreciated that.
In this “recession” we have going on here, you need to be creative and generous all in the same action. You need to tell your clients and friends that this year was a difficult one and everyone knows it but that you care and appreciate the business you have been getting.
So this weeks tip is one of generosity with self-serving needs. You need to send an email, snail mail, blog and post on your homepage that you are running a recession special. The end of the year/ sign up now and take advantage of the times as they are. Now is the time to strike. Many people think that this year is over. True it is December 22 but there are still 3 days left till Christmas and 9 days left till New Years. People are still working. As a matter of fact, at 6PM last night I got a call from a potential client (an architect) who I am going to see today. Believe it or not, he isn’t showing up on the search engines. He told me that things are slow and what else is he going to do? Wait around for the phone to ring? I like this guy. He is pro-active and recognizes that the Internet is here to stay and that he needs to start taking advantage today. Not tomorrow, not next week and not next year. I guarantee you he hasn’t be reading my tips of the week. If he had - he would’ve already been a client. But seriously, he found SalemGlobal on the top of Google when he searched for a “website marketing company in New York.” And then he sang me the song I love to hear: “Obviously, if you are able to get yourself up to the top of the search engines, you must know what you are doing!”
And that is my secret folks. You all do what you do best. I do my best to be at the top of the search engines for keywords that will bring me business. I do the same for my clients and I would love to do it for you. As a matter of fact - we are running an end of the year special right now. Call me and ask me how to get 50% off my regular pricing. You will be glad you did. Your business will improve and you will be on your way out of this recession.
Next week I hope to celebrate the holidays and New Year with some skiing, ice skating and other fun things. But I will still be working. So if you want to get together or call me regarding your Internet strategy for the end of the year or for the New Year, just let me know, give me a call at 212-993-5828, send me an email at raphis@salemglobal.com, or visit www.salemglobal.com. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year Everyone!
Raphi Salem
People Capital Launches Student Loan Platform Beta
Posted by Aryeh.Landowne on Dec 16, 2009
People Capital unveiled a beta release of their Student Lending Platform which enable students and individual lenders to connect and exchange a peer to peer loan. People Capital is a leader in P2P Student Loans and the launch of their new platform makes them an even bigger player in the industry.
Register now and begin the process to obtain a private student loan for your education. As a special gift to their users, People Capital will be waiving the registration fee for the first 50 registrants.
Click here to register and click here to find out more information about People Capital.
It’s 2010. Wake Up and Smell The Internet: 21 Things You Should Be Doing Online
Posted by Salem Global on Dec 15, 2009
Well, if you check our blog and past history of email tips on website marketing, search engine optimization, you should know that there are 21 things that we here at SalemGlobal recommend to our readers and do for our clients, day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. But before I remind you in this week’s tip what they are, I first wanted to remind you that as a capitalist, business owner and website publisher, that marketing your website, (SEO/ search engine optimization, search engine marketing and whatever term or “keyword” or keyword phrase you come up with) actually means nothing compared to the bottom line. That is, YOUR bottom line. That is, your revenue and your profit.
The reason why you are in business or work is for one reason and one reason only. You want to make money. Even the not-for-profits that we work with want to make money. They want to make it in donations so they can help more people. Doctors want more patients because patients pay them (or insurance companies do, and/or Obama’s Democratic Party healthcare reform bill will), lawyers want more clients, retailers want to sell more product and professionals want to sell more of their services. Regardless, even though SalemGlobal.com is #1 in Google for website marketing around the country and internet marketing in NY, it doesn’t mean a thing. That is, until the phone rings. And even then we (and you) need to get a meeting, make a proposal, present the proposal, get approval, get a signature and finally, get a check. And then you have to keep servicing your clients, with a smile, and keep on invoicing them.
So remember, we are indeed on the eve of 2010. We are 10 years into the new millennium. The Internet is here to stay. If you don’t have an online strategy, whether it is to have a brochure website telling people you exist, or you go all out with a social media strategy and ecommerce play, your competition does or is working on it. And that means that you are going out of business and maybe even retiring. But the good news is that there is still hope. You can change things around. You can get a website for a measly $50 a year. Or you can spend thousands. Is it true that in order to make money, you need to spend money? I don’t think so. But I do think that in order to make money you need to be smart. And by being smart, you need to start using technology to your advantage. So as you read through my not-so-secret list of 21 things your company, office, practice or firm should be doing online, think about your bottom line. Think not only how to market yourself, but also once you do get that customer in your door or on the phone, how are you going to sell them? You don’t need a flashy million dollar website, but you do need a website. You don’t need to spend a thousand dollars a month on maintaining your website if it doesn’t pay off for you ten times that amount. But if you did invest in technology, I guarantee you will be on the right track.
