TVS Internet Marketing, LLC.

Websites, SEO, and PPC for Small Business Websites

marketing

Does SEO Matter to Small Business Owners?

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does-seo-matterSearch Engine Land recently ran an article called Confessions of an $100/month SEO Client. It was an interview with a small business owner who had invested very little into his internet marketing profile.

I spend a lot of time talking about building your web presence and making use of SEO. But as a business owner it’s certainly worth asking the question: does SEO matter and does it actually help your business?

The experience of the SMB featured in the interview is somewhat unique since he got a lot of leads from a local service that’s only available in California. It was still a service that placed him online, however, and which contributed to his overall web presence.

He also did a lot of PPC advertising, and it looks like he did well enough with it that he credited it for a large portion of his business. Imagine what he could do with organic traffic, which receives the bulk of the clicks!

Inforza.com recently put together some stats about SEO that SMBs should pay attention to as they evaluate this question for their own businesses.

Emphasis mine.

“8 SEO Stats that are Hard to Ignore when you’re trying to justify whether or not you should be investing in search engine optimization.

  • 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
  • Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share.
  • 70% of the links search users click are organic.
  • 70-80% of users ignore paid ads focusing on organic results.
  • Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%.
  • SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
  • For Google, 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% of organic clicks go to the #2 position, and 7% of organic clicks go to the #3 position.

In short, SEO beats just about everything else. (Though social media is important for other reasons).

The 14.6% close rate struck me as particularly relevant. It’s yet another reason why small business owners need to think about diverting a lot of their old-school advertising budgets into SEO.

And it’s a great reason why you need to think about investing enough into your internet marketing efforts to actually make a difference.

What about blogging? How does that help you and why should you invest any efforts into the exercise?

Here are some statistics that The Inbound Writer blog compiled from several other sources.

  • Because 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content, they are more likely to buy from that company.
  • Interesting content is a top 3 reason people follow brands on social media.
  • Social media sites and blogs reach 8 out of 10 of all US Internet users and account for 23% of all time spent online.
  • 90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.
  • Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links.
  • The average cost to generate a lead through inbound marketing ($143) is about half the average for outbound marketing ($373).

434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links is a stat worth paying attention to. It demonstrates one of the reasons that blogging is so important.

Simply put, every blog post increases your chances of being found. It lets you rank for 130 keywords, as an example, instead of 3 keywords.

After awhile, all of these efforts reach critical mass and you start seeing an explosion of business that you never would have had if you hadn’t invested in SEO, blogging and social media alike.

So does SEO matter? Yes! And it will continue to matter well into the foreseeable future.

How a Contractor Can Use A Web Contact Form to Make More Sales

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In a previous post we talked about how your web contact form can chase customers away if it isn’t set up correctly. But there are other ways to lose these leads.

This is a slide show presentation from B2B Lead Roundtable. The numbers are just as applicable to selling to homeowners as they are to commercial sales.

So what are the takeaways of this presentation, and how do they relate to web contact forms?

Call Your Leads Fast

According to the presentation it takes about 5 minutes for a contact form lead to go stale. You need a way to put in a call the moment someone hits “submit.”

Your office staff can tackle the task if you want, as could an inside sales rep. Or you could use your mobile phone.

This was a technique that was recently outlined on a Screenwerk.com post called “Plumber: 95% of My Leads Come from Yelp.”

“He [the plumber] spoke about his reliance on his smartphone as a tool in the field and how he uses it to take payments (Square) and quickly respond to emails and make callbacks.”

This is a huge area of opportunity. Slide 9 indicates that it takes most people 44 minutes to put in a call back. If you’re competing with anyone at all you’re likely to become the winner simply by being the first person to pick up the phone.

Slide 11 makes this even more clear. 78% of the sales are going to the first caller, according to the report.

Now of course, if your prospect uses the form at 3 in the morning it’s more than acceptable to give them a call at a more reasonable hour. You don’t have to monitor your web form 24/7. Just make sure it’s covered during normal business hours.

Be Persistent

So you didn’t get the homeowner the first time. Do you drop a voicemail and go on to other things?

Not if you want to make the sale. Note slide 14. You need to try calling at least 6 times before you giveup.

Slide 41 specifically suggests 8 calls.

However, do leave a solid voice mail when you do call. Otherwise, how will the caller know that you were the first and fastest to respond? If they didn’t pick up the phone, they wouldn’t.

Keep in Touch

The slide show talks about capturing permissions in order to make contact again sometime in the future. It may be more efficient to just offer the option to subscribe to your blog so that potential customers can receive an update every time you update your blog.

According to massively popular blogger Jon Morrow, this represents the wave of the future.

