You see it everywhere, but probably didn’t know it had a name. Not only is it entertaining, usually humorous, witty and often times innovative, it is a great resource to maximize attention to a particular product, service or organization by offering shock value and edge. In fact, it can be one of the most effective marketing methods available. What is it? Guerrilla Marketing.

To get help with your guerrilla marketing campaign, visit Resource Nation’s online marketing business center.

Guerrilla marketing is all about getting the maximum attention of the public by using minimal resources. Usually unusual and unpredictable, guerrilla marketing techniques break traditional marketing rules, cross boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed, and even come close to breaking the law.

We must appreciate guerrilla marketing and the force it has to drive business and attract attention. If you have the right creative brains in place and understand the market you are trying to reach, guerrilla marketing can be very cost-effective, entertaining and drive eyeballs and sales to your business. Smart companies take their guerrilla marketing tactics to the streets…or bathrooms, or Rugby fields, or escalators.

A few of my favorite guerilla marketing campaigns:

1.  HBO

HBO advertised their hit show The Sopranos while playing on the crime theme of the show. This marketing campaign definitely broke traditional marketing rules and was effective in attracting a lot of attention. It is a great example of the shock value that often accompanies guerrilla marketing tactics.

2.  Cingular

With this giant, hard-to-miss, unconventional ad, Cingular effectively attracts onlookers from the ground, from the air, from offices across the way, from a distance, and more.

3.  American Airlines

American Airlines highlights its airport wifi network in this edgy ad. With many people utilizing the Internet at the airport gates, this ad effectively relates to the vast majority of airline passengers. As a bonus, the ad also unintentionally advertises Google.

4.  Spiderman

How about this irregular ad for one of the Spiderman movies. It definitely drew attention, but let’s hope patrons didn’t actually attempt to “use” the ad.

5.  Sonic

Sonic Drive-In fast food restaurants marketed with magnetic cups that adhered to patron’s cars. It would seem as though the driver forgot to remove his/her drink from the drink’s temporary resting place on the car. Meanwhile, Sonic’s logo was pasted all over highways, roads, and parking lots. The campaign was funny and effective.

6.  Virgin

This marketing method employed by Virgin Atlantic Airlines’ is a favorite of mine. They employ the perfect combination of funny, cute and originality to create buzz about their airline company.

7.  Other

Taking advantage of pre-existing everyday features is a cost-effective way to market. Here, various companies utilize escalators as the medium for their advertisements.

8.  And finally, what NOT TO DO.

In August 2002, two men went streaking at an International Rugby game with a mobile telephone company’s corporate logo painted on their backs. While the campaign was successful because it drew an immense amount of attention from consumers, it landed both the two men and the phone company in legal trouble. This boundary-crossing technique reminds us to beware of legal ramifications when partaking in guerrilla marketing.

My company provides internet marketing services for small-medium business, and when I meet a new client, I often find myself selling the value of the web itself as much as I sell the value of my company. The fact is that the internet, despite being more than 10 years old and representing hundreds of billions in revenue for millions of companies, is still “new” in the minds of many business owners. There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding online marketing, even if it’s just creating a simple website.

Of course, I’ve never had a problem convincing a business owner to market online. The technology is just too powerful. With search engine marketing and optimization, we can target potential consumers at critical stages of the buying cycle. With social marketing, we can build an audience and establish a business as an authoritative resource. With email marketing, we can take advantage of a businesses’ greatest resource - previous customers - and attain significant and immediate results.

I’ve attained a nice long list of reasons to market online during the last couple of years, but I’m always looking for more. A conversation I’ve had with a couple of business owners lately has given me another:

Reason to Market Online #374: Win More Contract Bids.

It didn’t even occur to me until I spoke to a couple of contractors, both of whom wanted to get a website up and running because they felt it would increase their chances of winning contract bids. Evidently, when contractors bid for a job, the bid review process entails more than just finding the lowest bidder. The bidder is often asked to provide references, examples of previous work, safety information, regulatory compliance, and more. What medium could provide this information better than a website?

Is someone looking for an example of a concrete foundation you’ve poured? Let’s post pictures and a copy of an inspection report. Does someone want to know what clients you’ve worked for? Let’s post a list with company general contact info. What about your safety record? Let’s create a page for your website that talks about all your safety procedures and your overall record. Is a client concerned about your compliance with laws and regulations? Let’s make sure they can find all the important disclosures on your site, and let’s also list off all of your company’s associations and accreditation’s.

