Tag Archives: Google

Local Marketing Trick – How to get your free google website and avoid paying for SEO (video 1)

1 Reply


You don’t need to pay for SEO! You don’t need to pay for fancy web design!

Google has already prepared THOUSANDS of free websites for businesses everywhere.  The problem is, you and other business owners don’t know about them.  Most SEO companies and web design companies don’t know about them either.

I will show you how to get yours, and more importantly I will show you how to use it to ROCK Google and the interwebs for the betterment of your business!  Watch these 3 free videos.  You’ll love em or your money back.

You’ll see first hand how I claimed the free google listing and web page for our Naperville App which is in itunes.

How To Get Your FREE Google Business Website in Google Places, Google Local Vid #1

How To Get Your FREE Google Business Website in Google Places, Google Local Vid #2

How To Get Your FREE Google Business Website in Google Places, Google Local Vid #3

Google has a free website for your business, which is already search engine optimized to work seamlessly with the top 2 search engines on the planet (google and youtube).

Matt Dubiel will show you exactly how to claim your free website, why it’s important, and how you can use it to make more money.

Get free radio advertising in Suburban Chicago Here.
Listen to Mancow and Dan Patrick here.
Advertise on Chicago’s Digital leader.
More from Matt Dubiel.

How Groupon Is Robbing Mainstreet USA…

Leave a reply

It’s official.  Groupon has filed with the SEC to “go public”.

In a time when mainstreet USA was struggling for business, Groupon rode in on their White Stallion and promised to bring business in the front door.  They patted the small business owner on the head and said, “don’t worry…we’ll help YOU.”

Groupon offered to advertise your business for free.  They said they’d even sell your stuff for you.  They’d handle EVERYTHING for YOU.  The best part is there’s NO RISK to you.  If no one buys, it didn’t cost you anything!

If no one buys, you get FREE advertising from GROUPON!!!!!

But what if lots of people buy?  What’s this “Groupon Effect” people are talking about?

Well simply put, when people buy your outragiously discounted and now commoditized wares through Groupon….Groupon will write YOU a check!!!

So to recap:

  1. Groupon advertises YOUR business FREE
  2. There’s “no risk” to you
  3. If no one buys your stuff, you pay nothing
  4. GROUPON will pay YOU if you sell your products or services

This sounds GREAT!  What’s the catch?

  1. You have to dive on price which compromises your integrity
  2. The reduced profit is split with Groupon
  3. Groupon uses your name, brand and customer base to build their database to use later to market other businesses, and even competitors
  4. You risk alienating your loyal customer base
  5. You risk overwhelming your staff with an influx of non-local business
  6. You give deals and price breaks to strangers instead of your loyal customer base
  7. You lose over 50% of your profit margin
  8. You have to clean up the mess, while Groupon moves on to the next business

In short, your business is underwriting Groupon’s growth.  They’re now selling shares for BILLIONS and you are still struggling to pay your CAM.  You are essentially paying THOUSANDS of dollars for an email blast that should cost you pennies.  Imagine paying $15,000 for an email blast.

But Groupon rocks other than that.

Here’s more on Groupon from the Tribune.

The solution?  Build your own following one loyal customer at a time.  Read 1,000 True Fans.  Partner with other local businesses and cross promote locally so you can grow together, steadily.  Forget the GRAND opening mentality.  It’s easier to keep a customer than it is to get a new one.  Love the ones you’re with and empower them to spread the word.

If you ran a Groupon, ask the board for some stock.  You helped build Groupon.

Why are Facebook, Twitter & Groupon the axis of Evil for Radio and business?

Leave a reply

Are Facebook, Twitter & Groupin the Axis of Evil?

Rick Kaempfer has been nice enough to interview me on his Chicago Radio Spotlight. This is one of the questions that ended up on the cutting room floor, along with my response. I thought I’d share it here…

Question #8: You have an interesting take on the impact that social media is having on radio. It’s definitely not the conventional wisdom in the industry. Tell us why you believe that Facebook, Twitter, and GroupOn are the axis of evil for radio.

The Radio Industry has been scampering around like Chicken Little for the last 5 years or so, bemoaning the Ipod, Internet Radio and Satellite Radio. We blocked XM spots on network avails to protect ourselves. Meanwhile, Radio gave the REAL wolves the keys to the hen house.

Radio, Mainstreet, and Madison Avenue built Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon virtually gratis.

I remember being a doe eyed intern at Q101 in the mid 90s and everyone was all a flutter about the NEW Q101 section being developed for America Online! Q101 didn’t have a website back then, instead they were building out their AOL section. Lots of meetings…and hull-a-baloo. This was back when AOL was mailing out CD-roms by the millions trying to protect the inevitable…the discovery of the World Wide Web! I was baffled by the notion that Q101 wasn’t working on what seemed obvious to me was the next step, a website. But what did I know.

