This blog has always been about helping others. We report, offer free marketing tips and share best practices. Of course, it's indirect marketing done to promote goodwill. It's also good citizenship, done to improve the community.

I'm going to be selfish today. There's a lot happening at Aligned Marketing. Here's a partial update:

• We continue to sign up clients for search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) projects. We recommend both because SEO is like farming, it produces results (food) in weeks or months, and PPC is like hunting, Bang!, dinner. A friend of mine used SEO & PPC to grow a distributor’s online sales from $72K/month to an impressive $1.0M+ per month and counting. What recession? Smart companies are getting off the sidelines. There are still markets out there with unmet needs. Someone is going to serve them, why not you?
• We team up with other companies to enhance our capabilities without adding fixed cost. One of those companies just completed a landmark four year study in collaboration with the University of Michigan. Over 200 companies participated in interviews and surveys that included manufacturer and distributor sales reps as well as industrial buyers. They observed over 1,000 live sales calls. From that research they developed a new approach to selling, an actual best practice process. The field test data is compelling and, I believe, can be a game-changer with the right commitment from senior management.
• We launched a 10-day social media campaign for Aligned Marketing and increased visits to our website by 343% in the first week. Because of the way we structured the program visits will continue at the new higher level for several weeks and should remain well above our prior level into the future, assuming we don’t do anything stupid...stayed tuned.
• Gary Vaynerchuk is a top-5 Internet celebrity who has been on Fox News, The Today Show, CNN, Conan O’Brien and several other shows. He reads my blog…surprised me too. Anyway, on October 13 his new book, Crush It!, goes on sale and as part of his promotion tour I’ll be interviewing Gary using video over the Internet. I’m excited to finally communicate with Gary live, not through email, and the technology we’ll be using is very cool. More to come.
• My wife and I attended a convention for web-geeks in Orlando last week. There were over 400 people in attendance. While I didn’t get to speak one of the presenters put my picture up on a slide and recommended that everyone read my book. I didn’t know he was going to do that so it was a nice surprise, although seeing my face fill up two 20’ screens was weird…frightening, actually.
• As companies prepare for 2010, and what we all hope is a year of recovery, many are using outside resources to fill gaps created by the recession and gain specialized expertise without adding fixed cost. Our approach is, "Let us help you reach your business goals." It seems to have some appeal so go ahead and borrow it if you think it will help your business.
• This remains a very challenging time (obviously). The only way the economy is going to turn around is if we all pull together and work our collective butts off. That's what my friends are doing and that's what I'm doing. Sitting on the sidelines and waiting for things to improve will only get you left behind, it's a loser strategy. You get one shot at each day, so make the best of it!

All the best,
Steve