The fact is, the internet provides instant and immediate access to a variety of information. By creating a useful and informative business website, you’ll increase the chances that potential customers will value your company or service higher than all the rest…and you just might win a few contract bids.

Please be sure to visit SporkMarketing.com or Resource Nation’s online marketing business center to learn more about their internet marketing services.

Recent reports show magazine revenue steadily decreasing. In fact, according to the United States Publishers Information Bureau (PIB), total magazine rate-card-reported advertising revenue through the first three quarters of 2008 posted a 5% decline against the previous year. Additionally, there was a 9.5% drop during the first three quarters of 2008 in advertising pages, compared to the same period in 2007. Specifically, for the third quarter of 2008, total magazine rate-card-reported advertising revenue decrease 8.8% compared to 2007’s third quarter. In addition, there was a 12.9% drop in advertising pages compared to the third quarter of 2007.

The magazine industry argues that magazine advertising has been negatively impacted by the ongoing economic woes, similarly to several other industries. Ellen Oppenheim, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Magazine Publishers of America stated “We’re seeing the unfortunate result of the ongoing softness in the economy. . .Consumers have cut spending and advertisers have followed suit.  It’s affected every ad category and every ad-supported sector of the media industry.”

A closer examination of magazine revenues evidences that while overall magazine rate-card-reported advertising revenue, publishing, and advertising page count declined, some advertising categories posted gains. For example, retail, food and food products, and public transportation, hotels, and resorts are three advertising categories that showed increased revenue. Overall, though, magazine revenue is unfortunately steadily declining.

So, how can the magazine industry and other industries remain alive and increase revenue?

By finding other ways to produce revenue online. Banner ads, revenue share affiliate programs, and lead generation are just three examples to help drive down the total cost of acquisition per customer and increase revenue.

See Resource Nation’s online marketing business service center to connect with companies to help you with your marketing needs.

Banner Ads, also referred to as web banners, banner ads are beneficial because they can be customized with multiple images, animation, and changing colors.

Revenue Share Affiliate Programs are another way magazines and online businesses are increasing revenue. Affiliate programs allow businesses to earn a share of the profits each time the magazine refers a customer to the business. If the business provides a service that is an added-value to the magazine’s online readers, the size of the profit share can be significant. Amazon.com has been successful in its affiliate program. Our program has also been successful for partners like Entrepreneur.com and StartUpNation.

Lead Generation is also becoming more and more popular. Essentially, a lead is someone who either signs-up for a product or service or signs up to receive more information about a product or service. Magazines and companies are implementing these tactics to connect with prospective customers.  Examples of lead generation marketing include online lead generation, direct mail, telemarketing, and email marketing.

The online advertising industry is a billion-pound industry with hundreds of millions spent on online acquisition campaigns alone. From Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on search engines like Google and Yahoo!, to banner ads, email campaigns, organic search, blogging and web PR, magazines and other businesses are making an investment to find additional revenue.

As a small business internet marketing consultant, I’m often confronted with some common misconceptions about online marketing. These misconceptions are often based on poor advice from consultants or web designers that my clients have spoken with in the past. Sometimes these misconceptions are a result of a poor experience or a misunderstanding.

Regardless of their source, these myths often keep small business owners from achieving success marketing online. I’m here to set the record straight.

Here are some common misconceptions about marketing and promoting your small business online: (more…)

We’ve all heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) by now. These tools help you track the progress of your online campaigns in real-time so you can make tweaks to fully tune your marketing budget and maximize your dollar. Before you start implementing the below efforts, use www.websitegrader.com to analyze your website rankings in comparison to your competitors. After you’ve implemented some of the tools below, you can evaluate and track how much progress you’ve made with your SEO efforts.

The following tools and factors are helpful in determining the relevancy of your website:

SEO tools for your website

• SEO Quake - This toolbar allows you to track key site metrics in your SEO campaign.
• Alexa Rank – This tool measures your overall internet ranking, rankings are in ascending order.
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool – This tool allows you to do some basic keyword research to discover which keywords should be on your site.
• Page Rank Tool - Use this tool to check your Google Page Rank for any given URL.

