Monthly Archives: April 2008

Leading online marketing agency Stickyeyes has launched a new website, designed to be the first port of call for blue chips and SMEs looking to increase targeted traffic to their websites, improve online sales and boost conversion rates.

The new website, www.stickyeyes.com, features a fresh design and simplified navigation, making it easier for customers to find out more about online marketing or build a bespoke Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign tailored to their business.

Stickyeyes have extensive experience in designing, implementing and managing PPC, SEO and Social Media campaigns and are one of the top online marketing agencies in the UK.

Craig Chalmers, Managing Director of Stickyeyes, said: “With companies facing increasing pressure to deliver results from the online channel, we have made it easier and more accessible for them to assess the options available, whether it be a paid advertising campaign, search-friendly website build or a full blown, exhaustive approach, covering all online channels.

“Our new website mirrors the fresh approach that we take when working in highly competitive markets and online channels. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for organisations to find what they are looking for.”

Stickyeyes are celebrating the launch of their new site by offering companies a free appraisal of their current online marketing activity. To find out how you are doing, or to enquire about improving your online marketing strategy, contact Stickyeyes on 0113 3912929, or visit the new site, www.stickyeyes.com

CreditCardAssist.com develops new algorithm to rank the most useful and authoritative sites on the topic.

Search engines are failing miserably to find the most useful, authoritative sources of information for their users, according to CreditCardAssist.com, one of the leading credit card comparison sites online. The site recently announced the completion of a research study that measured the usefulness of web sites on the topic of credit cards. The site was looking to provide users with a single authoritative list of web pages ( http://www.creditcardassist.com/top-50-most-useful-credit-card-sites.html ) containing the most useful and trustworthy information available on the subject of credit cards. “We try to provide our users with as much unbiased credit card information as possible,” said Robert Alan, Research Director for CreditCardAssist.com, “but we discovered that finding truly unbiased, highly useful, authoritative information on the topic of credit cards was surprisingly very difficult with search engines.”

According to Alan, most of the highest ranking web sites within search engine results pages are commercially oriented sites promoting or selling credit card products or credit related services. These search engine results are certainly acceptable for individuals who are shopping for credit cards or credit related services, but not for people who are merely researching the topic of credit cards or trying to gain access to objective sources of information. But in highly commercialized categories, such as credit cards and mortgages, for example, the dominance of commercially oriented web sites at the top of search engine results pages is fairly typical. “We were looking for a singular source for all of the most useful, authoritative sites in our category, but we simply couldn’t find one in the search results.”

Alan claimed that search engines have relied heavily on the concept of link popularity in order to rank the quality of a web page. Typically, a page that is linked to by many other pages is generally considered more popular or more important than other competing web pages, resulting in higher search engine rankings for that page. While search engine algorithms have been evolving and improving the quality of their results in recent years, their heavy reliance on link popularity in ranking pages remains largely intact. Search engines also have a ranking preference for older web pages that have been online for a number of years. “The search engines like web pages that are older that have lots of links,” says Alan “so even if the page is highly useful and authoritative on the topic, if the web page is new and doesn’t have many links pointing back to it, you’ll never find it in the search results.” Alan’s research team uncovered a wide range of highly useful, authoritative pages on relatively new web pages that had relatively few links. “We wanted to find a way to properly account for all of this incredible content that we discovered that would be so meaningful for our users that was buried so deep within search results pages and was almost impossible to find.”

As a result of their research ( http://www.creditcardassist.com/Finding-the-Most-Useful-Sites.pdf ), Alan’s team came up with a unique solution in their efforts to find the deepest, most authoritative content on the topic. “We wound up building our own ranking algorithm,” continued Alan, “that ranked sites based primarily upon the usefulness or merit of a page’s content across 3 dimensions — depth, authority, and objectivity.” The algorithm incorporated a number of well documented variables that are already utilized in some manner by all of the major search engines. But with Alan’s new ranking methodology, all pages are ranked primarily based upon the merit and the usefulness of the content.

