Jeff Walters is the co-founder of two leading marketing companies, Targetbase and Clicksquared. He is also an investor, Catalyst and consultant at Strategy Outfitters, a company known for building brands through business analysis, marketing strategy, and marketing technologies. Jeff’s specialties include marketing strategy development, interactive relationship marketing, and measuring brand communication ROI.
Jeff has an abundance of expertise in marketing, having worked with brands such as Coca-Cola, Marriott, HP, Jack Daniels, and several others. He’s lectured at several venues, and is considered a well thought of expert in the field of internet marketing. We’re honored to have Jeff share with our readers his opinions about the future of internet marketing in 2010.
In the video below Arnie asks Jeff:
1.) What are your predictions for the internet marketing industry in general for the year ahead?
2.) How about specifically integrated interactive marketing, where do you see that headed?
3.) What one critical issue should those in the internet marketing space be concerned about or focused on in 2010?
Follow both Arnie and Jeff on Twitter for their helpful advice in social media.
How are you getting your business prepared for customers to become brand ambassadors, which Jeff highlights as important for 2010?
Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.
Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.
Tony Mandarich is more than just a successful college and NFL football star, he’s also built a successful Internet Marketing business and is an expert in the field. Over at Mandarich, LLC he provides complete Internet solutions for his clients with search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaigns, videography, and more! At Mandarich, LLC clients receive unique, memorable and effective products.
Tony has built his successful Internet Marketing firm with the help of his wife Char. Over the past five years he and his wife have expanded their business from Mandarich Photography to a full service Internet Marketing firm with a location in North Scottsdale, AZ. We’re pleased to have Tony join us in our video series, as his advice and predictions in the industry are well regarded. In the video below Arnie asks Tony:
1.) What are your predictions for the internet marketing industry in general for the year ahead?
2.) How about specifically paid search, where do you see that headed?
3.) What one critical issue should those in the internet marketing space be concerned about or focused on in 2010?
Follow both Arnie and Tony on Twitter for their helpful advice in social media.
Tony states that the most important thing in SEO success hinges on the fundamentals. Besides onsite SEO and relevant links mentioned in the video, what are the additional fundamentals to SEO?
Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.
Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.
In the past 20 years Greg Head has been an impressive figure in the software and technology industries. Creating global brands and successful products with great people is what it’s all about for Greg. As the founder and CEO of New Avenue, a strategic marketing firm, Greg advises CEOs of emerging tech companies on their marketing and growth strategies to facilitate the growth of winning global brands.
Greg believes that three key elements are required to do great marketing: great products or services, a sound business model, and a compelling marketing strategy. His key beliefs have helped him to achieve incredible success for many global brands. Listen to Greg explain his predictions for 2010, and utilize his advice to help you with your marketing plan this year.
In the video below Arnie asks Greg:
1.) What are your predictions for the internet marketing industry in general for the year ahead?
2.) How about specifically investments and startups, where do you see that heading?
3.) What one critical issue should those in the internet entrepreneurial space be concerned about or focused on in 2010?
Follow both Arnie and Greg on Twitter for their helpful advice in the internet marketing industry.
Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.
Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.
Our interview series, “2010 Predictions From 10 Internet Experts”, will take place over the next two weeks. Join us to discover what some of the leading internet experts predict will be key factors online in 2010. We’ll present a new video each day for 10 days, aiming to help you understand important internet marketing issues for the coming year. Subscribe to our blog in the space to your right, and you’ll get updated when a new video is available.
Internet Expert Interviews – Click on the Name/Date Below to Launch each Video:
As an innovator in search for the past 12 years, Joe has held executive positions at iCrossing, and was a co-founder and President of Web.com Search Agency. Joe has held the position of CEO at Dean Garland Corporation, and is currently the Managing Director at iAcquire. iAcquire is a global leader in large-scale, crowd-sourcing level link building and viral marketing initiatives for exclusive clientele including leading Internet brands and appropriately funded Internet start-ups. He is also involved in projects such as LegalACE and AZIMA.
Jeffrey has fifteen years interactive agency and financial services experience serving Fortune 1000 clients. He’s currently CEO of Acendant, which is a holding services company headquartered in Phoenix, AZ. Ascendant CREATES, BUILDS, and ENHANCES global internet and web based technology companies. He was President at iCrossing, the largest independent search and interactive agency. He also sat on the advisory councils of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Additionally, he served five terms with SEMPO, two years as President and is the current Chairman.
With 20 years experience building successful products and brands in the software business, Greg is now the founder and CEO of New Avenue, a strategic marketing firm. Greg advises CEOs of emerging tech companies on their marketing and growth strategies, and facilitates the growth of winning global brands.
David Wallace, co-founder and CEO of SearchRank, is a recognized expert in the industry of search engine and social media marketing. Since 1997, David has been involved in developing successful marketing campaigns for large and small businesses. In addition to offering Internet marketing services to clients, David’s company operates several portal web sites and topical blogs of their own.
Fred is the founder of SocialMediaAZ.org, the premier Social Media for Business event in Tempe Arizona. He is also a managing partner with Web3Mavens, LLC. a company specializing in helping businesses use new technologies and media to maximize returns. He melds his executive, people and project management background with 15 years of enterprise technology experience and a passion for social media to deliver real and attainable actions and strategies for businesses, organizations and individuals to use in engaging their communities and building stronger relationships.
