Another great DSM custom web site

http://www.makingawesomesmiles.com

I am happy to promote this new web site for Doug Brossoit, DDS in Spokane, Washington. This custom Flash site will be enhanced with video from a DVD we have recently completed for Dr. Brossoit.

If you have never been to Spokane (and I lived there for three years), this site reflects the beauty of the Inland Northwest better than the local Chamber of Commerce media. Spokane is a medium-sized market that is very loyal to its own. This site is the ideal first impression for Dr. Brossoit. And... wait until we get the video on here.

That is two new, custom sites finished in two weeks. Wait until you see the next two from clients in Oklahoma City and Chicago.

Is there any wonder why DSM custom Flash designs are so in demand?

What is 9/10ths of the battle?

I always tell our designers that if you have great graphics, it is not hard to make a great web site. I was reminded of this earlier this week as I was looking at John and Michael Bixby’s new web site and a few others we will be finishing in the next several days.

Today’s great advice is to invest in photography. It will make the biggest difference possible for your web site and your marketing materials.

Need a good movie this weekend? Me, too.

With the Oscars coming this weekend, there is a lot of talk about movies... and a lot to read. I saw a story in the Dallas Morning News about a German movie that is a good bet to win in the Best Foreign Film category. It was called The Lives of Others and I have not seen it so I cannot recommend it.

However, I can recommend the best movie I saw last year... The Illusionist. It is on DVD now and I recommend it. This film about a Victorian era illusionist in Austria is nominated for Best Cinematography this year. Edward Norton plays the lead.

The Prestige, another movie about turn-of-the-century magicians that had a much higher profile director and cast opened weeks later. That film as great, too, and it is also up for Best Cinematography this year.

Either is a great rental for different reasons. I wouldn’t mind owning both. But, if you want a for-sure payoff, go with The Illusionist.

Enjoy.

Think of this while making your marketing budget

In case you haven’t noticed, AT&T is absorbing the its wireless brand, Cingular. The transitional ads have been running about three weeks now. Cingular was developed as a stand-alone brand for wireless service but AT&T is responding to market research that showed consumers prefer bundled services. So, AT&T is investing in un-doing everything they have put into building the Cingular brand.

So what does this mean to you? There is a lesson on spending in this for you no matter the size of your practice or small business. If you are in an area where the ads are running, try to notice how many you see in a week... or if you are a real media junkie, how many you see each day.

The point is, this is how you spend to influence brand.

One of the biggest issues new clients bring to us relates to spending on media. A big buy for you does not even get a major brand started. That is because branding in the media requires a good campaign plus two key factors: money and frequency. As a small business servicing a niche, you are not going to get any breaks. For you the hill is higher.

AT&T are spending millions on re-establishing an element of one of the strongest brands in advertising history. And, there is a good chance that you learned about his here. What does this say about what you can afford and how you should be allocating your marketing funds.

This is one of the best areas in which we advise our clients. I can’t tell you how many ad campaigns we have discovered that are just money pits... and the client keeps them going because they do not know any better. Well, I can tell you... there are better options out there.

Direct marketing, one-to-one marketing, Internet marketing... they are all more cost-effective strategies if you feel like you are throwing away your money on an ad campaign that is not working. And, if you have to ask if its working... it usually is not.

Another great DSM web site

Congratulations go to John and Michael Bixby of The Atlantic Center for Advanced Dentistry! We launched their new web site today at www.drbixby.com.

DSM Art Director Julie Teasley was the designer and she did her usual fantastic job.

BTW: A note to all who want an original Dog Star Media custom web site: Do what the Bixby’s did and invest in photography. Top flight, professional photography is always a smart addition to the site. Notice how sharp and well-presented the photos are on drbixby.com.

Movie idea for you

My wife Amy has been looking for an au pair to join our family for a year. Our youngest is about to be 3 which is the age we got an au pair for our oldest five years ago. Anyway, when Amy was describing to me the South African girl who she selected, she told me that she was reminded of Catherine O’Malley, a friend of ours from Australia.

