You know you’re supposed to build a customer list, and you’ve even done a great job of creating one and keeping it updated. But knowing the best way to use it is an entirely different story.

Yaro Starak’s Small Business Branding & Marketing blog has a few ideas, all of which, happily, don’t cost anything to implement (except your time and devotion, of course).

1. Broadcast Monthly.
   You don’t want to be constantly throwing email at your customers, but you also don’t want to lose track of them, either. One message a month is about right, especially if the information has real value.
2. Offer Discounts.
   It’s a pretty common way to use a customer list, and there’s a reason for that—it helps convert prospects into paying customers, and former customers back into current ones.
3. Encourage Referrals.
   Another technique that’s used often because it works: offer your customers an incentive to refer their friends to you. “Happy customers are happy to spread the word, they just sometimes need a little nudge to do it.”
4. Joint Ventures.
   If there’s a business in your area that’s not in direct competition with you, but with whom you share similar customers, offer to send an announcement about their services to your list, in exchange for an announcement about you to their list.
5. Market Research.
   Use your customer list as a focus group for new products, or to get details about the kinds of customers who are drawn to your business. Free services like Survey Monkey make it easy to create online surveys that you can link to from your email.

   There are lots more explanatory details in the original article

I got spammed today by a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm, guaranteeing me “Top 10 search engine results within 30 days!”

Such hogwash! We’ve had several clients lose money to hucksters like this.

But then I thought, let’s be a bit more constructive. SEO is a valuable and valid discipline.

So here are my five marks of a legitimate SEO firm.

1. They should have high ranking on terms pertinent to search engine optimization, like, say search engine optimization :-) If they can’t do it for their own site, how would they be able to do it for yours? (Incidentally, the #1 result on Google for “search engine optimization” is a company called SubmitExpress)
2. Their programs should be conducted over a reasonable period of time to get results. Getting high search engine results doesn’t happen overnight—or even over several weeks. A six-month period is reasonble.
3. Results should include a broad set of pertinent search keywords. Any SEO firm worth their salt will do an analysis of keywords both on your site as well as those that your prospects are using to search. They will use this information to create a matrix of search keywords to target. Ideally, an SEO firm will target 50 – 200 keywords or phrases.
4. They shouldn’t participate in any “dark-hat” SEO activities, like link farms, hidden text, cloaking, or other activities designed to game the search engines. These techniques can get your website banned from the major search engines if you’re discovered.
5. Your rankings should be sustained for some period of time. Once you get your top search engine rankings, you want to maintain them. This can help counteract #4, as well, because a lot of the “dark-hat” strategies can get you high rankings for a short period of time. I’d look for 6 months of sustained rankings at least, with options available for longer periods.

If you’re interested in learning more about search engine optimization, there’s a great guide, Intro to Search Engine Optimization, at the highly-regarded Search Engine Watch. (The article is, by the way, result #11 on a google search for search engine optimization).

There are no secrets to Search Engine Optimization: it’s a known formula that takes a lot of work to accomplish and to maintain.

If you’re interested in getting help with it, make sure to hook up with a reputable firm.

If you’re interested in doing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising you may be interested in Google’s AdWords Jumpstart Service

There’s no charge for the service and a Google staff member will help you setup your first AdWords campaign. They do require that you commit at least $299 to PPC spending on AdWords.

A review on WorkHappy notes that:

Overall, [jumpstart is] not a bad way to start AdWords if you’re going to do it on your own—so long as your expectations are that this is only to help you do the initial setup. It helps with about the first 15% of what you’ll need to do if you want to be successful…. It’s not designed for people who wish to have someone else set up and managed it for them. It’s for people who are willing and able to figure it all out and manage the nitty-gritty themselves, but need a little hand holding to get started.

If you do want somebody to take care of all of it, we can help. We have a new Search Engine Marketing Service that includes both pay-per-click advertising across all the major search engines as well as Internet Yellow Page premier listings. Contact Us for more information.