Yesterday Yahoo released site explorer, a tool for digging up detailed information about a particular website. Most of the functions it provides have been available individually for a long time but now they are all wrapped up into one tool.

Yahoo site explorer provides a list of all pages within a website that Yahoo has indexed and can be filtered to include or exclude sub domains. Site explorer also allows you to retrieve detailed information on websites linking to a particular URL and filter the data to include only the links pointing to that exact URL or links pointing to any page in that domain. Yahoo Site Explorer APIs (Inbound Links API & Page Data API) provide even more functionality for developers.

This looks like it will be a great tool for improving the ROI that you get from your website and will help to deliver results more quickly.

People have taken a number of approaches trying to do their own advertising ranging from silly all the way to insulting. These people choose there approach for various reasons. Some were ignorant about advertising and marketing while others were acting on incorrect information - usually in the form of cliches such as “sex sells.” If you’re in doubt, I can assure you that unless your business is in Nevada, sex does not sell. If you’re going to handle your own advertising, here are a few things to avoid:

Pictures that have nothing to do with your product or service - If your company is in the carpet cleaning business, there is no reason to have a picture of a baby. No one is going to say “What a cute baby, I think I want this company to clean my carpets.” The same goes for pictures of sexy people (male or female) in provocative poses and little clothing.

Cheesy headlines - I actually saw an ad with a headline that said “We might be able to afford a bigger ad if you’d buy something from us.” Yes, this will probably get someone’s attention, but do you want to be remembered as the company that’s having financial problems?

Illegible fonts - Most people will not take the time to decipher your ad when it’s written in 9 point brush script, in which case, even the most persuasive copy is rendered useless. You want to use simple, clean fonts for headlines and body copy. Save the artistic fonts for accents and things of that nature.

We had previously removed many of the pages that showcased some of our recent work while restructuring our website. Actually we just removed the links but in any case the end result was basically the same. Since we’ve been receiving a lot of inquiries about these pages we’ve decided to put them back in place for now.

This page links to some of the individual client pages which showcase the work done for them.

We’ve just updated the website of?Vivienne Brown showcasing some samples of her voice over work. Be sure to visit and listen and check back soon for more updates!

Online advertising revenue totaled $5.8 billion for the first two quarters of this year - 26 percent more than the same time period in 2004, according to figures issued Monday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Search advertising revenue reached $2.3 billion, or a 27 percent increase over Q1 & Q2 of 2004. Search accounted for 40 percent of revenue, followed by banners and classified at 20 percent and 18 percent, respectively. Rich media accounted for only 8 percent of online ad revenue but growth was 26 percent and is expected to continue pace. Sponsorship was the only online category to shrink, constituting just 5 percent, down from 9 percent.

So what does this all mean for you? As an advertiser in this rapidly fragmenting world it means that you have to diversify your advertising channels. The days of advertising in your local newspaper and calling it a day are long behind us. Almost all companies are now being forced to compete on a national, if not global level because of the Internet and those that resist will be left behind.

Flash mobs were the new, hot thing about 2 years ago and then they quietly disappeared, as people got bored of the idea.

Now Ford is trying to use Flash mobs to promote the Ford Fusion. The problem here is that Ford is attempting to use something that has no relevance to their product and is of little to no interest to their target market. There are situations (such as pushing a particular political or social agenda) where a Flash mob could be a viable marketing tool, but this is not one of them.

If you plan to use an edgy guerilla marketing technique to promote your product or service you need to make sure that the technique is somehow relevant to your offering and that it will be accepted by your target market. Do your homework - otherwise you risk executing a marketing campaign that delivers little to no results, or even worse, one that alienates your consumers.

Marketers/advertisers usually focus their efforts on the people responsible for making the purchase. In many cases, this is an effective approach but in other cases it can make for a totally useless marketing campaign.

Virgin Mobile took a more effective approach in marketing their cell phone service by focusing not on the people that would be making the actual purchase, but instead focusing on the influencers of the people making the purchase. To make this campaign work, Virgin developed a viral website called Parental Enlightenment Kit which offers many tips (often fairy funny ones) to convince their parents to purchase a Virgin Mobile phone for them. By enlisting the teenagers Virgin has multiplied the effectiveness of their marketing campaign for 3 reasons:

1. The teenagers will continually mention the phone/service to their parents until they get it - Virgin’s campaign will continue to work long after the teenager has left the computer.
2. This approach is exactly the type of thing that spreads virally. As teenagers tell their friends about it, it will increase exponentially in its effectiveness.
3. They have targeted the most likely decision maker rather than the person responsible for the purchase.

Companies in other industries have taken the same approach and achieved amazing results. For example, Pfizer targeted men with erectile dysfunction (a more PC term for impotence) rather than the doctors who would actually prescribe the drug (Viagra) to treat it. You can take the same approach to market your product/service and reap tremendous rewards.

It sounds contradictory, but as all things evolve so has the sales process. Rather than showing up to businesses without an appointment (the same goes for calling them out of the blue) begin working to establish yourself as the one that people come to when they need the best in your field of expertise. There are many ways to do this, such as writing articles (or even an entire book), public speaking on your industry, newsletters (web, print or both), hosting radio or television shows on your industry and anything else that you can do to provide information to your prospects at no cost to them.

This may seem counter productive - giving something away that you would normally charge for, but lets break it down and see why it really does make sense.

1. The people who are only interested in your service when it’s free obviously will not pay for it. They will usually tell other people looking for the same type of information about you/your company though - which means more prospects for you.
2. You will maintain TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness) by appearing in the media often and through various mediums. When the time comes for your prospects to invest in your product/service there is a much higher probability that they will call you first.
3. You will establish more credibility in your field which will often shorten your sales cycle.
4. You will help the people that need, but can’t yet afford your product/service, who will in turn usually become your clients down the road. Even if they don’t, think of it as your way of giving back to society!

Now stop cold calling and increase your business!

If you haven’t heard that we are holding a contest where the winner will have their entire website redesigned by WMG then you should do two things:

1. Climb out from under that rock. There is a lot going on in the world and you are missing much of it - besides, it’s probably cold and wet down there.
2. Enter the contest!

We’ve all seen ads that push the envelope when it comes to certain boundaries using humor or shock value, but few tie it into their product or service to create a truly powerful ad that delivers results. Recently, Olympus launched an ad online through a viral website that did exactly that. They later pulled the ad and redirected traffic from the website to their main website.

Red Eyed Baby