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This is the forth day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

By now, you are probably wonder where in the world am I coming up with all of these different topics and ideas. If not, I will tell you anyways. I set up a few different Google Alerts and have been digging through them for little gems of info to pass along.

I believe videos will continue to gain major ground as Internet speeds increase and more people figure out how to upload their videos easily to sites like YouTube. With that in mind, here is a good tip for marketing your videos:

The first thing that you have to determine is where you are going to post the videos that you are making for your products and services. Some different places that you can post your videos are on your blog, on your website, and on video hosting sites like YouTube.

The point is that you want to have as many people as possible look at your video. You can also ask your online friends if they are willing to post your video on their blogs. There are places that are going to bring more results than others, and it’s a good idea to research which places are going to be the best for the results that you want.

You can read the rest here at Articlebiz.com

This is the second day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

One realm I have never ventured into is that of a telephone conference series or packaging a product on mp3 or DVD. I have seen the effectiveness of marketing via these methods and the ability to upsale people on bigger and better versions of the same series later on consultant fees. Setting up and distributing an audio or DVD series takes a lot of front-end work to being with, but I have to believe it is definitely worthwhile since so many people do it. Here’s a quick outline:

Create a 3-part telephone conference series, scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving and the first two weeks of December. Rent an inexpensive bridge line (under $25 for each seminar or some providers offer free, bare bones services if you want to do your own recordings).

Send out an e-mail invitation to your list of customers and newsletter subscribers through a provider such as VerticalResponse.com (send a thousand email invites for under $10).  Spell out exactly what they’ll learn using intriguing bullet points.

Charge $25 for each segment, or $59 for all three.  Offer to include Cd’s or MP3’s, and/or transcripts of the courses if customers pay an extra $10.

Determined to send out holiday gifts like you always do, but this year you want to cut costs?  Create a low-cost promotional magnet that you design yourself. For more info check out Ambition is not a dirty word.

This is the first day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

As black Friday and the mad shopping spree from Thanksgiving to Christmas approaches, stores are getting desperate. The more desperate they get, the better deals you will find. Already, I have seen sites posting stores like Best Buy and JC Penny’s with Black Friday sales coupons. You can always visit BlackFriday.info to find the best collection of coupons. Here is what Mercury News had to say:

“Consumers may need some encouragement to get into the holiday spirit this year,” said Scott Marden, director of market research for Vertis Communication, which offers marketing services to retailers. “No interest, no payments, layaway offers, door-busters, one-stop shopping, and rebate incentives will all be welcomed by most consumers” along with gift-with-purchase deals and buy-one-get-one-free offers.

The Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy, which are owned by the Gap, are pushing hard to get consumers in the door this weekend. The company e-mailed coupons for 30 percent off to 5 million customers with an additional bonus: The Gap will give 5 percent of what you spend to a favorite nonprofit. The coupon is good through Sunday.

There’s also the soft sell: The Gap’s holiday campaign features current hot television stars such as “Cam Gigandet of “Twilight,” Jon Hamm of “Mad Men” and Mary-Louise Parker of “Weeds” in cozy pictorials.

In a departure from its traditional print and TV ads, the San Francisco-based company has also created humor-infused Webisodes featuring such unlikely pairings as Selma Blair with Rainn Wilson and the Dixie Chicks with Sandra Bernhard singing traditional Christmas songs. The videos launched Thursday and are designed to be shared through social-networking pages like Facebook and downloaded to iPhones. The six videos reside on gap.com/MerryMixIt and will be shown in movie theaters before features, too.

Josh here: I just have to say that I would love to kill the person who invented ads shown before movies. You used to be able to pay $10 for a movie and $15 on concessions, but now… You have to sit through 15 minutes of ads and previews. Don’t get me wrong, I love the previews of upcoming movies, but all the ads can disappear for all I care. I don’t want to be advertised to after paying an exorbitant amount to sit and eat junk food.

“They’re designed to bring a smile to someone’s face, given all the bad news lately,” said Olivia Doye, director of public relations and marketing for the Gap.

The holidays are upon us and with that it is time to ramp up the marketing of retail businesses. For this post I used the assistance of HARO (help a reporter out) and got a good return of ideas. I will explain more about HARO and different ideas on how to use the free service a little later.

1. The first suggestion comes from Leah Dossey who is the owner, art director/ designer for Blue Leaf Creative. She suggests:

2. Next we have Karl Schmieder who is one of the founders of MessagingLab in New York. Karl suggests:

3. Erin Read Ruddick, the client services director at Creating Results, LLC – Strategic Marketing, suggested that I find a video clip from the show WKRP in Cincinnati “Turkeys Away.”
Here is the video, you might have to click here to view it.

also suggested by Erin:

We’ve done multiple fall promotions for clients, including creating a giant corn maze for a real estate developer that drove thousands of leads, but nothing specifically Thanksgiving.

