Media expert Rob Bedell tells us how your company can survive and even thrive during an economic downturn. (from Entireweb newsletter #480)

Is the current tough market the right time to be slashing your advertising budget? Not if you want your business to survive the economic downturn and lay the groundwork to thrive when the economy improves! Tough times may actually provide us our best opportunity to reach out to our customers with little or no competition because so many of our competitors are doing just the opposite of that in an attempt to save money.

During good times everyone has the money (and bravery) to seek out clients, creating an atmosphere of extreme competition where reaching the consumer with your message proves to be exceedingly difficult. NOW is the time to have faith in your product or service, to reach out to your customers and to secure your success now and into the future. And there are easy and cost effective ways of doing so.

There are some simple things that you can do. Everyone knows about the internet, but not everyone knows the free ways to get exposure on the internet. You can write an article about your industry, or a product, and submit it to one of the many sites that accept them. At the end of your article, you mention your business and have a link to your website. Each site has it’s guidelines on how the articles are to be written, so make sure to follow them. This will help establish you as a leader in your industry as long as the information you share is helpful and not self-promoting.

Guerilla marketing is great in slow time. Have some flyers or postcards made. One of your employees or friends can design it or you can find an affordable place to do it for you. During your slow time, have your employees go to a busy area and hand them out. Now you are putting your message directly into the hands of prospective customers. Make sure you have an attractive offer that will entice people to visit your business. Obviously, this is mainly for businesses with a store front, but you can do guerilla marketing online as well.

Guerilla marketing is done differently online. With blogs and social networking sites, there are opportunities to market your business in a different setting. You can create blogs and check the response you get from each entry which can help you check what the market is interested in at any given time. Or you can find blogs that have an issue that your company can help with. Respond to the blog with your company information. You can set up an account with a social networking site, giving more information about your business and connecting to other businesses to network and exchanges leads.

Cross promote with other businesses, in other ways. If you’re feeling the pinch of the economy, most likely other businesses in your area/industry are feeling it as well. Find other businesses that don’t compete with yours and see about exchanging some flyers or a banner promoting each other’s business. Or if your business is online, do a link exchange with other businesses. Do not over due the link exchange or Google may lower your organic search results. Be selective in who you work with both online and in the brick and mortar world.

Press Releases can be a very effective way to bring attention to your business. If you have something that impacts the community, then you can have someone write a press release for you. If you hire someone to do it for you, make sure they know how to write and distribute it. Again, remember the topic must be something that impacts the community and not just a self-serving piece promoting your business.

These are just some of the ideas that will help your business grow in any economy. There are plenty of marketing options out there. You just need to find the ones that work for you.

Rob Bedell is an expert in the media industry and has worked in the industry for over 15 years. He has worked with some of the largest media companies in the world, Tribune and Knight-Ridder, as well as helping restructure and rebuild other companies in the Los Angeles, CA Metropolitan area. He now owns a marketing company that helps small to medium sized business, making sure that their marketing pays them back. www.bedellmediaconsulting.com.

MH1 Web Design and Hosting offices based just north of Houston in The Woodlands, Texas are back up and online with electrical power and customer service during regular hours. The company is open and ready to conduct business during regular work hours as of Thursday, September 18, 2008.

For our friends and clients, your hosting, email and other services never failed. That Web infrastructure is based in Virginia and was unaffected by the storm. New customers may call or email about Web design, hosting and other services.

None of our staff was seriously injured or personally impacted by the storm. For that we are very thankful.

To our Texas customers: please let us know if you require any special assistance following Hurricane Ike. MH1 Web Design and Hosting is ready to help.

by Mike Hallaron, MH1 Web Design

Email scams are as old as the Internet. Recently, we have received another round of a familiar phishing scam under the guise of a Google AdWords customer billing email. Those of you operating an AdWords account need to be aware before falling prey to this trick in the confusion and turning over your credit card or other vital financial information.

