Archive for September, 2006

A great avenue for advertising your local small business is local cable television.

For small business owners the downside of regular network television is that you pay for your ad to be shown to your entire region (let’s say a 100-150 mile radius) versus the area from which you draw the majority of your customers (let’s say a 10-20 mile radius.)  The same is true for most radio stations…pay to be heard by a large radius, when you really only want to talk to a small, local radius of customers.

The beauty of local cable advertising is that you can hit that small radius of customers. You can narrow your ad down to specific cities and advertise to your exact target market. It’s more cost effective and, more than likely, a better return on investment (ROI.)

With that said, if you are considering local cable advertising, you need to visit SpotRunner.com.

Their impressive online system lets you place your advertising and also pick out a professionally crafted ad.  Their “ad library has thousands of ads specifically created for hundreds of business categories”

It’s a very slick system and a great way for you, in a very timely manner, to set-up a local cable television campaign.

If nothing else, visit to their ad library and view some of the ads within your business category…it’s sure to give you some solid ideas.

Part of the purpose of this blog is for current and potential Your Marketing Guy clients to get to know who I am.

A common quote I like to use is this one:

“People do business with people they know.”

My hope is that the content of this blog sheds some light into who I am and by reading my thoughts/feelings people will get to know me.

In this post I’d like to share a dream of mine, in hopes that it sheds some light into what I value from an educational standpoint.

I earned my undergraduate degree from the Haworth College of Business at Western Michigan University. Ever since I graduated I have had the desire to go on and get my MBA. However, I really don’t have an interest in getting an MBA from Western Michigan or any other middle-of-the-pack university; my only interest is to earn an MBA from The University of Michigan.

The biggest reason for this selection is because the Stephen M. Ross School of Business is a perennial top business school in the country and by far the best in the state of Michigan.

I don’t know exactly what this says about me, but that’s my dream…

Why don’t I have a desire to earn an MBA from anywhere but the top business school in Michigan? Maybe it’s because an MBA is not a mandatory thing and, in my eyes, to put the effort into something of little value (middle-of-the-pack MBA program) makes no sense. Or maybe it’s my desire to be attached to something that people respect and look up to.

My other thought is that I search long and hard to find the best marketing books, the best business brains, and try to soak up all I can from the best and brightest sources. I view U of M’s MBA program as being one of the top sources for further education.

I wouldn’t read a business book that doesn’t expand my knowledge and make me think.

I wouldn’t want to earn an MBA from a university that doesn’t expand my knowledge and make me think hard.

Earning an MBA from U of M is an interesting dream of mine and someday I hope to make it a reality. In the meantime, Ill get back to my not so prestigious task of diaper changing.

One blog that I consistantly read is Greg Sterling’s blog about Local Online Marketing.

Back in August he wrote this post. Here are some exerpts from it:

Nobody these days would argue that local businesses don’t need a web presence. And probably no small business would argue against the value or importance of online marketing as a general proposition. But getting from those ideas to actual execution is quite another matter.

It’s incredibly painful to try and get a professional, reasonably customized site up and running if you want anything that is slightly unique.

As with online marketing, there are few places to get objective education or advice about what you need and the best provider to meet those needs.

I’ll leave you with this…

I understand, have seen and agree with his frustrations and have spent several years shaping Hunt Hosting (Your Marketing Guy’s sister company) into being a great solution to these commonly held small business frustrations.

Greg Sterling - please read this post and if you are still having troubles, contact me and let me rid you of your frustration…

Hunt Hosting’s (Your Marketing Guy’s sister company) most common Website Hosting plan comes with the following:

Who knows what the heck that means? Anyone? Anyone?

To the average small business owner or internet user, that number doesn’t mean squat. This post is an effort to explain this very common website hosting term: DISK SPACE.

Disk Space

First, a more technical definition: Disk Space is a measure of how much space your e-mail and website occupies. It is usually measured in MB (megabytes). A MB is a million bytes of information - typically, one byte can represent one letter or number. Another measurement you may see used is the KB (kilobyte) - which is a thousand bytes.

For Example:

A small text only email might occupy just a few KB of storage space whereas a large email with attachments, such as a video or MP3 file, might take up several MB.

The typical website page occupies 5-10 KB of storage space.

Another Example:

You have a large glass jar. You start filling that jar with sugar. Eventually that jar will fill up and you’ll run out of room.

That same example in relation to website hosting disk space:

You have a fixed amount of disk space. You start filling up that disk space with website files and e-mail. Eventually that disk space will fill up and you’ll run out of room.

Again, the common Hunt Hosting plan offers 300 MB of Disk Space. That offers plenty of room for your website files as well as a lot of e-mail. We monitor our clients’ disk space usage and if they are ever nearing capacity, we make adjustments to ensure that they’ll have disk space available.

Just like high school algebra, you’ll probably never have to know or use this information, but for some savvy web users, the explanation above answers a lingering question.

Source: Some of the information in this post was taken from this link.

Sending a large file via e-mail can be a pain. Did it go through? Did they receive it? It really is a guessing game.

I just found a program called DropSend.

How it works:

Instead of e-mailing over a huge file, you upload that file to your DropSend account and e-mail a link to that file.

Instead of sending a huge e-mail that may not get through, you simply send a link.

If you have had issues sending big files via e-mail in the past, this free program (free up to 5 sends a month) is worth a look.

Very easy sign-up. Easy to upload and send files. Good solution to a common e-mail problem.

For those of you wanting to learn more about how search engines work; here is a good starting point…

I found this link on Google. It’s titled: “How does Google decide what result goes at the top of the list?”

Search engine ranking is a very complex and constantly changing science. The link above will shed a little light into how the whole thing works.