The purpose of any insurance policy is to protect you against loss. All of us have insurance on our cars, homes, boats, RV's, lives and health. In business, we have it on our property, equipment, facilities, operations and grounds just in case someone falls or gets hurt.

THEN WHY NOT INSURE YOUR ADVERTISING?! Let’s face it, when you advertise, it’s a crap shoot on whether it will bring in any new clients. What happens if it doesn't work right away? What if there was a way, for around $25.00, you could verify the actual return on all your advertisements? Yellow pages, news papers, billboards, radio, television, coupons, direct mail, website, flyers, brochures, etc…? You name it and it can be tracked. Call tracking can provide you with real-time stats on every call answered, dropped or missed, as well as tell you which ad or promotion the call originated from.

You are spending thousands of dollars on the ad; its reckless not to spend an additional $25.00 to measure whether that ad is working for you or not. Instead of waiting months, you can immediately see if your ad is working or not with Call Tracking. Make any necessary adjustments; change the copy, alter the presentation, or make any other changes that feel are necessary to make the ad campaign work for you, not against you.

CALL TRACKING FROM UTAH WEB SERVICES is the answer. We implement a unique phone number on each piece of advertising, connect the number to a web interface and then redirect that unique number to your switchboard. No software, no special equipment, no extra phone lines, no contracts, no hidden fees, and no training. Your employees simply answer the phone as they typically do, but now with Advertising Insurance, you know exactly where the call comes from, the prospect’s name, their telephone number, their address, and which advertising piece the call originated from. The conversation between your employees and prospects is recorded for quality control purposes. Detailed information is captured for you to use now or later. Now you can gauge if your advertising paid for itself or has failed you.

IMAGINE TOTAL CONTROL OF YOUR ADVERTISING ROI – You no longer have to question whether your advertisements work or not, now you can be sure. Negotiate better deals with hard stats to validate success or failure, drop the unsuccessful advertising and spend more on the advertisements where ROI is verified. Come up with an accurate cost per sale figure and manage your bottom line more effectively.

Google continues to focus and weigh their search results using personalized search and geographically targeted searches. Most Americans will spend 80% of whatever they earn within a 20 mile radius of their home. With that in mind, it is understandable why so many advertising mediums, including Google, are scrambling to provide an opportunity for advertisers to connect with buyers in his or her neighborhood.

Google has spent millions of dollars getting to know who we are, what we like, what we shop for, what we search for, the sites we frequent, the blogs we gather information from, the news sites we stay up-to-date with, the celebrities we follow, our style, our personal health and pretty much anything else they can find out about us that we openly share and allow over the web without even knowing it.

As unnerving as this reality is, we tend to just continue doing what we’re doing and enjoying an online experience without any regard of what is happening behind the scenes. It is becoming more and more acceptable to allow Google to continue gathering whatever information they can on me, my family, my neighbors and my friends. After all, I can't see them watching, I don't get a notice that someone is following me around while I am surfing the web, I can't see anyone else's reflection in my flat panel monitor. Basically, out of site and certainly out of mind…so go ahead and gather whatever information you need.

Google continues to gather information so they can deliver exactly what I want, or what they think I want. If I am a nature lover and search for ‘dolphins’, my search history would lead Google to provide me with nature sites, fish sites and related environmental sites. However, if I am a football nut and search for dolphins, Google will probably provide me with football sites, the Miami Dolphins site and any top sports sites that match my query. This amazing process of a search engine knowing more about me than I would like will continue as their processes become more refined and transparent.

Call Tracking - Only a fool doesn't track their ads!

Thomas Tusser once said, “A fool and his money are soon parted". This has never been so apparent than in the advertising and marketing arena. There are hundreds of advertising choices from TV, Radio, Print, Online, Viral, Social, Coupons, Billboards and all of the other basics. Any business needs a steady stream of new customers to survive and continue staying in business.

Then why in the world would any smart businessman plow money into an advertising campaign that he cannot control or at least evaluate the return, if any? Just because the sales rep told you that the ad was a hit or provides you with some manufactured stats on the penetration of their advertising piece, doesn’t make the ad successful. Bottom line: if the ad made you money it was a success, and if you have no idea whether it did or didn't make you any money, then it was a failure.

Welcome to UNIQUE CALL TRACKING. Simple and straightforward. Here’s how the program works:

1. Utah Web Services provides you with a unique phone number to put on your yellow page ad, magazine ad, direct mail coupon, radio, website or whatever piece of advertising you want to verify your return.
2. A potential client calls that unique number; the call is routed through a web server and then connects to your current phone number. It will come in just like any other call.
3. We track the caller, show you their address and name, time stamp the call, record the conversation for future use or management and show you exactly which advertisement the prospect called from.
4. No contracts. No software. No hassle. No change in business. No worries.
5. Once the ad expires, the number is cancelled and turned back into UWS.

Yes, it’s really that simple!!!