I’ve talked about email marketing before. Even then I was talking about simply sending out blog updates as a time-saver. Let’s face it, your blog is the place where you’re working to create content that is specifically useful to the reader, and that’s pretty much the only kind of e-mail that the customer is that interested in receiving.

However, it’s not the only way to get the job done. Some people use their e-mail lists to go beyond the basics and to get “deeper into the weeds,” moving beyond the content they post online.

One way or the other though, you have to provide some method to hold onto people who visit your website and express an interest. Otherwise they’re just going to forget about you.

Using Calendars and Reminder Calls

I was quite intrigued by Slide 31, which mentions how Google or Outlook calendar invites can decrease no-shows. You could do this for estimate appointments and for service appointments, but you should definitely ask the customer’s permission to do this while you’ve got them on the phone.

Asking permission also gives you the chance to ask customers which of the two services they prefer to use.

However, the reminder call idea on Slide 32 does not require any special permissions.

Closing Thoughts

If you’ve done what it takes to turn your website into a big lead generation machine you’re already doing more than your competition probably is. Now you just need to tighten up your response so you can make the most of this advantage.

How to Develop Content Customers Care About

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how-to-develop-contentBy now, it’s pretty clear that knowing how to develop content is pretty vital for just about any business. But how can a small business owner develop content that really matters to customers?

After all, there isn’t a lot of profit in taking shots in the dark. You really need a way to tap into that “wow” factor.

Fortunately, there are several easy ways to accomplish this goal.

Do a Little Digging

In a previous post I talked about using Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers to find out what your target market is thinking about.

Some things have changed since that post. LinkedIn Answers went away, for example (though LinkedIn Groups now serves the same basic function).

You can dig elsewhere, too. Forums that cater to your target niche are a great place to see what people are asking about. So are blogs. You can just look right in the blog comments to determine what people are struggling with.

Listen While They’re There

Every business has a group of about 20 questions that customers ask again and again. 18 of those questions probably have both a “long answer” and a “short answer.”

Deliver the short answers in person (that’s probably what’s already happening). Turn the long answers into blog posts.

You might even save your staff a little bit of time, which never hurts.

See What’s Trending

Sometimes, it’s all about the latest and greatest. You can also build relationships by pointing people towards other people’s blog content.

But it’s pretty easy to lose yourself in a content sea.

I recommend following blogs and Google alerts through Feedly. You can separate content by category or search term and get a look at the current state of your industry in a matter of minutes.

This is nice, because it lets you come up with content that’s a bit more insightful and in-depth. “What is a Widget?” posts have their place, but “My Analysis of the Latest Widget Development Featured in Widget Crunch” is actually capable of driving a conversation.

Watch Your Analytics

Search terms that constantly appear in your Google analytics tells you something about the kinds of problems that people are trying to solve by coming to your business.

Sometimes, the queries will be vague or strange. Other times, you’ll get long tail keywords that are nothing more than a question begging for an answer.

It’s Still a Guessing Game

All of these methods really only produce educated guesses about content development. It’s important to realize that any post you create is going to be something of a guess.

And that’s okay. Because a website should never be all about a single piece of content.

A website is a total content package, built up slowly over time.

How to Grow a Small Business

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how-to-grow-a-small-businessAs I look around online I find a lot of questions about how to grow a small business. Some of those questions come from people whose businesses have stalled, and some come from new business owners. I’ve also seen the questions coming from people who are feeling squeezed by competitors and who really want a way to increase their market share.

Fortunately, meeting all of these goals isn’t as hard as most people think, especially not in the age of internet marketing. That is because most of the competition isn’t even using the tools that will help them grow, which means you’ve got a real chance of success the moment you take advantage of those tools for your own business.

Get a Website

It’s 2013. But over 50% of businesses out there still don’t have websites.

We work with a lot of contractors, and I’m sorry to say that among contractors the numbers are even worse. I’ve been helping a friend look for a few pros to work on her home recently, and I’ve been appalled at the results of my searches in her city.

Frankly, I can find 40 names but only 4 websites.

I pretty much won’t so much as call a business – any business – if they don’t have a website these days. That just tells me that your business is backwards and out of touch.

I know I’m not the only person who thinks this way.

Optimize Your Google+ Local Listings

We’re a local SEO company so of course we bang this drum all the time. However, most businesses are not doing a thing with their Google+ Local listings. I know this because several of the local businesses in the top 7 for any given category in some cities haven’t so much as claimed their listings.

This represents an enormous opportunity for you. If you do optimize our web pages you’ve got a good chance of snagging one of those Top 7 spots, showing up in the search results in a spot that customers really trust.

Build Relationships

Build relationships with your customers. Really take the time to take care of them.