One of my favorite stories from 2009 is the guy who came into my office and was boasting how he spent close to $300,000.00 on his website. It was absolutely brilliant. He paid geniuses from MIT to build it for him and he came to me looking for ideas on how to market it. I gave him the following 21 ideas. I told him my price. He told me he needs to go back to his investors with my price and he will have to get back to me. Well - maybe he will call in 2010. But I can tell him and tell you that if I was an investor and someone brought me a business plan that called for $300k in development and $0 in marketing, I would laugh. I don’t care what business you are in. If you have no marketing strategy, you don’t have a business.
Ok - a few more stories… This year was also the year I met a guy who was going to pay me $1000 a month to market his product that had the potential of making $60,000 a month. Ladies and gentlemen, I now present you with the 60% Return on Investment. Second lesson. Even Bernie Madoff didn’t make 60%. Greed will bring you down. Maybe you won’t go to jail, but be a little more realistic.
And then there was the high-end designer handbag lady. It is amazing to me how you can sell a $500 handbag in New York, London, Paris and Minuch (everybody’s talking about, Pop Musik http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFwy17_M-Ak) and not have the budget to market it online?
Last one. Years ago I met a great entrepreneur who thought he was going to hire us and sell thousands of his products online without an offline strategy to support the online strategy. This was a hard lesson but I learned that a $12 product with a $1.00 profit margin was a pretty bad product. But let’s say we were able to promote it online. Promotion does not happen over night. It happens over time. You need to build up your brand and build up your presence. (And read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.)
As I discussed last week, you need a long term AND a short term strategy. You need an online AND an offline strategy. Of course there are exceptions to every rule but the bottom line is that you have to be smart and be dedicated. There are no shortcuts to online fame and wealth. This is a long distance race. If you want to know more, If you want to know more, please give us a call at 212-993-5828, send me an email at raphis@salemglobal.com or visit www.SalemGlobal.com. In the meantime, here is my holiday gift to you:
21 Things You Should Be Doing Online:
1) Evaluate present website for compatibility with SEO strategies.
2) Research your industry and relevant keywords.
3) Purchase relevant domain names, for housing blogs and marketing websites.
4) Build marketing websites that are optimized for lead generation, areas of your industry and business.
5) Implement appropriate metadata - pagetitles, keywords, metanames, descriptions and search engine friendly URLs.
6) Rewrite and prioritize content and text on site according to research.
7) Submit site to search engines - Google, Yahoo, and the lesser used engines.
8 ) Submit listings to local directories - Google, Yahoo, Yelp, Merchant Circle etc.
9) Increase User Registration and Lead Generation - implement and promote a user registration form.
10) Build and maintain business blogs.
11) Social Media/Networks - Identify existing online communities, and build new ones.
12) Online video production - distribute your video across shared online video sites.
13) Develop new content - increase number of pages to claim being an authority.
14) Develop newsletter (We are a Constant Contact Business Partner).
15) Build and upload sitemap.
16) Write and promote online press releases for your organization (Interactive PR).
17) Write and promote articles - submission to 700+ online magazines for your organization.
18) Manage Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising (Google / Yahoo).
19) Link building - build inbound links from external websites (including industry sites, Directories, and SalemGlobal network sites).
20) Manage affiliate programs (for ecommerce companies).
21) Monitoring and Reporting - Evaluate efforts and results (e.g. Google Analytics and additional 3rd-party tools).
Getting ready for the 2010 New Year: Planting the Seeds for Your Long Term Online Marketing Strategy
Posted by Salem Global on Dec 8, 2009
Before anything, if you are looking for an excellent charity to support during this season of giving, please consider http://www.EvasVillage.org. They do amazing anti-poverty work with the homeless.
Now on to the Tip of the Week…
This week I am incredibly proud of myself. I actually used the Amazon.com gift certificate that my colleague gave to me for finding him a sub-letter for his office last year (through networking of course!). As I was writing last week about Black Friday and Cyber Monday and gifts for my kids for the holidays, I was all ready to break out my credit card to pay for the “good deals” I found online. But then I realized in the back of my mind that I had this gift certificate just sitting there in cyberspace. So instead of going to BlackFriday.com or CyberMonday.com, I went to Amazon.com and shopped there.
So let’s review exactly how and where I spent my money.
First I thought about the season and gift giving.
Second I thought about the gifts I wanted to get.
Third I thought about the currency resource I was going to use.
On a related note, I was not concerned with the locale of where I was going to purchase from, though I was interested and motivated by some free shipping offers.
Last I was motivated by price.
As you can see, I am a real live online shopper. Tis the season for me to be spending and all of the above factors influenced me to make my purchases. And you know what? None of those factors included SEO or search engine optimization.
Online and in the real world, you need to think about your INTEGRATED marketing strategy. “Integrated” means pulling together all of your resources to try and get to the customer and then trying to sell to the customer. In my example, it did not matter whether the companies I purchased from were at the top of Google. It mattered that a) there was a gift card, b) that the merchants were associated with amazon.com and c) they had the best price.
