Waaaaaasssuuuuup…. Sometimes I still say it. That commercial, after 22 years, still sticks with me. TV, done well, works! Granted, I’ve never bought a Bud… This year, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi – all staples of Super Bowl TV ads – are cutting the cord on Super Bowl commercials. Instead, Budweiser will run a 90-second ad […]
posted on June 1, 2017 by
How To Determine Your Small Business Marketing Budget
To determine what you should be willing to spend on marketing, you need to consider: Lifetime value of the customer Fixed Costs Variable Costs Marketing Costs Here’s an example of an existing company that manufactures widgets. Each month you sell 1,000 widgets at $15 each for total revenue of $15,000. Your variable costs – sales […]
posted on January 31, 2016 by
15 things we did to become the Happiest Company in the World
In January of 2015 my team sat in a ski-in, ski-out lodge at the foot of the Rocky Mountains at Durango Mountain Resort on a Friday morning. As we do from time-to-time, we were playing a game. The game was to guess how well we ranked as an organization on happiness compared to over 700 […]
posted on August 3, 2015 by
Why some businesses succeed and others just “hang in” there
On a balmy summer day, five years ago, two men excitedly stepped into the position of Owner/General Manager of their own Culligan Dealerships. These two men were very similar. Both their fathers had took on the same role from their fathers, both were college educated and had been involved in the family business since they […]
posted on July 17, 2015 by
Can Facebook generate leads for a brick-and-mortar business?
For most brick-and-mortar businesses, Facebook didn’t present a good ROI until it went public and started getting serious about revenue generation through marketing. Fortunately, now it has great potential for small, local businesses like yours! As with all marketing you have to define the GOAL of the marketing and that boils down to whether each […]
posted on June 8, 2015 by
Prevent competitors from stealing your search leads with branded keywords
If you’re looking for the most cost-effective, easiest-to-close leads for your business, your goal is to get to the people who already know (and trust) your brand, know they need what you sell, and are just trying to decide if your services are best for them. For example, here is a progression of searches from […]
posted on May 8, 2015 by
Hold Optimized Marketing accountable in 5 minutes/month
When I was the Team Leader of my Culligan dealership, each quarter I’d receive marketing reports from my ad agency. Marketing was always one of my favorite things to do so as soon as the email came into my Gmail inbox, I’d “star” it so I could set aside half an hour to look at […]
posted on September 10, 2014 by
“Field of Dreams” Marketing
One of the most memorable lines in cinematic history comes from Field of Dreams. A faint whisper tells Ray (played by Kevin Costner)… “If you build it, they will come…” The traditional way of developing a marketing strategy: Find an Ad Agency Agency asks you about products you want to sell Agency researches other dealers’ […]
posted on August 21, 2014 by
Use A/B split-testing to increase your leads without increasing your budget
In his book, How to Become a Rainmaker, Jeffrey J. Fox points out a study of salespeople who make more than a quarter million dollars per year in commissions. The study found that highly successful salespeople have an interesting common characteristic. They tend to implement new ideas very quickly. If they go to a seminar […]
posted on January 12, 2013 by
Optimized-Marketing.com founder featured in the Valley Independent newspaper
I grew up in Charleroi, PA about 45 minutes south of Pittsburgh. Based on an interview with Ron Paglia, the Valley Independent ran an article about my entrepreneurial adventures, starting an internet business, and being nominated for several national business awards since moving out of southwestern PA in 2008. You can read the full article […]
