All posts by JustPromote Marketing Company

Online Marketing Services in the Grand Rapids, MI Area & Beyond. Helping Small Businesses with Internet Digital Marketing, Social Media & Websites. As early as 1994, Terry had already recognized and began utilizing everything that the internet and related technology can do for any business. In fact while completing his M.B.A. (Marketing Emphasis: Grand Valley State University; Allendale, MI, 1995) he was a pioneer in identifying what was to come and was even asked to speak at a conference of local business owners to explain what this internet thing was! By 1998 Terry had already been hired by his first customer and created his first website. • Vast internet knowledge including browsers, websites, e-commerce, search/research and resources. • Varied computer software and hardware knowledge including Windows, iOS and Android. • Experience in business and consumer marketing, research, planning, advertising, sales and research.

New TLD’s (top level domain names) such as .company .business

Another massive change is coming to the business world. The hundreds of new top-level domains that are being introduced late last year and this year. They appear to be about to change the entire business and marketing landscape. The importance of a good domain name is well-known. These new top-level domains however take it to a whole new level because they allow much more flexibility and availability and even what is called domain hacks.  It reminds me of the late 1990s when someone registered McDonalds.com. Now the same thing seems to be happening where all this seems to be flying under the radar for many businesses and few are talking about it. Businesses should be taking this very seriously and researching what moves to make. The whole entire Internet is about to change.  All those businesses who could not register a domain name that fit well in the old .com now have many opportunities, so many available it is hard to know where to even start.  And what about those who are happy with their domain name? Will Domino’s switch from dominospizza.com to dominos.pizza?

I have registered the domain name GrandRapids.Marketing and pointed it to my JustPromote.biz website since this area is my focus and all of my clients have been from the West Michigan area.

Using Smartphones & Tablets and other technology for your small business

It’s really amazing that you can buy an Apple fourth generation iPod Touch, which has the iPhone 4’s Retina display, on eBay for $60 in great condition. These were only discontinued one year ago and the screen is high enough resolution and big enough to run many apps. It can greatly benefit you and your business even if you have a nice smartphone or even the newer iPhone 5 which runs iOS 7 and has a bigger screen. But you can still benefit from having a second device that can be used when you are using your smartphone for a conversation as long as you have a Wi-Fi connection. A second device can be a great way to look up information and give it to the customer that you’re talking to on the phone or if you are in the grocery store such as Sam’s Club or Meijer’s that has free Wi-Fi you can hold your shopping list on the second device while talking to your wife on your smartphone. Or you could also do all the functionality of an App most of which still run on iOS 6 on the iPod touch, it’s really like having an iPhone for $60. If you are not an Apple fan, bad esn smartphones on ebay for can be purchased for $10 and run android 4 and make a great wifi device. It’s also amazing that you can purchase a 7 or even 10 inch tablet for way less than $100 that is fully capable of doing almost everything a $700 iPad can do. Because when you’re starting a business, keeping costs low is extremely important and when you can get multiple devices at such a low cost, but yet not be too far behind the technological curve your business can really benefit. Having multiple devices also enables you to watch a YouTube video or be logged into multiple Google accounts at the same time or to share a device with somebody who’s with you. Another benefit is that if the battery dies on one device you have another one at the ready.

Google Adwords for the small business

One of the great things about Google Adwords is that small business owners can have a very small budget campaign going on that is very highly focused and wasting little money. You can literally spent one dollar per day if you wanted. New websites with GoDaddy give you $100 free credit which can be significant for a tiny business. Microsoft Bing network is similar although they are only about 30% of search, however they also have the $100 coupon when you set up accounts. Adwords delivers highly targeted ads to a specific location, city or to specific types of customers and it’s very easy to set up. Here at JustPromote Marketing Company we will set up your campaigns and we will monitor them and report back to you. All you need to do is tell us what budget dollars you would like to spend per day. The system will tell you how many clicks you got and there are call extensions that can add a mobile click to call button. You only pay when people call your telephone number from mobile devices! The system also tracks how many orders or other types of goal such as what pages or interaction they do in what order. Google Adwords should not be seen as not for you, it is customizable for any company and any budget. It is a really great way to bring in business when the organic search traffic or other types of inbound traffic from other parts of the Internet are not quite doing it for you. If organic search is not bringing enough customers we could set up a temporary campaign to test it or during your slow season.