Alan admits that their ranking methodology, like any other, is not full proof. But the formula produced a list of some of the most useful, credible and highly authoritative resources on the subject of credit cards available anywhere, according to Alan. “We’re confident that the results speak for themselves and we would gladly hold up the results of the study to any other done on the topic.”
For more information, tips and advice on reliable sources for credit card information, visit the company’s web site at http://www.creditcardassist.com

Aarhus, Denmark – J. Boye, an independent analyst firm focusing on online media, has found that wikis are increasingly gaining foothold in the enterprise due to it promises of simplicity. Yet, wikis introduce complex challenges for organisations, on a strategic level as well as on the level of actual content creation. Many are surprised by new demands on culture, governance, and training.

These are some of the conclusions of the recently released research by J. Boye. Based on interviews with early adopters of wikis across the globe, the research document – Wiki in the Enterprise – presents a business analysis of challenges and best practices for enterprise wiki projects.

“Wikis often grow out of hand very quickly and consequently many employees simply ignore them. Enterprises also face the risk of an explosive information growth far beyond their capacity to manage that information”, said analyst and MD, Janus Boye. “If you don’t create guidelines and processes for managing the wiki, the gap between information and capacity is a risk to the enterprise as it translates into the right information not being found and the potential creation of redundant information.”

J. Boye also found:

* Wikis can offer strategic benefits when it comes to increasing contribution and ownership, and improving information sharing. These benefits are, however, dependant on work practices and governance for successful collaboration and information sharing already being in place or being developed.

* Organisational culture is critical to ensure successful adoption. “We see examples of a wiki becoming a source of conflict in certain organisations. With the potential for everyone to contribute and a lack of built-in management control, concerns of quality and confidentiality put a damper on motivation. Too often, employees may be unwilling to contribute to the wiki, for fear of exposing themselves to criticism”, analyst Dorthe R. Jespersen clarified.

* Despite being sold on simplicity, wikis are not always easy to Use. Enterprises are generally surprised that training is still necessary. In particular, the need for special wiki mark-up is a usability issue, which slows down the adoption. To make matters worse, each wiki vendor has their own mark-up.

The 22 page research document offers a business analysis of best practices for all sizes of wiki projects, while also providing a reality check with an analysis of how a wiki best can be put to helpful use. The report is available for purchase online from J. Boye
http://eng.jboye.dk/research/wiki_in_the_enterprise .

About J. Boye

J. Boye http://eng.jboye.dk is a vendor-neutral analyst firm founded in 2003, which focuses on several aspects of online media, including CMS, enterprise portals, enterprise search, web analytics and Web 2.0. Being vendor-neutral, J. Boye only works with buyers and has no cooperation with, or income from, vendors or consultants. With a mission to help mature a young market, J. Boye publishes reports, hosts an annual conference, facilitate a European Community of Practice with 200+ members, and offers consulting services.

In a visually very attractive way the Internet platform offers a simple method to overlay and compare routes of drivers and potential passengers. ‘Using an auction-based method similar to other popular auction sites should’, according to the CEO Walter, ‘animate more drivers to offer rides, especially on highly demanded routes.’

DriJo with its auction-based ride-sharing model assures that:
supply and demand of routes based on the starting and arrival address are overlaid and compared automatically and shown on maps or satellite pictures,
based on the GOOGLE Maps(TM) database practically all addresses, even remote ones in the country-side, can be found – similarly to navigation devices,
the cost of ride sharing between driver and passenger is determined by supply and demand via an auction,
a registration of all users gives additional security,
feedback after travelling by both driver and passenger increases the trustworthiness of both of them.

‘Our matching also allows to compare longer routes with shorter requests’, according to the CTO Peter, ‘and the driver can even define an optional pick-up&drop-off zone along the route to be more attractive to potential passengers.’

Paid ride-sharing is popular in both the US and Europe. In the primary countries in Europe and US/Canada it is estimated to be well over 50.000/day.
On a general basis the market of ride sharing agencies is presently badly distributed between many small ad-based institutions. As a consequence it is very difficult to find regional and long-distance trips in one agency. Additionally these companies generate their own databases which in practically all cases do not include addresses or smaller towns.

