A few weeks ago, Jeremy wrote an excellent article concerning Black Friday and why it’s important to consider all the cloud has to offer for managing such a busy holiday. Remember that? If not, you can (and should!) give yourself a little refresher course, here. Now, to establish the obvious, Black Friday is a high-traffic “holiday”. The same thing goes for Cyber Monday. However, these days, this might be little more than the result of heavy marketing campaigns and layers upon layers of hype that have accumulated around it over the years. We recently stumbled over some intriguing statistics that The Wall Street Journal dug up. For those of you hardcore deal-seekers who may be tuning in–you should probably consider sitting down for this.

Did you know that Black Friday may not always be your best bet for finding the absolute lowest price or steepest discount? It was hard for us to believe, too! There’s always such a craze leading up to and—of course—on Black Friday; from the lines wrapping around entire city blocks, to the blinking, coffee-slugging early-birds maniacally refreshing retail sites. However, according to the aforementioned study conducted by The Wall Street Journal and Decide, Inc., all of this effort (and, well, misery) might not be monetarily worth it in the end.

Interestingly, it seems that major retailers are pumping up marketing campaigns surrounding their more extreme deals, while inflating the price of other items to avoid a diminution of profits. Therefore, let’s say you want a specific TV, and see that it’s absurdly marked down at a specific store. Go for it! You wait in those lines, hurdle those human beings, and get that TV by any means necessary! However, if you’re shopping in general or looking for something that has a significantly reduced demand post-holidays, you might want to just hang out for a week or so. Or, you know what? Be a go-getter! Create your own shopping holiday and have a “Super Saturday” a few weeks early, or something.

Before you give yourself a head-slap for time spent in the calamity of Black Fridays past, rest assured that Black Friday does offer some outrageous deals and you absolutely will and have saved yourself a good chunk of cash. Our point is, a lot of expert deal-hunters might be looking for bargains on days that aren’t Black Friday, and you’ll see high traffic spikes then, too. So, although you definitely need to consider Jeremy’s advice for Black Friday because of the less-informed masses who will virtually stampede through your virtual doors, you might ALSO want to do some research and apply it here and there at other times throughout the year. That way, you won’t be unprepared for the hordes of shoppers who have really done their homework.

Take a look at this graphic we pulled from Decide, Inc., and mull it over. Happy Autumn (and happy shopping!) from TurnKey Internet.

Hey, everyone! My name is Emily Wegener, and I’m the new girl on the block here at TurnKey Internet. As TurnKey’s Interactive Marketing Specialist, I could not have hoped for a more fun and exciting time to join these amazing people in the cloud. Let me tell you why.

As you Facebookers and Tweeters and Press-Release-Readers out there have probably already heard, we just began an awesome promotion. For those of you who haven’t, we are calling it “Let’s Make a Deal!”, based on the concept of the popular game show. Have you played yet? If not, you’re missing out!

Here’s the scoop: If you head to www.turnkeyinternet.net/deal, you’ll arrive at the “Let’s Make a Deal” page where the fun begins. You can get there from a bunch of other places as well, like our homepage and social media sites. As long as you get there, we don’t mind how. You decide; it’s your world. Anyway, on the deal page, you’re met with three briefcases and a human. No, that is not an Olsen twin.

This is where the game gets interesting. We’re offering HUGE product offers and discounts on absolutely everything. We picked out the deals that we thought were the coolest, and placed them neatly in the aforementioned briefcases for your consideration. Disagree with us? Think you can come up with a better, more personalized and relevant deal? TELL US. Our spin on this game show not only allows you to do that, but it encourages you to! You’ll see an option to talk to our “Deal-maker”, where you can negotiate your own special deal. It’s fun! Try it!

Lastly, most importantly, and most wonderfully, ”Let’s Make a Deal!” is being served up piping-hot with a side of “Deal of a Lifetime”. As the promotion progresses, TurnKey Internet will be randomly selecting winners from the participant pool, and awarding them a lifetime of free service! That’s right, a LIFETIME. AKA: The rest of your life. AKA: Forever and ever. I’m sure you understand. Didn’t find your perfect deal? Doubtful, but no biggie. We’re just happy you came to play! The giveaway is no-purchase-necessary, and if you would like to enter anyway, simply mail a letter of intent to us at our headquarters in Latham, NY. You can find the mailing address here.

Here’s the thing, guys: we really, really appreciate you. We like that you choose to use our services, and read our blog, and hang out with us in all of the other awesome ways that you do. That being said, we also like to give back to you. We want you to save money, and we want you to have fun doing it. This is our attempt at helping you kill those two birds with one stone. I mean, everyone offers discount codes and coupons, right? But how often can you make your own?

So, without further ado, I know I speak on behalf of all of my new TurnKey pals when I say – Have fun, and thanks a million. No, thanks a zillion.

There is a whole new world out there when it comes to advertising and reaching the multitude of potential clients.  For many years companies would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on as many different types of advertising as they could.  One way would include a plethora of ads, whether it is banner ads, text ads, display ads or interstitial ads, to name a few.  All of which take your specific product(s) and post it on the website or series of websites in which you contracted with.  Phenomenal; we can be right in front of anyone who visits that specific website. It’s great to be front and center.

As the years went on these “ads” became very competitive. Companies spending exorbitant amounts of money, and basically fighting over the top trafficked sites on the Internet.  If you couldn’t financially stay in the game with the bigger companies in your industry, then what’s the point?  Now, don’t get me wrong, there are thousands of sites you can buy banner ads on, but when you’re financially competing with “Fortune” companies, it’s frustrating to say the least.

Let’s think about it this way.  Instead of picking and choosing sites to purchase adds on, maybe half of the people that see them are actually interested, why not go after people individually? Hmmmm. Now that’s a thought.  Go after the site or go after the actual consumer.  In comes retargeting.

Every company generates traffic to their own websites.  We work everyday on getting our products and services out there and bringing potential clients to our site.  Imagine a client coming and viewing your website for whatever reason, whether they meant to come, or just happened to stumble upon it while browsing the web.  With retargeting, a “cookie” is placed into the viewer’s web-browser. Think about it like you would a temporary tattoo if you will.  Now the banner ads that you would of purchased on a specific site, follow your potential clients around like a footprint.  The banner ads are attached to the “cookie”, so that when that client lands on a website, your banner ads pop up, in complete view of someone that very well might be interested in what you have to offer.

So what’s the benefit if they already went to your site, but didn’t buy anything?  Find out in part 2