• Determine which vendor or vendors would be suitable to bring in on the project
• Determine the relative cost of the project
• Identify and communicate the project requirements
• Determine project management milestones and realistic dates

There are additional benefits to implementing the RFP process. Here are a few of the hidden reasons to draft a detailed request for proposal.

The RFP procurement process lessens the appearance of favoritism. There is much to be said in favor of staging an open bid. Often the benefits can be political: if there are ever any questions concerning why this particular vendor was selected, then a RFP provides documentation to support the decision. This political cover can be a career saver if the project ever goes ‘sideways’.

The RFP process helps to negotiate a lower cost for the project. Even if you don’t chose the lowest cost vendor because of factors such as level of experience required or connections to the CEO, you can still use the line-item cost comparisons with other bidding vendors to negotiate a lower project price.

RFP vendor feedback can identify false assumptions or unrealistic expectations. The RFP process is a good reality check for internal customers and constituencies. Vendors will often, but not always, let you know when your expectations are out of line with current technology, the budget provided, or the time-frame estimated. Fully discuss any concerns a participating vendor may have about the project–you will probably learn a thing or two in the process.

The RFP process helps determine if part of the project is better suited for the internal team. Given the feedback of the vendors under consideration, the final decision may turn out to be ‘no decision at all’. Sometimes it makes more sense to have just part, or all, of the project assigned to an internal team–given factors such as expertise needed or the complexity of customized in-house systems. The selected vendor may morph into a consulting partner in these cases. This often occurs when integrating a legacy content management system with a new website design.

Postpone, prune or cancel marginal projects. Once the cost of outsourcing is determined, sometimes it turns out that the ROI just isn’t high enough for the project as initially conceived. In that case, a project often gets pruned back, abandoned or postponed. Better to have sticker-shock before the contract have been signed.

There are a number of other benefits to writing a request for proposal. What is your experience going through a formal RFP process?

Remember when TV news reporting went from a nightly, once-a-day cycle to a 24 hour cycle after cable news channels became popular? Your company’s marketing, sales, and customer service departments now face similar pressures. Here are some of the factors driving the evolution to a real-time, 24/7 sales funnel process.

1. International markets. More than likely your website has visitors from every corner of the globe; you are―or should be–marketing to the world, and the world is an insomniac. Someone, somewhere, is awake right now and looking at your website. We compete in a global economy, your organization must market and sell that way―because a competitor of yours already is. For instance, Google is up against Baidu in China, while Yahoo competes against SINA and Sohu.

Assuming your merchant card services processes and accepts foreign currency transactions, why aren’t you trying to sell to foreign customers right now.

2. The 24 hour internet. Rather obvious in this day and age, so obvious we might as well mention electricity too.

3. Smart phones and mobile technology. Prospects and customer are right around the corner driving by, too bad your direct mail ad missed them by three days. Real-time 24/7 means that you never stop marketing or selling, ever. No need to time a campaign, when the marketing campaign is a never-ending stream of messaging on multiple sites, platforms, and channels.

4. Competitive pressures. Everyone else is re-marketing, after that prospect leaves your website they will be ganged up on by your competitors. You need to keep your customers and prospects engaged with your brand, whether you are in their Facebook newsfeed, in their Google Local map, or texting or tweeting a “flash sale” good for the next 3 hours.

5. Sales overhead. Your explensive sales force is growing old and restless waiting by the phones, your cashiers are texting at the cash register, your website is hacking its own database. You need a constant stream of new leads and customers now in order to justify your investment in an inside sales department. That can mean using social media monitoring tools to scrape real-time conversations, or inviting board members to ‘like’ your Facebook page.

6. Faster sales cycle. Given the fact that most online tools are now available with hosted versions, there is less need to invest large sums of capital. With less capital at risk, decisions can now be made faster by customers at a lower level in the organization, and in response marketers and sales people need to react–and be proactive–on a shorter timeframe.

Furthermore, social media is developing the trust factor between buyer and seller more quickly. How many times have you gone to a new restaurant based upon a Yelp review, or found a product review while standing in the store. Even in business-to-business marketing, social media is bringing the first 7 touches “up-front” so that when a prospect is ready to buy, they have already established a relationship with your company. Therefore, when the buying signals line up like astrological signs, the sales transaction can be more quickluy consummated.

