In her article “Be a Better Boss in 2007,” Forbes reporter Hannah Clark asks top management experts and consultants their management resolutions for CEOs in the new year.

A note from Mark: When you’ve got the chance to be quoted in article, don’t blow it by saying something ordinary, predictable, or boring. Being quoted isn’t a time to play it safe; it’s your opportunity to passionately state your unique point of view. In time, you’ll see that doing it any other way is a wasted opportunity.

Below is an excerpt from the article. To read the entire article click here.

Be A Better Boss In 2007
Hannah Clark, 01.07.07, 6:00 AM ET

Also, don’t be afraid to make tough decisions. That may mean firing some of your close associates, says Mark Stevens, CEO of marketing company MSCO, and author of Your Management Sucks. Remember that New Year’s maxim: Out with the old, in with the new. If some of your senior managers are underperforming, share your concerns with board members. If they agree with your assessment, warn your lieutenants that they need to shape up or ship out. The world is changing, and slow-moving companies can no longer compete.Do you have comments on the article? Make them below!

I’ve often been asked something like, “We’re sending 100’s of emails as part of our cold calling strategy, how can I see if any of them are resulting in visits to our web site?” Ok, I’m not exactly often asked that question, but somebody did ask it once. But it is a good question that deserves a good answer, instead I’ll give it a so-so answer and hope that we can garner some good comments that will make it a good answer. And so intrepid reader, read on!

A quick and easy answer to the question is to use a different signature or URL in your cold calling emails than you use for your regular emails. For instance my regular signature is:

Regular Email Signature:

Chris Kieff, Director of Internet Marketing

MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses
50 Main Street
White Plains, NY 10606
T: 914-251-1500 ex.25
F: 914 997 0636
www.MSCO.com
www.YourMarketingSucks.com
www.YourManagementSucks.com

Cold Calling Email Signature

Chris Kieff, Director of Internet Marketing

MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses
50 Main Street
White Plains, NY 10606
T: 914-251-1500 ex.25
F: 914 997 0636
www.MSCO.com/inet

Now, I will just have our webmaster create a copy of the home page in that special “/inet” folder on the web site. Now using ClickTracks our web analytics package, we can track every single click on that link in my emails. Just as an aside- if you aren’t using Click Tracks for web site visitor tracking you have missed the boat. It is by far the most intuitive, helpful, web tracking tool I have ever encountered. And by the way, we can help you get into it very quickly and easily. Contact me for details.

Note: I could create a custom landing page on the site to go along with the emails I’m writing. I’ve made the decision that for these letters I’m writing I don’t need a special landing page, our home page is sufficient for this purpose.

Next in PPC or other forms of online advertising you can easily implement the same strategy. Instead of directing the searcher to your home page, or landing page, create a special copy for each element you want to track. Then use your web analytics to gauge how well it’s working.

There are other techniques such as using query strings and landing pages for achieving the same results. However, for my money this is a simple, easy to implement, technique to make tracking your effectiveness and your ROI. It only takes 5 minutes to make a copy of the landing page or the home page and stick it in a new folder on the web site. Keep the name of the folder short so it’s not too much for people to type if the link in the email is disabled by their security settings.

WARNING- TECHNO BABBLE: For those of you with SEO in mind be sure to label the page with the Robots Meta tag or your Robots.txt file to exclude Google and their friends from thinking you are duplicating content.

And so, my intrepid reader here you are having spent 5 minutes reading this blog instead of doing real work. Didn’t you learn anything when you read “Your Management Sucks?” You should be doing something else right now, not reading stupid blogs!

But for those of you who are guiltless, perhaps reading this after hours at home on the weekend… Here is your payback for the time you’ve spent here- one of the most popular blogs on the net today is Boing Boing. It’s a site that’s hard to describe but easy to enjoy.

Please remember to always look before changing lanes on the information super highway.
Thanks for reading,

Chris Kieff, Internet Guru @ MSCO

MSCO’s traffic is up 118% since I joined the company and started our new SEO program. Can SEO help your website? It’s kind of like asking if you need to use deodorant before a date. If you have to ask then the answer was yes and you should have learned that a long time ago.

This page will show you up to the minute how my SEO efforts are working for MSCO . Our SEO efforts began in mid-May of 2006. You can see that the traffic on the site has steadily increased since that time.

Notice that the site started receiving more traffic immediately after the SEO effort began. Can we do that for your web site? I can’t say for sure but most likely we can improve what’s happening to your traffic.

There are other ways to measure the improvements to the site traffic:

Site Stats for msco.com: (click for up the minute data)
* Traffic Rank for msco.com: 192,542 (up190,723)

* Speed: Average (58% of sites are slower), Avg Load Time: 1.5 Seconds What’s This?

* Other sites that link to this site: 30

* Online Since: 11-Jul-1997

Reach per million users:
Today 4.5
1 wk. Avg. 3
3 mos. Avg. 4.25
3 mos. Change up 118%

To me, the competition between Microsoft and Google, which the former continues to claim it will vanquish, is more than a battle between companies…it is a classic case of power shift…similar to the way once-great nation states decline and are usurped by new powers, often more technically advanced, on the world stage. This contest between Google and Microsoft represents a titanic shift in the way of doing business.
Read the entire article on CNN.com here.

The Fifth Shockwave Targets The Pillars of Marketing: Madison Avenue and Network TV.
“Good-Bye Story Boards, Hello Algorithms”

It’s been a glorious ride. Ever since the atomic bomb rained destruction on Japan and pulled the plug on World War II, Madison Avenue has reigned as a powerful pillar of the U.S. business establishment, and a beneficiary of its swollen treasuries. The first four shockwaves – the Cold War, Mass Merchandising, Madison Avenue, and Network Television – created and defined the American lifestyle for the last 60 years. The last to succumb to change has been Madison Avenue. But suddenly, it’s all coming to an end, as the Fifth Shockwave of the post-war era has revolutionized marketing.

Another bomb — the Internet and its increasing Google-ization of marketing — is forcing the bloated and hidebound practitioners of traditional advertising to face their worst nightmare: the uber-cool “creatives” are being replaced in the pantheon of vaunted advisor’s by geeks and nerds formally known as computer scientists and mathematicians.

In short, the new way to spell Madison Avenue is M.I.T. The creatives - writers, producers, actors, photographers, songsters, jingle junkies - promise glamorous photo shoots, celebs, Clio awards. The nerds promise science, precision, results. Google CEO Sergei Brin is working toward offering advertisers a guarantee: “Give us $1million dollars and you’ll gain $100 million dollars in sales.”

The axiom “the nerds will inherit the earth” is about to prove true — increasing numbers of advertisers are voting for algorithms over aesthetics. If you think this is an exaggeration, Google already accounts for a greater advertising spend than NBC. This is a sea change, and it is because these “nerds” are focused on selling things – cars or toothpaste or ski vacations – while Madison Avenue cares little about sales.

The tipping point for the Fifth Wave isn’t here yet, but it’s arrival can be measured in months. And as Rome burns, Madison Avenue’s response is to dig up has-beens like “mellow yellow” folk rocker Donovan and shove his songs into Volvo commercials. (Like this is going to sell cars. Meanwhile, the song Madison Avenue, the Times, the networks, all of them should be singing is “Eve of Destruction.”

Read the entire article on CNN.com here.