Marc Scibelli
E-Mail: marc@scrappyupstarts.com
Yahoo IM:
AIM: virtualadagency
Jabber: virtualadagency@gmail.com
Web Page: http://www.virtualadagency.com
Registered Since: 2008-11-27 17:02:45
Profile: Marc is the Creative Director at a media company in New York and the founder of VirtualAdAgency.com a scrappy upstart dedicated to helping small businesses create big ad agency marketing.
Posts by Marc:
- Get referrals from people you trust in your network to others who can help you.
- Check their credentials thoroughly by speaking to clients and those they have worked with.
- Ask them to provide answers to a short test case you create of how they would tackle your challenge.
- Work with them on a trial basis before signing on for an extended engagement.
- Communicate with them continually on your needs and expectations.
- You Love It
- There Is Money To Be Made
- You Can Do All The Important Aspects Of The Business Yourself
- You Can Bootstrap It Yourself
- YOu have customers lined up
- Linkscape - an inlink search engine
- Trifecta - which measures metrics to estimate the relative popularity and importance of Page, Blog or Domain (Page Strength).
- Term Target - which helps determine how targeted a particular page is for a specified keyword.
- SEOmoz Firefox Toolbar - Lets you add an SEOmoz tool to your toolbar.
- Term Extractor Tool - analyzes the content of a given page and extracts the terms that appear to be targeted at search engines.
- Crawl Test - Helps diagnose search engine crawling issues on your website
- GeoTargeting Detection - Discover how well your website is targeted to country specific search engines.
- SEO Toolbox - A collection of FREE Tools that will give you quick answers and aid in daily SEO activities.
- Popular Searches- Aggregates and archives popular searches from various sources.
- The Internet Marketing Handbook
- The Web Devloper’s SEO cheat sheet
- The Beginner’s Checklist for Small Business SEO (Local Search)
- The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO
- The SEO Industry Survey Results
- Use your home office exclusively for business. The IRS won’t let you take a deduction for your kitchen, just because you use the kitchen table as your desk. You must have a separate room or partitioned area that’s devoted to business use.
- List your home address as your principal place of business, even if part of your business, like a warehouse, is outside your home. Make sure you have a desk, filing cabinet and separate phone line for your business.
- Store your merchandise or supplies on your property — in a detached shed, spare closet or your garage — instead of renting a warehouse. You’ll save on rental costs and get a tax break for the space you use.
- We’re growing comfortable with social networks. Not surprisingly, social-network-related searches grew 178% in 2008. Historically the top searches in the category have reflected privacy concerns and last year was no different. The top keywords included “hide friends” (No. 7) and “hide comments” (No. 8). However, search volume on these keywords actually declined last year. This, perhaps, is the biggest indicator that as a nation we’re becoming more comfortable living on social networks.
- Blogging may be making a comeback. Searches related to blogging resources and services posted 64% growth in 2004. Then they basically flat-lined the next three years. However, in 2008 they climbed 24%. It’s highly likely that both the growth in 2004 and 2008 was fueled by elections. But my gut is that something deeper is going on here. Perhaps some see blogs as a powerful personal branding tool that can help them weather the recession. Searches for the keywords “personal brand” are also up significantly.
- The recession drove consumers to shop online. Perhaps surprisingly, shopping-related searches grew 50% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. Of course, between 2004 and 2007, search volume typically reached the same apex in December. But this year was different. Consumers were also looking for deals. Coupon-related searches grew 61% in fourth quarter. If consumers continue to find deals online, then the trend could stick.
- Placing a premium on progress.
- Mastering paradox.
- Learning to love the low end
- Organize to accelerate learning.
- Establish your A-item priorities.
- Define a compelling vision.
- Get your new team in place fast.
- Secure early wins, in the right ways.
- Build a ruling coalition anchored in the “middle third.”
- Leverage a balanced advice-and-counsel network.
My Entrepreneurial Journey by Jeff Pedone
June 10th, 2009The moment of greatest clarity for me that defined my place in the annals of entrepreneurship was when I was mixing a large batch of Good Dog Foods Home Mix, in the CAFT test kitchen of Rutgers University. The product line was all human-grade food (meat, vegetables, rice, nutritional powder) made in a USDA approved facility. You begin to think about the choice you made as an entrepreneur when you’re shoulder deep in cold mixed meat and vegetables. I don’t regret a minute of it.
