Traditionally, public relations have always been a tool used by brands and big companies to enhance their image, increasing consumer awareness and sales. PR is still a big part of marketing and promotion for big companies like Coca Cola, Microsoft and Apple. As big as those names are, you would think that they have all the brand recognition they would ever want, right? Wrong! Why would they keep spending millions of dollars in PR to enhance a brand name, which is already at the top?

Whether you are looking for Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Paid Search Management (Pay per Click or PPC), you need to make certain that the Internet Marketing Company you are interviewing includes or excludes the following:

In recent writings, I have emphasized the importance of using efficient means of deploying precious marketing budget moneys during these tough economic times. Clearly, staying close to your customers, while always important, is even more so in such an environment. Internet Marketing again proves to be a valuable tool here.

We are being reminded multiple times a day of how tough times are and how much tougher they will get. Unemployment is expected to rise even into the double digits during 2009. The Auto Industry is in an unimaginable mess. Our banking and financial systems are dysfunctional, not even trusting each other to lend between themselves. The federal government seems to lack planning, direction or even the understanding of how to deal with and address these issues effectively. Talk of recession, the worst one since the Great Depression, and even talk of another Great Depression are all part of the daily discussion. For business owners, large and small, marketing executives and managers , sales executives and representatives, these are formidable forces to be reckoned with and are the everyday challenges being faced in conducting business, particularly in the areas of planning and execution with precious sales and marketing budgets.

SEM is no easy task. It requires a thoroughly planned execution strategy and a flawless process to be successful. Depending on the competitiveness of the industry, it might take 6 months to years to achieve substantial results. There are no tricks or magic involved here, just hard work and dedication. There are a lot of roads to take and strategies to implement. However, marketers should not forget the fundamentals of SEM.

How can we differentiate ourselves from the competition? Many companies are using the same methods and procedures to create results for their clients. I have been hearing al lot of this recently at events and conferences. It seems to be a huge concern for companies who feel they cannot sustain growth or who feel they have hit a ceiling in their markets.

Some say we are in a recession. Others say we haven’t had any negative growth yet through the 2nd quarter of 2008 and you need 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP for a textbook recession. The financial and credit markets are predictors of the future and they are telling us that, any way you want to measure it, 2009 will be a year of recession, possibly a big one.

A lot of Pay per Click Gurus tell clients not use the Google’s Content Network because it is filled with Made for Adsense sites and click fraud, which is a huge issue. However, the same Gurus do not say anything about the content network not being able to generate targeted traffic, but it does.

The turn of the century brought a lot of new technology to the world and with that it brought the Music Industry a whole lot of problems. To deal with declining sales and continuous losses, record labels are finding new ways of raising money by focusing on different aspects of their business such as online marketing and consumer feedback rather than basing everything on CD sales.

At the time of this writing, the country is facing real and growing fear … on Wall Street and on Main Street. The Congress, without shame, has passed the bailout plan along with a whole bunch of pork. In other words to get enough votes, individual members of Congress traded their “conviction” for their pet projects designed to do what … get more votes and insure their own political longevity. This is Democracy?

Most of my new clients come to me with the same problems; their websites don’t generate enough leads or sales. There are several factors that contribute to this, but usually all fall under a combination of 3 problems. They are either not getting enough traffic, they are getting poor traffic or the website is not converting the traffic into leads. These are usually the biggest problems that most website owners face. Here are the solutions I propose

During these crazy times, it is clearer than ever that those owning and operating businesses of all kinds and sizes must maintain their focus on their business. While grossly under-reported, business loans are still very obtainable as long as you have the same things you have always had to have to obtain a business loan from your community or area bank i.e. solid business plan, collateral, etc. In other words, capital is still available to entrepreneurs as long as you aren’t relying on smoke and mirrors.