Nearly a decade and a half later, here we are and major media companies, retailers, and food chains are spending millions in media to promote Facbebook or to tell people who aren’t even on Twitter, to “follow us on twitter”.

My philosophy on all these applications is simple:
Use them, don’t let them use you.

Recently, a station in town ran a promotion titled “Rush To Facebook”. Men 25-54 were told to go to Facebook, change their profile picture to the station logo, and then they might win Rush tickets. Now if Facebook paid the station for this promotion I say kudos. But if Facebook did not pay for this, my question is why in the world would you drive your listeners to Facebook for free?

By all means, have a promotions person log into Facebook to engage and connect with the Loop audience that’s already on Facebook. But to give Facebook that sort of Call To Action and frequency with no compensation is an insult to all the paying sponsors.

The way to use Facebook is to run ads ON FACEBOOK and drive your target demo to YOU. I’ve run campaigns on Facebook at $.14 CPM and as low as $.07 CPC. Another approach would be to work with advertisers and help them reach their target demo with the Station as a brand ambassador on Facebook. Mainstreet businesses need help with Google Ads and Facebook Ads. They need the power of radio behind those ads. But when radio stations don’t understand how to use these tools for their own marketing, they telegraph to retailers that they aren’t really marketing experts who can help their business. Send a radio sales person to call on retail and you’ll get a lot of “Nos”. Send a local retail marketing expert who will help me make more money and show me how radio makes it even better and the answer will always be YES.

Now the folks at the Station will say “but we increased our “likes” from 8,000 to 13,000”. I say GREAT! Now what? How much did that cost? If you spent over $100,000 in promotional inventory to get 5,000 new Facebook fans. That’s $20 per fan to build up Facebook’s web traffic.

If you want to capitalize on the power of Facebook you can integrate their APIs into your website. If you want to work on “likes”, work on them INSIDE Facebook, and help your clients do so. Facebook “fans” report spending $71 a year more than non-fans. Each Facebook Fan is worth an estimated $3.60 annually. This is something that benefits your clients, if you know how to help them with Facebook, and show them how to use it with radio. If you don’t they’re going to think they don’t need radio and will be waiting by the phone for Groupon to call them.

Incidentally, 30% of businesses who have worked with Groupon will not work with them again.

The other dirty little secret is, you don’t need to run promos on your radio station to get 10,000 likes on Facebook. If you want to get 10,000 fans on Facebook you need to customize the landing page visitors arrive at so they don’t just see a bunch of comments from random people when they stop by your fan page. For an example of this, go to http://www.Facebook.com/TacoBell

Taco Bell serves tacos, but on Facebook they are teasing a preview of the new Panic At The Disco music video if you click LIKE. When you click like, it appears auto-magically. Taco Bell is serving up Rock music…go figure. 6 Million “likes” can’t be wrong though.

Subway recently ran a media blitz to tell everyone they could interrupt that $5 Footlongs were back. Thankfully for radio, they spend a lot. Unfortunately for Subway, all they had to do was give everyone who bought $5 footlongs last time the option to get SMS or Email alerts when $5 footlongs were back. Subway doesn’t need to reach 1 million cume or 50,000 AQH. They just need to reach people who want $5 footlongs. As soon as they figure that out, and master it, radio is in deep trouble. So instead of building Groupon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the next flavor of the year….Radio needs to build big lists, made up of smaller lists. Then radio will own the keys to the castle.

I told Radio Ink last month we’ve worked out a system to make money on the web, powered by radio and with one 3 hour weekend show we’re grossing over $60k a month in revenue. That’s a fact. I can show stations how to do it and I’d be delighted to. If you want to learn more and sit in on a free webinar just go to http://www.MattDubiel.com and join my email list. We’re doing it in May.

If we get enough interest, I will share the scariest thing about Facebook no one is considering, and how it will kill your business and your brand if you do not protect against it right away. This is a lesson we garnered from the SaveTheLoop.com experience. Another reason we knew it was worth trying….you keep learning. Failure courts Success.

My Predictions for Radio in 2009

1 Reply

Here are some of my predictions for the radio biz in 2009 and beyond:

1) Sirius/XM will add another name to their merged moniker in an effort to stay alive. (I’d really like to see Google gobble them up). Someone will or they will merge yet again with another company.

2) Ryan Seacrest will realize even more extreme national radio clearance the likes of which we have never seen….which will set the table for Howard Stern to return to terrestrial radio to larger affiliate clearance than he saw during his hey day….and a Rush Limbaugh pay-day to boot. American Idol will have RECORD numbers this January….blowout record numbers.

3) Nights will be the new overnights as stations and groups cut back. Instead of experimenting with new ideas and formats at night, companies will continue to opt for jock free delivery post 7pm.

