Large and small businesses alike share the confusion of a volatile and shaky economic future in 2012. I know, as a business owner in these times, I need get my head out of the sand. I need to keep up with the Jones’ and countless others who have put 2011 behind them, moving forward with a reduced expense budget and searching for unconventional ways to market their business.

At Media DUCK Brands we were fortunate to see some growth year over year in 2011. Despite a lackluster 3rd quarter and a poor 4th quarter, the first half of 2011 was excellent. 2012 begun with the same new growth as 2011, the test is to carry that same first half of the year success into the last half of 2012.

Perhaps you’re in the same position.

Allow me to share what we at Media DUCK began last year at the end of the third quarter, and what you can do, even if you only begin now.

1) We began canceling any duplicate and or overlapping services and providers. That only, provided easier and more convenient day to day support with our workload. To do this, we retrained staff to better use their time in a more productive manner. And heightened our understanding of the best software, services and providers, using a 100% of a software, service and or providers full capacities rather than 60-70%.

2) Carrying out the point above has taken nearly two full quarters to complete. But with elimination of underutilized phone services and lines, retooling and combining our independent Support ticket program with our CRM and Project software from Worketc. Has all contributed to reduce costs and has stepped-up our overall services and organization at Media DUCK.

These two items above will save thousands of dollars in 2012, while assisting Media DUCK in sales building as well. Programs like Worketc may work for Media Duck; it may not suit your business’s needs. There are many CRM, Project and Support programs and or services available; I know I’ve reviewed all.

David Schlatter

Managing General Partner

Media DUCK Global

As time slips away, there is less and less of it to get ready for the 2012 holiday season. Let’s look at some more local internet marketing tips that will ensure you make the maximum profits for your online business this year.

Holiday Events

One way to get a lot of excitement going for your business and its products or services is to plan a special event. This is a particularly great way to get people in your local community through the doors of your bricks and mortar store. It takes a lot of planning to make your holiday event a success, though, so start putting together the details and supplies right now.

Another type of holiday event you may want to consider this year is a customer appreciation party. This is typically held at a location away from your business (unless you run a restaurant or hotel). You may find it difficult to book your preferred date this late in the season so try to be flexible. Tip: If you hold this event in conjunction with a big charity donation, you’ll get double the return on positive PR for your business.

The key to a successful holiday event? Promotion, promotion, promotion. Add details to all of your printed receipts, send flyers to your customer database, advertise on the radio, in the newspaper and online. Have your staff really talk it up. The more excitement you can build now, the better attendance you’ll get for the actual event.

Can’t afford a big holiday fete? Why not partner with a complementary business? This makes it much more affordable to promote and cater an event plus you get the benefit of reaching a brand new target market.

The Cyber Monday Advantage

An in-store holiday event is great for local sales but you may also want to capitalize on the spending power of internet consumers by planning a big promotion for Cyber Monday. The Monday following Thanksgiving is traditionally the biggest buying day of the year online and many e-tailers offer something special such as free shipping to entice prospective customers.

If you really want to reach a large percentage of holiday shopping enthusiasts, have your sale listed in any of the Black Friday websites/newsletters that abound on the World Wide Web. You might be surprised at their enormous subscription numbers.

Consider keeping the momentum of Cyber Monday going by continuing to offer weekly “door buster” specials until Christmas arrives. You may want to use mobile marketing as a great way to send reminders of special deals to your database.

Using Social Media

When it comes to advertising and promoting holiday events and sales, there’s truly no better medium to do it on than social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or even YouTube. Christmas and Hanukah are personal and family-oriented holidays that require a personal touch to your marketing efforts. Start a conversation instead of pushing your marketing agenda; you’ll get better results with warm and fuzzies than you will with a more direct approach.

Now is the not the time to skimp on personnel dedicated to managing social media, either. You can’t afford to miss opportunities so it’s important to keep someone on top of monitoring messages and communication.

Now, are you ready to make loads of money this holiday shopping season? Use the local internet marketing techniques outlined here for the best results with minimum effort. Rest? You can get some of that after New Year’s has come and gone; now is the time to get your business in the black with seasonal sales!

Now that October is here, the Halloween decorations are barely on the shelves in retail stores while the Christmas items are already starting to crowd them out. Yes, that’s right – the big holiday shopping season is just around the corner. What can you do to optimize your local internet marketing efforts and capture the maximum amount of sales? Here’s a few ideas to get you started.

