Take it from me – this is a tall order considering the current state of the economy. The truth is, if you keep doing the same things (marketing wise) that you have been comfortably doing in the past – you probably can expect similar results. As obvious as that sounds – you may be surprised by just how many businesses and entrepreneurs complain about their finical situation, but are either too scared or too set in their ways to actually do something different.

…… Example marketing video

As someone who runs several businesses – I am always looking at the trends of what marketing initiatives are working and what has ceased to work. Earlier this year, I was pleasantly surpassed to see that one of our businesses was having a run of new requests like never before. More than just a flash in the pan trend – our Avenstar video production department was not only getting requests for bids -we were down right busy!

Here’s what’s happening…

Important Point # 1 The major search engines, such as Yahoo, MSN, and Google, used to penalize websites that had online videos (such as Flash video files) on their pages. This is changing quickly and now, although most people don’t realize it, videos are not only ‘OK’ -they can actually help your website’s SEO! Flash is slowly getting recognized, online video sites like YouTube, Vimeo and many others allow you to use their embedded code (along with your keywords and tags) making your web sites much likely to attract new clients/customers via the search engines.

Important Point # 2 It’s happening – Television and the computer/Internet are truly merging. Big business is already on-track with this and maneuvering to take advantage of this over the next few years. Why – easy, polls show that the average adult in the U.S. spends a huge amount of time online. And there’re doing this at virtually no cost. Big business has had lack-luster results with online advertising campaigns and now want’s to capitalize on the latest technology that would merge the two technologies and where they can capture the most amount of “eyes” – and wallets. If you think about it – it’s inevitable, this is where the money is for businesses currently only advertising on television.

Important Point # 3 The average consumer is visually highly sophisticated. They watch TV and feature films with extraordinary visual effects today. On the flip-side, the average web site is in the dark ages – mostly text with a few poor quality images. But that too is changing fast. Internet speeds are getting really fast. Now, we we’re watching our favorite TV shows right on the computer. Unfortunately, there is quickly becoming a huge difference between bigger business sites and the typical monad pop business site. And if you haven’t noticed, big business sites are starting to look a lot like television…

So what does all this add up to from a business marketing perspective for you and me? Simple – the smart businesses today are building websites that keep their customers interest (even entertained) vs. dying of boredom! Utilizing professional film/video, that engages your customer like nothing else in the past. Where a picture is worth a 1000 words, video, at 30 frames (images) per second – changes the whole playing field.

Imagine, even small businesses being able to compete with some of the largest businesses on the planet – and doing so by producing video/films that are highly professional to the level that your customers increase their spending on websites (your website) by 20%, 30%, even 40% or more. A good start is to up your game by providing the excellent information/content and the visual media the consumer has come to expect.

Okay, let’s clarify something… when we talk about adding professional media to your website, we’re not talking amateurish, go buy a Wall-Mart handy-cam, and do it yourself type video. Again, the average consumer is visually very sophisticated and (for the most part) the capabilities of lighting a scene or subject correctly, scripting, editing, adding music, incorporating the necessary SEO keywords to the embedded code – all this is simply a more than what the average business owner can handle – or even wants to handle.

Video production businesses are situated all over the country and many of them are super great at building video content for the web. Google them in your area. Here are a few things to look for that can mean the difference between success or waisting your money:

Experience - does the video production company have many years of experience working with actual corporations? Check out their reel and see if you like what they have produced for others.

Video Marketing - does the video production company have experience in on-line video marking and integrating Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so your videos (and web pages) will come up high in the search engines?

References – Don’t underestimate the important of this one! A video production house that does inferior (or shotty) work will not have up-to-date ‘happy’ customer testimonials and referrals. do your do- diligence and call their past customers to see if they are up to snuff.

Pricing - You typically get what you pay for and if your are always shopping for the lowest bid – you may be disappointed in the end. At the same time, some producers have highly inflated, not competitive pricing – again do your homework. Keep in mind that a professional – high-end video production will cost you anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 a running minute.

