My approach to press releases is different than traditional PR. Most of the press releases I write are less about getting press coverage for my news, and more about getting quality backlinks to my site. However, it is possible to do both. It starts with a good story and added to that, online distribution.
Many people believe it’s enough to blog about their news. For some high traffic blogs (thought leaders) this might be true. For most blogs there isn’t the distribution. You want to reach outside of your community for greater exposure.
Here’s an IM conversation I had recently about the importance of press release distribution:
Clogon: i guess i just put my “press releases” in the form of blog posts
Me: yes and your reach is pretty limited compared to a distribution site that sends it to thousands of people
SEO, Sales and Marketing, Search Marketing
online PR, press releases
Many of you have probably read the book “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, but for those of you who haven’t… the book is based on the premise that there is always a tipping point (aka significant momentum shift) in the life cycle of a message that becomies a wide spread epidemic, and that the “tipping point” can always be traced back to small numbers of people who start behaving differently.
I really found the case studies highlighting different business’s tipping points to be the most interesting part of the book. It was intriguing to contrast the tipping points, which were not really a direct result of any specific action taken by the business, against those tipping points that were a direct result of a specific action taken by the business. Generally, when the business is directly responsible for bringing about the tipping point you will find that the catalyst to be a new marketing angle taken by the company.
David Mink, Sales and Marketing
marketing angle, marketing tactic
I have been pretty impressed at the sheer quality of the testimonials generated by the retail arm of DSM over the last few weeks. So, I decided to write a blog post encapsulating 5 steps any business can take to receive killer testimonials.
Step 1 – It all starts with a great product or service. Obviously. So the real question is: what can you do to improve your products or services? Here are a few things we try to do religiously: attend trade shows, ask customers for feedback, read industry-relevant publications, continually and consistently analyze our service procedures so that we are pro-actively looking for ways to improve.
Sales and Marketing
how to get testimonials
Free shipping has been the most popular promotional offer among online shoppers. According to 2007 
Forrester Research, 61% of online shoppers preferred to shop with a retailer that offered free shipping than one that didn’t. High demand encouraged most online retailers to win customers’ hearts by offering free shipping – either on minimum purchase or without conditions.
Because of the fast approaching economic crisis and rising gas prices (and hence increasing shipping rates), some experts believed most merchants would fail to offer free shipping this year:
…rising fuel costs will make free shipping much more expensive for online retailers this holiday season and will likely limit the amount of offers or lead to an increase in the dollar threshold level.
The dilemma looks as follows: the demand is growing (nearly 80% of online shoppers wanted to be offered free shipping this year versus 60% in 2007) while the profit is declining.
Sales and Marketing
free shipping, free shipping day, free shipping ebook
Tuesday morning I had the opportunity to meet with a company regarding providing search engine optimization services to them. This is a company that is on the verge of being an Inc. 500 company and I was meeting with the CEO, VP of Marketing, and VP of Development. About 45 min. into the meeting the CEO said, “So how do we get this going?” and my reply to him was something along the lines of, “If we begin working together we will start with, etc. etc.” and went on to explain our process to him. Roughly 10 min. later the CEO stood up and basically said,
I have to get running, so you guys take care of the details and lets move forward, but I have one piece of advice for you, say “when” we begin working with you instead of “if” we begin working with you. We then shook hands and he left the board room.
General, Google, Sales and Marketing, Twitter
Motivation, Persuasion, Sales and Marketing
Click Click Click
I had an interesting chat with a family member about something the company they works for had recently done with a website redesign. First of all – I was blown away when I was told what they paid for the site (over 100k). My designers could have build a much better site for 1/3 of what they paid, but that is not the issue here. They created a site without talking to any marketers, or sales guys or people who do online marketing for a living. His company left it into the hands and discretion of web designers. I do not want to get into the debate about web designers not being Internet marketers on this post, but these guys had really taken this company for a ride. You do not see me telling my designers how to code something, so please stick to what you are good at.
Sales and Marketing
conversion rate, sticky website, website conversion
I had a chance to interview Jason Skinrood (Plastic Rewards) on his thoughts of the 2008 shopping season. Jason has some pretty amazing insight because its his business to keep an eye on it. He is heavily involved in the credit card industry, an avid credit card industry blogger and has a passion for helping people find the credit card that is right for them.
All of the Dream Systems Media sites did really well this holiday season, but I feel we have a good grasp of what needs to be done to keep sales flowing, and what to do to take advantage of a down economy. I just wanted to get some general insight, and over all statistics across the board when it comes to Internet sales. I appreciate Jason taking the time to answer these questions – (we went back and forth on chat so I just cleaned it up and will post it all together here)
Sales and Marketing
2008 holiday shopping season, economy, online sales
This is a question I get asked all the time. Today I was doing a webinar with about 40 people and I was talking with the group about strategies you can use to source products, the only problem was most of them were more interested in me telling them what to sell as compared to how to find it. So many people are interested in doing business online, but they don’t have any ideas about what they want to sell. Because of this I diverted a little bit and spent about 20 min. talking about how to qualify a product and come up with ideas. Here are my recommendation on that subject.
General, Sales and Marketing
Products
All in all I have to say Cyber Monday was a success for those of us here at Dream Systems Media. We saw an average of 5% conversion rates with all our sites. I really think a lot of it has to do with what industry you are in, but we really try to make sure we are in industries that can survive recessions (which we seem to be in).
I have spoken with many of our clients and they had very successful Cyber Mondays too. One of our clients had a 10% conversion rate for the day, and that is their best ever. This year we saw an overall sales increase too. We did have some rough months compared to last year, for example October was probably one of th worst, but overall the whole year was a huge success and increase in almost every statistic from last.
Sales and Marketing
Cyber Monday
Today, Cyber Monday, is the biggest online sales day of the year for many online businesses, but is it and has it really been all that this go-around? It appears not.
Cyber Monday became known as such back in 2005 after the National Retail Federation Trade Group coined th phrase, in an attempt to define the largest online shopping day of the year. As compared to Black Friday for traditional retailers (called such because that was the day that most offline retailers financial spreadsheets went from showing red numbers to now showing black numbers, meaning they are no longer negative). And, as you can guess online retailers have been tentative about what they expect today in the form of gross revenue.
Because of the economic turns and the results seen from Black Friday I think that most e-tailers had formed their own opinion that goes something like this:
General, Sales and Marketing
Cyber Monday
