Small Business Internet Marketing – How Potential Customers Find You These Days…

Posted on | February 12, 2010 | No Comments

If you haven’t heard, more than 50% of your potential customers have abandoned the print yellow pages for online search. A vast majority of these buyers use Google Maps to find a local business in their area. Remember, these people are BUYERS. They are ready to spend their money NOW.

Here’s how they find you:

Do you have your local business listed on Google’s Local Business Center? If not, as you can see, you’re losing a lot of potential customers.

If you do, then you need to enhance it with as much information as possible. Fill out the information page completely. Add photo’s, video, specials, etc. Set yourself apart from your competition by using the Coupon feature. Get your satisfied customers to post reviews. The more information you provide the better because it will improve your ranking, results and profits!

What are you waiting for? It’s free.

Category: LSEO

Small Business Marketing Goes Online – Will You Be Left Behind?

Posted on | January 27, 2010 | No Comments

Would it surprise you to know that a majority of companies have turned their marketing efforts to the internet?

Spending increased for email marketing, social media, PPC and online display advertising. The only “old school” strategy in the top 5 was telemarketing.

Television and radio? Down 83%! Print ads down 60%, and direct mail down 52%.

Direct mail is no surprise with all the rate hikes from the post office, but the TV numbers really are kind of surprising. Of course, the big drug companies gobble up most of the air time these days, but it’s still compelling.

If you’re a small business owner you want to look at these numbers seriously if you haven’t ventured online yet. At the very least you should look into email and mobile marketing if your business depends on repeat customers.

A former ad rep for a print yellow page ad company recently left a comment saying his sales plummeted in the last few years. He noted a negative ROI for many customers, and predicted the print yellow pages would be extinct by 2016. He may be right…

If you noticed your print yellow page ads haven’t been performing very well in the last few years you’re not dreaming. According to recent studies consumers have abandoned them for online search by more than 50%! Just like the print yellow pages, these customers are looking to buy NOW. Shouldn’t you be in front of them?

To get started, you can pick up my free guide. It covers everything to get your business in front of these prospects when they are searching for your products and services.

Category: Email Marketing, LSEO, PPC, Social Media

YellowPages.com – Small Business Owners Beware?!

Posted on | January 22, 2010 | 2 Comments

I was doing a little research the other day checking out YellowPages.com and some of their services.

Since the only way to get pricing information for a custom website was to call a sales rep I decided to do a little online searching. The results were very interesting…

I ended up on ComplaintsBoard.com, and many others, viewing hundreds of complaints about deceptive sales practices, horrible customer service, hidden auto-renewal clauses, and non-performance of contract in regard to advertising results.

The complaints that really stuck out were the ones from former sales reps who talked about their deceptive sales tactics. They inflate the numbers and downplay the contract. In other words, anything goes to get you to sign on the dotted line. And why not? The sales reps get paid big bonus money for reaching sales goals.

Of course, the program can’t be all bad. If it was completely ineffective the service would be devoid of advertisers. To be fair, I found reports showing the quality of visitors from bigger online directories like yellowpages.com (YPC) are much more engaged — they stick around your website longer.

But the real problem for most small business owners is not knowing the Return-On-Investment (ROI). With YPC you have to sign a long-term contract (12 months) without the benefit of testing performance. This has always been a thorn in the side for advertisers in the print Yellow Pages too. You have to pay no matter how well the ad does. Not doing well… too bad for you.

It looks like they’ve taken this same business model and transferred it to the online program. This makes no sense because unlike the print edition they can remove your ad anytime they want. And worse, their advertising isn’t performance based like Google where you only pay when a person clicks on an ad. You pay a flat rate no matter how many times your ad is shown. And if your click-through-rate (CTR) sucks, too bad.

Another glaring number is search traffic. YPC says they provide exposure to 125 million searches per month. This is peanuts compared to Google with a whopping 2.7 billion! And don’t forget, with Google you can look up keyword traffic numbers for yourself right online. Not so, with with online directories like Yellowpages.com — you have to depend on them to provide these numbers. This is where a slick salesperson can take advantage of you. They can manipulate numbers to show more impressions and higher CTR’s to get you salivating. Anything to get you signed up…

By now you probably get my position on all this. I wouldn’t sign any long-term contract without some performance guarantee. That’s just common sense. If they don’t agree to this in writing, or downplay the enforcement of the contract, forget it.

When it comes to online directories like YPC the best thing to do is grab a FREE listing and watch your traffic sources. If you’re getting traffic and it’s converting into sales then you may have something to work with. Look at the numbers and figure out what you can pay for the results. If they are charging too much, either negotiate a better deal or walk away. You have plenty of other advertising options online.

I always recommend my clients use Google Adwords to test and optimize their sales funnel before rolling out to other options. It’s cost-effective, accountable, and provides valuable marketing and SEO information. You can start and stop a campaign anytime you like, control your budget, and track everything with Google analytics. It’s not the pig in a poke offered by some of these online directories.

Category: PPC
Tags: yellowpages scam

Grow Your Customer Base With Groupon

Posted on | January 14, 2010 | No Comments

If you’re a small business owner who likes the idea of no-cost, zero-risk advertising programs then you’ll definitely want to check out the Groupon.com program.

And as you’ll soon see, it can be a very powerful long-term profit-center for a small business owner. Let me explain…

Groupon is a full-service online coupon discount service. They have over 2 million subscribers (and growing) in metro areas waiting to see special offers from local merchants each day. If your small business is in one of the metro areas they cover (you can check and see at grouponworks.com), and you have products or services they would like to promote, they’ll set up a campaign for you at zero cost.

They’ll work with you on a promotion, write all the copy, and promote your special offer to local customers via email. All the email recipients are opt-in and want to receive these special offers every day. And from what I’ve seen they’re very responsive.

So, for example, let’s say you own a restaurant in Dallas and they agree to send out a special offer to 75,000 potential customers in your area. The coupon is for $75 worth of food for $37. They fire off a professionally designed offer announcing the Groupon, collect the cash from the buyers, take a cut, and send you a check. They distribute the coupons via email to the buyers who redeem them at your place of business. It’s a totally hands-off operation for the business owner.

What I like about the program is the fact you can build your customer base without any marketing expense except for the cost of goods. Even if you break even on the offer, you have new customers you can easily convert into more profits.

So if I were to use this program, I would set up a special back-end marketing program for anyone who brings in a “groupon”. First, I would find out up front if they have a groupon and make sure they get special treatment. Then I would offer them more special deals to get them to come back. I would ask them if they wanted to be notified by email of any specials and put them on an email list (you should be doing this anyway).

In other words, turn them into lifetime customers. This can turn into a serious cash cow for any business owner who puts a little thought into it. For instance, on their website they show one restaurant owner who sold 2,873 groupons. If you take each of these customers and turn them into an average spend of $300 annually you’re looking at gross receipts of $860,000!

Since Groupon is risk free, I’d say it’s a sweet deal. You should check out the availability in your area. They currently service 29 major metro areas with 19 more opening soon.

Category: Email Marketing, Offline Strategies

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