7. Real-time information. Your decisions can now be made based upon a non-stop stream of data. This information immediacy gives rise to the belief that decisions should be―need to be–made quicker.

8. Real-time analytics. The flip side of real-time information is real-time metrics. More information require smarter tools; which in turn allows for quicker decision-making.

9. Leaner organizations. Cost pressures make organizations leaner, more efficient―so therefore your marketing team have more to do, and get it done more quickly. Marketing decisions have to be made quickly, seemingly in real-time, because there are so many decisions someone in marketing needs to make.

10. Customer demands. Your customers prefer offers on-demand and direct communication in a convenient format, when its convenient to them. Direct mail and email campaigns can seem positively archaic when your competitors are always in your customer’s Facebook newsfeed and tweeting about their latest deals.

11. Work-from-home syndrome. I’m not sure if its the chicken or the egg, but the expectation is there at many companies for employees to be available at any time, even at home. This creates internal pressures for people in Sales and Marketing to be responding to emails and checking social media sites for the company.

In the follow-up to this article we explore what tools can help you keep your sales, marketing and customer service efforts going on a real-time basis―even when you and your team can’t.

What factors do you see driving an organization to become more real-time, 24/7 in their sales, marketing, and customer service efforts?

How do these companies grow their Facebook following? Well, to no one’s surprise, its good to be a brand.

In order to increase the number of people who “Like” their company’s Facebook page, take a page out of Kirkland’s playbook and run a contest offering a $25,000 prize. This promotion increased their tally by 200,000. It calculates out to $0.125 per like. If your company doesn’t have that sort of promotional budget, even a simple contest built around a highly sought after tech toy, amusement park tickets, or whatever is appropriate for your target market.

Contests can seem quite daunting though given the legal restrictions by various states, the site’s terms of service, and internal company expertise and headcount allocation restrictions. One resource that can make a Facebook or Twitter contest manageable is wildfireapp.com.

Another good technique for a business is to offer a discount for a customer’s next (or first) purchase. People love deals, and if you incent their participation on Facebook, then it becomes a win-win proposition.

While Kirklands proved Facebook ‘likers’ could be bought cheap, Build-a-Bear Workshop and Pottery Barn Kids demonstrated brands can grow just by inviting fans to share stories and pictures by keeping their Facebook open to customer contributions. Between March and May 2011 Build-a-Bear Workshop increased their follower base by 137%, and Pottery Barn Kids grew by 98%. This data is from Media Logic’s June 2011 Retail Marketing Report, which tracks the top 100 retailers performance on Facebook and Twitter.

Another critical way to build your Facebook traffic is by advertising. Facebook servers about one third of all banner ads on the Internet, take advantage of their reach and excellent targeting capabilities.

One key tip for growing your company’s Facebook traffic; Ask for the Like. If you have a inbound or outbound sales or CRM team, have them collect the data on clients. Mention your Facebook page on your packing slips and give them a reason to Like you. Make sure your Facebook and other social media pages are highly visible on your webpages. Don’t be shy; think of the link for a Facebook ‘Like’ as being one of your most important call-to-actions on your webpage and a great foot-in-the-door question for your sales team. Create a sales campaign for your sales team around building Facebook followers. Incent your sales team and they will build your list for your company.

Build your brand Facebook page for first time visitors or 1 time campaigns. Most people will never return to your Facebook page after the first visit, unless you make your page engaging, relevant, and valuable (think contest, coupon, or community sharing). Coke and RedBull have particularly good Facebook pages. For the most part, your Facebook conversations will occur on the customer’s news feed, or possible on the group pages.

Finally, make sure your posting information is informative, but not too frequent. An once-a-day posting schedule on Facebook may turn out to be more than necessary. But certainly don’t make your postings all you talking about ‘Your Brand’. The more you can get readers to participate, the more active your community will become. Social media is a conversation–think of it as a cocktail party mixer, it is not a podium for shouting at the customer. Talk about what is happening in the industry, trends that are relevant to your customers, events you will be attending–anything but selling your product. A 1:10 ration is a good yardstick. For every 10 general comments you can promote your brand 1 time on your Facebook page.