Restaurant Marketing on the Internet

I love marketing for restaurants/food establishment on the Internet. There are so many places to list your business it’s amazing, and the listings are heavily used be potential customers. There are a lot of listings that need to be claimed because most of them are auto generated. So you’ll find a listing for your business but it’s not complete or sometimes not correct.

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Owners of restaurants and delis and caterers sometimes get a little paranoid about having their business listed all over because they are afraid of bad reviews, But the problem with that approach is that you’re going to get reviews whether you take ownership of your listing and create listings or not because the listings get automatically generated anyways, even Facebook, Google Maps, yelp, trip advisor and foursquare, complete with reviews! So it’s best to claim a listing that way you can at least make your listing look good and respond to any bad reviews or attempt to remove them or get them removed. That itself is very difficult however. Sometimes the review can be challenged.

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Or you can make it right with the customer and ask them to revise or delete their review.

The Marketing of Inventors and entrepreneurship.

So many good ideas so little marketing.

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Being an inventor and entrepreneur is one of the most rewarding of experiences. Watching these creative people sometimes though can be heartbreaking because trying to get their product or service on the market, it’s like they’re pushing an 800 pound ball up a hill.

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They may actually become very good at doing the marketing and business part of the company, and getting the word out and getting people excited.  However a lot of times it is too little, too late and other times the inventor is just too close to the product in knowledge and emotion to get the right kind of traction.

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So what JustPromote Marketing Company is offering is to take a different look at the marketing of the product or service and try to input more/different marketing into the effort.

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Looking at it from a different point of view and different form of creativity about the ways to get the word out to prospects. There seems to be some kind of mysterious position that an inventor is stuck in. It is like they can only be an inventor sometimes and not a business and for some reason they also get stuck with an inventor label forever.

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JustPromote Marketing Company has worked with several new ventures and looked at them and their product or service as a business. Taking that ball and running with it and give them the benefit of the doubt and treat them like they are a long-standing company. It’s probably true that 9 out of 10 inventors, business start-ups, etc. fail usually within the first year. But if you’re at the point where you’re hiring me to do your marketing and you’re willing to pay for it, that means that you’re not subject to those statistics. To believe that you are the 1 out of 10 that succeed is what a marketing company must do and become a part of your venture. I get paid from you getting paid and I want you as a customer for the next 10 or 20 years.  So it is in my best interest to make you succeed.

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My first customer from 1998 is still with me, and in fact in recent years I’ve done the most work I ever have for them.

Using Gmail for your business email (your domain name email)

Email in your business is obviously one of the most important aspects, and it seems to be only be getting more important not less. It is a technology that is not going away anytime soon. A great way to handle it is to add your email from your domain to Gmail in accounts and import tab in settings. Add it both in the “Check mail from other accounts (using POP3)” and in the “Send mail as:” sections. When you do this you can respond quickly to customers from your phone, tablet or any browser from any computer. Also all email is kept in your Gmail folders which can quickly be searched. You can import old mail using IMAP perfectly. When you make the switch you need to shut down the e-mail program you were using to check your domain e-mail using such as Outlook, Eudora or Thunderbird because it will cause some weird results and duplicates. Or you could remove that domain account from the program. If you are using the Gmail app, a Gmail browser window and even Gmail in a mail app or program with Gmail pop access you wont have any trouble.

Starting a business. Your internet marketing might start from the very beginning.

2105512When you’re starting a business one of the first tasks is often creating your digital content especially your website.  It may not be published yet, but typically it is because that helps in testing and gaining inbound links.

The cost of starting a business can be quite large and we are offering a way to get your marketing started cheaper than some of the bigger marketing companies and advertising agencies.