With a highly successful college and NFL football career under his belt, Tony migrated to the Internet Marketing business in 2005. As an owner of Mandarich, LLC, Tony provides a variety of complete internet solutions for his clients including: SEO, PPC, videography, and more. Tony is also an author, his autobiography released in 2004 is entitled “My Dirty Little Secrets: Steroids, Alcohol & God –The Tony Mandarich Story”.
Co-founder of two leading marketing services companies, Jeff is also an investor and consultant at Strategy Outfitters. Building brands and businesses large and small is what Jeff is known for. His specialties include marketing strategy development, interactive relationship marketing, and measuring brand communication ROI.
As an Arizona SEO consultant currently working for Dream Systems Media (he’s also an owner), Matt has proven himself as an expert in natural search, social media marketing, link building strategies, and more. He is also a well known blogger, speaker, and branding and reputation management expert. Matt also owns several successful eCommerce websites and is well versed in the world of SEO, Social Media, and Internet Marketing as a whole. Jeramie McPeek – January 14th, 2010
Jeramie McPeek is responsible for the social media and digital efforts of the Phoenix Suns. He is entering his 18th season with the organization and because of his efforts Suns.com has been named the top team website in the NBA twice and received the Website of the Year Award from the NBA. McPeek has also been recognized with two Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards.
Is the CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, a leader in the field of search engine optimization tools, resources, & community. Rand is particularly compassionate about the SEOmoz blog, read by tens of thousands of search professionals each day. As a regular speaker on search topics around the world, he has been the keynote in many cities working to strengthen the search marketing community.
Keep up-to-date with the above internet experts on Twitter by following our list here:
We’re so excited to have had the opportunity to meet and interview the above 10 experts. As an internet marketing services company we have had the honor of working with and learning from most of this well established group of experts in the past. We’d like to thank each of them for participating in our video series, and also would like to thank GreenScreenFX for hosting the interviews at their Scottsdale site.
Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.
Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.
One of the best sessions I attended during PubCon 2009 in Las Vegas was one about Competitive Analysis. In SEO and Internet Marketing, competitive analysis is most often used to try to discover how a more successful competitor is out ranking your business or website online.
Many times by performing comprehensive competitive analysis you will find information and be able to develop strategies to better compete and/or over take your competitors market share on the web.
First I’ll start with a list of strategies and end with a list of tools recommended by some of the top Internet Strategists.
Strategies:
1.)Read your competitors press releases. What are they talking about and what words are they using? Sometimes a competitor may be increasing the popularity of a keyword just by talking about it. If you can figure that out early you can also focus on that keyword.
2.)Look for reviews online about the competitor and/or their products by Googling “rate company name” or “review company name” (or product name).
3.)Find and read forums in the competitor’s niche.
4.)Use the “allinanchor” operator in the search engines to see who is ranking for the keywords you want. Here is an example of a Google search: allinanchor:competitive analysis
5.)Identify strong content on the competitor’s site by using the seobook.com Firefox extension and the site operator in Google like this: “site:sitecompanyname.com” (without the quotes) The extension shows you valuable information about the competitors content.
6.)If your competitor has a strong presence on bookmarking and voting sites like stumbleupon.com and de.licio.us take note of who submitted the content or bookmarked it and then query the sites (or Google) using “submitted by” or “discovered by” and look for trends. If the same person is regularly submitting their content they might be willing to do the same for you.
7.)Use Twitter for research. Most companies and/or their employees are tweeting and talking about something and most companies that are not are working on a strategy to start.
8.)Most tools listed below will offer an RSS feed of the data you seek. Use an iGoogle page to aggregate it for each client you are monitoring. Just add an RSS gadget of your choice.
9.)The next 3 (9,10,11) could be considered "Black Hat" and even "Unethical" & "Deceptive" as most reputable companies won’t need to incorporate these tactics in their analysis. These were shared and worth reporting so we will let you decide if you want to use them. We are NOT recommending them. Robots.txt files can offer some interesting insight in to what your competitors are hiding, planning or just don’t want eyes to see. With most websites you can point your browser to http://www.domain.com/robots.txt and voila. What is listed as “disallowed” could be helpful information.
10.)This one is also a bit “black hat” and could be considered deceptive. Set up a “sock puppet” site that would not be considered a threat and make friends with your competitor (a sock puppet site is a temporary site used solely to create an online persona.)
11.)Scour the Internet for negative press and chatter about the competitor. Do searches using derogatory words in association with their company name, brand or product. If you find negative press or conversations you can build your campaign to address that specific issue(s) with customers.
12.)Look online for competitor employees. Loose lips sink brands. Follow them, watch what they say, who they talk to and why. Follow their tweets, company profiles, Social Media profiles and others.
13.)Monitor job listings. This will tell you what their turnover rate is, what level people they need and possible directions they are going. You may also be able to gleen products in development etc.
14.)SideWiki: Google’s new real time comment system can give you insight in to what your competitors are doing, how their customers feel about them, what their customers want that they may not be getting and other valuable data. If you are not familiar with SideWiki Google it.
15.)Facebook: search fan pages, and conduct research on Facebook.
and Jeff 
on Twitter for their helpful advice in social media. 
One of the best sessions I attended during PubCon 2009 in Las Vegas was one about Competitive Analysis. In SEO and Internet Marketing, competitive analysis is most often used to try to discover how a more successful competitor is out ranking your business or website online. 
