What's this mean to our website clients?
It's huge! How many website companies have radio advertising on a national scale AND are willing to use it to promote their website clients? I only know of one... Every time we add a new station to our network, YOU benefit.
How can I measure if the radio advertising is working?
To see how many visitors we have driven to your website, visit www.agmarketonline.com and do a search for your business. Click on your banner or name, then click on the yellow link in the black bar labeled "view search statistics". The national average click-through rate for search sites is between 3-4%. How does your site stack up? Contact us if you would like to improve this to get even more customers to your website.
How do we have all this radio advertising?
Howard Hale produces several nationally syndicated programs and provides them to radio stations at no charge. (Horseman's Corner, Cattleman's Corner, Harvest USA, Ag News, Opening Markets & Closing Markets). In return we get a bunch of air time. Instead of being greedy by selling the ads and keeping the money, Howard graciously allows us to use the advertising to help promote our clients! So we built a well-organized, easy to use search-engine type website that lists our clients, then we advertise it every day M-F on some 28 stations in 8 states (currently). We recently added 4 in Scottsbluff, 1 in McCook, 1 in North Platte and 2 in Grand Island. To view a complete list of stations, visit agmarketonline.com/stations.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Auction-Corner.com
Beginning in April, we started work on our largest website project ever and it's just about ready for launch. Auction-Corner.com is being developed to compete with eBay in a number of ways. We have a client who has been using eBay for years and they came up with several things they thought we could improve upon, then hired us to build it!
Our primary goal is to simulate the way auctions work in the real world. We are very close to launching this website to the public, so we thought we would give you, our clients and readers, the first chance to check it out. We will notify everyone again when it's officially ready, just be watching for it!
ELITE 100
We've developed a radio & internet advertising co-op that is limited to 100 businesses who want to promote their business on multiple radio stations and search engines for the price of one. The package includes hundreds of personal endorsements from Howard Hale for your business (by name) on multiple radio stations PLUS your banner will be shown in the search results as well as a feature member on agmarketonline.com. The fee is only $99 per month (and no long term contracts). Call or email if you might be interested.
Jeremiah House Update
We are excited to report that Brian Hale was recently named Director of The Jeremiah House Children's Ministry in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
Our vision is to share the hope and love Jesus Christ with children and their families. We have over 30 volunteers from several churches and bible colleges and a typical Tuesday evening brings around 30 children for a hot meal, bible study, singing and activities from 5:30 - 7:00 pm at our ministry center at the corners of 12th Street and 12th Avenue across from Overland Park.
For more info about the Jeremiah House including how to donate or volunteer, visit our website at www.jeremiah-house.com.
Our vision is to share the hope and love Jesus Christ with children and their families. We have over 30 volunteers from several churches and bible colleges and a typical Tuesday evening brings around 30 children for a hot meal, bible study, singing and activities from 5:30 - 7:00 pm at our ministry center at the corners of 12th Street and 12th Avenue across from Overland Park.
For more info about the Jeremiah House including how to donate or volunteer, visit our website at www.jeremiah-house.com.
Client Toolbar Updated
We told you about our new custom toolbar that we created just for you last month. This month we want to let everyone know that we are constantly adding new resources to the toolbar, so you are encouraged to download and install it as often as you wish. Our updates will be automatically added to your new toolbar. Visit www.halemultimedia.com/toolbar to download your updated toolbar anytime! This month we added some new links under Resources as well as the radio programs that we added when we got the broadcasting contract with Hometown Family Radio Group on 8 more radio stations in Nebraska. See the article "Radio Network Expansion" for more details and if you are looking to advertise at a great price, be sure to check out "ELITE 100".
Billing Reminders
We have gone to a monthly billing policy, HOWEVER, we want to remind you that YOU CAN STILL PAY ANNUALLY if you wish. It does save you TWO MONTHS and it's one check to write versus 12. You can also Pay your Bill Online via credit/debit card through your Control Panel Login or by calling us. We accept Visa, MasterCard, AMEX and Discover as well as Paypal.
Marketing Tip #4
Marketing Tip #4 - Think Like Your Prospective Customers.
This answers the common question, 'How will people find my website?' You are applying a vital principle of marketing when you put yourself in the shoes of those searching for you. This is especially important when it comes to dealing with search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. Do some brainstorming and come up with every possible keyword or key phrase that someone might type into a search engine when looking for the type of product or service you have to offer. We have developed an extremely easy way for our website and agmarketonline clients to have full control over updating these vital elements without ever having to contact us. Just login to your Control Panel and click on the update account info link in the grey area. Still need help, contact us!
This answers the common question, 'How will people find my website?' You are applying a vital principle of marketing when you put yourself in the shoes of those searching for you. This is especially important when it comes to dealing with search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. Do some brainstorming and come up with every possible keyword or key phrase that someone might type into a search engine when looking for the type of product or service you have to offer. We have developed an extremely easy way for our website and agmarketonline clients to have full control over updating these vital elements without ever having to contact us. Just login to your Control Panel and click on the update account info link in the grey area. Still need help, contact us!
Mission Trip Update
Anyone who has ever gone on a mission trip understands what it's like to serve no matter the circumstances. It's all for Him who died for us, so no matter how far it is, how much it costs or how many attacks satan tries to throw at us, it's all worth it! I am sure we have been called crazy many times for doing what we do, but that's ok. We enjoy doing whatever we can to help others.
