It looks like the battle of the budget has claimed the state of Minnesota, or the government at least. But many on Twitter are quick to point out that although state parks are now shut down over the holiday weekend, …

It’s a tough question, especially in a bad economy.

The question really begs another question – what is your goal for your site?

If you are operating it as a real business where you hope to either supplement your current income or rely on it as your sole source of income – then you need to be prepared to invest in search (it’s often the foundation of your marketing and a consistent source of regular traffic).

You can invest time or money and in most cases, you usually need to invest both.

Lately we’ve been working with quite a few CMO’s at companies that are considering the leap into social media marketing, many of which are in the process of choosing a social media agency, nailing down scope of work, and all of which are still unsure if it will be a good or a bad investment.

To be honest, this is a scary leap for marketers, who are being pushed from competitors and internal staff to enter this space , and who then feel the inevitable pressure to quantify their results.

Although many shoppers will have less to spend during this holiday season, some of that money will find its way to online retailers.

The Associated Press has an article about Google and the fact that the company barely advertises, especially when compared with its competitors.

Though the small and medium business (SMB) market has a handle on the importance of a website, nearly six out of ten are not actively doing search or other types of online marketing.

Companies that buy search advertising may be flushing away part of their budgets as they bid on brand keywords they probably don’t need.

This is the ninth part in a ten part series.

Think of how silly this is: advertising generates revenue: would you put off your income?!  Handle this one this way:

Avinash Kaushik has a thought-provoking post on how to optimize your search marketing budget. He is right on in his assertion that most search marketing programs are far too heavily skewed to popular brand keywords—the words people who already know you use.

SEMPO in conjuction with Radar Research and IntelliSurvey have recently completed a research study (the State of Search Engine Marketing survey) on the topics of Video and Mobile search adverstising. The study concluded that search marketers wanted to pay the same or less for Mobile/Video search advertising than traditional search marketing strategies.

Here are some key points found from the study:

Yuri thinks so and wrote a post last week entitled Create a small business website on a small budget to tell you what you need to think about if you want to get it done.

Here’s the basic checklist of what you should be doing:

* research your customers
* research your keywords
* plan your website
* get a content management system
* get a website template
* improve template usability
* make the template accessible

Thanks to Jim Berkowitz and his CRM Mastery E-Journal for pointing me to the MarketingProfs article, Five Proven Ways to Waste Money With Pay-per-Click Advertising by John Grant.

Expect this online holiday shopping season to be a blockbuster as 80 percent of American Internet users will purchase gifts online, according to a Zogby International poll commissioned by AOL. New York City will lead the rest, more than doubling the spend of the nearest market.

Over the years we have answered many a phone call where a prospective client is frustrated with the poor performance of their website(s).

If you sell to government, non-profit or educational accounts, your firm may be accustomed to managing this next challenge.

I got a lead through our website the other day with an interesting comment attached. The prospect was requesting specific information on pricing for our services but as you can read below, they simply copied the information from what another SEO provided them.

I recently read an interesting Marketing Sherpa case study on a successful search engine marketing (SEM) project.

It seems that having a project come in On-Budget is the holy-grail of project management, especially when it comes to CRM projects.

I had a client say something to me the other day that I thought was rather interesting.

Budget Rent-A-Car has an interesting viral marketing campaign going on right now. It’s called “Up Your Budget” and the prize is a hefty $10,000. The deal is it isn’t just one prize, there’re many and people are treasure hunting for clues all over the country.

If public relations tactics like special events, brochures, broadcast plugs and press releases dominate your answer, you’re missing the best PR has to offer.