Hi there!  We hope you found our AMA-Inland Empire content valuable, as promised here are the links to the stories. If you are looking table colleague Aaron Norris, he can be found at The Norris Group. Owned Relations – The idea that your organization is: The owner of expert, authoritative and trustworthy content. Benefits from owned knowledge, valuing its placement and distribution. Own relationships, treating relationships the way they want to be treated. Read the full article. Hyperlocal News Domination – The Process for Posting PR for Digital Value What is the Goal of your Content? The goal of content should be simple – it needs to be an authoritative piece on something of value. Content MUST to be authoritative It should fit your site’s content topics and focus You must curate content for better performance BONUS – it should be shareable Read the full article. InlandEmpire.US Find out more about how we work, promote your stories and curate the best content across the Inland Empire. We are a bit different, listen to our story – http://inlandempire.us/partner-and-advertise/ Enter your promotional code here Bonus – Watch our Bad Neighborhood Video

Owned Relations Owned Relations is the idea that your organization is: The owner of expert, authoritative and trustworthy content Know who you are as an organization Benefits from owned knowledge, valuing its placement and distribution. Know what you Want from your Content. Own relationships, treating relationships the way they want to be treated. Don’t guess, know how to distribute your content. The Problem The Internet, social media, and mobile devices have shattered the old models. Pressures on journalism and media companies, along with self-publishing has changed the way content has been distributed. The Solution Business and life should be simple, so that your organization can have a certain amount of marketing health in this chaotic environment. We call this marketing maturity, and in your public relations, you should have a digital public relations maturity. We believe you should strive to have and maintain meaningful relationships, building your brand and improving your communication to your customers and evangelist first, leads and prospects second. Each person is a handshake, make sure you take care of your relationships. The more mature your systems, the simpler the solution becomes – the better your relationships become. To make this solution work, you must know who…

Ron Burgess – Founder of four businesses and consultant to hundreds more. To start a new business today, look at where niche markets are being created. To properly investigate this subject, one must look at the primary trends shaping our economy and niche markets now. Market disruption is occurring across nearly all industries. This disruption, of course, is due to the digital revolution. The digital revolution is the nexus of incredible computer power, advanced software, and (Internet) connectivity. (The New Online Paradigm: Channel Disruption) This disruption goes far beyond buying online. It is the backbone of how parts from around the world are made into a product, getting a product to the best fulfillment location, and finally mapping the last few miles to the home or business. This is happening in industrial distribution as well as consumer goods. Digital also now helps run the machines that make products and will probably drive the trucks that will transport what the machines make. Digital, which creates the numbers for engineering, also drives the visual interpretation of the product design and selling tools. Existing technology, which will become much more widely used, includes three-dimensional viewing of products and specifications, live video demonstrations and…

Five Marketing Musts for 2018 Our annual outlook for clients by Ronald L. Burgess Trends tend to be slowly emerging changes, rather than more quickly occurring fads resulting in a molasses-like tide that can take some by surprise if not trained on the slow movement. This year may break out of that stable axiom. While not fads, the big changes this year may, indeed, be more apparent. Why? Several reasons. First, love him or hate him, Trump has rocked the economy, not only with the tax reform which will be a help to most Sub-Chapter S  businesses, but by the changing regulatory environment. Business owners rarely have had the current optimism about growth.  Helping Trump is a general momentum coming out of the worse economic times since the Depression. Second is the intersection of business growth, tough hiring, and technology. Hiring is tough because it has its own perfect storm: Fewer working people, too few qualified–skilled workers, and hyper employment (my term, less than 4% unemployment). In California this is not true now but will possibly happen prior to year-end, but in states like Colorado, the unemployment rate is already below 2.2% unemployment in the metro Denver area. Finally, the…

Truth in SEO. By Jon Burgess I get lots of questions about search engine optimization (SEO): what to do, how to do it, what is it, does it work? I rarely get questions about the dark side of SEO, what we call black-hat SEO. If I were to be asked those questions they would be: How come I lost all of my traffic? My phones are not ringing anymore! Why can’t I Google my own company? Why did my site get marketed as WebSpam? Honesty is the best policy – and we are now in the age where Google expects to find truth in your content. If you are not truthful your site is severely pushed. There are two levels of this purgatory: first your site is marked as Web SPAM. Second: is that everyone connected to the offender could be included, in what Google calls a “Bad Neighborhood,” where the ripple effect pulls lots of websites down with the offender. I have even seen where sites on shared hosting are affected by one bad site using the same IP address. I have seen too many sites that put their hand in the black-hat cookie jar, got caught, and then…

