Be a Real Local Marketing Hero

Why spend money on a human directional dressed as a chicken or a giant submarine sandwich? If you're a business with a local trading area, your best bet to get seen by your potential customers  is through local search. It's really just a matter swimming with the current (or dropping your line where the fish are swimming or whatever aquatic metaphor that you prefer) because that's how most people begin to search when looking for a place to go or something to buy. And with Google looking to return localized results with every search and mobile searches growing exponentially (where local results are most prominent) needing to succeed with local search is as essential as paying the electric bill to keep the lights on. In fact, it may just be the most effective way to keep the lights on!

So you may ask: "Larry, can I really get free visibility through local search instead of paying someone to stand all day in an uncomfortable costume in the stifling heat?" Not only will I say yes, but I'll tell you a few simple steps to get you started. So here goes:

• If you haven't yet claimed your Google Places listing (the one associated with the map, search for yourself (aren't we all searching for ourselves?) and click the Manage This Listing box in the right hand column. (If you've already have claimed your listing you can skip to the third bullet point.)
• Sign in with your Google account (if you don't have one create one; it's free) and the first thing you will see is a dialogue that will ask you to verify that you own the business. Chose phone verification (instant) or mail (takes about 5 days to get the PIN) and then return and read the rest of this post after you've verified.
• Make sure you complete all of the business information that Google asks you for (they give you a handy progress bar to let you know how you're doing. This includes choosing the category(ies) that most closely match your business, writing an about description using words that people use when looking for what you do or sell, adding hours and contact information (including your website). 
• Google has finally merged the Places listing management tools with the full Google+ Local panel with social functions. Using this dialogue you can upload a cover photo, other photos, add people to circles and post like you do on Facebook. You should post often.
• Encourage people to review you on your Places/Google+ Local page. Reviews count for a lot.
• Get your business listed in as many directories and local listings that you can. This not only gives you additional avenues of exposure but is a factor in how Google ranks your Google listing. This handy tool at getlisted.org can help you make that happen. 
• Make sure there are local markers on your website if you have one. This means having location words in the page title and main headlines but especially having location (including phone number) and directions on the home page if possible. If you want to take it a step further, you can put schema, or html markup language on your page for locations. There are a few tools out there, but here's one -- http://www.microdatagenerator.com/local-business-schema/ -- that's easy to use.
• Strengthen your website by sourcing quality in-links from other strong websites, preferably local ones.

So that's it. Give it a try and hang up that chicken suit for a while. If you have any questions, enter them here or call me at 904-744-8877. If you prefer to let us drive, click here to learn about our local marketing services. 

                                          

Why Paid Search Advertising Still Rules

I have many clients, in fact all of my clients who have tried it, that have been very successful with paid search advertising, which, let’s face it, has become synonymous with Google Adwords. Still they can't help from wondering if a really cool rich media ad with a racing car that runs across the screen or a banner ad with a dancing leprechaun will somehow be more effective. I tell them, based on both click-through rates and conversion rates that this kind of online display advertising is unlikely to be more effective and now there’s research on user preferences that also supports this point of view.

A new study from Adobe indicates that the overwhelming majority of people prefer television ads and other forms of off-line advertising to ads in online media such as banners ads, social media ads and online apps. Over half (54%) said banner ads don't work, just 3% said they prefer to view ads in social media and literally 0% said they like ads in mobile apps. Whew!

Needless to say this should give businesses and their marketing providers pause. Just like banner ads when they were first introduced back in the day (and they have yet to live up to the hype) ads on social media and mobile apps have failed in delivering on the heavily-promoted promise.

But with online space occupying more and more of people's time and attention, what's the best way to reach that very large and responsive audience? I would say search marketing, particularly paid search -- yes, those stodgy, boring text ads on search results pages. They may not be as interesting as the dancing leprechaun or the race car that flies across your screen obscuring the the text you're trying to read, but they consistently perform better with both click-though rates and conversion rates.

Paid search combined with a strong local search presence on Google+ Local will get you seen by the critical audience of mobile users whose searches are expected to dominate activity within the next two years. Click here and here to learn how we can help you succeed with search marketing and if you really want a dancing leprechaun, we can give you one of those too.

A Domain by Any Other Name

Is still just a domain. Back in April I wrote in this post about the poor unfortunate soul who invested a huge amount of money in what amounted to an exact match domain (EMD). It didn't work out all that well for him and now, with Google's new algorithm update that affects EMDs, it's even more unlikely that it will work for anyone else.

According to this article on the SEOMoz blog, early data indicates many sites that had exact match domains (domains that match exactly the desired keyword, e.g., teethwhitening.com) took a significant fall in search engine results with the update. My take on it is that the sites that did drop probably were not that strong in other ways, so when they lost the advantage of having an exact match domain, they took a tumble.