XING (www.xing.com) today announced a new feature with which its members can view the distribution of their business network with Google Maps. The integration of Google Maps into the XING platform gives members a new perspective on their personal network, visualizing geographic locations of their direct business contacts on a map or satellite display. Contacts’ business addresses can be displayed provided a member is logged in to XING and the contacts permit such a display and release the information to the member.
The new service gives members an additional advantage in their daily professional lives. At a glance, XING members can see which countries and cities are represented in their network and which are not. The map view is also an easy way to find regional experts or arrange business meetings when traveling.
As always, XING members will remain in full control of their own data and privacy settings. Each member decides whether to allow their business address to be displayed on the map, who has access to their business address, and who can view their exact position on the map. These settings can be modified at any time.
The beta version of the new map feature will go live for all XING members today.
About XING:
XING makes your professional network an active part of your life. Far more than a directory of business contacts, XING enables its members to discover professional people, opportunities and privileges through its unique discovery capability and advanced contact management tools.
With the successful IPO of XING as the first Web 2.0 company to go public, XING AG has had a long-term impact on the social networking trend amongst professionals. By focusing on the target group ‘business people worldwide,’ the company is able to offer tailored features, thereby making networking and contact management simpler. Besides Headquarters in Hamburg, XING AG is also represented with offices in Barcelona, Istanbul and Beijing.

Advtise.com (http://www.advtise.com), a leading pay per click company has dedicate a 70% of its resources for developing a unique Anti-Fraud sophisticated system that eliminates click-fraud and maximizes advertiser s performance. “…Click fraud is a serious trend to our industry, Click-fraud criminals are using rolling-IP attacks from multiple countries. We in Advtise.com, are focused on Research & Development, for technologies that stop click fraud. Now we are extremely satisfied because our patented technology stops click fraud before it happens. And this is a unique advantage we offer to our advertisers” says Mr. Hough Matt, CEO and founder of Advtise.com, and continues “If our system detect click fraud, it automatically refunding advertiser and at the same time terminate the account of the member is conducting click fraud”

But how we can avoid click fraud? Really there is not much to do as an advertisers, but advertisers can monitor their overall site traffic on a daily basis and through a ROI tools that companies like Advtise.com are offering to measure the quality of clicks and the prospects and customer s conversions.

Advtise.com is part of a global network, distributing ads to over 100,000 sites worldwide on a pay per click basis, growing rapidly daily. We pride ourselves on Quality and efficiency, in how we deliver and how we present advertisements. With our strict Policy of where Advertisements will be shown, we can guarantee that your Advertisements will be displayed where it matters and for maximum ROI

NEW YORK – Marketing and promoting an online business today is significantly more challenging than it was back in 1994 when Yahoo first started.

A large contributing factor is the sheer growth in the number of web sites launching every day jockeying for Internet real estate. This is especially evident over even the last 4 years.

Before 1999, marketing and promoting a website was easy. All you were really required to do was submit your website to Yahoo, DMOZ, and a few other large directories and search engines and presto, you have traffic. As long as you had a decent looking website and responded to customer service enquiries, you could earn repeat customers.

Today however is more difficult and you have to be more creative than applying the basics. Adding your company to Yahoo Directory may help marginally in the terms of ranking with search engines, but that is pretty much where the buck stops. If you are considering listing with DMOZ, expect to wait upwards of a year or more. And sending email requests to sites that are relative to your industry and requesting back links? Forget it! With the amount of spam flying around the Internet, you will be lucky to receive a 2% response rate.

Times have definitely changed. The dynamics on the Internet have changed and Web 2.0 is here. This means from a marketing perspective you must become engaged in blogs, rss & press release distribution to announce your business and build customer trust. Start a blog through blogger.com, create RSS feeds for your website content. The best bang for your buck would be through a press release. An excellent press release resource is 24-7pressrelease.com. The site offers a $49 package that will give you instant exposure, tens of thousands of headline impressions, allow you to add images, and performs search engine optimization on your press release. For a new website, a press release is an essential part of your marketing starter kit.

A press release is an excellent tool for a number of reasons. The content becomes syndicated on the net much quicker. The viral benefit is one of the most important reasons in using 24-7PressRelease.com. For example, a $49 press release is published, archived and distributed to syndicated news channels that will publish your news online again and again. With 24-7PressRelease.com’s strong search engine presence, your story will be found on major search engines for thousands of readers interested in your product or service. For a minimal investment of a $49 press release, you can immediate jump start your marketing campaign.