Today’s Social Entrepreneurs
I began to think about that again recently when I started to see Tweet posts (@JeffPed) regarding social media experts and those launching businesses in today’s social media landscape. When I launched my marketing consulting and gourmet frozen dog food businesses in the 1990’s, there was a prescribed and albeit “traditional” way of launching and marketing your business. Today the landscape has changed dramatically and few of the new entrepreneurs are versed in sustaining a business utilizing social media.
Yes, you can jump in quickly and begin to promote your business almost instantly, however due to the amount of information that needs to be processed, networking and marketing that needs to be done, and lack of truly trustworthy advice that you will receive, most businesses will wallow in relative obscurity, be a flash in the pan, or rise and fall quickly and dramatically.
Take a Cue from The President
The reason The President surrounds himself with a Cabinet and trusted advisors is that for all his wisdom and experience, he still cannot concentrate adequately on all the multiple areas of running the country at once. You can’t do this either, there is not enough time in your day nor will you be an expert on every area you need to, to be successful.
When to Seek Help
Find the key drivers of your business and your specialties, your unique value proposition. You should be the “specialist” or “expert” in these. That does not mean you should not be continually learning from others and perfecting your craft, social media is great for this. But, if social media is too big a challenge for you, the new marketing vehicles are changing too rapidly, or every vendor you meet or person you speak to has a varied opinion on the same question you are trying to answer, do this:
How to Work with Trusted Advisor
Jeff leads Silver Lining Consulting, his blog can be found at: http://jeffpedone.com/
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.scrappyupstarts.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this-small.png)
Tweet ThisPay Per Click, simply explained.
February 22nd, 2009A common small-biz rule of thumb is to set aside 10 percent of total expenses for advertising.
Are Scrappy Upstarts really doing this? How do you promote your product, get your company and its great services in the public eye without spending a ton of money?
Pay per click is a familiar and viable option, that you might not totally understand if you’re just starting out.
Pay per click lets you advertise your product or service online and only pay for what brings consumers to your business site. If you put a pay per click ad on the Web and no one clicks on that hyperlink to come to your site and buy your products, you don’t pay for that ad. If they do click, you do pay.
Google AdWords is probably the best known and largest volume pay per click advertising program. It’s also extremely easy to start and it gives you total control of your advertising campaign’s budget.
For its Starter Edition just decide what you are going to say in your AdWords ad (it’s all text), go to the Google site and sign up, write what you want to say in your ad and note the ceiling you will spend each month. Your ad will appear next to the search results of relevant keywords (that you note) when someone searches on Google. You only pay for those who see the ad and click on to your site. And you stop paying when you’ve reached your stated budget for the month.
These ads appear along the side of search related results they can also appear on sites that have agreed to show google ad words, often related to the ad’s content.
While pay per click cannot guarantee results – no advertising can do that – what it can do is guarantee that you won’t spend more than you can afford.
Bootstrapping Your Business
February 7th, 2009Great article for Scrappy Upstarts about bootstrapping at YoungEntrepreneur.com
20 Ways To Bootstrap Your Business:
1. Start A Service
2. Figure Out What Makes The Most Money
3. Get Volunteer Help
4. Hire Part Time
5. Automate
6. Form Partnerships
7. Use Pay Per Click
8. Use Search Engine Optimization
9. Leverage The Media
10. Think Big, Start Small
11. Do Something Every Day For Your Business
12. Don’t Quit Your Day Job Until You Can Afford To
13. Turn Everyone Into A Referral Partner
14. Watch Your Payments
15. Start At Home
16. Share Your Office
17. Barter
18. Lease Don’t Buy
19. Hire Friends / Family
20. Create A Rainy Day Fund
Will Your Business Work Or Not ?
January 28th, 2009
Youngentrepreneur.com just released a great article discussing
5 sure-fire ways to know if your business will work.
The article has an added bonus of explaining the author’s theory on leveraging pay per click on a site to bring in large amounts of revenue.
Under #3. You Can Do All The Important Aspects Of The Business Yourself I found this to be interesting:
I have a number of friends who are starting online businesses and don’t know anything about programming, web design, servers, content writing, search engine optimization, or link building. They think they can just outsource everything.