Building a brand’s following is just the beginning. Facebook can become a direct marketing medium for your company by Likers with a steady stream of informative posts, promotions, games, contests, and other engaging communications. Several apparel retailers like Lane Bryant and Fashion Bug have created a following of brand advocates through a steady stream of targeted communications.

What best practices have you seen by brands to build their Facebook ‘Likes’?

It’s not just how some SEO consultancies perform search engine optimization, its also the manner in which they operate that is troublesome. The way a large agency treats its clients is as important as what they do for their website; the two are actually closely related.

With these two principles in mind, I’ve identified the seven deadly sins (and counting) of SEO agencies:

1. Out-of-date SEO tactics. It seems a lot of SEO advice is often 18 months out of date, but try telling that to a senior manager who remembers search practices from how they did it in 2001. Some practitioners have not kept up with the evolution of Google and Bing recently. My rule of thumb: 18 months in search engine optimization is equal to 7 years of regular website marketing time. Yes, think in terms of dog years when it comes to SEO.
2. Hubris. Beware superficial explanations, “just trust us” may actually mean “I read this somewhere, so I believe it”. The real issue is whether it makes sense for your website and competitive situation. You, as the client, should be in the decision-making process and understand what the long-term risks and rewards are for any given strategy.
3. Laziness. Learn to be suspicious of any SEO answer that corresponds too closely with what you want to hear: “One video is all you need,” and “no need for a SEO audit, we already understand your business” are really cries for help; often a SEO intervention is needed at this point.
4. Greed. Be aware that your SEO agency’s bottom line will sometimes/often drive the tactical decisions they suggest for your website. Every client is cookie dough when an agency uses a SEO cookie cutter, unless they can bill at their premium hourly rate.
5. Staff turnover. Internal staff reassignments may suddenly negate months of learning curve knowledge gained. There is nothing more annoying than finally educating your assigned SEO project manager about your business, only to begin again with a new person.
6. Good SEO / Bad Marketing. Key word stuffing does not make for a well written page title, so don’t accept good SEO as being an excuse for poor marketing communications.
7. Silence. The next sin covers a multitude of problems; including not communicating an engagement plan, lapses in reporting, and not returning phone calls.

Bonus SEO sin.

8. Gray / Black hat SEO. I am not a fan of tactics that can get you banned or penalized by Google, that said I undersand the temptation to use these techniques. What I do not appreciate is when a SEO “pro” suggests a gray/black hat strategy, but then does not fully educate the client on the potential downside. (See sin #2).

But wait, if you order before the end of the month we’ll add one more deadly sin for no additional charge.

9. Sloth. Its hard to say where laziness ends and sloppiness begins, but practices such as incomplete chronicling of site changes, suspect billing practices, spaghetti code, and reliance on automated link building techniques all deserve their own place in SEO Hell.

Ironically, the ‘coveting your neighbor’s SEO’ is not really a sin―at least in any business sense.

Now for the real-life example. In the course of recently working with a widely-known SEO agency on the behalf of a mutual client, I witnessed a number of specific SEO engagement fouls:

1. Pulling a bait and switch; In a recent engagement an experienced SEO expert successfully sold the client on his agency’s expertise. He was knowledgeable and experienced, someone you’d want working on your website. But wait, come time to implement, the agency assigned a junior staff member to manage the account. Even more annoying was after 60 days of getting this junior staffer educated on the business, the agency replaced him with another junior level staff person to manage the account―and the client found themselves back at square one.
2. Letting the client pick the 12 key words to optimize from the onset; this practice avoided a time consuming website audit that would have taken a lot of effort on part of the agency to complete. It turns out the agency had better things to do.
3. Suggesting the home page title and meta tags be optimized for these 12 key search terms; this practice makes the agency look good for all the resulting traffic based on the 12 selected keyword search terms, but it would have destroyed the website’s home page branding in the process. The worst part is when the agency salesperson claims “look how well we’re doing for these keyword search terms, meanwhile ignoring how total conversions have gone down.
4. Requesting access to change the client’s site directly; this little tactic would have neatly bypassed any client review and approval process. The problem becomes how to roll back the changes made by the agency if, and when, the agency is fired.
5. Not explaining the SEO tactical changes; In a fixed fee engagement spending time explaining to the client each change meant less profit for the agency. Never accept a file of meta tag and content changes with a note that basically says “let us know when these changes are uploaded” without any explanation.
6. Creating 100+ directory back links; unfortunately for the client this superficially impressive tactic has been downgraded by recent changes in Google’s algorithm―now the quality of the links to the site mean more than the quantity of links to the site (on a related note, after 30 days none of those 150 links had been indexed by Google).
7. Adding a 500 keyword laden essay on to the bottom of the home page; This approach is an amateur move that simply waves a red flag at Google indicating the website deserves to be re-ranked lower. Seems like user experience and content quality are elements that some SEOs have yet to fully understand how to execute correctly. It was so much easier being a SEO in 2009.

