Maximize Your Online Marketing
Portland, OR – As marketing budgets continue to be squeezed due to diminished resources, business owners are looking to engage in more cost effective solutions that show greater accountability. Many of these professionals are rediscovering their website as a means to achieve important business objectives such as: gaining wider exposure online, gathering prospect information and generating sales inquires. Harlo Media is a website development firm that helps companies take the plunge into the online marketing arena, which can seem a little daunting to companies that have focused on print and other traditional forms of advertising.
“The business owners that are willing to give online marketing a shot are hooked once they see the return on their investment. Top placement on a search engine results page can deliver hundreds if not thousands of qualified visitors to your website over time. Businesses that are typically considered ‘low tech’ can actually get a big jump on their competition by adopting these strategies first,” states Harlo Media’s President Danny Decker. Technology has progressed to the degree that most of what happens on your website is 100% trackable via free and easy to implement software such as Google Analytics. These types of platforms can be used to track website visitor volume, how visitors arrive to the site and many other site usage statistics that can be used to understand the effectiveness of the website and corresponding marketing campaigns.
While it might not be realistic for most companies to employ an in house search engine optimization expert there are some basic steps the owner or marketing director can take to make their site more search engine friendly. “All websites should include basic meta-tags which include the search terms that the business should rank for online, says Harlo Media’s Director if Internet Marketing, Cody Galloway. “It’s important to make these terms specific. You will have little to no chance to rank for ‘insurance’, but ‘Portland insurance quotes’ will give you much better odds. You should also continually develop in-bound links, which are other sites that link to your site. Being listed in industry association’s and business chamber’s online directories are also great places to gain these,” explains Mr. Galloway.
Search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, email marketing and social media marketing are all part of the new wave of search engine marketing strategies that are increasingly being used to supplement or even replace traditional outreach efforts. It’s important to ensure that your website is ready to convert the traffic these activities can generate such as an obvious call to action, clear navigational layout and a simple way for the visitor to submit their information for sales follow up.
For more information about Harlo Media please call or email Cody Galloway at 503.517.8074/cody(@)harlomedia.com or visit www.harlomedia.com
Professionals Are Networking Through The Recession
Portland, OR- As the national economic downturn continues to rage through the nation, local companies in Portland, OR are returning to the basics of networking in order to drive business development. One group the current recession has helped are organizations that hold and promote business networking events as record attendance and standing room only seminars continue to blossom. Business owners and sales professionals are feeling more pressure than ever before to reach out to new prospects through events that cultivate a personal relationship. One company that has seen the benefits of this resurgence is web development company Harlo Media who holds a successful bi-monthly networking event called Schmooze .
Started two years ago as a chance for Harlo Media (www.harlomedia.com) clients to meet one another, Schmooze (www.schmoozepdx.com) has grown exponentially over the past year as an event that has developed a reputation for cultivating qualified networking opportunities. “What really started as a laid back social gathering has evolved very naturally into a great business development event. I’d say we have over 100 die hard attendees that come to every event and usually bring associates with them. To us, knowing that people are making great connections while having fun is what it’s all about,” says Harlo Media’s Marketing Director McKean Banzer-Lausberg . Networking events are age old, but the proliferation of new events and venues catering to this rekindled demand is being fueled by the accessibility of affordable marketing and promotional tools such as email marketing that make it easy to promote events on a shoestring budget.
While most companies do not consider themselves to be in the event production business, many are finding out the benefits of putting together simple mixers that positively promote their brand and clients. “It’s funny, because it really doesn’t take much for us to put on our events these days. You just come up with an interesting theme or excuse to bring people together, call up a willing venue to hold the event and then just start spreading the word through scheduled email blasts. The rest is up to the event, if people like what you’re doing, word is going to spread and those attendees are going to be your best marketers,” explains Harlo Media President Danny Decker . These more informal mixers also tend to be more geared to the creative class that thrives in marketplaces like Portland. Just as longstanding organizations struggle to recruit the next generation of members, the younger professionals are flocking to events that can often appear to be more social than business oriented.
Even with the continued prominence of social media outlets and online based businesses there’s still an important role being filled by networking events that are changing with the times. The next Portland, OR based Schmooze is being held at Grand Central Bowl
For more information about Harlo Media please call or email McKean Banzer-Lausberg at 503.517.8074/mckean(@)harlomedia.com or visit www.harlomedia.com
Last week the Senate Commerce Committee met to discuss the future of journalism. In recent years newspaper readership has exponentially declined and electronic versions news sources have flourished. These changes have drastically affected the journalism industry, rendering many of the large players unsure of their next move.
With technological advances in mobile technology, devices like the iPhone and Amazon’s Kindle series e-readers have made it possible to receive news over the national wide 3G wireless network. These technologies have begun to enter the mainstream market and newspaper publications have adapted. The New York Times is now available in a completely electronic version that is automatically downloaded to the user’s Kindle; mobile news applications for the iPhone are numerous.
Students studying journalism at the University of Missouri are now required to have an iPhone or iPod Touch. And Amazon released the newest Kindle, KindleDX last week that is targeted toward textbook and newspaper use.
Online news publications and mobile devices are not the only substitute to old-fashioned newspapers. In the past, news organizations held a competitive advantage in their ability to communicate. Journalists working around the world formed networks that could transport and share data. Organizations like the Associated Press made it possible to transfer information across the world in a relatively short amount of time.
However, with the emergence of blogs and social media platforms, the market has drastically changed. Everyone has the ability to be a journalist now, enabling an individual access to a network as large as corporate media giants.
A social networking/micro-blogging platform called Twitter has been the most recent to emerge. Several TV personalities and celebrities have taken to Twitter; Ashton Kutcher recently “won” the race to one million followers against news giant CNN. Although Kutcher was able to take advantage of his stardom to attract an online following, he was very particular to point out that Twitter enables an individual the communicative power equal to that of CNN. Twitter is now the fastest growing online social network and many large players are participating in it. Furthermore, companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple have offered to buy the 3 year-old company for amounts rumored to be as high as 700 million dollars. The potential value of Twitter is expected to be within its search capabilities and the mere amount of users it has attained. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone commented last week, “We’re not for sale.”
Social media is emerging as the newest way for businesses to reach their clients on a personal level and will undoubtedly become a necessary element of businesses in competitive markets.
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Grand Central Bowl Hosts SCHMOOZE!!
On April 19th, the next Schmooze event will take place! Less than two weeks!!
Add the event to your Google Calendar by clicking the button below.