4) Syndicated voicetracks (ala one of John Tesh’s delivery options as well as Seacrest’s) will sweep the nation allowing owners to get top notch “jocks” without Rush Limbaugh rates and ridiculous amounts of barter. Look for the midday jock at name-your-hot-ac in Denver to be doling her tracks out to 10 other stations nationwide with custom tracks just for that station. Stations who want to know more about this email me.

5) MTV & VH1 styled repeats will hit PPM markets. You know how Rock of Love is always on VH1….well look out because radio in PPM markets will become very similar. Instead of burning non-music content once and never re-purposing it again, look for music stations to re-purpose and repackage their non-music content for repeat at various times throughout the day. This will mean morning shows in the afternoon, countdowns repeated and much more.

6) Shorter talk shows. The days of the 5 hour morning show or 5 hour talk show are going to be numbered. Just like repeating content will be more common place, so will more content and smaller doses of content. Talk stations are going to embrace the 2 hour show, and probably run it twice.

7) Weather will be the #1 local content/feature/benchmark for radio. Weather is practically the #1 talking point of all time. When in doubt, talk to someone about the weather and you have an instant conversation. It will only increase as a “hot” topic for radio in 2009 based on the populations heightened awareness of climate issues, and radio’s lack of other “local” elements as time passes.

8) Talent development and non-spot revenue will be lead by brokered programming. Radio stations will broker more and more airtime that is off peak and even peak to pay the bills and get local programming at the same time. This will be a tremendous opportunity for business savvy wannabe talent/programmers as well as business people who know how to use radio to get results for their business.

9) The next revolution in radio will be the introduction of a Hamburger U type sales training academy for radio sales people. Radio is being crippled by the drought of sales talent and this is an opportunity for either various broadcasting schools or a major broadcasting company. My bet is on either TRN or Triton Media to lead the way in training and mentoring the next radio sales superstars. They are the ones who can revive this business. There has never been a talent drought on the programming side. Great talents have come and gone with great radio stations because of an inability to sell. Radio groups will invest in sales consultants and eschew programming consultants.

10) Arbitron will become a measurement system for the exclusive purpose of bragging rights and programming adjustments. The sales teams of the future will not be selling 40,000 AQH, but will instead be delivering 40 car buyers per month. Reach will be replaced with results. The new sales talent will design programs that sell results for their clients based on real numbers….not guess-timates.

11) Direct Response advertising will be the model for 80% or more of the spots running nationally, and locally while 60% of radio revenue will be non-spot, non-sponsorship related.

12) All the programming talent that fought off joining “sales” for all these years will reconsider their stance as they see opportunity in brokering time, selling radio campaigns that work and producing their way back on the air as quality production and stellar writing become even more important.

13) More and more AM stations will simulcast on the FM. FM Sports, and various forms of FM talk will thankfully put the 5th lame rock station playing Boulevard of Broken Dreams off the dial in your market, USA.

14) Radio Disney will migrate to FM and claim their tween-ers and once they do, competition for the 6-12 year old demo will expand to include Nickelodeon and others….which will in turn spawn a revival in what was thought to be a lost demo for radio.

15) Streaming and websites will both get better and worse. All the bad websites will only get worse. The streams of the same station you can get on the FM or AM dial will make less and less sense as time passes unless supplemented with additional options for customized personal listening. Any radio company with a radio station website will be doomed. The winners will have lifestyle websites for their audiences.

16) Westwood One will get gobbled up by Triton Media (if the feds will allow that and it doesn’t seem as though they’re discriminating against much lately) or somehow, someway….Sirius XM will find a way to make a play for them which would set the table nicely for Howard’s triumphant return to terrestrial radio and Mel’s ability to leverage his Sirius XM content elsewhere.

17) In Chicago, either WLS AM or WGN AM are going to have a better year…and the other one is going to choke. Bonneville’s 3 stations will continue to dominate and grow. CBS’s balance sheet will look better, but audience share and revenue share will suffer dramatically…and the tough question will be deciding which of their properties NOT to blow up as they’re all going to look pretty rough. Emmis is in trouble. There’s so much opportunity and I don’t expect them to discover how to capture it on 2009…..but Marv and Tisa…I’ve got some ideas…I know what you’re thinking…why would you listen to me? My queston is why would you listen to the same consulting company you’ve been listening to for years, for yet another year? I’d like to see someone get wise and program and sell a station to the suburbs….a chicago stick. I mean forget about the city and the miracle mile….oak street beach….yada yada yada. Design a station around the people who live, work, and spend their money in the suburbs…and you’ll make a mint.

That’s enough for now I think. Happy New Year! Please feel free to add your predictions below and we’ll see what shakes out in 2009.