I help small and large businesses with some aspect of web development everyday, this is where the most money is wasted. A quick post on guru.com or ifreelance a low ball bid from India and the Ukraine and your site is up. There are plenty of advantages to these sites and vendors from India and elsewhere. But it is all in how you use them. If you don’t have a deep understanding of what you want along with a good sense of web usability your site goes off course rather fast. That understanding is necessary to take advantage of those potential cost savings.
Free SEO Tools
January 23rd, 2009
While full access to SEOmoz.org requires a monthly fee they offer quite a few free resources to help you understand the fundamentals of search optimization. Whether you work with a professional or go it alone - you may find something useful for your scrappy upstart.
SEOmoz free tools include:
Their free guides skew to beginners and include:
Small Business Tax Tips
January 19th, 2009
Good post over at InfusionSoft:
Featuring links to some useful “Last Minute Tax Tips” For Small Businesses.
For those of you running your small business from your home, Score.com recommends to:
mixergy.com offers tactical interviews
January 9th, 2009I plan to continue to give Scrappy Upstarts REAL how-to info on all things small business and the web.
Andrew Warner’s blog at http://blog.mixergy.com/ is a great example.
Andrew does audio interviews with people instrumental in building web businesses.
They tend to focus on specific tactics small businesses can take. That to me is more important than the constant 30,000 foot level coverage we hear about “social media”, “twitter” etc.
His most recent interview with Chris Winfield who is the Co-Founder and President of 10e20, a search and social media marketing firm, offers some real how-tos for social media and your small business.
Thanks Andrew and Chris for actually giving real information not pontification.
Listen to the whole interview here. And more at mixergy.com
Google Search data reveals a lot about 2009
January 6th, 2009
There is a lot you can learn from digging into aggregate query data. Google knows a great deal about us as Bill Tancer’s book, “Click” revealed.It can also has the potential to be used as a yard stick for the future.
So using Google Insights Steve Rubel from AdAge was able to crunch some data and spot three internet trends (US only).
Full article here.
Using SEO in Your Blog
January 5th, 2009
Your small business blog needs to constantly be refined for maximum pull through. There are certain topics your blog can cover, and even certain keywords you can use to attract more people to your blog. The trick is in knowing which keywords to use and how to make the most of them. This process is commonly known on the internet as SEO, or Search Engine Marketing. It might sound complicated, but all you do is research keywords relevant to your industry, add them to your blog titles and topics, and the traffic will generate itself.
How do I know what words to use?
That’s the easy part. First, you have to think like a consumer. What would they search for? If you have a real estate business in the Atlanta area, for example, you would focus on what a person would look up if they wanted to find homes in Atlanta. If you can’t think of them on your own, there are keyword search sites where you can find the most popular phrases and keywords based on your subject. Using words like ‘Atlanta real estate’ or ‘Atlanta homes for sale’, for example, would be much more relevant to consumers than choosing phrases like ‘real estate for sale in Atlanta’ or ‘homes Atlanta for sale’, and so on.
Ok, I’ve got my keywords. Now what?
Now, you create a blog, or add to the one you have. Give it an SEO-friendly title, and make sure each post title is relevant, as well. Then, in your content, take the keywords you’ve found and use them 5-10 times, depending on the length of the blog. Just remember, with SEO, less is really more, so don’t overstuff it. That will actually have an adverse effect on your website, because it’s bad practice and frowned upon by search engines.
Having a blog is going to be a big part of your success in today’s online market. Making sure that blog is seen by optimizing it with SEO practices will only help to drive traffic to your website. Even in a slow economy, people are still buying, so you need to make sure you’re doing everything you can to get them to buy from you. One of those crucial elements is using SEO in your blog. For more information, the SEOBook offers detailed insight.
Peter Schiff has a time machine.
January 2nd, 2009I am convinced after watching this.
I love that he was yelled at for predicting EXACTLY what we are seeing.
Thanks to Brian Jones for originally posting this.
More importantly, see Peter talking about 2009 last month, he was still getting yelled at!
Holiday Shopping Sales Fell 3%
December 31st, 2008
According to comScore - holiday e-commerce was down 3% year-over-year - spending totaled $25.54 billion, from $26.33 billion during a similar period last year.
First time since 2001 when they started tracking this.