Let's see if you think this is crazy... We spent two weeks raising money through speaking at churches and doing bake sales, then Andi spent several hours the night before packing up the minivan. We took off early Thursday morning headed to the Great White North and drove all day through Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and into Canada. We arrived at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan around 11:00 pm and bedded down on the hard basement floor at our partner church there before heading to our final destination about 4 more hours north the next morning. We were one of the first families to arrive at the Shekinah Retreat Centre (about 50 miles north of Saskatoon) at about 3:00 pm on Friday. Our primary purpose for going was to provide Vacation Bible School for the children, only to find out that they did not have any multimedia equipment that we were told they had. No internet, no computers, no projector, no screen and really no area big enough for our full production. We ended up using our laptop so we had the kids sit really close and be really quiet (haha) so that everyone could hear the tiny laptop speakers! For classroom space we used our own families sleeping quarters. This years theme was Outrigger Island with a Hawaiin setting so as recreation director Brian brought beach balls, frisbees and some other light games... which would have been great if the wind hadn't been gusting all weekend! God is SO awesome. He makes us WANT to work with missions by giving us these little challenges and ALWAYS provides a solution when we remain faithful to His purpose. Everything worked out exceptionally well and the kids and their parents had no idea what we faced to pull things off.
Since this was our second year serving with the same association we had more opportunities to really get to know everyone. We also noticed how much more the kids opened up to us this year! We believe that children need stability and for them to see some familiar faces leading them really made a big difference. Last year was kind of a blur for us all, but this year was all about building relationships. We received so much more personal joy knowing that those kids were looking for us and almost expect us to return every year!
The camp wrapped up Sunday afternoon by 2:00 pm and Brian had everything packed up in the van around 3:30 pm. That's when we got to thinking about travel plans... It dawned on us that we were carrying alot of Canadian money and it was a weekend... Labor Day Weekend. Canadian banks are closed on Labor Day as well. We wondered if American gas stations in North Dakota or Montana would take our currency. It was doubtful, which proved true. Therefore, we did some math and it appeared as though we would NOT have enough US dollars to get all the way home. One of the pastors there did have $33 USD that he let us exchange our Canadian dollars for and he graciously topped off our gas tank right outside of camp ($55 CAN). No one else had ANY USD, so we figured we would fill up right before the U.S. border and put our faith in God to get us home. We said a prayer and took off headed for the States. We were anxious to get home so we traded off and drove through the night and the next day. We made it home safely by noon on Labor Day Monday. Do you believe God provides? We certainly do! We got home and counted our remaining cash. We had $33 USD and $55 CAN. Whoa! Is God cool or what? Like our 3 year old son Brayden always says, "God is Real" and we believe it!
Let's see if you think this is crazy... We spent two weeks raising money through speaking at churches and doing bake sales, then Andi spent several hours the night before packing up the minivan. We took off early Thursday morning headed to the Great White North and drove all day through Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and into Canada. We arrived at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan around 11:00 pm and bedded down on the hard basement floor at our partner church there before heading to our final destination about 4 more hours north the next morning. We were one of the first families to arrive at the Shekinah Retreat Centre (about 50 miles north of Saskatoon) at about 3:00 pm on Friday. Our primary purpose for going was to provide Vacation Bible School for the children, only to find out that they did not have any multimedia equipment that we were told they had. No internet, no computers, no projector, no screen and really no area big enough for our full production. We ended up using our laptop so we had the kids sit really close and be really quiet (haha) so that everyone could hear the tiny laptop speakers! For classroom space we used our own families sleeping quarters. This years theme was Outrigger Island with a Hawaiin setting so as recreation director Brian brought beach balls, frisbees and some other light games... which would have been great if the wind hadn't been gusting all weekend! God is SO awesome. He makes us WANT to work with missions by giving us these little challenges and ALWAYS provides a solution when we remain faithful to His purpose. Everything worked out exceptionally well and the kids and their parents had no idea what we faced to pull things off.
Since this was our second year serving with the same association we had more opportunities to really get to know everyone. We also noticed how much more the kids opened up to us this year! We believe that children need stability and for them to see some familiar faces leading them really made a big difference. Last year was kind of a blur for us all, but this year was all about building relationships. We received so much more personal joy knowing that those kids were looking for us and almost expect us to return every year!
The camp wrapped up Sunday afternoon by 2:00 pm and Brian had everything packed up in the van around 3:30 pm. That's when we got to thinking about travel plans... It dawned on us that we were carrying alot of Canadian money and it was a weekend... Labor Day Weekend. Canadian banks are closed on Labor Day as well. We wondered if American gas stations in North Dakota or Montana would take our currency. It was doubtful, which proved true. Therefore, we did some math and it appeared as though we would NOT have enough US dollars to get all the way home. One of the pastors there did have $33 USD that he let us exchange our Canadian dollars for and he graciously topped off our gas tank right outside of camp ($55 CAN). No one else had ANY USD, so we figured we would fill up right before the U.S. border and put our faith in God to get us home. We said a prayer and took off headed for the States. We were anxious to get home so we traded off and drove through the night and the next day. We made it home safely by noon on Labor Day Monday. Do you believe God provides? We certainly do! We got home and counted our remaining cash. We had $33 USD and $55 CAN. Whoa! Is God cool or what? Like our 3 year old son Brayden always says, "God is Real" and we believe it!
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