I have been working on a lot of fun projects.

In January, a local group of hotels asked me to speak about digital marketing and advertising techniques. I included my presentation below but need to warn you that you will probably need headphones to hear it. The next time I do a presentation, I will amp up the volume.

At the end of the presentation I talk about a new site / service we created. My goal was help connect the hotel industry with people looking for hotel rooms. I wanted to create something that all hotels could be a part of and equally benefit everyone involved. So without further adieu I introduce to you WhosGotRoom.com the easy way to find a hotel room.

The goal of Who’s Got Room is to help people find a hotel room in any town immediately. At the same time, we want to help hotels fill their empty rooms.

The site has a lot of work ahead and not many hotels are in the system yet. But as the site grows, people will be able to find available hotel rooms wherever they travel. Instead of just being able to find a hotels in Fargo, ND, or a hotels in Ashland, NH, you will be able to search any city for available hotel rooms.

Who’s Got Room lists the most recently updated hotels first in order to provide the most relevant information possible. If you are driving across the country, the site allows you to know what hotels ahead have available rooms. If a snowstorm comes while you are driving down the interstate, you won’t have to call 10 different hotels to know what’s available. Or perhaps you neglected to get a room early when attending a concert on New Year’s Eve. Who’s Got Room can help. You get the idea.

Nine times out of 10, hotels will have availability in the area you are questioning. But that isn’t always the case, and you never know if you are heading to a town without rooms. For that, you now have Who’s Got Room.

The site is in BETA and liable to break, which we encourage. Give us your feedback and tell us your thoughts. We’d love to hear them.

Video below is of Josh Whitford speaking for the Fargo Moorhead Lodging Association (click here and skip to 11:30 to hear the start of my presentation and 49:00 to see Who’s Got Room.com).

Just like one shoe doesn’t fit all, the same applies to Internet marketing. I wrote a post the other day targeting keywords like Internet marketing Fargo and SEO Fargo for the sole purpose of ranking in the SERPS (search engine results pages) for those keywords. I wanted to spend a little time in an effort to rank and hold a ranking for those keywords. I view that type of Internet marketing as the equivalent of buying a house vs renting one. The easy way to rank for keywords is to buy ad placements from Google, MSN and Yahoo. By doing so you are guaranteed to rank on the first page for those words and generate the visitors you are requesting.

The flip side to the paid-for model of Internet marketing happens when you quit paying for those ads and disappear from not only the first page, but all pages. Instead, if you invest a little time and effort into promoting your site/business online, your site can be found by many people searching the same things. You will only invest time, not money. My site and sites like mine sit at the top of the results pages for a variety of keywords. When I go to sleep or leave on vacation, my site still sits there. Every once in a while I will add some fuel to the fire ensuring I stay above the competition.

I am #2 and #3 for the search term Internet Marketing Fargo just by writing one blog post. That puts me just behind all of the paid placements on Google. It won’t be long, and I will be ahead of the directory listing at the top of the page for my selected field. This is done by building more support to my pages than the yellow page generated results. I will also be doing the same for other keywords related to my local niche as I mentioned on my recent Fargo Internet Marketing and SEO post.

A funny thing happened the other day when talking with a client about my Fargo Internet Marketing post and targeting those keywords. The client asked me if my competition knew I was targeting those words. What I didn’t mention is that I already have other sites ranking in the top for those keywords. Those sites have been generating leads for the last 5 months. It’s just another way to capture as much of the local market as possible.

You have many different choices as far as Internet marketing goes, but I view SEO as a more viable promotion option than ad buying. But SEO takes time and effort and involves a longer ramp-up period. If what you are doing needs more of an instant promotion model, then you should buy ads from the major search engines. At the same time, start working your way to the top of the SERPS for relevant keywords through SEO. Eventually, you will either capture a lot more market share and customers from other keywords you don’t rank for or you can swap one model of promotion for the other.

All of these ideas and tactics lead to a very important discussion when starting Internet marketing and web promotion of your product or service. Don’t leave out questions like “Where do we want our traffic to come from?” “How much are we willing to pay in advertising?” “What is the percentage of fraud associated with paid advertisement?” and many more questions. Of course if you are interested is talking with me, I encourage comments or emails.

Just saw this flash up on MSN and couldn’t help but wonder why it took Starbucks so long to counteract McDonald’s Free Coffee Mondays. I think this is a long overdue Starbucks Marketing Strategy to pull in the market share that can no longer afford $4 for a blended drink. I actually think the VIA Ready Brew is priced just right, given I am not a huge fan of Starbucks coffee, just its atmosphere.

The new VIA Ready Brew, which will sell for about $1 a cup, is a “transformational instant coffee that replicates the body and flavor of Starbucks coffee,” the company says.

The launch comes just as Starbucks prepares to offer “breakfast pairings” value meals.

It wasn’t very long ago McDonald’s came out swinging for Starbucks customers by offering very cheap coffee including free coffee at some stores on Mondays throughout the nation. McDonald’s marketing strategy has paid off. Profits were up 7% last quarter. With the coffee promo and people starting to count pennies, the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s has exploded. People are ditching the night out at Applebee’s for the drive-thru at McDonald’s.

It’s funny that the coffee industry is losing business to a fast food chain. You would think that there are enough intelligent people in charge of running these companies to foresee that people are now going to save money and time. Cost is a huge factor, and so is service in determining where people are going to frequent. The days of old where getting average, overpriced coffee was the “thing to do” are over.