Internet Marketing, Google Changes, Halloween, Election Day, Thanksgiving, 47 Days Till Christmas: Your Business Needs To Prepare For The Holidays
Posted by Salem Global on Nov 3, 2010
Did you say 47 Days till Christmas? That’s right folks. I said it. That’s less than two months. And that means that 4th Quarter is upon us and you should be preparing for 1st Quarter of next year. Yes. 2011. I know you can’t believe it, but believe it. The weather is getting colder. You just finished Halloween Trick or Treating with your kids. Election Day was yesterday and that all means that we are in the middle of 4th quarter.
As my conversations with my clients gets to be very serious about how this past year went vs. how it’s going to be next year, from my biased perspective, you need to pour more of your budget into advertising and marketing now in order to be on top when the economy turns around January 1, 2011. Thanksgiving is coming up. Black Friday is coming up and people have been hoarding their money so they can afford those great holiday presents for their kids. But that’s not all they will be spending on.
People are going to be buying more cars in 2011, going in for that elective surgery and buying the real estate and vacation packages they were holding off on. 2011 is going to be a boom year. It’s very simple. 2007 was a great year. 2008 and 2009 were busts. The economy was faltering and people lost their shirts. Madoff and all of the other Ponzi schemes came to light and people got really hurt.
But think about it. 2010 wasn’t really that bad. People lost their jobs but not as much as in 08 and 09. 2010 was not a recovery year. It was more of a stopping the hemorrhage year. So by that observation, 2011 is going to be a comeback year.
Thanksgiving marks the deciding factor in people’s spending habits. Will they spend money in the retail sector? Will they go another year without a new car, home or vacation? Not necessarily. Of course this is all in the B2C market. Now let’s talk about B2B.
Business to business has really suffered over the past three years but I know it’s coming back. I can feel it in my own business. The calls and inquiries have started to come in. And though most companies are still gun shy, I have received word that many of my contacts would like to start up something “in the new year.” People have been budgeting and now is the time to let go. There are so many new strategies for Internet marketing now. Of course you need a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, but now that Google has changed their results page, you also need to incorporate a local and maps strategy, a social media strategy and an email newsletter strategy. Of course, Google, Bing and Yahoo would also like to take this time to let you know that you are going to need to start spending money with them. They really want your “sponsored ad” dollars. And why not? They deserve it. They built the search engines. And you use them every day of your life. So why shouldn’t they get paid?
So the only reason why they shouldn’t get paid is because there is still click fraud going on. Google needs to curb this evil. They are raking in billions and a hefty percentage of that is all fraudulent. Until they fix the problem, we won’t be encouraging PPC campaigns. We will continue to educate and test but there has to be real ROI.
What about your business? In addition to SEO search engine optimization, are you also testing for PPC pay per click? Are you blogging? Using social media? LinkedIn? Facebook? Are you sending out newsletters? Need help with Internet promotion for your business? We have been helping companies and businesses strategize online since 1997. Call Raphi Salem at 212-993-5828, email info@salemglobal.com or check out www.SalemGlobal.com for more information about how to win the election, get the treats instead of tricks and obviously finish 2010 positively.