Catherine had a great, fun personality with a real spirit. But, one of the most memorable things about her is that she used to be a County Agent in Australia for an area that included Parkes, a small rural community in New South Wales. This little community played an unexpected role in televising the moon landing in 1967. Based on the true story, the movie The Dish starring Sam Neill and Patrick Warburton is an unexpected delight. It’s my recommendation this week.

Enjoy.

See a Video Blog

I think there’s something you should know

Do not ever downplay the importance of being genuine. Detecting and projecting this quality has been a part of the Dog Star way (or the Tao of Dog Star as we sometimes call it around here) dating back to the days when we offered sales training as part of our standard offerings. We learned the importance of this quality from Steven Covey in 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.

I have learned to trust my feelings on whether someone is begin genuine with me or not. I am not always right but I know it when I feel it now. I use this all the time and it helps me make decisions about hiring people, buying from people and companies and whether or not I want to work with people. Do I feel like they are being genuine with me or are they simply being polite with the express purpose of getting something from me? I am aware of this very keenly when I am shopping for something or if someone is trying to sell me on a concept or purchase. It comes down to trust... a trust that I want to establish going both ways.

We operate Dog Star Media with a genuine concern for our clients. We are genuine in our efforts and I hope to get the same from our vendors, referrals and even clients.

If there was any quality that I recommend you begin to observe it is this one. Learn to fine-tune your detector on this one. If someone is not genuine with you... if they are simply being polite or tolerant of you, learn to tell the difference. Those who are not genuine are hiding their true feelings and, in time, when their guard is down, will act on it. That’s why I do my best to weed out those who are not genuine as early as possible.

I am busy on June 26

http://www.thepolicetour.com/

I hope you are among the many who have dreamed of this day for the last 23 years.

DIY vs. The Value of Your Time

There has been a lot of discussion among our clients this week regarding the value of technology. I think sometimes we get used to having answers and take the source of the answers for granted.

In this case, I am talking about tracking numbers and tracking technologies. Clients who have been with us for a few months or years get used to having detailed reports on their web traffic, details on how many calls have been tracked and fine details about their email marketing. I know you appreciate the service and the analysis because you tell me this in our meetings. But, there has been alot of questions lately about the cost of the tools.

Why does you need tools? Because you can’t do a root canal or a surgery with your fingers. The same applies to marketing. You can’t market without tools. Brochures, websites, blogs, online databases, email marketing, web track, tracking numbers. All of the tools are needed to track and execute your marketing plan.

<>Your marketing media needs web track and tracking numbers to judge conversion rate

Web sites need web track and interactive data collection so you can build a database of future prospects. With this database you can nurture future patients and current patients with inexpensive emails. This is the basis of one-to-one marketing.

Blogs needs blog software and email marketing to send out your blog updates. With blogs, you can extend your circle of influence and give a high volume of prospects and referral sources a feeling of access to you.

When you consider the cost of your technology tools, consider this...How much is your time worth? Using the DIY approach for web marketing technologies is not too far from wanting to change your own oil to save the $14.99. At some point, DIY becomes a losing proposition. (In case you do not know, DIY stands for Do It Yourself.)

If you want to do something DIY, you should do something that cannot be replaced by a tool. Take the hour you would spend doing your own email marketing or cost per click signup/analysis and spend it networking. This can be a much more useful use of all that time you have on your hands.

Have some time to check yourself out on search engines (something on which retainer and coaching clients get reports)? Try spending that time making new contacts in your communities for cross-marketing and joint promotions.

A lot of people like working on computers and will do it at night and in a lull during the day. That is fine. Being knowledgeable and plugged in is great. That is why using that time to do something you cannot hire out is the smarer move. If you are not comfortable networking... if it takes you out of your comfort zone... just remember this bit of advice I picked up along the way. I was told "You can't do anything great if you stay in your comfort zone."

If the new year has you ready to join your own marketing effort... bully for you. Welcome to the fight. Why not add a unique effort to your marketing plan by networking. We and your technology vendors will take care of the rest.

Think Dog Star Media. Think movies!

It's true. Everyone on our video team has a degree in filmmaking. This is great for our clients when we make more sophisticated projects. And, it will come in handy for my blog subscribers when you need to rent a movie.