Some winners: HP site visitors jumped 28%; Amazon’s traffic increased 7%.
Ebay was the most visited site but was 4% down from last year.
No surprise Circuitcity.com visits were down 21%, and Dell dropped 17%
“The Great Disruption”
December 29th, 2008
The Great Disruption. Is this how we will be referring to our current economic times?
Scott Anthony poses that question at Harvard Business Publishing.
He goes on to discuss how to Thrive in the Great Disruption stating it requires a particular breed of innovator.
Specifically, innovators should look to master three disciplines:
I only care about doing.
December 29th, 2008I don’t care about Steve Jobs or Michael Dell.
There I said it. I don’t even care about the guy who just secured $9 million in venture funding. I don’t care about Tim O’Reily waxing philosphical about online serendipity. I don’t care that TechCrunch says Google and Adobe are great places to work.
I care about the guys (and women) in the long tail of it all. Not making a million bucks, but making it. Cashing a $2,000 adsense check? Good for you! How? Getting by on 8 new customers a month? Great! How? Figured out how to make a living without going into an office? Fantastic! How? Moved your brick-and-mortar successfully online? Awesome! How?
Look there is a tremendous amount to learn from the analogs of Steve and Mike and the rest - no question - I’ll watch, I’ll read - but for the love of God, stop letting internet media stay at the 30,000 foot level - You want to succeed? DIG DEEPER!
Philosophical diatribes won’t help you succeed in the trenches. Vague predictions about “new media” or “social marketing” aren’t going to put food on the table.
Tactics, execution, dedication - How are you doing it? Be specific! Speak up!
[Author's note: No one is going to respond to me. I know it. Either no one is listening (possible, this site is only a month old), no one cares - that too, then you might as well go back to solitaire, or no one has any idea how to really do it...Then tell me that.]
No Budget Advertising
December 26th, 2008
Oh no! You’ve invested all your cash getting your business started but you failed to set aside a budget for advertising. You could have a cure for the common cold and still die broke if people don’t know you have it. Fortunately there are still ways to get your business off the ground. The key is you have to start today, and you have to continue everyday.
Oh, I can hear you now. What could I possibly do with a budget as low as $10? Well I’ll tell you just to give you a few ideas. Of course like I said above you will have many more options once your account grows but for now let’s assume its your first month in business and that is literally all you have $10, period. So you work with what you have. Sit down with paper and pen and start thinking. Make a list of any ideas you can come up with to spend those bucks to get you even one or two new customers this month. As I write this I am doing that right now to come up with a few ideas for you. How about… Getting as many flyers as you can copied advertising a sale of some kind. Then you could distribute them on weekends at car shows or even on car windows at flea markets and places like that.
How about having a bunch of simple business cards printed up. Instead of just your name or phone number, they can offer a new buyer discount. If you have the equipment you can even print them yourself. Then just leave those cards everywhere you go. On counters when you stop for coffee. In phone booths, all over in nightclubs, in men’s rooms and any place else you happen to be in your marketing area. Get the idea? Getting any other ideas now?
As your budget grows so will your options for advertising. You will also find that now salespeople will be calling on you because they saw your ad or promotion somewhere. You’ll be getting offers to advertise and most of these will be fairly expensive. Here’s an easy way to remember what to do: forget em! When you’re just starting out investing a large sum of money in a single place is just not the smart way to do things. Right now you should be placing smaller bits of advertising in as many places as possible. The objective here is to find out what mediums work best for you. As results come in you then invest more in the most productive ones. By working in this fashion you are always building from a position of strength and knowledge. That is always more desirable than experimenting.
Do it and watch your business grow every day. Anyone else have any “no budget” ideas?
What Obama needs to do to create momentum
December 24th, 2008From a recent post at discussionleader.com: Memo to President-Elect Obama: 7 Moves to Create Momentum
Michael Watkins writes an open memo to President-elect Obama.
He begins by citing the “contrast effect” , which basically says we distort our perceptions of something’s performance based on immediate previous exposure, in other words, Obama may have an easier time changing things since things are so desperately in need of change.
Michael also cites 7 principles Obama, as a strong leader, should put into action after assuming the Presidency:
To Obama: Your transition has to be the best the nation has ever seen.
Michael Watkins, is the same guy who wrote: “First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels”.