If you spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an ad, who in their right mind would not spend an additional $20 to confirm whether the ad dollars were spent wisely or not? It defies logic as to why anyone would not place a unique tracking number on every marketing piece, every yellow page ad, every marketing brochure, every magazine ad, newspaper ad or virtually any other advertising piece that leaves the front door of their business.

With so much to gain and virtually nothing to lose, why aren't you tracking?

ARE YOU TRACKING? TIME TO FIND REAL CLIENTS AND REAL PROFITS

If you are not tracking all of your advertising, then you're wasting money! Do your local charity a favor and just write them a check instead of wasting your money. At least this way you’ll know that your money is actually doing some good.

IF WE CAN'T SAVE YOU MONEY - YOUR CALL TRACKING IS FREE!!!!

1. Target your primary audience. A good advertising campaign should be catered to your primary niche market. Oftentimes, businesses make the mistake of creating generic ads that do not grab attention or speak to their primary customer.
2. Highlight your advantages. A key in advertising is to accentuate the advantages your company has over your competitors. This gives you a strong competitive edge and allows your customers to see why your products, goods or services are better than the next guy’
3. Establish an identity. Almost everyone recognizes the symbolic golden arches that represent McDonald's. There are plenty of products in the world that are easily recognized by symbols, logos or packaging. Image is very important when it comes to effective advertising and promoting your company. Smart advertisers know that building a consistent image equals higher sales. Read Three Brand Identity Myths That Will Bring Your Business Down.
4. Spend money to earn money. There are billions of ways to save money, but typically advertising is not the place where you should cut corners. Cutting corners will negatively affect sales, and in turn, negatively affect your bottom line. Successful advertising may cost more money than you had expected to spend, but the results are well worth it. Check out information on Call Tracking to learn valuable information on tracking results on all your advertising campaigns. Call tracking is an easy, inexpensive way to figure out which ad campaigns are bringing in the most leads and which ones aren’t.
5. Advertise in the right places. Remember, your favorite radio stations, magazines, or TV programs may not be the same as your audience. Research what your audience typically listens to, reads, and watches in order to determine which advertising media will best reach your targeted market.
6. Don't allow your budget to lead your advertising campaign. If you budget $2,000 per month for advertising, you may have made it easy from a bookkeeping perspective, but have you accounted for seasonal highs and lows? Most businesses fail to take into account seasonal highs and lows, and their advertising efforts suffer because of it. If you’re spending too much money during hard, economic times, then you may be throwing your money away.
7. Branch out. Many business owners choose one media to advertise, based on the price and potential ROI, and then simply stop. Much like investing, you never want to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s a better idea to spread your advertising dollars around.
8. Don't try to impress everyone. Realistically, no one product or service will appeal to everyone. A lot of business owners, including CEO’s, try to come up with too many ways to reach every single market. Typically, this is not a good idea and does not work. It usually spells disaster for small companies who cannot afford to spread themselves too thin. Try to find your niche market and be everything you can to that audience.
9. Test your ads. Test your ads on other people. Do they fully understand the message you’re trying to convey? If not, it may be a good idea to restructure your ad.
10. Monitor every single one of your ads. If you don’t have a way to ensure that your advertisements are bringing in new leads and creating new opportunity, then what good are they? You could potentially be throwing away thousands of dollars each year on ad campaigns that aren’t bringing in one single sale. Many businesses do not track their ads, let alone even know how to track them.

Duplicate content is a huge problem on the web. Search engines have a hard time determining relevancy with duplicate content, and consequently penalize sites for it. Google, Yahoo! and MSN announced that this new canonical url tag can be inserted directly into an HTML header, which tells search engines to treat multiple url’s within the same domain that have similar or duplicate content as one url. This exciting new tag prevents site owners from being dinged by search engines and experiencing lower rankings and traffic losses due to multiple url’s having the same content. The Canonical URL Tag is useful for a variety of scenarios: •    If your category url’s creates multiple versions of the same page. For example: www.colors.com/yellow-color?color=yellow •    If a session ID creates duplicate content. For example: www.colors.com/yellow-color?SESSID=012 •    If your print-only url’s create several versions of the same page. For example: www.colors.com/print/yellow-color SEO professionals can help you determine whether you need this tag and where to apply it. Search engines will now be able to identify multiple url’s with duplicate content and decide what to include and exclude while indexing. When asked if this canonical tag was a hint or directive, Google said “It’s a hint we honor strongly. We’ll take your presence into account, in conjuncture with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.” Google, Yahoo and MSN will also take into account slight differences if the content is not an exact duplication, for example: slight differences in the sort order of products. They also specified that even a redirect url can be tagged with the canonical tag. Also, they stressed that the canonical tag cannot point to an entirely different domain, that it must be on the same domain or subdomains. This breakthrough canonical tag is an exciting new tool in the web world because it helps deal with problems associated with duplicate content, and allows search engines to index sites more thoroughly.