What’s On My Mind
The Customer Service Line You’re Not Answering
Question: Which is greater—the number of home service companies touting their exceptional customer service or tweens at the mall in Justin Bieber T-shirts? Answer: Who cares? There are far too many of both and they annoy the crap out of me. It’s easy to say that you’re committed to customer satisfaction, but delivering on that…
Using Data to Transform Your Business (and your waistline)
During the course of a typical week at Blue Corona, I interact with anywhere from a dozen to more than a hundred business owners. Virtually all of my conversations are centered around advertising, marketing, analytics, the Internet, and maximizing organic growth. The common thread in these conversations, no matter the company size or industry, is…
Branding VS. Direct Response Advertising
Recently, a local landscaping company asked me if I thought it would be worth it for them to advertise in Bethesda Magazine. I suspect that a lot of business owners find themselves asking similar questions about their own advertising. I’ve outlined my response below in the hope that this framework helps you make better advertising…
Announcing the Launch of HVACSEOReports.com
SEO is an industry in its infancy. The rapidly evolving and changing nature of it makes it an exciting place to be. During certain times of the year, it seems like every hour there is some new tactic worth learning or some update Google has made that has everyone talking. It often feels like the…
How Facebook is Stealing Queries from Google
Having just returned from SES Chicago 2012, I’m recharged and full of new ideas. Although “SES” stands for Search Engine Strategies, social media was a hot topic of discussion throughout the event. Everyone wanted to know whether social media is important for SEO; are social media signals included in the search engines’ algorithms; how are…
The Blue Corona Story & Lessons Learned
Recently, I was invited to speak to a group of Maryland businesses. I was asked to tell them how Blue Corona started, talk about our journey to the Inc. 500, and offer a word or two of advice—things learned along the way. The speech is set to be short, so I thought I’d write up…
Spending Money on Intelligence vs. SEO
Running on of the fastest growing Internet marketing companies in the country, I get asked a lot of interesting questions. Last week, I received an inquiry and some very interesting questions from an escort service in Richmond, VA (no, I’m not joking, and Becky, if you’re reading this, I did not respond!!). More on that…
5 More Lessons from the 2012 Inc. 500 Conference
Running a fast-growing internet marketing company makes it hard to break away for things like industry conferences. However, when Blue Corona was named number 174 on the 2012 Inc. 500 list (in our first year of eligibility), I knew we had to send a group to the conference and awards ceremony in Phoenix, AZ. Although…
Why Now is the Best Time to Invest in SEO and PPC
If you’re a business owner and you’ve been thinking about trying SEO or PPC, let me give you a little push. Now (as in right now) is THE best time to invest in SEO and PPC. I’ve been in the business of tracking advertising for companies for nearly 10 years, and I’ve never seen a…
8 Tips for Hiring the Best SEO Company
You’re a business owner. You want to grow your business. You know that your website isn’t generating the leads it should. You know you need to make some changes. You know that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So you decide…