You can find lots of reviews of movies that are in current release. But, how many times have you walked the aisles in Blockbuster or scanned over your NetFlix checklist wishing you could avoid mistakes. Now you can just sit back... let me entertain you.

Each week, I will recommend a movie from the past that you can find as a rental. This is yet another reason to bookmark my blog and come back here frequently. Don’t just wait for the reminder emails. I’ll always try to give you a good reason to watch these excellent films and shame on you if you rent anything else and it wastes your time.

This weekend, my wife Amy and I went to see Departed. It was really good but not nearly the best work by Martin Scorsese. I really like him as a director and he will probably win Best Director for Departed. Anyone who has seen The Aviator, Goodfellas or Raging Bull knows that this is a make-up call by the Academy. I even enjoyed Gangs of New York more. If you want to appreciate Scorsese like I do, rent the 1989 release New York Stories. Three short films by three New York directors. The films by Coppolla and Woody Allen are great, too, but in my opinion, Scorsese steals the show with his short film Life Lessons.

If you want to feel the frenzy of creativity an artist feels, watch this short film and enjoy the rest of New York Stories. No one uses the soundtrack quite like Scorsese... even Quentin Tarantino. Drop me an email and let me know what you think.

I will have another for you next week.

Search Engine Optimization

Last week, at the AACS meeting in Phoenix, I got a lot of questions about search engine optimization. There are plenty of opinions out there about the best way to use search engine optimization, so it can be confusing.

There was a speaker at that conference who took a pretty strong stance on SEO (search engine optimization) and, as usual, it polarized those who were listening. This always happens when someone recommends that there is a best way to do this for everyone. Anyone who has seen me speak at a conference knows that I always talk about “the best strategy for YOUR needs.” This is opposed to the one, best way for everyone.

And, that is where I think everyone should approach SEO... based on what works for your strategies on the web. To minimize confusion, here are a few key issues to keep in mind.

Organic search engine optimization and Pay Per Click search engine optimization are two different strategies. In Pay Per Click, you buy ad keywords on search engines and you are charged only when someone clicks through to your site. A bidding process determines the rankings so you can always be ranked #1 on a keyword search if you are willing to pay for it. You can establish daily and monthly budgets so your account is not run up on you and you can see the actual terms that people are using in order to determine the best buys. Bottom line: it is accountable. When you spend, you are spending for traffic.

In the case of organic search, this is the order in which the search engine itself ranks the sites. You can affect this order with certain factors like longevity on the web, traffic and the addition of relevant html content. What is html? It is the code in which basic web sites are written. So, when you add text to your site, a search engine spider (a program that reads and documents your content for a search engine) can recognize new relevant content and report it to the search engine. Using mechanical parameters, the search engine then ranks the sites for given key words. In short, the machine decides where you should be... not you. For this sort of SEO, you pay companies to rearrange and update somewhat relevant (and sometimes irrelevant) content on your web site to maximize your organic SEO potential. In this case you are not paying for results... you are paying for someone’s effort with no real promise of delivery. Remember, guaranteed money back is not a promise of delivery.

So which is best for you? How do I know? But, I can help you figure it out based on what is important to you.

Would you rather have a web site that makes an excellent first impression (like a Flash Video site) or would you compromise aesthetic quality for organic SEO potential? Flash sites do not perform as strongly with search engines because they are not written in HTML. But, they make an unparalleled impression on the web. Its not always a either/or situation, but we want our clients to know, you do not give up SEO if you want a Flash web site. You just have to go about it a different way. In these case, we recommend pairing an excellent Flash or Flash Video design with a strong Cost Per Click campaign. This way, you get the beauty of Flash and the predictable production and value of Cost Per Click.

If being optimized for organic search is your goal, you will need HTML as your basis for your web site. You can add Flash as a module but your site would need to be HTML.

For small businesses, I think organic search is overrated. When we optimize at DSM, I go for the multi-media capabilities of Flash to make the best overal impression on my site and I rely on my own marketing to drive traffic to the site. I don’t care about organic search because I cannot control it. When I put in a search engine strategy I buy cost per click... but that is because it is the best for me.

I will always make sure my clients know their options so you can make that choice, too.