Comments on: Fortune 500 Marketing Techniques For SMBs

By: hugoguzman

hugoguzman — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:15:03 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Jamie! You’re right on the money, but unfortunately most companies – big and small – opt to go the lazy route by not segmenting and just using a “batch and blast” approach to email marketing.

By: Jamie Fairbairn

Jamie Fairbairn — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:57:42 +0000

Hi Hugo, great post – I particularly liked the section on email marketing segmentation. It’s definitely worth taking the time to do this rather than sending out a ‘one size fits all’ email and hoping for the best.

The subject line in emails can make or break a campaign and as you say, by keeping this as targeted and relevant as possible, small businesses are much more likely to get the results they want from email marketing.

By: frankj

frankj — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:48:09 +0000

There are definitely many SEO tactics to choose from. It’s either you engage manually or use automated softwares to do it for you. But the concept is still there, having backlinks to your site. This type of SEO is an off-page SEO since these links aren’t contained into your site but from a different source pointing towards yours. Another type of SEO is on-page SEO. These are keywords and links going to related sites to help your rankings with the search engines.

By: Hugo Guzman

Hugo Guzman — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:33:08 +0000

Thanks for the compliment, Jason! I definitely agree that long-term goals and metrics are lacking, but I would that most enterprise brands also struggle with this.

By: Jason Acidre

Jason Acidre — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:36:20 +0000

Enjoyed reading this one Hugo. On a high-scale campaign, both time and budget really play a huge role to really have things materialize. And I do think that what small and medium businesses are really lacking these days are the focus on conversions and their long-term goal setting, in which should be including the business’ expansion (in terms of traffic/revenue source, products, services, etc…) along the process of developing their own brands.

By: Geno Prussakov

Geno Prussakov — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:38:35 +0000

Thank you for your reply, Hugo.

1) Yes, Oli’s Unbounce is a great one too. Sitespect’s A/B Testing and Vanity are the other two worth checking out.

2) You’re exactly right about affiliate marketing! It isn’t as easy to implement as some merchants think (or some “guru” consultants are leading them to think). It isn’t unusual to have a online business launch an affiliate program, set up automatic affiliate approvals, and run themselves into such troubles that they would’ve been happier without their unmanaged affiliate program. But when the program is properly managed, it can be great addition to any online business’ marketing efforts. Glad we’ve mentioned it at least in the comments.

By: Hugo Guzman

Hugo Guzman — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:06:16 +0000

They sure are, Sankar, although I do think it’s worth mentioning that its possible to go overboard on the automation front. There are still certain facets of link building that require the human touch.

Thanks for the comment!

By: Hugo Guzman

Hugo Guzman — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:02:34 +0000

Thanks for chiming in, Geno! You make some great points.

I didn’t go into all of the different testing tools because I wanted to keep the article tight (since there were so many topics covered). But while we’re at it, there’s another great portal for conversion optimization over at unbounce.com (and thanks for mentioning the ones listed in your comment above!).

And as for affiliate/performance marketing, it definitely is a solid technique that is used by enterprise-caliber companies, but I didn’t list it because a) I felt that the other ones were easier to implement and have success with b) I already had a lot listed (there were others that didn’t make the cut).

Glad you brought these points up, though!

By: Sankar Datti

Sankar Datti — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:58:54 +0000

Automated tools for link building is the best choice to save lot of time.

By: Geno Prussakov

Geno Prussakov — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:54:38 +0000

Very good post, Hugo.

I’ve specially enjoyed the part about testing. You’ve hit the nail on the head. It is a “hot topic” indeed (one yielding immediately visible results too) yet one neglected by so many companies (including some large ones as well). The only thing I’d add to what you’ve written is that Google is not the only one who makes it affordable. Their Website Optimizer is a excellent free tool, but there are also a number of other (free to dirt-cheap) ones worth looking at (e.g.: Visual Website Optimizer, LiveBall, A/Bingo, PickFu, Vertster, and Five Second Test).

Also, surprised affiliate/performance marketing didn’t make your list.