One of the topics I saw frequently discussed among budding Internet marketers this past year was the idea of providing Internet marketing consulting services to ‘local’ businesses.

The idea was to set up shop as an Internet marketing consultant who would help small businesses in the local community establish or grow their Internet presence, and promote and sell their products or services online.

Perhaps the only thing I found surprising about the discussions I saw was that some people seemed to think the idea of selling consulting services to small businesses was so new.

Since when was providing consulting services to small businesses a new idea? What do you think those very same local accountants, lawyers and insurance brokers have been doing over the past century?

And in terms of helping small businesses go online… well, go back to the late 1990s when just about every graphic designer decided to become a web designer… in order to help small businesses go online.

Okay, okay, I don’t mean to be negative. But there’s something in what I just said that probably needs some attention.

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Reply.com has launched an interesting pay-per-click (PPC) advertising marketplace called the Click Marketplace. It aims to give small businesses without huge ad budgets access to highly targeted advertising.

Here’s how it works. A user clicks on an ad and is immediately taken to a page that prompts them for basic information related to the category of the ad. For example, a real estate ad might prompt users to enter their zip code.

Based on the user’s input, the Reply system will then direct the user to the website of one of its pool of advertisers in the Click Marketplace. Which advertiser’s website the user will see will depend on the outcome of a real-time auction between the various advertisers.

If my interpretation of Reply.com’s click funnel is correct, Reply.com estimates that out of all the raw clicks on your ad, 30 to 50 percent will be filtered out at the ‘qualification’ stage i.e. when users are prompted for more information. This means that, if you win the real-time auction, about 50 to 70 percent of the original prospects - who, in turn, are more qualified – will arrive on your website.

Source: Reply.com Launches Secondary Click Marketplace: Get Geo Targeted Ads On The Cheap 26 Commentsby Jason Kincaid on December 3, 2008

Recently, we’ve heard a lot about the economy. How banks have gone bust, people are buying less, tech companies are laying off people, how we’re in (or headed for) recession, and so on.

If you’re like me, you can see the opportunity in all this. I firmly believe that this is a time when the pretenders will fall away, and only the strongest will survive and thrive.

But what about another kind of economy that really does doom Internet marketers? In fact, it’s the kind of economy that dooms us in good times and in bad.

It’s the ‘false economy’ i.e. the circumstance where you aim to save in one area… without realizing that what you save actually COSTS YOU MUCH MORE overall.

A great example of this is someone who drives across town to find the cheapest gas station… but ends up paying MORE in fuel costs (not to mention time) based on driving the car to find the cheapest gas station!

Unfortunately, I see the same phenomenon among small businesses and, in particular, Internet marketers. Actually, I’ve been guilty of it myself.

There seems to be, for example, a common tendency to try to avoid anything - whether it’s information, software or traffic generation methods - that costs money.

Now, there’s NOTHING wrong with looking for low-cost or free ways to do things, but the question is: is there a false economy in doing so?

Will the time you spend trying to cobble together your own website really be time well spent? If it takes you 6 weeks of struggle as you try to learn how to put together a website… is that really cheaper than enrolling in a web design course and learning how to do it properly? Or than paying someone to design and develop the website for you?

Even if you ARE an accomplished web designer… is your time better spent designing all your websites, or doing something else that has much more value (such as marketing)?

Or if you insist on using only free traffic generation methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) or article marketing… are these really free?

Or is there a price to be paid in terms of the TIME you must spend on SEO and article marketing to generate meaningful results?

And could you have learned what does or does not work much FASTER and ultimately more cheaply had you invested a few hundred dollars in pay-per-click advertising?

In some cases, the choice to take the ‘free’ option may entirely sound. But, as the saying goes, nothing in life is free. There is always a price to pay, whether it’s in terms of time, money or both.

On that basis, I would urge you to consider the obvious and not-so obvious costs of everything you do… and decide, on that basis, which is actually a false economy… and which will genuinely be cost-effective overall.

Research by the Kelsey Group indicates that more and more small and medium sized businesses in the home and trade services categories will develop online presences in the coming years.

According to Matt Booth, SVP and program director for interactive and local media at Kelsey, this group of small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMBs) has been slow to move online due to a housing boom that delivered plenty of work. Now that the housing market has collapsed and economic conditions have worsened, such companies will be more aggressive in advertising and marketing.

Specifically, that means advertising and marketing online - where more and more consumers are looking for home and trade services. According to the study, SMBs in the home and trade area spend 83 percent of their ad budgets on traditional media (largely on Yellow Pages ads), while SMBs in general spend 68 percent of their ad budgets on traditional media.

Email marketing is another area of potential growth. Currently, email marketing represents 3 percent of home and trade services ad budgets, compared with 13 percent of ad budgets of advertisers in other categories.

All in all, the report predicts 60 percent of home and trade services companies will have an online presence in the next 12 to 24 months, up from just 33 percent now.

Source: Douglas Quenqua, “Housing Market Could Send Small Home Services to the Web”, The ClickZ Network, October 29, 2008

Marketing - the conscious effort to sell you stuff - is more prevalent than ever. You’d think, by now, it would be more sophisticated too.

Yes, in some cases, it is. But when I consider how many small businesses and large corporations pour their marketing dollars into vague campaigns that lack any real understanding of the needs of their target market… lack a specific call to action… are never properly tracked or tested… and are chosen based on their “creativity” rather than their effectiveness… I can only think that millions of dollars are being wasted.

And let me reiterate - we’re not just talking about “inexperienced” small businesses investing in weak, ineffective marketing efforts. You might be shocked, for example, at how many large, prominent corporations invest enormous sums of money in campaigns they never bother to split-test. Split-testing is simply testing two executions of a campaign in order to find out which is the most effective. Ideally, you should always be split-testing, in order to continually improve your results (e.g. response rates, sales, etc).

Why don’t more companies split-test or apply more rigor to their marketing? It’s because they’re lazy. Not lazy in the sense that the average marketing department doesn’t work hard. Of course they do. But lazy in how much effort they put into continuously improving their marketing in order to achieve optimal results. It’s so much easier to choose one execution… rather than test and improve, test and improve, test and improve.

Many marketers and ad agencies also want to be “right” or be “creative”. After all, if you “just know” that a given campaign will work… or opt for a campaign because it’s the “most creative”… you don’t have to put any effort into testing, tracking, innovating, improving , etc. And you get to be the expert too.

But any marketer or advertising executive who thinks they’re “right” or is the “expert”… is deluding themselves and the company or client they work for.

The only person who is “right” every time… is the customer.

And any company that doesn’t test its marketing properly is leaving money on the table. No joke - lazy marketing is costing companies millions.

Yahoo has finally pulled its previously freely accessible Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool from the Net.

If you visit inventory.overture.com you will now be permanently redirected to a landing page promoting Yahoo Search Marketing to small businesses. Of course, you can still access Yahoo’s keyword suggestions if you sign up as an advertiser on Yahoo’s search marketing platform.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable, “Yahoo Finally Kills Overture’s Keyword Suggestion Tool?”, June 27, 2008, Yahoo Search Engine Marketing