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Word Magic, and When Your Efforts Tell Your Customers To Go Away

Be careful what you name your newsletter, your products, your services.

Recently I booked a hotel with La Quinta hotels for a business trip I have planned and a part of doing that I agreed to receive emails with promotions. I started getting those promotions recently.

It is quite jarring to receive their emails!

Don't go It Alone In Your Business

My favorate quote of late.

"How do you make an apple pie from scratch?"

"Well first you have to invent the universe!"

I don't know where it comes from, but it illustrates a very good point. Everything we do builds on the work of others.

What can online research teach you about offline marketing?

Online research can show you that Offline Marketing works and not just for offline business but for building your online business too.

Seems counter intuitive but Internet traffic proves it.

If you look at all the traffic going to a site and the unique visits are high, the traffic coming from referring sites are low, the searches coming from Google and not keyword driven but are the name of the business or website you can be pretty sure they are doing effective offline marketing.

Recently I was doing some research for a client and found just such a situation. I showed it to the client and discussed it with them. They were thinking of reducing their offline marketing efforts and focusing more time, effort and money on the online piece.

Build It and They Will Come - NOT!

Let's call it the Inventor's problem. Too often we imagine the solution to a problem in the world as we see it. We go about inventing the solution to the problem in our own little world. Somehow we are taught that we need to keep these ideas a secret until we are ready to unleash them on the world. Then the customers will be clamoring to our door, eager to pounce on the previously unavailable treasure.