Summing it all up If you are looking to dramatically change (and improve) your on-line (and brick and mortar) marking results this coming year – don’t wait. There are many millions of web sites all competing for the consumers attention and dollars and from our own indications – things are heating up.

Avenstar is a marketing and video boutique based in Boulder Colorado. We specialize in producing beautiful “film” like video at an extreme affordable price. Also, we are on-line SEO marketing experts to boot. We are currently supporting clients all over the country and happily provide references if interested. Feel free to call us or ail us with questions:

800 478-1214 / info@avenstar.net

Seth’s Blog, for me, has been like an old friend that I connect with several times a week. The simple fact that we’ve never met – and I don’t show up on his radar screen in the slightest, is fine with me. As long as I can continue to utilize his vast knowledge and quirky way of thinking – I’ll continue to see what he has to say.

So thank you Seth – you are today’s winner and very much appreciated!  Check out Seth’s Blog here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

To make a long story short, we tried to do too much. We were living in Thousand Oaks, California at the time, and the fulfillment facility we chose was in Windsor, Colorado. Everything started out okay. It was a lot of work to set up, but the people that worked there seemed friendly and proficient…at first.

It did not take long for a total melt down to occur. Our first few orders that we had trickling in seemed to get lost. We received “call center” bills from the 1-800 number that could not accounted for, and we found out we were being charged for pallets that were not being used. We actually still tried to work with this fulfillment company, realizing the time and money it would take to move all of our inventory. But as time passed, more problems cropped up, and old problems never got resolved.

We bit the bullet, and moved our inventory to a Fulfillment Center in Sun Valley (now in Chatsworth), California. Without going into too much detail, the entire crew of this Fulfillment business was amazing. The name of this company is called River Plate Fulfillment. And I give them 12 out of 10 stars. River Plate (which is also a trucking company) is family owned and operated. The owner is Daniela Rodriguez, and she is an incredible person.

It is interesting that we give this fulfillment facility such outstanding marks for service, because about 1 month after we got all settled there, all of our inventory was destroyed in a fire (no fault of River Plate). But River Plate was insured, and we got refunded for our loss. River Plate and Daniela handled the whole unfortunate episode swiftly. We are still friends to this day.

Given our experience with fulfillment centers, we are in a unique position to offer you advice on going this route for setting up your ecommerce site. The Universe was clearly trying to tell us not to carry any inventory, and, ultimately, we listened…at least for now.

There could come a time when we change our minds, and start using a fulfillment center again. And if we do we will use River Plate Fulfillment-and we highly recommend that you do, as well.

Check out River Plate Inc here:  http://www.riverplateinc.com

The products are all hand picked by Kim (my wife and partner), and I so we have put a little of ourselves into this site. Add to the fact that we offer our own best selling Zen Fireflies product (that we manufacture), as well as a great selection of cool – zen type products that are super-great occasion type gifts, as well as business gifts, and you have the makings of a winning site.

So, as far as I’m concerned, we have the perfect website. It’s undemanding (of our time) but continuously makes our customers (as well as ourselves) – quite happy.

So, here’s to you aZenGift- thank you and many returns!

You can visit a Zen Gift at http://www.aZenGift.com

A great place to start this education is a site recommended by my Wife, Kim. Here’s her review…

Benefits-of-Recycling is a wonderful site for a number of reasons – first of all, it provides a ton of information – not only on recycling but alternative forms of energy and water conservation. And it provides info on what great things companies and individuals are doing in the green movement. Also the site looks great. I mean this may sound trivial, but it feels good to be on an educational site and have it be visually rewarding. I also like the nature of the writing – it is warm and engaging with some humor thrown in. It’s nice to know there are sites out there trying to make a difference without being preachy!  Take a look at this great site here: http://www.benefits-of-recycling.com

Today’s Bring You Success (BYS) winner comes from a recommendation by Michael who has his own site at: http://www.aquachifootbath.com

Today’s Winner – Strategicprofits.com (http://www.strategicprofits.com).  This is Rich Schefren’s site. He is well known in the internet marketing community.