At this point I finally convinced the client that the SEO agency contract should be terminated. It will take months to unwind all the damage done by these SEO “experts”.

What experiences have you had with outside SEO agencies, both good and bad?

Generate More Business Through Local Online Advertising

Need more revenue but your marketing team is already stretched thin?  There are many benefits from outsourcing your next marketing project: expand your in-house capabilities without adding head count, test new tactics and strategies, train your current in-house talent on new techniques.

Create Custom Graphics for all Social Media Sites
Set Up Accounts For Top 20+ Social Media and Feeds
Manage Your Corporate Blog
Conduct Keyword Research To Pin Point Target Market
Set Up 10+ Google Adwords or Facebook Campaigns
Dominate Google Front Page PPC
Setup and Enhance Your Company’s Social Media Presence
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube
• MySpace
• Yelp
• Local Google
Increase your Friends/Followers/Connections in 90 Days
Create Video or Slide Show to Promote Your Business
Integrate Video on all your Social Neworks
Conduct Research on Where to Place Ads on Google/Yahoo/MSN
Place Video on Google/Yahoo/MSN with 3 Different Keywords per month
Set Up Article Submission Service To Top Social Bookmarking Sites
Develop Custom E-Mail Marketing Campaigns
Complete Auto Responder System Set Up
Training on E-Mail Marketing and Social Media Training
Place Your Business On Google Maps
Create Internet Based Sales Funnel For Lead Generation and List Building
Two Hours Of Personal Coaching

Free Analysis

Receive an analysis of the state of your current internet marketing. Choose from the following reports.

Social media review
Website SEO review
E-commerce review
Lead generation review
Website email and paid marketing review

Here at InternetMarketingForCompanies.com we can provide a number of different marketing services for your existing marketing team; including

• Increase Web Traffic.
• Generate Sales Leads.
• Increase E-commerce Sales.
• Online Promotions.
• Manage Social Media.
• Execute Email marketing.

LOMO marketing actually been happening for several years now. Activities such as Flash mobs, SMS marketing, Tweets, iphone apps, Yelp reviews, and Google location mapping are all part of this burgeoning marketing stream for both international brands and local retail store.

LOMO campaigns differ from traditional local marketing campaigns in a number of ways:
Ongoing versus traditional campaign start/stop
Interactive vs. local paper
Merging of branding/awareness building/trial/loyalty
Social network enabled
Technology-driven
Metrics-driven
Physical location-favored (Although not necessary)
Video/Image/Mapping/Short messaging vs. heavy text

The good news is that it’s not just a rich-company’s game; any size business can participate. How can your business participate? Here are just some of the many LOMO revenue-generating activities your company could be executing upon right now:
Emails collection
Cell phone collection
RMS news feed
Smart-phone friendly blogs
Facebook fan page
Twitter posts
Active announcements on Twitter
Soliciting Yelp reviews
iphone apps
Google Adsense on mobile phone maps
Augmented Reality apps http://layar.com/
Mobile-enabled websites
Universal search and Local-search optimization
Local portal site advertising
Long-tail search optimization
Employee profiles on your website and other social media
Photography and YouTube Video posts

So, how is your business using technology to reach the active mobile phone prospect and customer?

Internet Marketing For Companies will be a concise guide through the ever-changing world of interactive marketing. Whether its local and mobile marketing, universal search, or social media trends we’ll highlight what you need to know.