Author: Jeremy Harrison

Billy Mays was found dead in his Tampa, FL home Sunday morning, possibly connected to a blow to the head he received the night before onboard a US Airways flight. As a marketing professional, I am saddened by the loss. Mays was a man of character. He gave our profession a positive example, in a field that's often overshadowed by manipulative people who will say anything to make a quick buck.

Do you know what people are saying about your company? The rapid growth of social networking has both simplified and complicated things all at the same time.Our only challenge used to be making sure people said positive things about our companies when they talked to their friends.Now we have to keep up with the techno-savvy people too -- the bloggers, reviewers,YouTubers, twitterers, facebookers, and much, much more.

Has your name been "Googled" recently? I bet it has - whether you realize it or not.Now you can control what people see, by setting up your own Google Profile. Like a scaled-down Facebook page, Google's profile gives you a chance to enter some basic information about yourself, add photos, schools you attended and a few other things.

In November I wrote about my system for getting things done. Now, 6 months later it's time to review successes & failures of the system I talked about. Some of the things I was doing worked very well, and have become a permanent part of my organization system. Other parts haven't worked as well as I'd hoped. Let me review both.

Question: "So what is twitter, I signed up tonight, is it just a spin off of myspace and facebook but with a business twist?"

If you do pay-per-click campaigns, you probably know that one best practice is to add brackets and quotes to your keyword list - which makes them a phrase match or exact match. It's simple, but repetitive and time-consuming to do that by hand -- especially if you have hundreds of keywords for each ad group as I do. Here's a simple tool my team just created to help me convert my keyword lists on the fly.

If just one of the big 3 automakers would make it through this economic mess, it would be Ford, in my opinion. That said, I got a chuckle out of a Chevy Silverado commercial I saw today. It was targeted at Ford F-150.

I just finished a new postcard that will be released next week in response to the recession. The headline matches the blog title. The ad copy says the following...

Most folks know that to get more revenue out of their customers, they should sell add-on products. However, some well-crafted add-on products not only give you more revenue at the time of the sale -- they practically GUARANTEE that you will get more repeat business.Here's a perfect example.

In October I blogged about some bad news -- the sudden closing of Archway Cookies here in Ashland Ohio.Late last week we learned that Lance Inc. -- the Charlotte-based company who bought the assets of Archway Cookies -- will be reopening Archway cookies.

Our business has grown quickly over the past 18 months. One challenge has been finding the right system for email, schedules, to-dos and new business leads to handle our growth and keep things organized.Here's what we've done so far to get organized, and what I'm looking at to make the system better.

Imagine if you could walk up to the prospective customers who are looking at your company's website and ask if they're ready to buy. What would they tell you? In fact, if you asked every website visitor -- how many do you think would be ready to buy your products or services right now... today... right on the spot? If you're selling expensive products or services, it's probably no more than 3%. So what are you going to do with the 97% who "walk out" of your "online store" without making a decision to buy?

If you are a member of the Ashland or Mansfield Chamber of Commerce, you will be receiving our new postcard sometime this week...

I've been aware of Twitter for a while, but have never been terribly impressed. Cool for personal use, but businesses are raving about it being the next big thing, and I've just never seen the marketing benefit to using it.