Other factors to help optimize your website

• Quality Content - one of the most important factors in any SEO campaign is quality content. But, it’s only quality if you use keywords that relate to your site. Keyword density tool checks your content to make sure it flows and is natural.
• Number of indexed pages - The more pages you create with valuable content, the more your site will expand and gain authority. Search engines value high indexed pages with high quality content.
• Meta Tags - These are very important in on-site optimization. Use a meta tag generator to easily create meta tags for your website. Be sure to avoid duplicated meta tags on the website, as you can be penalized by Google.

The Top 10 SEO Websites

Below is a list of valuable SEO resources you should consider when entering the SEO world. Each provides quality tips and tricks that can help you jump start your marketing campaign and maximize your advertising dollar.

10. HighRankings.com - These professional SEO consultants will provide you with search marketing goals, and give you many unique strategies to increase your traffic and rank.

9.) SEOBlackHat.com - A hot SEO blog that provides genuinely useful tips and helpful information, all free of charge.

8.) Seroundtable.com - Provides readers with Search Engine Marketing forum topics from all over the net in one place; a great source for opinions, and advice.

7.) SearchEngineJournal - Another blog that offers SEO tips from a unique perspective, while also providing useful statistics or polls (such as John McCain’s site stats vs. Barack Obama’s).

6.) SEOChat.com - Provides various tutorials and tips to enhance your SEO campaign.

5.) MattCutts.com - Some of the best Google-specific advice you can get, –from a guy who works there!

4.) SubmitExpress.com - Trained professional SEO consultants, prepared to work until you’re fully satisfied with your site’s optimization.

3.) SearchEngineLand.com - More than you ever wanted to know about Google and SEO - a real look behind the scenes!

2.) SEOBook.com - One of most well known SEO resources online. Aaron Hall runs SEO Book which is free, and provides some of the best SEO resources online.

1.) SEOmoz.org - This site has modeled and marketed itself as “The Web’s Best SEO Resources” and they have yet to be proven wrong!

Other tools to improve and benchmark your online efforts

Google AdWords and Yahoo SM advertising are probably the two largest Internet advertising competitors. Both are a pay-per-click advertising service that can help you reach your customers that are searching for your keywords.

Google AdWords works on a bidding scale for placement on the search engine results page for Google. You are charged on a per click basis based on whatever keyword you’re targeting; thus the term “pay-per-click advertising.” Google AdWords has a cloaked bidding system and a higher potential for click through rankings being dropped.

Yahoo Ads are similar except the bidding process is a bit different and not as confidential, which is beneficial when bidding on keywords.

Yahoo is more user-friendly for beginning users with the ability to see all the bidding prices on your keywords.  Google does not provide this bidding information and so you never really know how much you will pay for each bid. You can set a maximum bid which stands as a ceiling for how much you’re willing to pay.  Google AdWords also offers consistent reports that provide user friendly data on your advertising campaign. Google holds the advantage over Yahoo for its competent data distribution, while Yahoo has an advantage for their unique and ultimately helpful bidding system. The coin toss lands in favor of Google however, nine times out of ten, for their rising popularity, despite Yahoo’s higher payout potential.

Karen Armon of www.marketoneexecutive.com has a new book just released on the 9^th of June. She presented last night to our Colorado FENG chapter a presentation called Market Your Potential, Not Your Past. I had some dialogue about online visibility with several people afterwards.

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As a co-chair of the local Financial Executive’s Networking Group chapter, I felt some elaboration might benefit my friends on Resource Nation.

Google yourself. Put your name in quotes, e.g. “marty koenig” so it searches on the whole phrase. I get 491 hits, and 6 of the 10 the top organic search responses are me on the first page.

Page 1 6/10 (my LinkedIn profile is at the top this morning)
Page 2 8/10
Page 3 3/10
Page 4 6/10
Page 5 4/10

54% of 5 pages of search results are yours truly. Not bad. What do you think a potential client/customer/vendor/employer perceives when they google someone with results like mine and looks at some of the pages? It’s not hard to get a pretty quick read.

Next I try “marty koenig” denver with these results:

39 hits. Not a rock star, but hey, I’m THERE.

Page 1 10/10
Page 2 9/10
Page 3 10/10
Page 4 6/9

90% of search results are yours truly. If I search on Martin Koenig, I get around 2% return on the first 5 pages, and over total 20K hits. That’s why I use Marty Koenig because there are fewer competitors for search results.