The important thing is to get started right away. If you are just starting to think about holiday promotions, you’ve got no time to lose – but there are still things you can do to promote your holiday sales through local internet marketing.

1. Graphics

If you’ve got a graphics artist on your staff, have them design a special image that can be used for your PPC campaign, on your website, in your print ads, on flyers, and in email marketing. If you don’t have the capability of creating graphics, contact us and we can help you out.

2. List Building

Make a concerted effort to build your database. Consider starting a Facebook advertising campaign – even a small one – to gain as many online fans as possible. It’s vital that you have a large list to which promote your holiday specials. Don’t forget to encourage sharing, either, with social media and social bookmarking buttons attached to every piece of content on your website or in your advertising.

If you have a large enough database, send out at least weekly – or even daily – email messages to remind them to do their holiday shopping at your online store. Include a link to your opt-in form in every message so that it gets shared. You can do this for free with a program like Constant Contact or pay for an account if you've got lots of subscribers and plan on sending more frequent messages.

3. Decide What to Offer

Decide what items or services you will offer as a special holiday loss leader. This is what Wal-Mart does; they offer something at an incredibly low price, even losing profits on it, in order to get shoppers into their stores. Once there, the odds of someone walking out with only one item are pretty slim. The same strategy applies online – especially if you offer related items and special deals at checkout through your shopping cart software.

Think about something you can offer as the “one size fits all” or a package deal gift option. Be more creative than just promoting a gift certificate and try to come up with customizable options that will get you future business from the gift recipients.

4. ‘Tis the Season to Give

The holidays are about more than just selling, they’re for giving, too. Start thinking about items or services you might already have that can be repackaged as gifts for your best clients. If you’ve got something that costs you nothing to deliver, such as a virtual greeting card, consider giving it to every customer who places an online order. This is just another incentive for a consumer to do their holiday shopping with you instead of the competition.

Stay tuned for the next blog installment when I’ll share even more ways small business owners can capitalize on the hugely profitable holiday shopping eason. Don’t forget to like our Facebook page at and follow us on Twitter to get even more valuable information.

What does it take in terms of local internet marketing and SEO to get your website to the top of search engine results? Although there’s no magic formula and the algorithms used by Google and other major search engines tend to vary frequently, there are still some sound principles that will help your website achieve higher rankings. Let’s take a look.

Local Internet Marketing

In order to get your website added to various search engine maps and geo-location shopping sites, you need to make sure that it includes a physical address and phone number. This is easily accomplished by adding a Contact Us page with a handy map of your location in addition to a mailing address, phone number(s), fax number and email address. But don’t just stop there; you may want to include a footer on each page that lists your local phone number and address so it can easily be found by spiders crawling your pages.

URL Registration

Registering your domain name for at least five years and preferably ten is a good way to achieve higher search engine rankings. Any less than five years and your website doesn’t appear to be as good a prospect in terms of longevity. Sure, it may cost you more money upfront to register your URL for that long, but it’s a solid investment.

Brand Advertising

Another thing search engines love is to see your brand mentioned all over the Internet. A good way to do this is by using social media and video content, which tends to spread virally. Of course, you have to create your brand first and then build on its recognition, so this isn’t a quick SEO fix. But it is one that will put your company in good stead as far as local internet marketing and even offline marketing that results in increased sales.

How These SEO Factors Help

Why do a local address and phone number, a five-year domain registration, and broad brand advertising help your website in terms of SEO? The main reason is that all of these factors indicate that your business has staying power. It shows that you, as the company owner, are committed to making your mark on the Internet.

The second reason this is good SEO is because each of these things costs money. When you spend the money to solidly establish your business, search engines know you stand to lose a lot if it suddenly folds. Your website gets higher ranking simply because the pages are of good quality – and that’s what people want to see when they search for a company like yours.

Of course, it makes sense in financial terms for the search engines, too. They get more money on their bottom line from advertising and other ancillary services when their results are relevant and trustworthy. By helping your business establish a presence online, Google, Bing and Yahoo are essentially earning royalties via your branding and local internet marketing efforts. Eventually they might not place such an emphasis on having a physical location, but for now, at least in the short term, your online business benefits from geo signals you provide to the search engines.

There are many ways to make local internet marketing work with SEO principles in order to get your business website noticed. Try including these three key factors in your local internet marketing campaign and see what a difference it makes in regards to search engine results ranking.