What we are offering is our rock-bottom rate with no minimum, no contract to sign and most importantly no monthly fee or package deal. We are able to offer this rate because we do not have the huge overhead of a large marketing company. But we are able to provide services that are close to or equal to what they provide. For the small start up, when you’re starting a business you have limited capital because you don’t have much or any income. You can hire me for the little as one hour, dozens of hours or hundreds of hours of flooding the Internet with everything about your new business. This is a great way to control your budget and spend marketing dollars as they become available by simply sending me emails and requesting that certain things be done like create or update a Facebook page, add YellowPages listings, develop a Facebook following, a twitter following, make some changes to your website, set up email accounts etc.

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This is JustPromote’s current position in the marketplace where I am willing to work with somebody without a large marketing budget or even with individuals who are creating websites for personal use or family or for individuals who just have an idea and want to put some content out there and see if it sticks to hopefully become a full-fledged business.

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I can bill in small increments such as every 5-10 hours and we are willing to offer 30 day payment terms to some clients so that you can get some content out there but not have to pay for it right away.

I am really interested in seeing that you are a success because that’s what it’s all about. We will be the experts and build the base of your business on the Internet. That’s what I do but it is not necessarily what you do because you are the one creating your business, your product, your service and that is what you are the expert in.

Leave the marketing stuff to me. 1236162

The future iPhone 6 and other large smartphones changing the world

Clipboard01 (2) The iPhone 6 is reportedly going to be a much larger iPhone and there are already larger android smartphones that are wildly popular. For mobile Internet marketing we think this will completely change everything. If not change everything else in the entire world too! Most of the people in the USA and even the world are going to be carrying around portable, fully usable, functional Internet in their pockets or on their belt. The increased size has made it so that using the device, when held close to your face is every bit as powerful as a tablet and for many functions more powerful than a desktop or laptop computer because of all the apps. The screens are so large that even large fingers have no trouble quickly using them or even typing. And the speech recognition is outstanding anyways. The emergence of the 4G LTE and WiMAX network has served broadband to them that rivals cable internet.

Purchasing decisions will be even more increasingly made with mobile devices. The emergence of Joomla!, WordPress and Drupal has created beautiful websites that are fully usable on a smartphone. Decisions are now going to be made with knowledge that came from a device that is larger so that you can actually read large amounts of information very quickly from lots of different websites with lots of different tabs open. Multitasking with apps at the same time, sending email and doing all the other things like a tablet will now be done on a phone that is 5 or 6 inches diagonal. It remains to be seen what the preferred sizes will be, perhaps 6.3 inches with no bezel. For people who don’t wish to carry something large I’m sure something closer to 5 or 5 1/2 inches will also be fully functional Internet.

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Decision making about purchasing products and services, going to restaurants, stores, and other businesses are going to be increasingly done on these devices. The issue for Internet digital marketing and social marketing is that for searching and for pay per click advertising, these devices are seen as mobile so we need to design our websites and advertising and other digital content to focus on mobile. Many current advertising campaigns on Google Adwords for example are set to exclude mobile because this decision was made years ago when Mobile was not a very strong proposition or platform to the advertiser and all that is rapidly changing.

I believe that the change that’s coming with the iPhone 6 later this year is going to be one of the biggest internet related changes ever, coming from a mobile platform that has already changed the world. We need to act quick and we need to become mobile compatible.

Listings of your small business on multiple Internet marketing properties

InternetThe punch list. Google, Bing, Foursquare, YouTube, Google Places, Google Maps, Google Local, Yelp, Trip advisor, YellowPages, the list goes on and on. They are all absolutely crucial for a local business with foot traffic. One way that I have found works for getting a business online correctly is to make a list of all the places that need to be created, updated or improved. It is a daunting task for sure but if it is taken in bite-size chunks it is manageable. First I create a list and as soon as I have at least a few written down I start creating the content (listings.) The list grows gradually and some seem to stay on the punch list for quite a while as it can be difficult to get them complete. They may be difficult to claim, requiring postcard verification through the mail and they may need to be monitored and even responding to reviews like on foursquare. But each one has to be dealt with individually and meticulously because all of them are so important and they each have their intricacies where they have to be analyzed and fixed and improved, pictures uploaded, text copied and pasted, etc.