The momentum in online advertising is indicative of the growing confidence of the advertisers and interactive agencies. There has been a substantial rise in the overall ad spend on the ad networks, which is the quintessential catalyst of increasingly creative online advertising and marketing. Rupinder Khurana, Co-Founder and Director, Rupiz Infotech Group, the online conglomerate confirms that a recent study by Collective Media revealed 75 per cent of the interactive agencies and advertisers planning to increase their overall ad spend on ad networks by 5% or more. He also mentioned that more than 25 % of agencies and advertisers were planning to spend 15 % or more on ad networks specifically.

Rupiz Infotech group shelters businesses of diverse industry verticals. Rupiz Ads is one of its ventures in the global digital marketing sphere. Distinguishing itself from the other me-too networks, Rupiz Ads provides a comprehensive and productive platform to global web businesses to seek perfect alliances. It develops innovative and result-oriented display ad campaigns. Some of the highlighting features of Rupiz Ads Network include:

Pay-on-Performance model
Excellent banner ad campaigns
Ad Inventory of 5 billion impressions per month
Ideal platform for global partnerships
Extensive advertiser and publisher base
Latest web software and technology platforms
Best CPM rates
Scalable tracking and reporting
Dedicated customer support

The network provides 360 degree advertising solutions through their display ads which come in various creative formats including skyscrapers, HTML-Banners, pop-up/under, flash-banner, text links, interstitials, streaming media, layer ads, standard banners, the list goes on. Rupinder Khurana further added that worldwide the ad network model would continue to evolve under the basic principle of seeking more information on the audience base, having more control and transparency in their operational systems and listening to the clients. Rupiz Ads has also evolved on the same principle.

In short, what the foreword trend suggests is symbolic of the bulging force of online advertising and ad networks. It would mean nothing less than a golden harvest period for Rupiz Ads, expanding manifolds and adding value to their clients, globally.

Rupiz Ads
1st Floor,
26 Fouberts Place,
London
W1F 7PP
Tel: 0800 097 0237
www.rupizads.com

Rupiz Ads is an Internet advertising agency specializing in banner advertising and online advertisement. It has an efficient banner ad network and provides advanced banner advertising services.

SAN RAMON, Calif. – Reply.com announces the launch of the world’s most liquid lead marketplace, offering the highest level of control and putting the power back in the hands of online lead buyers and sellers.

While anyone can click on a website, whether or not they are interested in the products or services offered, a single click offers extremely limited potential. Clicks don’t walk into your store or call you on the phone.

A lead, on the other hand, represents an interested party that wants to be contacted by a service provider. For online marketers, this has always been the promise of the Internet. Reply.com believes that it is time for businesses of all sizes to Go Beyond The Click™ and only pay for measurable results.

Reply.com has created a unique platform that delivers the world’s most efficient and liquid marketplace for buying and selling leads—at a cost that represents the true market value of each lead.

“We, at Reply.com, are leading the evolution of the web from CPM (cost-per-thousand) to CPC (cost-per-click) to CPL (cost-per-lead),” states Chairman and CEO Payam Zamani. “We have made the process of buying and selling leads as easy and empowering as buying clicks from Yahoo and Google.”

With traditional online lead generation companies, the lead advertiser (buyer) cannot effectively control and match quality, volume, and price to meet their desired ROI. The lead seller (publisher) is often left with unmonetized or under-monetized inventory.

With Reply.com, businesses of any size can access the online consumer without significant investment in infrastructure or personnel—all while maintaining ultimate control.

Reply.com’s auction format for pricing and distributing leads provides a stunningly efficient platform that unleashes the potential of performance-based marketing.

Reply.com was founded in 2001 by a veteran team of Internet entrepreneurs as an online lead generation and performance-based marketing company. In 1994, Reply.com CEO Payam Zamani co-founded the first online car buying service, Autoweb.com, and in 1999 helped take that company public. Autoweb became the first service to price its traffic on a per-lead basis, as opposed to per-click or per impression. Reply.com’s six-year history as one of the leaders in the lead generation business has resulted in direct relationships with over 5,000 lead buyers, plus thousands more through enterprise-level partnerships with other networks and national brands. Reply.com is a profitable, venture capital-backed company, and to-date has raised over $20 million in funding.

The promise of online marketing has been realized by Reply.com. Businesses will now be able to Go Beyond The Click™ and only pay for measurable results.

Additional information is available at: http://blog.reply.com/?p=4.

