I want to thank you for the opportunity to reach out to you today, I know that you are busy…..so I will try and keep this brief.

Your web presence is poor, non-existent, incognito, losing you money and quite honestly….sucks! It lacks the true meaning behind having a website and that is to increase your profits, yes that is correct….increase your profits! Now you are asking how do I know this?? Well, it is quite simple…..your potential buyers (prospects) cannot find you, which means you do not exist in their eyes, which means they will never have the opportunity to buy from you, which means you are losing money.  Feel free to continue to spend your hundreds of thousands of dollars on trade shows, trade journals, print advertising, TV commercials, Radio Spots, direct mail and the many other traditional forms of marketing available. Meanwhile, realize that 90% of all buying research and decisions takes place through the internet.

I know what you are saying, we are doing SEO, SEM, Social Media and some other forms of Internet Marketing Services and I have to stand right up and tell you…..you are not! You might be dabbling in it, playing around with it, testing things, increasing traffic and perhaps feel that your outsource firm or internal efforts are maximizing your potential, when the truth is due to their uneducated, lack of knowledge….you are losing money. Your Internet Marketing campaign must be conversion and profit focused and most external and internal teams do not have the experience or knowledge to make that happen……so you keep losing money.

You see I have been through this with your marketing department, sales manager, IT department and various other executives within your company and they seem to have this fear that you will deny this need even though it is a MUST HAVE. I have strongly demanded that I cannot believe you would take this approach since this is such a missing link to your overall marketing strategy and one that cannot be ignored any longer. Perhaps, you should re-engage your marketing department and various other execs showing them your support of such an initiative.

See my job is to take your online presence to a whole new level that you cannot even comprehend and I know that sometimes there is not even a budget established. Not having a budget is truly not a good enough reason to lose an enormous amount of potential income especially for a strategy that is so precisely trackable. Go find out how many people viewed that TV Commercial you ran or saw the full page magazine ad you placed in that trade journal…..not gonna happen, is it?

Well I have taken up enough of your time today and I will follow this letter up with repeated phone calls and contact points until you see the error of your ways and want to start making a difference and increase your companies profits. After all, you would not want me to start reaching out to the owner and/or board of directors…now would you?

Make it a great day!

Sincerely,

Your Best Shot At Internet Immortality

There are a number of things that project managers and teams can do to try to improve performance. But what if you’re someone who is working with an internet marketing company? Do you, as a client, have a role to play in helping to increase the chances of your project succeeding?

I believe you have a significant and important role. So… how can you help your internet marketing project team help you?

One of the most important things you can do is understand some basic project management concepts and adjust your expectations in accordance with those concepts. I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of project management here, but I believe it is necessary to give an overview of a basic project management concept, the theory of constraints, and how it applies to managing internet marketing projects.

The Triple Constraints Concept (aka the “Theory of Constraints”)

All projects have three core components: scope (the work to be completed), cost, and time to accomplish the work. For a defined amount of work, we can reasonably say it will take a certain amount of time, given a certain level of resources.

The challenge is to keep the triangle in balance. Say, for example, you would like to include additional items into your project – perhaps a nice feature for your website, a tweak to the design, etc. These projects increase the scope. Therefore, an adjustment to the cost and/or time is required. If cost will be higher, then the time required to complete the project will be longer.

If you want to move the deadline forward so that the project is done sooner, then scope or cost will also need to be adjusted to reflect the changed time component of the triangle. Scope can be reduced in order to get done sooner and/or we could increase the cost so that we can acquire more resources to apply against the project in order to get done sooner.

I believe that simply understanding the triple constraints will help you communicate more effectively with the project manager of your internet marketing campaign and the team working on the project. It will also enable you to have more realistic expectations about the scope, cost, and time components of your project.

In the meantime, I found something online that I felt was very interesting.  Tonight I was searching for a ‘Microsoft Wireless Mouse’ on Amazon and came across something I had never heard of before.  Look at these 2 Amazon links and tell me if you can spot the difference.

Link1

Link 2

Could you spot the difference? Congratulations!  It’s not like it was right in the product headline or anything.  For those that missed it, Amazon is selling the EXACT SAME mouse for about 4 dollars more because it is in, what they call, “Amazon Frustration-Free™ Packaging”.

I hate dealing with those plastic death traps they put around gadgets as much as anyone else, but is it worth a $4 bump in price? What would I be willing to pay in any given situation to get the same thing with less frustration? $10 more for shoes you don’t have to tie (oh wait, that’s why I wear velcro). $100 more for a computer that never crashes? I’d pay it (and as I type this on my iMac I realize I did exactly that…except, more than a hundred dollars extra…).

My overspending aside, the point is, your lack of frustration is worth something. It’s just hard to figure out exactly how much it’s worth. In any given situation when you buy something, I wonder how much extra you would pay for better service, a better experience, an easier delivery method, etc.  How much money are companies losing because they aren’t willing to add that little touch to make their extra service worthwhile and “frustration-free”?

But this is starting to get deep.  In this case, for $4 extra dollars, I’d rather buy a sweet pair of scissors and just go to town on that plastic packaging.

Because in the end, I’d then have a wireless mouse and a cool pair of scissors to do with as I pleased. Win-win.

As I am searching for several available positions within ProspectMX and GetMyHomesValue.com it brings reality into the fact that there are tons of good people looking for a career and would be happy with a job. Skilled people are working at places they would not have even dreamed of stepping into as a customer over a year ago. That person bagging your groceries could very well be someone with a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering. Now speaking to all of you with a job, position, career…..these out of work skilled individuals are waiting for you to “screw up” so they can slide right into your position. They are not intentionally stalking you and your position however, employers are realizing the overwhelming amount of talent that is available in the current market and will not be tolerating employees that give a sub par performance as they would have in the past.

So if any of you employed individuals are thinking the “grass may be greener” on the other side and you are not giving your position 150% you may want to consider all of the unemployed individuals waiting for that opporunity you may give them. After all, it may take many of you to realize what you had…..after you lose it?!