Drinking Our Own Kool-Aid With Our New Website
When you spend your days helping clients with their website strategy, you expect that your website will be held to a high standard. Today we took the wraps off our new website (dev.acceleration-partners.com), which was the result of many months of work and planning with the folks at Fresh Tilled Soil (FTS) who designed and…
Ten Things Your Affiliate Manager Will Never Tell You
1. Our “Screening” of Your Affiliates Is Limited To Auto Approval There aren’t many cases where an active affiliate manager should set your program to automatically approve affiliates. Fraud is rampant and many affiliate applicants should be rejected from the outset, especially if you are trying to maintain brand standards. Also, having a lot of…
Raising Money & the Problem of Intermediaries
Early-stage companies need to be very careful about working with intermediaries who offer to help with “fundraising” and expect be compensated with a percentage of the money raised. Unfortunately, this is gray area in which many people operate on the darker side of charcoal. First and foremost, it is illegal for someone who is not…
What is Online Marketing Strategy?
You don’t start building a house by hiring a carpenter—you hire an architect. A marketing strategist is the architect for your website. It’s his or her job to figure out your needs and wants, translate those into workable plans and provide the proper oversight. Without this planning, what you get may not fit your needs…
15 Million Reasons B2B Search Optimization Pays Off
Many owners and managers still don’t believe the Internet can be a valuable lead-generation and sales tool for their business-to-business company. Usually this is because they don’t currently get any leads this way, which may simply be because the company has little to no search presence. It seems obvious to say that you won’t get…
What a Fundrasing Consultant Can & Cannot Do
One of the first things prospective clients often ask us about a business plan/fundraising project is “What’s your track record?” or “What percentage of the companies that you’ve helped have been funded?” These are fair questions, but the answers aren’t straightforward. First and foremost, we never promise companies that they can raise money. Such promises…
Google Beer Goggles: Brand Premium for PPC?
Savvy marketers know the value of a brand. It’s the reason a bottle of Tide costs twice as much as generic detergent that works just as well. Companies receive a brand premium, not because they have shown that their product is better, rather it’s based on the belief and or perception that it’s better. But…
Don’t Fall Victim to Website Hosting Hostage
Last Sunday my wife and I wasted an hour driving to a rug store that turned out to be closed even though the store’s website indicated it would be open. When we called on Monday, the man at the store apologized and explained that the business is in a fight with its web designer, who…
When Starting a Business, Win the Backyard First
Entrepreneurs often have well-laid plans for global domination. They have charts, projections and sales plans showing who they are going to sell products and services to and how much they are going to gross once their company has become a household name. What they typically don’t have is a tactical plan to get to the…
Why Bad Mergers for Customers Hurt Shareholders
A few years ago, just after the Sprint/Nextel merger, I dropped into my local Sprint store because my cell phone contract was about to expire. The companies had already merged brands, but the products in the store were positioned as if they were still two competing companies. The cell plans on offer were confusing and…