What worked in marketing as recently as 2019 is not working as well now. Don’t you hate when that happens?

I’ve helped over 60 companies – many of them start-ups – fine-tune their message and reach their prospects through outbound marketing. A lot of the marketing worked: companies grew, some were acquired, a few went through an IPO.

For years I spent many hours writing and proofing direct mailers and putting millions in the mail each year, with response rates up to 6%.

Now the game has changed.

Response rates are down, people are better at filtering out marketing messages and any type of cold call. Even print-biased direct marketers have added an Internet component to direct mail with personalized URLs to bring response rates back up to acceptable levels.

A Google search is the dominant way people seek information – 86% of searches are with Google.

If you are a start-up, a small business, or any size business, Google searches matter.

Did you know that Google doesn’t search the live web? It searches a copy of your mobile website that it has indexed.

If your website pages not part of the copy, they won’t appear in the search results, much less on the first page. Even though some live web results are appearing in searches now, such as Twitter, this still holds true for most web sites.

So it is important that your web site be Google-friendly.

Here is a free tool to test your web site for Google friendliness – which is another way of saying it is optimized for search – and compare it to your competitors:

Website Grader (note: you don’t have to put in your email address to get the report)

What was the most surprising piece of information about your report and grade?

What about your competitors?

Were there items on it that you haven’t thought about or implemented yet?

Most companies have plenty of missing pieces when it comes to digital marketing

Contact me to improve your score.