Without a strong brand image and a unified brand, your business does not have a solid foundation to grow on. We all know the story of The Three Little Pigs and what happened to the homes made out of straw and sticks! Core to building a solid brand is making sure your Internet domain name, toll free vanity number, and business name all match and blend together. If they are different, you will find that you are losing a lot of business from customers who can’t find you and come across your competition instead.

Not having a domain name that matches your business name can be an easy mistake for new entrepreneurs and small business start ups. However, it can also be an extremely expensive one, not only from having to secure different Internet domain names, or toll free numbers, or changing your business name, but also in terms of new research that will need to be done and redrafting marketing campaigns.

So before you go too deep into the planning stage of a new venture or spinning off a new division, make sure you can reserve and secure the appropriate matching business name, vanity number, and Internet domain names. Just making sure that they are available isn’t enough. Hundreds of new businesses and websites are created each day. Lock in your Internet domain name early if you want to succeed.

Another factor that is often overlooked by those rushing to register new companies and web domain names is checking to see whether your proposed business name is in use in another state or has been used recently. If the name has been taken, you may want to spend time checking out the reputation of that company name. The last thing you want is to secure a new Internet domain name and launch a business only to find that one with a similar name was just shut down for fraud!

Vanity phone numbers have proven to be one of the greatest marketing tools for improving branding and increasing advertising effectiveness, but it doesn’t end there. The recent changes in the economy are demanding that companies not only fight harder to expand their market share in their current niches but also become the company of choice in other niches within their industries in order to maintain revenue levels and grow. Vanity numbers can help accomplish this goal.

Vanity numbers that spell out words can be used to target specific groups and needs within your given industry, enabling your enterprise to carve out big slices of market share and dominate them. Obviously there are advantages to having generic vanity phone numbers for your industry if they occupy the number one spot like 800-FLOWERS, 800-CONTACTS, or 800-MORTGAGE. However, if you can’t get your hands on these for some reason, then look at targeted vanity phone numbers that can help you take over different market segments one at a time. These phone numbers make it easier to maximize marketing ROI with more targeted campaigns. Once you have locked in a top position in a certain niche, it is going to cost your competitors much more to try and compete with you in it, no matter how good their products or services. Then, while they are planning attacks on you in one area of your industry, you have the luxury of a head start to go after other niches with new vanity phone numbers while they are not paying attention.

How can you put this marketing strategy into play for yourself? Start by looking at customer needs and desires. Then take a look at how your company differentiates itself in your industry. Typically, you can harness factors like being easier and faster to deal with than your competitors in order to grab attention and drive prospects to action. Use words like FAST, EASY, EZ, and NOW in your vanity phone numbers for maximum effect. You may not even be the fastest or easiest in your industry, but it is all about perception. Harness the power of winning vanity phone numbers and grow your business.

Are you analyzing marketing strategy metrics to improve the quality of your website? If not, then it's time to start now. There are key metrics you need to look into and study. It is important to have an in-depth understanding about your customers in order to gain time and a competitive edge in today's marketplace.

Some important marketing strategy metrics that deserve your attention include the following:

Website Visits:  Consider those statistics by day, week, month, and year. These will give you an idea about when your peak season is and what time of day visitors usually go to your site.   

• Visitor Geography:  Where are your visitors coming from? Consider if you are getting hits from the target area.
• Traffic Sources:  What sites refer visitors to yours (what search engine if any, blogs, websites, etc)?
• Bounce Rate:  Percentage of visitors who abandoned your site within seconds.
• Content:  Determine how your visitors are interacting with the text and other information on your website. It is possible to see their reactions if you have a blog or forum section on the site.
• SEO Ranking:  Is your website located within the first few pages of the search engine results page (SERP)? Related to traffic sources, your search engine ranking will determine whether you’ll get relevant visitors. What are the figures showing?

Besides all the facts stated above, it is crucial to study marketing metrics to determine how effective your campaign is toward fulfilling your company's goal.

A huge explosion of marketing online has occurred across almost every industry in the last few years. This growth in marketing online has not only been due to advances in technology but also out of a need to expand into new markets, lower costs, and for individuals to launch their own businesses since the downturn in the economy. Unfortunately, as with any industry that booms, it also means that marketing online has increasingly become the new favorite haunt of fraudsters - well, in addition to the banking and foreclosure industry of course.

This situation applies both to scam companies selling a variety of services and products as well as companies offering marketing online, including SEO marketing online, website design, toll free numbers, and social media marketing online. Why? Certainly the current economic situation has made many people more desperate than ever before, and they are doing things to others they would have never previously dreamed of doing. However, many of the other fraudsters now jumping into marketing online are those who have been chased out of the stock market, car sales, and the mortgage industry. They are just looking for the next hot thing that is selling quickly and will allow them to  take advantage of people - marketing online offers them that.

Another reason marketing online is so popular with fraudsters is that it is very hard to track them down. Anyone can now throw together a scam company in a couple of hours on the Internet, complete with a new Internet domain name and website. This process is even easier for those based outside of the U.S. Really, nothing can be done in most cases if you are scammed by fraudsters operating out of remote foreign countries. Even if they can be tracked down, the expense is just too much for law enforcement.

So what can you do to protect yourself from scams involving marketing online? Educate yourself a little. You don’t have to become an expert at marketing online, but you should look around and get an idea of what actually works and what doesn’t so you can recognize most scams when you see them. Next, take a couple of minutes to research companies before you send them your money. How long have they been in business? Of course, new businesses are necessary to grow in new directions, but it is certainly much wiser to go with a company marketing online that has been around for over ten years. At a minimum, make sure a company's website has real contact information posted, not just a web form. Look for an actual contact name, physical address, and business phone number.