4. Next Benjamin Christie suggested I take a look at his blog www.gourmetads.com.

“Taking advantage of targeted advertising next to online recipes for holiday favorites is a great way to get your brand at the top of every shopper’s grocery list this year. When a consumer goes online to look up recipes on how to roast their Thanksgiving turkey, will they be thinking Butterball, Norbest or Honeysuckle White? That all depends on whose ad is cleverly placed right beside the roast turkey recipe.

More and more consumers are turning to the Internet for their recipe needs; especially their holiday recipe needs and smart advertisers are taking advantage of this trend with their Thanksgiving advertising in order to create brand awareness during the critical holiday sales rush. Ideally, companies should get their products placed four weeks before the big holiday as many shoppers have already begun to stock their pantries in preparation for the big event.”

5. Lastly I figured I would throw out a suggestion of my own called the Turkey Hunt

I would aim for success by getting as much local publicity as possible, including local business sponsors. Then right on or around Thanksgiving Day I would dress 3-4 people up in big turkey costumes and have them run around in a big field. I would charge people a couple bucks for a bucket of water balloons (all proceeds go to a local charity). Next give them all water balloon launchers and let them rip. The first person to hit each turkey with a water balloon wins that turkey’s prize package from the local sponsors.

So we create a fun way to promote sponsoring businesses, free prizes and also donations to charities. Maybe even instead of charging for the water balloons we offer a swap of a balloon or two for a nonperishable food bank item.

Do you have any Thanksgiving marketing ideas for local businesses or charities? Have you ran a successful marketing campaign on Thanksgiving? Tell us your stories.

These are the responses to the second round of Ask Josh. Occasionally I open up the floor for people to ask whatever they feel like asking. I don’t think there will be any perfect answers, but you asked for my opinion, so I’m giving it ;). Here we go:

Sherry Asks: What webhosting are you using? Have you heard of Shann Host or Dotster ? What do you think of the webhosting that I just mention.

Josh: I use 1and1.com as my webhosting. I have not heard of Shann Host or Dotster. I personally think web hosting has to do a lot with your needs are and how much you would like to spend. I have two servers, one shared and one dedicated, that I use for personal and business. I can tell you that the dedicated server customer support is much more knowledgeable and prompt. If you are only hosting a couple of sites and don’t drive tons and tons of traffic, focus more on the price. If you are hitting it hard, focus on the services and equipment.

BM Asks: When did you start blogging? How many blogs do you own? How many are active?

Josh: I started full-time blogging at the start of the year. I had written a few blog posts before that but wouldn’t really consider myself a blogger at that point. Currently, I work on about 10 or so active blogs. I have a few drifters that are waiting for some attention. Mostly I use the extra blogs to drive niche traffic or build support for other sites I work on.

Chelle Asks: Is the majority of your traffic from social media or organic search results?

Which makes me wonder, why do you think more people don’t search for more marketing related terms? I’ve done a lot of keyword research for it and there are very few that aren’t broad terms that get more than 20 searches a day. Are people just not thinking that way for marketing info yet?

Josh: Most of my traffic comes from organic searches or referring site. I am averaging about 150 marketing related searches a day via the major three Google, MSN and Yahoo.

It’s hard to have an accurate view of search traffic from just keyword searches alone. Once you are first for random marketing related terms, you would be surprised of the amount of searches they bring. I have moved up a lot recently for “marketing ideas” and related terms like “Halloween Marketing Ideas” which will bring a nice steady flow of traffic in at least until the end of the month. I usually see what people are searching for when they come to my blog and at what page I show up in the serps for that term. If they are finding me on page 5 and I know with a little work I can get to page 1, I will spend a little time doing that. The first spot on page 1 receives about 80% of the clicks for that search term. You never know what you are going to get until you do it.

shawal Asks: It is possible to sell a blogspot blog, if yes, HOW?

Josh: Technically, no. But can you work something out with a potential buyer? Probably yes. Not easy. That is one of the hard things to overcome in free hosting like Blogspot. Everything you do there is like renting a house. You don’t get the equity you put into it.

Driveway Sealing Asks: I’ve started a new site and I wanted to know: What would you do to get it ranked highly in the SERPS in under 3 months?

Is it blog commenting? or directory submissions? a combo of both maybe? Anything else I am missing?

Josh: I would approach this one of two ways depending on how old the domain is. If it is a brand new domain, you are going to shoot up in the serps and then right back down to work your way up again. This is Google’s way of preventing spam sites from taking over their serps. So in that case I would do directory submissions, blog commenting on dofollow high pr pages and reciprocal linking like blog rolls. It’s as effective as one-way links, but it passes link love more evenly while you crawl the new site back up the serps.

For an older site that has been established for at least 1-2 years, I would focus on high quality anchor links. Write a guest post for a high pr site with your link in it and comment on high pr pages with a contextual anchor link. I don’t personally do this but it works if done correctly to purchase a link from a high pr page. Sometimes it can run $30-40 a month for a good link, but it is an option. Always consider the risk vs. reward factor before doing any of this. Link building is strictly forbidden in search engines TOS.