The moral of the story is that having a strong site that is properly optimized with informative content will carry you a lot further than any particular domain name (you can learn more about how we handle SEO here). So ignore all those resellers hawking the dream domain, or even those registrars trying to push the dot whatever on you as they're barely a step above the former. Build your site with quality content, optimize it and keep it fresh. Then no matter what your domain is, the business you get will still smell as sweet.

Google+ Local Update

This is both an update to my latest post on local search and a post about an update to Google+ Local so that we're all, well, up-to-date.

As promised when Google rolled out Google+ Local in uncharacteristically clumsy fashion back in March, there is now at least some integration available for those small business early-adopters who opened up a Google+ Business page for a local business or place and then found themselves blindsided and befuddled when  their Google Places page suddenly became a Google+ Local page. The result was that they now had two Google+ business pages: one with full functionality but couldn't be found that easily in local search and another that was basically a Places page skinned to look like a Google+ page, but with very limited functionality.

But the sun does rise, the cloud cover breaks, and now you can merge the two. What these means for you  is that you now have the best of both worlds -- a page that customers can find easily on the map and where they can post reviews plua a true social media page for you where you can post regularly, gain followers, create circles and so on. To merge the two, just follow these simple steps:

• When you visit your Google+ Business page you'll see a radial that says Verify Now in the right column. Click on it and follow the instructions
• You will, unfortunately, have to go through the postcard verification process again
• Once that's completed, Google will merge the local data from Places with your Google+ Business listing.

If you've claimed and populated your Google Places (+ Local) page but have not created a Google+ Business page, I recommend you do so to get more utility to connect and sell along with a better experience for the user. Then you can go ahead and merge the two but make sure you open your Google+ Business page as a local business or place.

If you haven't yet claimed your Places listing (see my last post) then it appears you'll still have to go through the Places interface, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Local Search: Location, Location, Location

It's not just about real estate anymore (then again, even real estate is not just about real estate anymore but more on that in a future post.) If you're a business that trades in a defined local market area, your location is becoming the critical factor in customers finding you in the search engines, particularly Google, who over the last several years has been elevating local results displayed on the map.

And now, with Google+ Local (formerly Places) that emphasis is even greater. If those reasons aren't enough, more than half of Americans now own smartphones (a percentage that's expected to grow rapidly) and some projections say that in a couple of years nearly 75% of all searches will be conducted on smartphones. Local search results dominate the returns on these devices.

Now that I have your attention (or have at least inundated you into submission with facts) here are a few simple things you can do to improve your performance in local search:

• Claim your Google Places/Google+ Local listing here if you haven't already done so. Don't let the changing terminology confuse you, everything you will see still says Places when you work with your listing, even though Google has "transitioned" these listings to Google+ Local. It's free, but you'll have to open up a free Google account if you don't already have one. Google will also take you through some steps to verify that you're the business owner. 
• Whether you're just claiming your listing or are updating an existing one, fill out the listing as completely as possible, even though some fields, such as the additional information fields, for now don't appear on the Google+ Local listing. 
• Choose the categories that most closely relate to your business. Although you can enter a custom category, you're better off going with the existing Google categories. 
• When describing your business, use the words that you want your business to be found for, the words that people search on. And that's not to be confused with your business name. It's what you do, not who you are that counts here. 
• Upload several photos if you have them and also video if you have any into those sections. Get your customers to review you on Google+ Local, ideally they should be positive ones. 
• Update your listing from time to time; adding new photos is a great way to do this. There's also a "share an update box" you can use but currently that does not appear on the Google+ Local page either. 
• On your website, it's best to have your address and phone number in text on your home page. Having variations of the city you're in combined with your keyword variations won't necessarily get you there. 

Or you can have us do it. We'll set up and optimize your Google+ Local/Places page for just $149 or we can optimize for local search both your Google+ Local/Places page and your website for just $399. Click here to learn more about our local marketing special.

Why Direct Mail Works for B2B

Recently on Google+ there was a posting, by Google Analytics I believe, passing on an article that basically stated that b2b and b2c were really no different, since everyone is essentially just a consumer. I took issue with that premise and further suggested that the most effective b2b tactic was actually physical direct mail. I was surprised at the reaction that I got, how audacious I guess it was in the online space to suggest that an old warhorse like direct mail was the way to go. (And no, the increasingly beleaguered USPS did not pay me to write this, although I would welcome the opportunity).

