|
|
-
You’ve heard it before for real estate –location, location,
location. But for service businesses too, location can be essential, even on
the Internet. In the United
States, millions of people search for local
products and services on the Internet every month. If you want your website to
bring in more local customers, tailor your Web pages for local searchers, even
if you also sell worldwide.
How to Grab Local Searchers
To tailor your pages for this, include local or regional information, as zip code,
city, state, county, or street, on each of your Web pages as text. You can
simply add this information to the header or footer of all of your Web pages.
For a site seeking to attract local business, this makes more sense than
burying the information on your Contact Us page only.
You might want to put local or regional qualifiers into your Page Title, also. The Page Title is the text that displays at the top of your web browser window. You can edit your page title with content management software such as Adobe Contribute.
Localizing the Global Medium
The Internet is unquestionably the global medium par
excellence. Even so, if you’re competing on the Web for local customers who are
using search engines, you often face much less competition than you would when
locality doesn’t matter. Therefore, local businesses could get the jump on big
national businesses in this arena. So play with the localized content on your
Web pages. Let me know what you try and how it works for you.
|
-
Developing your business is fun, not work – right? Your creative hobbies and pleasurable pursuits are a perfect way to spur your business development. How? Well, here’s what we did.
NordicInteractive.com is a web development firm. After the second quilt shop we designed a site for, we realized how many of us loved quilting, and how involved some of us are in quilting online – sharing information, patterns, tips, and the like with other quilters as passionate as we are. Because we are in touch with online activities for quilters, we saw a need for an online community, offering directory listings, forums, discussion groups, blogs, and more, all for quilters, and all in one place. We quickly realized that we could fulfill the need, and got into the game by creating the online quilters community that we had envisioned. We called it QuiltersBiz.com (http://www.quiltersbiz.com).
Marketing activities so far have been very natural. Through our hobby activities, we’re already in contact with a wide group of quilters. We’ve been talking about what we’re doing in the online community with all the quilters we know.
What if my business isn’t web development, you ask? You can still bring together your hobbies and your business. Promote your business online by blogging, participating in discussion forums, and joining email lists. You won’t mind the time it takes when you love what you’re doing! And that’s what it’s all about, right?
|
-
The links you create to and from other sites are crucial to your online success. Drive more traffic to your site by carefully managing both types of links. If you develop a strong content-oriented site, you can persuade other webmasters to link to you or to trade links with you.
Networking
The key is to develop content people want to link to. Then get out there and network, both in person and online. In person, talk up your website to your personal and business contacts. Ask everyone you know which websites might be appropriate for mutual linking with your site. Find people who offer a related product or service (not necessarily your direct competition) and ask if they want to trade links. Explain that this benefits both of you. Online, visit people's sites, send personalized emails to their webmasters, and make posts to discussion groups, forums, and blogs.
Building Links
A strong showing of links to and from your site can really benefit your search engine rankings. When search engines use links to rate your site’s relevance, they are copying the word-of-mouth principle: if a qualified person is willing to recommend you by linking to you, this increases your standing in the online community, just as word of mouth recommendations boost your reputation in a real-world community.
What’s your experience with building your links page? Tell us your stories here!
|
-
The comments your customers give you are invaluable. The positive comments are called “testimonials”! Think about positive comments your customers have given you recently. Can you point to specific statements they’ve made? Have you written them down?? If not, it’s time to shape up!
Testimonials are one of the cornerstones of any marketing campaign. They give potential customers specific, tangible impressions about your product, and they inspire confidence.
Every time you or your employees follow up with a customer, write down what they say, both positive and negative. Respond to the negative ones, whether with changes to your product or service, or with further information and education to help them become satisfied customers. Remember, a great response to a negative comment can generate overwhelming loyalty, and another excellent testimonial!
A simple way to collect testimonials is to train your employees (and remind yourself!) to jot notes whenever they are speaking with a customer. From these jottings, you can easily develop testimonials, which can be used in all media, whether print, online, or on the radio or TV. Just make sure to get approval before using their comment. Ask if it’s OK to identify their company and use their name. Publishing the customer’s name with the testimonial increases the value of their comment considerably. If using the testimonial online, link it to their website or blog, and request that they link to you, also.
