Press Direct International

In response to consumer demand, on June 2, 2008, Advocate Auto Claims ramped up personnel and expanded its daily hours of operation. The company, which opened its doors to the public in April 2008, can now be reached Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. EDT, and around the clock at www.advocateautoclaims.com. “Through our affiliate company, we had been providing services exclusively to fleet owners and car rental companies, but we recognized the need to educate consumers about their rights and expand our operations,” said Omar Quddus, President and Co-Founder of Advocate Auto Claims, LLC. “Consumer response to this service has been phenomenal.”
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Managing Funds, Family and Charities

If you passed him walking down the street you wouldn’t guess this man had set up what was at one time one of the largest hedge funds in the US which peaked at over a billion dollars. Sitting in a Florida office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, Ron Pollack (http://www.ronpollack.net) talked about his career as a hedge fund manger and short seller, his family, the charity groups he’s helped and why he’s decided to return to fund management after a six-year hiatus. “Short selling is what I do and I need to get back to doing it.”

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Hi Everyone,

In talking to a lot of people who have their own businesses I often hear I know everything about my business, but the phone isn’t ringing. What’s wrong?

It’s a problem that almost everyone in business that isn’t a marketing expert faces. You can be the best plumber, tax accountant, or doctor in the world, but if you don’t know how to get the word out–how to market your product or service–there’s no way you can get the customers you need.

Here are six essential steps to follow to get great marketing that doesn’t cost a fortune.

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Hi Everyone,

Web Statistics — Are they for geeks only? Nope, they are essential if you are going to market your product successfully.

Which ones are important? Continue reading…

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are all doing well.

I thought I’d spend a few minutes going over an interesting discovery with regarding website conversions.

As you probably know, we almost always suggest putting a lead form on all websites. We also suggest that a phone number is prominently displayed on the site.

In addition, we add statistic tracking to the site so we can see what specific keywords brought the person to the site and which of those keywords were the most effective for gaining a lead or sale.

Now, most of you know how paid search works. You do some research on how people are searching and what competitors are doing, place some ads and if your research and ad are done right, you will get a percentage of the people clicking on to the target website.

That is the first threshold of what needs to be cracked so to speak in order to get an efficient campaign.

Now, what if you’re getting traffic and you are not getting leads or sales?

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What am I going to do?

In 1992, after eleven years in my dental practice, I was asking myself this very question. My practice was in a strip mall and the supermarket moved out. The foot traffic left with it. New patients crashed to fewer than 10 per month and collections were down by 25%. Over the eleven years prior to this I spent tens of thousands of dollars on consultants to teach me how to have a great staff meeting, run my schedule, etc. But, after all of this consulting, I was still left with no solution to my lowered income and new patients. I was frustrated. I began investigating PPO and HMO plans as a solution.

Perhaps you to are or have look at managed care (HMOs and PPOs) either as a source of new patients or how to get out of it. As the topic of managed care is one that I get asked about on a regular basis, I thought it would be a good idea to look at A) why people join up and B) What it really takes to get out. If you are involved with any HMOs, PPOs, discount plans or just want to know how to stay out of them, this article is for you.

In looking at an exit strategy, we should first examine what prompts dentists to join these plans. Common answers I hear from colleagues are:

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Hi Everyone,

First of all, a word of thanks to all of you who filled out my survey last week. I found out quite a few things, including your dislike for the courier font I was using in our last few newsletters. I hope this one is better for all concerned. I personally liked the courier font; it felt a bit old school, like the manual typewriters I learned to type on in the year of the flood (the 1970’s for those who don’t remember the good old days), but being a marketing professional and knowing this newsletter is designed for what you need and want, have changed it to this nifty Arial font. I guess I should have known better. I don’t wear polyester anymore either. Let me know if this is better for you.

As far as the newsletter goes, some of you wanted more basic information; some of you wanted more in depth information.   At this point I’m going to keep the newsletter somewhat basic, but those of you who are interested in a more technical newsletter, please e-mail me and if there is enough of a need, I will start writing one. I also found out that you guys are interested in marketing thru video, mobile devices and blogs as well as any insider tips I can give you to do better. I plan on doing that in the coming weeks, but today, I want to go over what I found out from the research we did last week and my personal realizations from analyzing the information.

Now, I hope you do get a bit excited about that information, maybe not as much as I did, because I’m not only a marketing Goddess, but a geek deep down.

First of all, I don’t know if you realize this or not, but I had a tough time getting more than 30 responses when I was doing this at In Touch. I knew if I was really going to get a real understanding for my own marketing needs, I needed to get more than 30 responses.

So, I used my linkedin.com network as well as posting it to the questions area of linkedin.com. What I got was almost 200 responses between you guys and them. The information was great, especially since we had responses from all types of businesses and budget categories. One of the things I found most surprising, was the various ways people were marketing and their relative success.

Here you can see a sampling of people with budgets of $2,500.00 a month or less

Now, here are the results for those with a monthly budget of more than $5,000.00.