Wine Blog Association

Small business marketing tips are everywhere these days and if you pay attention, even in the most unexpected places.

My partner, Greg and I attended a search engine optimization symposium presented by Search Engine Workshops in Raleigh, North Carolina. Greg lives in Montreal and I live in Toronto, so it was a great opportunity to meet and catch up on a few small projects while learning the latest SEO techniques we will employ in marketing our business.

Robin Nobles inspired us to develop creativity in our content development; Andy Beale gave us an in-depth overview of blog marketing for businesses, Dave Barry discussed dynamically delivered web pages and Michael Marshall…..well, if you want to know what Michael is up to, you will have to attend the next symposium.

John Alexander renewed our enthusiasm about keyword research with Wordtracker and gave added a few small surprises, as John always does.

However, one of the most important business lessons during the two day session wasn’t taught in the classroom and it wasn’t delivered by the usual suspects.

The first night in town, we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. A waiter approached our table and introduced himself; “Good evening everyone, my name is Omar and I am your waiter this evening.”

Omar was taking our dinner order when we noticed that he wasn’t taking notes which caused some concern in our group. Omar told us not to worry and that after he had taken our 5 orders that he would repeat the order….of the table of 6 behind him and then he would repeat our orders, which he did, flawlessly.

The food was terrific and the service was great so the next night we decided to go back to the same restaurant. Of course, we asked to be seated in Omar’s section. Once again, Omar delivered. When the kitchen took too long to cook a meal for one of our associates, Omar provided a free cocktail, brought over some finger food and boxed the dinner for later…..no charge. Read more…

There are numerous ways that web has in some ways leveled the playing field for small businesses. As the web continues to develop as a business tool the small and medium size businesses needs to grow and learn how to harness all the capabilities that the web has to offer. The importance of highly targeted local search engines is growing as customers look to the Web to find goods and services.

A recent study by Borrel Associates contends that by 2010 local search advertising will reach $4 billion by 2010 which will considerably exceed the $420 million spent in 2005.

The overall growth of Web based advertising was reported in a recent Clickz News article. They say that global online local search market, which includes Internet Yellow Pages, local search and wireless, is set to grow from the $3.4 billion it brought in last year to nearly $13 billion by 2010.
Local search is a growing part of online searching. Many small businesses have relied on the efforts of traditional media, yellow pages, direct mailers, city pages etc to reach their local market. The fact is that local searches provide retailers with data that the Yellow Pages and other traditional methods can’t provide. This includes interactive maps and the website of the business which can tell the story better than print ads. Read more…

For reasons scientists are not entirely clear about, the olfactory sense is closely linked to memory. As performer Garth Brooks once commented, a whiff of a certain perfume and he “was right back in high school.” All of us associate certain smells with times and places in our lives.

A woman of a certain age has probably had lots of different favorite perfumes over the course of her life. Fragrance is a lot like fashion in that, on the surface, both seem to be dominated by fads, but, in fact, some enduring classics emerge.

Despite the faddishness of the perfume world, there are still some scents that seem almost timeless. I like to put Chanel No. 5 in that category. First introduced in 1923, this venerable perfume is still well liked even by modern celebrities. The newest celebrity spokesperson for the line is Nicole Kidman.

Youth Dew, which came out in the 1950s, is still a classic but it tends to be regarded as more “dated.” It’s a rich, powerful, Oriental scent that is-as an overall style-a bit heavy for today’s tastes which favor light, fruity, on-the-go kind of fragrances.

In the world of perfume, even surviving a decade can put you in the near-classic category like Tresor by Lancome (1990), Obsession and Eternity by Calvin Klein, and Happy by Clinique.

If you want to give your mother perfume this Mother’s Day you have two main strategies. You can select one of many new fragrances on the market (which is a good idea if your mom likes to try new things or if you happen to know she likes a particular new perfume) or you can go with the classics.

From time to time, a beloved fragrance is discontinued. A good case study for this phenomenon involves a perfume called Evening in Paris. Created by Ernst Breaux (the “nose” behind Chanel No. 5), this perfume was phenomenally popular and came in a very distinctive deep blue bottle in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s. Its fragrance resembles Chanel No. 5: it’s a sparkling adelhyde type floral. But anyone shopping the perfume counters in the U.S. after 1990 could not have found a trace of Evening in Paris. Even if you asked for it, most sales people would not have even heard of it. Read more…