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!