Google has unveiled radical changes to its Trademark policy that could cost Britain’s major companies millions as they struggle to protect their brands online.

In a move that is sending shockwaves throughout the digital marketing sector, Google’s controversial decision to allow anyone to bid for trademarked keywords is set to have a major impact on the industry. Tipped to send prices skyrocketing, the decision could leave the search giant open to legal challenges from the major UK brands likely to lose millions as a result.

“This is an incredibly bold move that has taken most of the sector by surprise. It will certainly lead to a big change in the way that advertisers and agencies manage their search campaigns. It could also have an impact on the UK digital agency landscape with agencies running on pure performance deals taking a big hit “said Lyndsay Menzies, Managing Director of bigmouthmedia UK.

Lyndsay further commented, “Our international offices have been working with such a system in the US for years and we know how to deal with it, but the news is likely to precipitate massive changes in the market as brands move budgets about within digital channels to maximise return”

Bringing the UK and Ireland into line with its North American business, which has operated such a policy since 2004, from May 5th Google will allow open keyword bidding on all terms. This means it will now be possible for more than one advertiser to appear in the list of sponsored links that appears after a user has typed in a search query using a trademarked term.

While bad news for major brands, the move is likely to be good news for smaller competitors looking to close the gap, although a question mark now hangs over what effect it will have on the millions invested every year in keyword bidding. Industry commentators believe that some major price comparison sites and aggregators could see advantages, while the change is likely to further fuel industry rumours that Google are planning to make a bid for Expedia.

This announcement is also likely to have a profound effect on all affiliate partners, with the ability to bid on competitor keywords greatly increasing the scope and range of their operations.

“Google’s revised rules for UK and Ireland will add new layers of complexity to the search landscape. Look at affiliate marketing and PPC: many brands restrict their affiliates from brand bidding but these policies now need to be reviewed” said Andrew Girdwood, bigmouthmedia’s Head of Search.

He continued, “It may now make sense to let affiliates brand bid, compete using trade names against brand competitors and bring a stable cost-per-acquisition model to the auction market that Google has just made volatile”

Notes to Editor:

About bigmouthmedia
Founded in 1997, bigmouthmedia are leaders in digital marketing, with a team of over 200 staff across 13 offices in 10 countries on 3 continents the company maximizes return and exposure for major brands online through a variety of fully integrated digital marketing channels: Search – PPC and Search Engine Optimisation, Display Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Social Networking, Brand Monitoring, Online PR and Web Analytics.

Bigmouthmedia services big-brand customers globally including: Adidas, Hilton, British Airways, Tesco, Aer Lingus, BP, Barclays, Castrol, Conrad International, Dorling Kindersley, Early Learning Centre, easyCar, Fasthosts, Jumeirah, Canon, Samsung, Starbucks, Top Man, Debenhams, Which?, Lacoste, Euler Hermes and Wall Street Institute.

Bigmouthmedia is a Deloitte Fast Growth winner and a 2007 FT Best Place to Work. 2007 saw the company celebrate its tenth anniversary and global CEO Steve Leach celebrated a unique hat-trick of major business awards; UK Entrepreneur of the Year title at the National Business Awards and National Business Awards for Scotland and UK as well being named European Entrepreneur at a recent ceremony in Paris.

www.bigmouthmedia.com

Druid Video Limited, a software and media publishing company, today announced the release of a free unique article submission program. Most internet marketing experts agree, article marketing is currently one of the most powerful ways to generate free traffic and build links online. Every business should be using unique content and articles as part of their online marketing campaign.

Steven Lohrenz, owner of http://www.UniqueArticleMarketing.com, says “There’s no reason for people to spend money on other tools and services when a free solution with more features and a better user experience is now available.” The software is the first known unique article submission package to be released
at no cost.

The software provides some very powerful features, previously only found in high priced products:

1. List Ownership – Users submit their articles to their own list of 1,000s of publishers, giving the user full control over who received their articles and when. The user is no longer be stuck with a limited list the software developer puts together.

2. Unique Articles – The user can create variations of each article in order to produce unique articles for each publisher to avoid the search engine duplicate content penalty (this penalty occurs when search engines such as Google see the same content on additional sites – and limits the number of listings).

3. Scheduling – There is a scheduling feature where article submissions can be set up to be sent weeks or months ahead of time, allowing users to batch their article writing into one day a month or quarter.

