What is reputation management?

Reputation Management is a process of keeping track of online reviews of your company to protect your reputation. This includes giving the right advice on how to respond to complaints, and in some cases, requesting removal of inappropriate or false reviews. We discourage any so-called reputation management program that includes fake reviews, or any other way to circumvent the review system. Reputation management is about staying on top of reviews and ensuring they are accurately reflecting your company. In most cases, responses to reviews mitigate any potential damage caused by the negative review.

What is SEM or Search Engine Marketing?

SEM is the acronym for Search Engine Marketing and though it is often confused with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), it is not the same thing. SEM is the specific part of online marketing that can be the most effective and achieve almost instant results. Search Engine Marketing is based on PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising through search engines; allowing you to receive great results when people search for a product or service that you offer. As with all advertising, Pay-per-click campaigns cost money, and depending on the keywords, can cost several thousand dollars per month.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization on the other hand, can establish your business over time for very little cost but can take time to achieve the results desired. The results are usually long-lasting, and there is no additional cost for SEO because you are only paying for our service, not advertising.So, your next question is likely to be, "if SEO is so good, why would I pay for SEM?"

There are a few good reasons for SEM or PPC campaigns:

• SEM can provide instant results. If you have a special, or want your product or service to gain quick exposure, you can do that with Search Engine Marketing.
• Since search engine optimization takes time to achieve results, SEM is a great way to market your product or service while waiting for the optimization to “catch-up;” allowing you to not waste critical time that can be gained by an internet presence. Eventually you can discontinue your search engine marketing efforts once you feel that your website is optimized enough and you are receiving the amount of traffic to your website that you want.
• SEM can help you target specific audiences in a short amount of time. For example, if there is a news story about the economy, such as with the “bail-out,” you can target your advertising to certain keywords to attract visitors searching for things related to the bail out. Search Engine Marketing often needs immediate attention to be effective and we are here to help your business or organization achieve the results you require.

SEM is complicated, and we can simplify this for you by managing your online advertising campaigns. We can not only save you money, we can also save you time and effort of creating your own campaign which will not likely achieve the results that we can offer.

What is eCommerce?

Ecommerce is simply "electronic commerce." This is a system to conduct online sales, whether it's service or products. The difference between basic website design and eCommerce is that you need a platform to conduct business online. Your website needs to communicate with a gateway and a merchant account to send payments to your bank. There are many systems out there, much of which have significant costs due to a steep learning curve.

Make it Active manages many eCommerce websites to ensure our clients are up and running and have someone to help when they have issues that they can't resolve. We can also build an eCommerce website for our clients who aren't happy with other eCommerce platforms.

What is considered spam?

An unsolicited email is considered spam. If your customer agrees to receiving email, then it is not considered spam. We do not send spam, either internally, for ourselves, or for our customers.
We have worked with many clients that have asked us to send out an unsolicited “e-mail blast” to promote their product or service; to their chagrin, we declined. We will design an e-mail for you, or recommend strategies for success. We will also take care of all of your bulk e-email needs (only for solicited emails). However, we will not participate in spamming. While it may provide short-term results, it hurts your credibility with customers.

Please keep this in mind: Any marketing company that willingly sends spam for you, is only concerned with their profit, not the long term success of your business or organization.