I've already expressed my skepticism when it comes to b2b social in this post and I wish I could link the Google+ thread to this blog, but I still haven't found a way to link my blog to my Google+ business page, not the personal account that it's under, as this thread was under my personal Google+ profile (anyone who knows how to do that please let me know). So I'll just excerpt my response here as to why physical direct mail was a more effective b2b tactic than say, paid search, with one of the reasons being that in search, the person doing the searching is different than the decision-maker :

"...Generally speaking (and I'm only making general inferences here) the CTRs (click-thru-rates) in paid search for b2b and b2c are comparable and at times for b2b they're higher. However, in my experience the abandonment rate on the form and/or landing page for a b2b product is much higher and since most times you're talking about generating leads, you have to factor how many clicks you have to generate to get a sale into your ROI equation. (Even for b2b products that can be self-served, like software trials, data backup or cloud services, I've seen this general pattern hold.) So that buttresses my theory of the discoverer being different than the decision-maker.

With physical DM, using a good hand-compiled list, you can get directly to the decision-maker for the product/service in question -- finance, IT, HR and so on. A couple of years ago -- after a long, long time away -- I briefly took a Director-level position at a corporation (although director is not what it used to be) and there was nobody opening my mail (I wish there was because I invariably forgot to approve invoices and so on). Even at an executive level where there is an assistant opening the mail, if you create a piece with a high-enough perceived value the gatekeeper is going to be very reluctant to toss it. So I find physical DM to be the most efficient tactic when it comes to ROI against a b2b target."

So there you have it, you heard it here first (or last since DM appears to have gone the way of vinyl records, but as any audiophile will tell you, they sound a helluva lot better). Oh, and by the way, b2b direct mail is one of the things I specialize in and I do it because it works. Considering the decline in popularity, I can't be doing it for the money and excuse me because I have to go meet my friends from the PO for a beer to commiserate.

Google+ is Now the Place

Google has just announced a major new change that affects millions of businesses -- the conversion of Google Places listings to Google+ (for the uninitiated, this is Google’s social network, akin to Facebook’s, but in some ways better). This of course follows the transition of Google Maps listings to Google Places and as some unwitting small business owners found out, listings on Google Maps and Google Places weren’t always in sync, especially if the business owner or owners unwittingly claimed listings on both Google properties using different Google accounts (if the preceding phrases weren’t confusing enough in and of themselves).

Google stated the transition of Google Places to Google+ Local took place on Thursday May 31st and a quick perusal of my clients’ Places listings verified that was indeed the case. And this transition is a good thing for local small businesses for the following reasons:

• Google+ gives you much more space to talk about your business and what you do for people 
• Google+ gives you more ways to keep your content fresh and interact with customers through posts (just like Facebook) 
• Partly because of all of the above, Google+ gives you more ways to affect high how you are placed in the search engine results.

Because of its search engine visibility potential I recommended that my clients establish a Google+ presence upon its broad introduction some months ago. Now that Google Places has been folded into it, Google + has become a must for small and larger businesses alike.

Comment on this post or email me if you have questions or need assistance in establishing a Google+ presence.

The Social Role

Recently in my Twitter feed I shared a link of this article that discussed the advantages of search marketing versus social. Predictably the article concluded that you should to both, but in my mind it's really not a case of one or the other or even of doing both to cover all of the bases.

In my view search and social really represent two very distinct dynamics. Search marketing reaches people who are looking for something very specific, often to meet an immediate need. Social marketing is where people share experiences, ideas, likes and dislikes, which can help them discover new options or influence a purchase decision. It can also lead them to a need that they didn't initially realize they had -- what we used to call creating need awareness in the old days of sales.

So you really need to operate in both spheres for two entirely different reasons. If you don't have a strong search presence (paid or organic) you'll miss out on all the people who are in the real-time behavior of looking for a solution that you may offer. If you don't have a social presence, you won't have the advantage of people propagating your sales message for you or bolstering your brand credibility with recommendations.

You also won't get the chance to expand interactions with customers. Search tends to have a very direct chain -- users click over, come to your page and they either buy or they don't. Social gives you a chance to have expanded and ongoing conversations with your customer base -- in fact the best social dynamics often expand a sales conversation that was initiated on the website, eventually returning it to the site to close the deal.

Despite what people may tell you, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who is successful selling purely through social. And although search can have very predictable cost and conversion metrics, it's only one step in building deep and profitable relationships with customers.

So my take on it is that you should engage in both search and social marketing, but for very different reasons.

Search Marketing, Online Marketing and Branding

Well, it looks as if branding has made it's way into the supposedly dispassionate world of search marketing. Check out this article in the New York Times on a very interesting campaign by Google.

Of course, branding in the online world isn't exactly news -- elements of branding have been used particularly in online display advertising and often in conjunction with offline campaigns. Still, search is supposed to be driven predominately by relevancy to the search and position, but this isn't always the whole story.

I manage search marketing (Adwords) programs for several clients and I've seen a significant difference in campaigns where there is a concurrent brand effort going on versus when there is not -- a click-thru and conversion improvement of 20% or more. So although relevancy may still be the most important thing, don't forget to build trust, awareness and credibility through your brand.

Check back for a future post on the four most important questions to ask when building your brand.