The main (and ongoing) lesson that I have learned from his content is that the level of success that one can achieve is directly related to their ability to systematize every part of their business.

Without having systems in place ones’ efforts will hit a brick wall at some point – limiting growth.

Congratulations go out to today’s BYS winner, Rich Schefen and his team over at www.strategicprofits.com

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to drive a high-end German manufactured automobile (I’m thinking Mercedes here), you come away from the experience with an appreciation of how well put together everything is – how precise things all fit and there is an almost elegant feel to the whole package – well, I get this same feeling from Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land site.  It’s a work of art in the sense that a lot of time and thought went into the layout, the colors, how the information is disseminated – a very cool site.

Yep, I love this site and it does what few others do – makes life easier for me. I talk to clients virtually everyday. For me to stay halfway intelligent sounding – I need to have good/solid information rattling around in my brain. Just several minutes hanging out at searchengineland.com has helped me immensely.

Don’t ignore the navigation buttons at the top of this site. Each take you to a plethora of cool useful info. I like the “How To” and “Columns” areas – in fact I got so immersed on this site today I missed an important conference call. Hmmm…. maybe there is a website that can proactively help me with my appointments?

Congrats out to Danny Sullivan and his Search Engine Land team – you are today’s BYS Daily Winner!

We, as entreprenures and online marketeers have only so much time during the day to do research and get up to speed on what’s new and noteworthy. Sites like marketingpilgrim.com make life easier. Another important aspect of marketingpilgrim.com is that there is just the right amount of information and detail. Like I said – only so much time for research, so give it to me quick and to the point!

This blog is also great for picking up the latest rumors on the street (about Google, MSN, Fortune 500 company news, you name it!) – and I’ve found that usually (not always) rumors tend to be true. I like getting the scoop especially if it helps me in business.

Congratulations go out to Andy Beal and his super useful and entertaining site: www.marketingpilgrim.com

To those shortcut-takers out there, let me ask you a simple question:  With hundreds of millions of competing websites out on the web, and billions of people searching the web – which websites will these billions of searchers ultimately spend time at, link to, and ultimately buy from?  The answer is simple – the sites with quality content.

One popular shortcut is to hire an SEO expert to add tons and tons of popular keyword phrases to your existing small 10 to 20 page website. Sure this expert has run the keywords through their little analyzer program…  and sure the keywords will be quite popular – but don’t they realize that Google can see that you are just stuffing keywords into a minimal amount of web pages? We are talking about Google here who uses some of the most sophisticated search algorithms on the planet – they can tell a site is not ‘a quality site’ and will penalize you by placing the site lower in the search results. Remember, in this day and age, a quality site is more likely to have hundreds of pages of pertinent, excellent content with lots of incoming links.

So, needless to say – we don’t recommend (or develop for our clients) the ’shortcut methodology’.

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Mark here from Bring You Success…  Sure, we are consummate marketeers and we utilize the web, like many of you, to scratch out a living each and every day.  And to be honest, we do better than just “scratching” out a living – we do quite well and even love what we do to boot.

So I am thankful. Thankful for the technology available to us and the time that we live in that makes all this possible. Sometimes, I think one just needs to sit back and see all the really cool things going on around us.

Yes, there is strife and ugliness on our planet – nothing new there. But there is also so much that is good and exciting and downright outrageous – that you have to just smile and acknowledge that this is an incredible time and place.

There really are amazing people (everywhere) that are doing truly good things for each other and for the planet.So I’d like to share with you something we (Kim and I)  put together that is not intended as a marketing piece, internet training, or anything ‘business’ at all – but just our way of saying thank you.  Keep spreading the love.

Mark W. McGinnis
Avenstar
http://www.BringYouSuccess.com
http://www.Manifest-Passive-Income.com
http://www.avenstar.net
http://www.aZenGift.com