Summary of interesting findings….use these as examples for you to pump up your googleness:

• Reuters / Business Wire picked up an article about the recent Colorado Capital Conference 20 Year Rockies Venture Club anniversary to which I presented on a panel.
• O’Reilly Media picked up a book review I did in 1993 for a trade magazine publisher for which I used to write a monthly column.
• Denver Post picked up my name for our CO FENG meetings, and they even have a “Buy Now” button linked to our reservation system. All our posted events are there (I better get our upcoming presenters updated). http://calendar.denverpost.com/denver-co/events/show/81408900-co-feng-july-2008-meeting-extreme-linkedin-for-executives Feel free to go there and write a review.
• eWeek Microsoft Watch response to an article in March ‘07 The Dynamics of QuickBooks and Great Plains

So, why should you care if you have online hits in your name?

What does a new customer think when they google you, especially if you don’t show up on the first three pages? What does an angel investor or VC think? What does the hedge fund manager or private equity investor think of you, after you set up an appointment with him and he googles you? If you are competing for a contract against another firm, and the other CEO has a 50% hit rate, who’s going to be perceived a better executive? Who would you want to do business with? Are you portraying a “Luxury” vs. “Commodity” Viewpoint? (Karen’s words). Are you pursuing an Active Marketing Strategy? Do you have a National Presence? If your name is “John Smith”, you’re not going to be so distinct. (over 6 million hits). So try “John A. Smith” denver. If you have a common name, like Bruce M. Allen indicated to me last night in our conversation, you have to have more content out there with your name on it, to increase the likelihood of the search results actually being your content.

Your next customer or investor or employee or vendor will google your name and your company. Have you done that lately?

In line with Karen Armon’s 12 Desired Executive Capabilities, here are my Top 12 items to make you more visible online. Make these part of your system and you’ll enhance your ability to Market Your Potential.

1. Do some research like above, and see what your best signature should be for the largest, fastest growth trajectory on results. If you are Jane Gould, you might consider using Jane M. Gould in all your online content. If you are Jane M. Gould in Denver and google returns zero results, then you’ve got work to do. Our B2B CFO® Founder and CEO always uses Jerry L. Mills and he gets 7/10 on the first page. If I add CPA to the search, he gets 10/10 on the first page and 22/23 total.
2. Create a good LinkedIn profile. Setup a new, separate personal email address for this. If you are not sure how to do that, take a webinar or class from Integrated Alliances. I did. That’s why I have a great LinkedIn profile that shows up at the top of search results. That’s also why I have 2,400+ first tier contacts in my LinkedIn network.
3. When you read an interesting article online, look at the bottom, under the article. Most now have the comment feature. Use it. Show your opinions and passion about things, but don’t get too outrageous. Make sure you put your name (I always use Marty Koenig, never Martin Koenig). I always write responses in a word processor program, spell check, re-read then copy and paste into the text box on the website.
4. Write an online review of a meeting you liked. Be sure and add your consistent signature.
5. Go to meetup.com and join some groups. I joined a dozen or so but have only had time to engage in several. Many of my google results are the bios I added to these groups. Google seems to like them. Be careful not to join political or religious or other meetups that others might perceive wrong.
6. Karen says to figure out numerous ways to increase your word of mouth buzz. Once you have a nice LinkedIn profile, ask people you know for recommendations on LinkedIn. Sign up for Twitter and hook up with other important people. You’d be surprised how many stars of the business world are using it now. Each person that follows you and that you follow will give you a search result.
7. Find a relevant book, go on Amazon and write a review. Put your full name and location so everyone knows it’s you.
8. Offer to write articles for a trade magazine in your industry or craft. For five years in the 1980’s I wrote a monthly column for an international trade publication. I became the expert in a niche market, and grew my business tremendously because they saw me as an expert, the go-to guy, and bought my products and services because they felt like I helped them regularly.
9. Setup your own workshop or lunch-n-learn. Advertise it so you get the online hits and the attendees. This, of course, does much more than get you online visibility.
10. Invite yourself to speak or participate in a chamber event, a local chapter organization, hook up with your relevant organizations, get yourself on a on a panel that you know will have announcements in the business press. Be creative.
11. Get on an internet radio show. Every city seems to have them now. Your name will go on the show listing and result in a search hit.
12. It seems there are hundreds of online business social networks. The more you join, the more exposure you get. I don’t know about you, but I get invites from Plaxo, Naymez, Ning, BeBo, Facebook. More professionals are even putting up a Myspace page. Might consider making an interesting video of yourself covering an important topic, and put it on Hulu or YouTube.

If you are not sure about how best to enter your searches, see more info on search syntax here: http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html