Posts by Author

Howie Jacobson

Posts by Author

Howie Jacobson

Courting Your Ideal Customer

By Howie Jacobson | 05/18/2010

Google AdWords is nothing more or less than a medium for direct marketing. So every now and then, I put away my books about the latest online techniques and reach for the classic texts.

Here’s some of what you can learn from the old masters:

There are three elements to any direct-marketing offer — the offer itself, the creative, and the list.

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How Your Website Is Like My New Favorite Car Dealership

By Howie Jacobson | 07/23/2009

I just took my 2002 Prius to the local Toyota dealer here in North Carolina for its 100,000-mile servicing . Now I’m used to service stations and dealers in New Jersey, where standard operating procedure is to make customers guess where to park, what line to wait i n, and…

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How to Handle the Ongoing Recession

By Howie Jacobson | 07/16/2009

This recession has revealed a psychological rift in the world’s consciousness. A lot of people are scared and angry. They’ve lost their jobs, their businesses, their insurance, and in some cases their self-worth. They feel victimized by events, by elites, and by entities. So they bob up and down, waiting to…

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The Dirty Secret of Screw-Ups

By Howie Jacobson | 07/14/2009

Here’s something I discovered shortly after launching my business in 2001: Up to a point, customers don’t really mind when something goes wrong. What drives them batty is when they complain and nobody cares. And when you make it clear to everyone in your organization that listening to customers is…

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A Non-Entrepreneurial Slap of Reality

By Howie Jacobson | 07/9/2009

My buddy – author, CEO, and consultant Peter Bregman – recently wrote a commentary for CNN.com advising people to embrace the recession as a chance to reconfigure their careers to be in line with their passions. “Focus your time on what you’re truly passionate about,” he said. “Successful people are…

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It All Starts With Traffic

By Howie Jacobson | 06/16/2009

If you’re getting 20 leads a week now from AdWords, it’s hard to imagine what 200 leads a week would look like. From your current perspective, it would probably look just like 20, except 10 times more. But when volume and velocity and quality of traffic increase, lots of things change. Big time.

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An Advanced Internet Marketing Tactic

By Howie Jacobson | 06/12/2009

Your website visitors will convert – to buyers or subscribers – when they’re ready, willing, and able. And the usability testing and feedback gathering you do should give you an idea of which of those three factors will make the biggest difference. Ready: Are your visitors ready to take the action…

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Have You Tested Your Landing Page Lately?

By Howie Jacobson | 06/2/2009

You know all about the value of testing your marketing copy, but are you doing it on your landing pages? Let’s talk about some tests you can run having to do with placement. Don’t worry about the copy at the moment. Just where things go on the page. First thing…

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Online Marketing in 3 Steps

By Howie Jacobson | 04/29/2009

Find a problem. Solve it. And charge people for the solution. If you’re wondering why your online business isn’t doing better, put it through this three-part marketing audit. • Have you found a problem? A problem that matters to people? To enough people?

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Google’s Duplicate Content Penalty

By Howie Jacobson | 04/17/2009

Google doesn’t like twins much. That is to say, Google penalizes Web pages that it deems to be near-exact copies of existing Web pages. It won’t let them appear in search results.

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A Marketing Self-Assessment Tool

By Howie Jacobson | 03/24/2009

One nice thing about a business website is how easy it is to change.
So when I change – when I grow as a person, lose some fears, embrace new beliefs, etc. – I want to make sure that the website where I sell my services represents my current reality. Not just the details, but the heart of my business. I don’t want to broadcast an outdated message and attract clients who won’t be in sync with me.

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Strega Nona, the Missing Kisses, and Your Competitor’s Back End

By Howie Jacobson | 08/22/2008

The other day, my wife and son were reading Tomie de Paola’s wonderful children’s book Strega Nona. In the story, Big Anthony comes to work for Strega Nona and overhears her incantation over her magic pasta pot. The result: He learns the spell to get the pot started making pasta… and memorizes the words to turn the pot off. But because he is hiding while doing this, he misses the visual accompaniment to the “stop-the-pasta” spell: blowing three kisses…

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