For 2010 I want you all to think out of the box of SEO. My company is involved with website and Internet marketing. We don’t just do one thing, we do it all. (And by all, I mean literally 21 things. Huh? You didn’t know about the 21 things you should consider when thinking about an online strategy? We should talk 
But where we REALLY differ from our competition is in our strategy. We think in the box, out of the box and then pull it all together. We have over 12 years of experience with online marketing. Before that we were involved in TV and traditional media and advertising. Some things have changed but the basics are still here. We survived the first online crash of 2001 and have survived through the past two year recession. In the year 2010 we will double in size, revenue and profit. If you would like to know more about what we do, how we do it and what we can do for you, give us a call or send us an email. Next week we will tell you what the 21 website marketing things are. Happy Holidays Everyone!
Best (and Worst) Christmas Decoration
Posted by Salem Global on Dec 8, 2009
As seen somewhere in America…
After 2 days the person had to take it down because it was causing traffic and people were running up to the house to help
People Capital Making Noise in Peer-to-Peer News
Posted by Aryeh.Landowne on Dec 7, 2009
People Capital, one of the leading peer-to-peer lending platforms, has been keeping busy this past week. Here is one event and two stories in which People Capital was mentioned this past week.
- People Capital Founder & CEO, Tom Shelton will be on the panel for The Future of Private Student Loans at the International Institute for Business Information & Growth (iiBIG) seminar on the Student Loan Market & the Outlook for 2010.The event will take place on Tuesday December 8th at the Hilton Times Square in New York City.
- People Capital’s Human Capital Score was used in a CBS MoneyWatch article on The Best Route to a Rich Retirement
By far the most momentous decisions you make in building human capital are when you’re young. Projecting off estimates by People Capital, which tracks workers’ earnings history by college and by major, a student’s decision to major in a low-demand field like English rather than a higher-demand one like bio-engineering, might vaporize the equivalent of $700,000 on the spot. (Keep reading…)
- People Capital was also featured in a round up story on WalletPop.com, Top 10 Tips for College Planning:
College Planning Tip #10: Peer to peer loans. Person to person lending, or P2P is another option for college planning, cash strapped parents. You request a loan on a P2P site, and an individual lender or a group of lenders may provide the loan at an interest rate set by the site. Some P2P sites have student loan niches, while other sites focus solely on student loans. (Keep reading…)
Keep of the good work, People Capital! If you would like to learn more about P2P Student Loans check out www.People2Capital.com.
Short Term Website Marketing Strategies Continued… Using Social Media to Make Sales Now!
Posted by Salem Global on Dec 1, 2009
Black Friday has come and gone. Even Cyber Monday is over. And now look at you. Are you having “Regret Tuesday” or are you happy with what you have been implementing since we started talking about online marketing for the holidays one month before Halloween??? You see, most small business owners (SBOs) have a calendar and they look at the past and they regret what they didn’t do. Most large companies have a marketing calendar, a marketing budget, a marketing plan, and they implement like clockwork. And the companies in the middle struggle with where they stand. So the question really is, do you lean towards being a small company and think “small,” or BIG company and think BIG?
Macy’s created the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for a reason. They didn’t want to “give back” to the community; they wanted to sell more of their merchandise. Of course they get the benefit of “giving back” because the parade has evolved into a fun family treat for everyone in America. If I don’t take my kids to the parade, we usually watch it on TV. And there is the Macy’s logo, ingrained on my mind, on every float, every TV and every second of the hours it takes for all of the floats to be transported to the Upper West Side, get blown up, get handled, and then walked downtown. When I was younger I used to go to the balloons the night before Thanksgiving and watch them blow up the balloons. People have parties and it has become an event in and of itself. Then I got an office on Broadway and it over looked the parade. I used to host parties there until I moved. And then in 2005 Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s entourage pulled up down my block and I got a picture of him and my son (I still regret not taking off my son’s hat for the photo op but what’re you gonna do… http://www.raphisalem.com/mayor-michael-bloomberg-and-isaac)
So let’s be realistic. You aren’t going to throw a parade on the streets of New York City… But what you CAN do is throw a VIRTUAL parade on your and your friend’s computers. Meaning: using social media and creating a buzz amongst your friends and family. In the past few weeks we have talked about pay per click advertising, contests and emails. Now its time for you to rev up your social media engines and get everyone you know, multiplied by everyone THEY know, and start to spread the word.
On Facebook, this feature is called “becoming a fan.” In LinkedIn, this feature is creating a group and letting your network know it exists. Did you know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of social networks? Though Facebook is my favorite personal one and LinkedIn is my favorite professional one, there is also Twitter, Ryze, MySpace, Ning and much much more. Sign up for as many social media sites as you can. First let them know you exist. Then let them know you are having a sale. After all, there are only 10 more days till Hanukkah and 24 days left till Christmas.
If you want to know more about Social Media, social networks or short terms strategies for the holidays, please give us a call at 212-993-5828, send me an email at raphis@salemglobal.com or visit www.SalemGlobal.com. You’ll be glad you did.
Next week we will talk about getting ready for the New Year and planting the seeds for your long term online marketing strategy.