Spend time with them. Answer their questions. Deliver great service.

These things aren’t hard, but most businesses don’t do them. Encountering someone who even does these basics, who is kind and knowledgeable, is even more rare.

So if you can go above and beyond the call of duty then you’re simply going to blow people away.

When you do this, something magical happens. These customers call you again and again, every time they need yo. They also tell their friends all about you. And yes, they sometimes even voluntarily think to leave online reviews.

There’s plenty of fast new technology to help you market your business. But getting a lasting edge still requires at least one slow-and-steady method: being one of the best at what you do.

This Combination Can’t Be Beat

Doing any one of these things is helpful. Doing all three of them together will really help your business reach its full potential.

Action Items:

  • Build a website if you don’t have one already.
  • Claim your Google+ Local listing.
  • Don’t have time, know-how, or desire to do this stuff? Call us at (800) 679-6005.

Home Improvement Marketing that Prevents You from Losing Bids to Lowballers

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home-improvement-marketingIf you’re in the home improvement business then you’ve felt the pain of losing a bid to a low-quality competitor whose only asset was their willingness to provide rock bottom prices. Fortunately, home improvement marketing can be planned in a way that allows you to maintain the integrity of your prices while still continuing to win business for your company.

The strategy addresses both your actual marketing and the sales process that the marketing initiates for you. It’s a very easy and inexpensive strategy to implement.

The idea is that we’re going to find a way to reach those customers for whom price is not the sole consideration when making a decision about your services. We want people who are more interested in quality and who have money to spend in order to get that quality.

You also need to make sure that you’re selling on that value, and not on the price. If you start selling on price alone then a race to the bottom is all that you’re going to have left.

Strategy #1: Adjust Your Website

Is your website a full blown authority site with tons of interesting blog posts addressing problems and questions that your target customer might have? Or is it a 5-page electronic brochure?

If it’s the latter it’s time to create a regular supply of helpful, friendly content.

The content that you put on your site only has to be related to what you do. I understand that, as, say, a person who replaces roof tiles that you might find it challenging to come up with vast quantities of cool stuff to say about, say, how homeowners can maintain their roof or tell if it needs replacing.

But you can expand. If customers want to know how to maintain their roof they might want to know about other aspects of home improvement and home maintenance as well.

A fence contractor can build goodwill by talking about rose bushes as well as fences. In fact, adding this extra content demonstrates that you care about the total package – all of the issues that a homeowner might care about – and that you’re not just looking for excuses to write “roof” or “fence” over and over on your site to impress the search engines.

Along the way you can also spend some time talking about what makes you different and better. For example, if you only use the finest wood to build fences instead of the cheap, low quality wood that your lowballing competitor likes to use, then you’ll give yourself a lot of opportunities to say so without attacking that competitor. A homeowner who is shopping around will take this into consideration when it contacts you for a bid.

Strategy #2: Adjust Your Presentation

The second part of this strategy happens when you actually get in front of a customer. Now you’re there to make the sale.

Make no mistake, going to deliver an estimate is an opportunity to actually make a sale. Don’t just run in, quote a figure and run out again.

Spend zero time stressing your low prices, too. Instead, you need to take the opportunity and the time to ask your prospective customer a lot of questions.

Your goal is to understand the customer’s situation and concerns. Then you can walk the homeowner through what you do, how you do it, and why it will solve the problem that they’re hoping to fix.

Once that’s done you can ask the customer if he or she has any other questions. Answer them thoroughly, demonstrating your care, concern, and expertise.

Really take the time to build that relationship and that trust. Then, when it’s all done, hand off the quote without any additional comment about the price and ask when your prospective customer would like to schedule the work.

Ask “when,” not “if.” If is a yes-no question.

In sales, you’ll find that a “yes-no” question is always answered with no, so avoid them. Just assume they want you.

If you want to take it a step further, suggest two open dates and see if the customer picks one. If so, then you’ve just written the other competitors out of the equation. You can wrap up any additional paperwork and be on your way, knowing you’ve made that sale.

Now of course, customers whose budget is smaller than your price are still going to go with a lower bid if they don’t have any other choice. But that’s okay. They were never really in your target market as you were looking for people who were capable of paying in the first place.

And those who can pay will want you. They’ll want you because the biggest fear a homeowner has is that you’re going to screw up the work and cost them more time and money than they’re prepared to lose.

If you take the time to work with the customer you’ll dispel those concerns. That means the customer will want you even if you’re the MOST expensive – especially if they’ve already spent time on your website being pre-sold on your services.

As you can see, the two strategies work hand in hand to win more bids for your home improvement business.

Action Items:

  • Begin blogging at least twice a week.
  • Change your sales approach whenever you’re in front of a customer.