If you manage a website you must learn how to use Google's free tools....
Adwords, Analytics, Webmaster tools and their other tools such as calendar and youtube.  They are powerful, well explained and free. 

Follow-up to on-website videos.

I worked with 2 clients to place videos on their websites. The results are amazing. 100% more website traffic week over week. Time on site increased from 1.5 minutes to 3+ minutes each. Fewer bounces.

Video on websites is a powerful tool now backed by our empirical experience.

If you are a techie interested in php enabled dynamic websites coupled to MySQL databases, I have found a great free package to recommend. XAMPP installs php and MySQL in a very straight forward installation. Having labored through downloading these two free applications and struggled with setting permissions and connecting them, the team at XAMPP has created a simple yet powerful tool that is a must for open source (LAMP stack) web developers.

It has my highest recommendation. 

I most often do three things with clients:
 1) Teach them how to build effective marketing programs or teach them how to use the marketing automation tools
 2) Consult with clients to conceive of a marketing system  and develop the plan
 3) Execute or implement their marketing system plan


I must confess that while I am in the teacher role, I am am thrilled by the continually learning from my clients I benefit from. Being exposed to dozens of small businesses, I have the benefit of seeing which tactics have been effective and those which aren't.   Every week my tool kit is a bit larger than the week before.


I love the learning but I confess that the most satisfying is the execution. I love developing the checklist and checking all the items off as done. It's almost as much fun as popping bubble wrap.  


When a program is launched, there is the moment of satisfaction... Pride that it is exceeding promises. I always then start thinking about how we can do this better...what needs improvement.  90% of the value, to my experience, is in the tuning of the program after launch. Maybe I don't plan as effectively as others but I sure can adapt, using a measure/modify cycle to obtain the performance we looked for.


I'm curious about other peoples experience. To my experience, planning is important but execution and adaptation are the real keys to success.