Shortening the Customer Ordering Process by Ron Burgess We are working with many of our clients to mitigate the “Amazon Shift” taking place in most product distribution channels. Amazon just announced the latest benchmark, another step to shorten the customer ordering process. Called “Amazon Dash,” (or Dash-Replenishment) a small Wi-Fi device connects the customer to their account for immediate shipment. Placed next to the product storage area, or in a convenient place, just push the button and another unit is ordered (such as paper towels, detergent, coffee filters) and placed on your next home delivery shipment. While auto replenishment systems are not entirely new, Amazon will add scale to the concept, and become the warehouse and delivery system for many companies such as Brother’s Printer Ink replacement system. http://goo.gl/AOEMVQ RedFusion is working with clients to strategically mitigate the channel disruption caused by Amazon and others using the Internet and fast delivery systems. The Amazon Dash program, like its innovative Kindle, and Fire TV, will likely add one more advantage to Amazon Prime program that helps block competitors. When the button is pushed, the manufacturer’s specified product is delivered only by Amazon’s system. This adds another level of stickiness and fulfills five, of…

by Jon Burgess – 12/30/15 Note to readers. This story is 1,900 words on marketing, so we have added “+Expand” links within sections, so you can skim, or expand the sections to find more content. Have a great 2016! – Jon Businesses, housing prices, the stock market all run in cycles. Marketing runs in cycles too. And in 2015, not too much changed from 2014, but at the same time we believe we have entered into a period where the cycle has looped back to a traditional marketing approach. Many of the new words or jargon many be fresh, but we are seeing the same traditional, proven marketing tactics. [1] For two decades, digital marketers and businesses have been chasing change: always trying new things, cool ideas, thinking that bleeding edge technology may be the answer. But, in the last few years, the sparkling new ideas have slowed their growth. Digital marketing has calmed, and the Internet storm has passed. [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”@redfusionmedia” suffix=””]In 2016 and beyond, we see clear sailing ahead for marketers and businesses.[/inlinetweet] Seems simple, maybe too simple for most marketers and business owners to swallow, so we’ll layout the trends. Google has hit a “sweet spot” Mobile has…

Jon Burgess honored as “Agency Professional of the Year” at the Inland Empire Media Awards Gala on October 15th at the Mission Inn in Riverside. The “Agency Professional of the Year” is given to an individual from the Inland Empire who works in advertising, marketing or public relations, and provides outstanding services and professionalism to the Inland Empire, beyond the normal requirements of their position. The finalists for the Agency Professional of the Year were: Adrian Hyatt-Ward, President of HyattWard Advertising, Russ Cornelius Founder of Brand Savants, Victor Suarez owner of Your Silent Outburst, Mary Winter founder of Winter Advertising Agency, Mark Landon, partner at Figlo & Landon and Jon Burgess, Co-Founder of RedFusion Media. “I was a bit shocked when I heard my name, knowing that a number of the finalists are people I look up to in the advertising industry,” said Jon Burgess. “It is real honor. I am very thankful that our work for clients and the time spent supporting the area and media industry has been recognized by other professionals.” Eighteen winners were announced at the signature event for the American Advertising Federation – Inland Empire, to honor those who provide outstanding service to the advertising…

Have you ever sat down to look at the value or costs of prospects calling your business? You should. Understanding where, how and when phone leads are finding your business is now fairly easy, because you have tools at your fingertips. You just need to do some calculations. First, how can you know where someone called from? Sure you should always ask “where did you find us?” or “how did you hear about us?” Many of our clients have a simple excel spreadsheets that receptionists use to ask a couple of questions before passing the lead on.  Other clients use a CRM to track the source of the lead.  All sources become important, because if you know the source of the lead, you can make some educated guesses on what advertising budgets you have used to gain the lead. Second, are you actively tracking leads? It should be common knowledge that you can cheaply purchase tracking phone numbers. We highly recommend that if you are doing branding campaigns, you should always use tracked phone numbers. Tracking can help you find better advertising media, compare reach and find the best performing ads. You can also track phone calls from your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns…

by Jon Burgess – 9/18/15 I’ve read too many posts, tweets and statements from marketing pundits who say that content marketing is somehow new or revolutionary. A statement on “Traditional Marketing is less effective…use content marketing” Content marketing & traditional Marketing  – I don’t like this message, it is delivered by a sales guy, not a marketer, and I would argue there is no need to split traditional from content marketing. Content marketing is NOT new. In fact it is old, traditional marketing. Marketing is about finding and keeping customers. Marketing really is the skill of creating a Perceived Value in the customers head. So, to communicate to prospects and customers you need to have content. Content is what tells the story about your organization, that wins and keeps customers. Let’s look at some famous content marketing from not just last century, but the century before that. John Deere created “The Furrow” in 1886 and grew the magazine into the preeminent farmers magazine. Creating content for Sears Catalog traces back to a mailer in 1888, and by 1894 it was the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog, with colored black, brown and red shoes by 1897. National Geographic Magazine was first published in…