Here is how it works

You receive an email from “Google AdWords”, the popular pay-per-click tool. The subject line reads something like “Your AdWords Google Account is stopped”.  The email message reads like this:

Dear Advertiser,We were unable to process your payment.
Your ads will be suspended soon unless we can process your payment.
To prevent your ads from being suspended, please update your payment information.Please sign in to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your payment information.Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.This is a common “phishing” ploy. Simply defined, phishing is a fraudulent email claiming to be from PayPal, eBay, Google, Youtube or online banks that direct the recipient to a fake Web page in an attempt to trick him into entering sensitive account information or credit card details.

If you are uncertain, skip using the link provided in the suspect email and go straight to the Web site in question (google.com in this case) and login as normal. You might change your password and contact customer support about the mysterious email request to update your payment information.

Bottom line, if you get a link in any email asking you to update credit card or bank information, you should NOT click it no matter how real it looks or whose email address the notice appears to come from.

Phishing can be used against you in many ways and if successful can devastate your private finances and personal security. Be careful and contact MH1 Web Design if you are in doubt about any curious email request.

If we are managing a Google AdWords account for you, contact us with any related issues.

Houston/The Woodlands (713) 429-1746

How often do we visit Web sites that don’t look the same as their print marketing materials? Logos are different, colors and themes don’t match. Sometimes the company brochure and the Web site look like they belong to two different companies. This is very unprofessional and sends the wrong message to potential customers. That message is that you are disorganized, clueless about marketing and have no concept of branding.

Here’s a quick test from Entireweb to see if your marketing passes this test.

1. Can a website visitor get a thorough understanding of your bread-and-butter product/service and reach your contact info page in two clicks or less?

2. Is your website design and content consistent with the quality of your company and its products/services?

3. If you looked at your Web site and sales materials/brochures side by side, are they conveying a consistent brand image?

4. If your salesperson were to read aloud your Web site’s content word-for-word during a sales call, would they close the sale?

If you answered “NO” to any of the questions above, your Web site probably needs some immediate attention. Get to work.

THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS – Two local companies are merging their services and sharing new offices in The Woodlands Town Center. Since 2003, MH1 Web Design and Brochure Builders have provided professional Web development and graphic design services for small to medium size companies across the country with many clients based in The Woodlands, Texas area. Their new offices are located at 21 Waterway Avenue, Suite 300 next to the Waterway Mariott in The Woodlands. Office buildings in the Town Center are bustling with similar companies and start-ups.

“We share many clients and the new offices means we are more efficient in serving clients’ needs. The work flow is better. Internal communication is quicker and we have noticed that projects are getting done faster,” explains Mike Hallaron, owner of MH1 Web Design. That’s good news for two companies that have nearly doubled in revenues over the past year.

Hallaron and business partner Curtis Schlough, owner of Brochure Builders, are sold on the Town Center and headquartering their newly steamlined offices in the heart of The Woodlands business community. Over the years they have both worked remotely from home offices or leased offices in surrounding areas. But it is difficult to compare with the rapid growth and centralized location of so many small and medium size businesses found in the blossoming Town Center. Their new location is ideal. They frequently call on clients, many of whom are also based in The Woodlands area

The pair have worked together since their days in the newspaper industry in the mid 1990’s. Both companies started in 2003 following corporate layoffs during a slow economic turn. After five years in business, they have found The Woodlands, Conroe and Spring areas fertile ground for new business opportunities.“It’s not hard to find potential new clients,” says Hallaron. “New businesses are springing up everyday and all of these companies need professional marketing services to some degree. We function as a small boutique marketing firm specializing in a few niche areas – Web sites and Internet marketing, brochures, graphic design.” New customers are looking for a professional, consistent brand image from their Web site to their brochures, logo and other print marketing materials. They should look uniform across all media. In these situations, the two companies serve as one combined marketing resource.

Brochure Builders creates many of the original logos and initial Web site designs for MH1 clients in addition to a full complement of professional print design services. In turn, many Brochure Builders clients use MH1 for Web site development, hosting and search engine marketing. Companies realize the value of ranking highly on Google, Yahoo and other search engines. MH1 develops Web marketing strategies for them, including search engine registration, Web site optimization and pay-per-click advertising campaigns.