4. Web Hosted – The software runs entirely on a web host allowing the user to submit articles even when away from their own computer. No longer will users be tied to a specific location or spend hours checking on their computer to see if the submission process is proceeding correctly.

For more information on how to build more traffic and links to any website and to receive the free software visit: http://www.UniqueArticleMarketing.com.

While most of the national economic forecasts call for a recession later this year, many businesses have already seen a downturn in new customers and recurring business over the last six months. How can businesses cut costs while maintaining crucial advertising campaigns at the same time? Interactive advertising is all the rage but the specter of click fraud still remains. Traditional media is feeling the cascading pinch as businesses are hesitant to advertise in a troubled economy. According to recent data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 , the most severe percentage decline in over 50 years.

“The drop-off points to an economic slowdown on top of the secular challenges faced by the industry,” said Jennifer Saba of Editor & Publisher. “The second worst decline in advertising revenue occurred in 2001 when it fell 9.0%.” According to Saba, the growth in online advertising for Newspapers could not stave off the losses in print. National print advertising revenue dropped 6.7% to $7 billion last year. Retail ads slipped 5% to $21 billion. Classified ads plunged 16.5% to $14.1 billion.“I think we have the answer for traditional print and media,” said Clarence Briggs, CEO of tyBit,Inc. (www.tyBit.com/?pdkw=alt-traditional-media-prp-04-01-2008 ).

“Over the past two years we have been building and rebuilding tyBit, and end of second quarter we are making tyBit 1.0 available to the public. The ad module Beta has been a success using over 5,000 advertisers serving millions of ads per day. The last Beta before releasing tyBit 1.0 is the Partner Beta and for that we have 3 large partners and 80 search affiliates.” Partners who have existing web properties with eyeballs will be able to sign up and manage their own advertisers who can run PPC and KWR interactive ad campaigns, said Company officials. “I have been one of the Beta advertisers,” said Wally Bell. “I am extremely impressed with the tyBit ad module, reports and results of my online PPC campaigns. It is easier to use that Google’s ad module and more flexible because I can make and serve my own video ads.” Company officials indicate that over the past 90 days usage of the tyBit search engine has grown exponentially doubling each month. This metric reflects the actual searches conducted by subscribers using the ultra-fast client-side search engine.

The success of tyBit search usage is supported by industry analysis conducted by the Center for Media Research. In numerous reports covering various interactive market segments from media buyers, women over the age of 45, social networking communities, wealthy and minority households, and the political advertising industry has grown far beyond expectations. Gary Drenik, President of BIGresearch, concludes, “It’s no longer enough for marketers to advertise only a slogan…(they) need to better understand the changing dynamics of the consumer media market and develop new marketing plans that integrate new media to replace the erosion of traditional media…” Company officials claim that tyBit is the cutting edge of the new media with over 100 partners in its pipeline representing 60 million users.

Why is tyBit a better advertising network? The industry’s excitement is due to the value for the advertiser’s dollar. The new media industry watchdogs estimate that up to 35% of all PPC traffic is artificially generated, AKA Click Fraud. tyBit delivers fast, relevant, secure, search results with little or no click fraud in its PPC platform, and none in the Global Keyword Registry. tyBit also delivers the features that subscribers want with more to come such as fully integrated secure mail, comparison shopping and a social networking platform, in addition to the ability to distribute text, video and audio ads that are keyword relevant. tyBit is making interactive advertising affordable for small businesses as well as larger enterprises who spend billions each online year. “Until the end of May, anyone can advertise for free in tyBit simply by signing up,” said Kitti Jo Finch, GM for tyBit. “Once 1.0 goes live in June this year, we will begin to charge for advertising in tyBit. We know that we have produced the most relevant, powerful and cost-effective interactive advertising in the industry.”

tyBit is affiliated with AIT ( www.AIT.com/?pdkw=alt-traditional-media-prp-04-01-2008 ) a web hosting and domain registration company that has achieved 12 straight years of sustained profitability and has generated $100s of millions in revenue while creating a profound economic influence on its surrounding community. AIT has been named 2 times to the Inc. 500 list of fast growing firms, 3 times to the Deloitte & Touche Fast 500 list, and has been previously named as the NC Entrepreneur Firm of the Year.