Yes. That’s right. I’m going to talk about cutting your marketing budget.

I know that we are in the middle of the worst economic downturn our country has faced since The Great Depression. Unemployment is in the double-digits. Businesses are closing left and right. Homes are being lost. Dreams shattered. It ain’t pretty.

It’s during times like this that business owners look for ways to cut costs. You can probably guess where I’m going to tell you to cut your budget. In fact, you might have already made cuts to your marketing budget. Many business owners cut marketing budgets first when they feel the squeeze of the economy.

You do need to cut your marketing budget, and you need to cut it today. BUT, here’s the catch: you need to stop advertising in any medium that you aren’t tracking.

Let me say that again…

Stop advertising where you aren’t tracking your results! If you are running a Yellow Pages ad, a newspaper ad, a Val-Pak coupon offer, Search Engine Marketing, Facebook, a radio spot… whatever the medium, and you AREN’T tracking how well that ad is bringing in new business, either START tracking that marketing campaign, or STOP spending that money! You are likely throwing away THOUSANDS of dollars EVERY MONTH on advertising that isn’t being tracked.

This is one of the most common PROFIT LEAKS that I find in businesses today. So many business owners are throwing money at so many different marketing efforts today, hoping one of them will stick, but they aren’t tracking what’s working. What’s worse is that business owners are cutting their marketing budgets to save money, and they very likely are stopping advertising methods that were bringing in new business. BUT, because no tracking systems are in place, they had no idea what was truly working.

Cutting your budget wholesale during a recession is the WORST thing you can do. In fact, you actually want to maintain your marketing efforts because EVERYONE ELSE is cutting their marketing budgets! Recessions are one of the best times to gain market share!

So don’t follow the rest of your fellow business owners by stopping your marketing efforts completely. Start marketing with intelligence by keeping track of what is working, and stop any marketing effort that ISN’T working. If you don’t have tracking systems in place, take steps today to start tracking what is working, so you know how effectively you are spending your marketing dollars.

I recently made some adjustments to a clients Google Local Business Listing and I was astounded by the resulting improvement.  I saw a 540% increase in the number of Impressions their listing received, and a 1200% increase in the number of Actions taken.  Check this out:

Before Making the Tweaks

After Making the Tweaks

One of the biggest changes was that their listing was coming up for a number of keywords directly related to their business that they were not coming up for at all.  In fact, they are now #1 for their main keyword in their city. Not bad, if I might say so myself!

Here are the changes that I made:

1. Claimed the Listing for the Business Owner

The listing was unverified and had generic information that Google had indexed from another site. This really should be step one for any local business, as it establishes trust in the information that Google has about the business.

2. Placed the Main Keyword/Service and City in the Company/Organization Title

This is one of  the most important change I made, as they just had their company name listed before.  I belive that adding in the city further pushed their listing up when people used their city as a keyword.

3. Added in their Main Keywords to the Description, as well as the Cities that They Service.

Their description was pretty good before I made some adjustments. In describing what their service offered, I was able to use several of their main keywords, as well as the main city they do business in.

4. Choosing Proper Categories

Because their service was not an official category, I chose several that were very similar to what my client offers.  However, I also created several custom categories of their keywords. You can only have 5 categories, so choose wisely!

5. Updated Contact Information, Photos, and Video

I made sure their information was correct, and then added in their website and main email address. I also uploaded their logo and linked to a brief marketing video of the companies on YouTube.

6. Added in Additional Service Information in Custom Fields

I created 3 custom fields and filled them with information about the service my client provides that would give their potential clients just the right amount of information that would entice them to either visit the website or pick up their phone to call.

While this might look like a lot of work, it actually did not take that long to implement. I’m looking forward to seeing the Impressions, Actions, and Top Search Queries in a month, as well as the ROI for my client!

Article written  by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:
Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:
Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:
Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

• http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
• http://www.bondedsender.com
• http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

Closing thought from Tom Osypian: With email deliverability so incredibly important, I know I can’t leave it to chance. That’s why I use and highly recommend Aweber.