Besides being a great marketing tool, comments from happy customers make you and your employees feel good. That reinforces good relationships for everyone. And that’s valuable, too!
|
-
Ever think you were ordinary? That your business had nothing to offer beyond the average? Think again! Take a hard look at your promotional materials: your logo, print materials, website, your telephone system, your storefront, and the rest of your premises… anything your customers see (or hear). Are you really communicating the value you have to offer?
Our sales people visit businesses that are far from average every day. But too often, they bury their brilliance under outdated logos, unprofessional print materials, and amateur websites that shout “insignificance,” not brilliance.
Start thinking about what makes you stand out. By definition, you are unique, and so is your business. Think about your values, your mission, and the passion that prompted you to start your business. Every business owner will have a different answer to these questions. Your values and passions define your mission, and your mission is what sets you apart. Dig, define, and redefine, until you can clearly express your brilliance. Then once you have determined your message, make sure all of your promotional materials communicate it.
Believe me, you’re going to need outside opinions on this project. Ask your best employees, customers, and even strangers to help you understand how you appear to the world. If you can possibly afford it, hire an expert too. You deserve to show all of your merit!
Have you ever noticed another business upgrading their promotional materials, or done so yourself? What kind of a difference did it make? Share your stories here!
|
-
Most businesses are busy just doing what they do best: providing products or services. They don't have time to step back and uncover their problem, let alone find a solution. Sometimes, in talking with our staff, a business discovers that what they thought they needed is not relevant. For example, one business we visited thought their problem was a bank of files filled with paper that should be digitized. As we talked with them, we realized that in this case, the paper was not the problem - their information was already digitized! What they really needed was a better way to share the information with their customers.
Our company was able to propose a simple web-based application that would allow customers easy access to the information. Customers would go online to search, view, and print the information themselves, with almost zero demand on staff time.
Sure, we could have scanned their documents, re-digitizing what they already had in digital format, and made some money. But this would have left their original problem unsolved -- their customers still would have needed easy access to that information.
Have you encountered situations like these with your customers? How do you communicate with them when you see their problem much differently than they do?
|
-
The promise of the digital office has been predicated on a paperless office. But anyone who has used electronic information systems for clinical care, customer support, business record keeping, or information sharing knows that paper has not completely gone away.
We probably all know a handful of technological sophisticates who use handheld devices and the Internet to read news or sports, email or message friends, map directions, or capture and transmit pictures. But most of us are still going to be using paper in one way or another for these activities, at least for a while.
So until the paperless world is a reality for all of us, we'll need to keep finding ways to manage and share paper-based information.
Where are you and your associates in the paperless scale -- still entirely paper based in your information sharing, entirely paperless, or somewhere in between? What are the unique hassles you face in this area? Most of us are so used to struggling with information in various formats that we hardly notice it.
Take a step back from your business process, think about how paper and electronic information sharing happens for you, and post your thoughts.
|
-
Recently I’ve seen people take a fresh look at their advertising strategy. For example, Yellow Pages ads are expensive: $600 a month for a quarter-page ad. People ask me, “Am I really getting the best return on my advertising investment with this ad?”
I tell them, “That depends. If your customers always look for you in the phone book, maybe you are. But if more and more people are looking for you online, you’re getting less and less return on that Yellow Pages investment.”
One way to learn how your customers find you is to ask them, either formally, with a simple questionnaire, or informally, in conversation. If you don’t get many positive responses from your Yellow Pages ad, consider a new strategy: reduce the size of your ad, or shrink it to just a line listing, and invest the money you have left over in your Internet presence.
To make the Internet work, you need to know your audience. Do a little research into who your potential new customers are, and what makes them tick, before investing in an online presence. You might find yourself turning more and more to the web for communicating with existing customers and gaining new ones.
What strategies do you use to get the word out about your company's products and services? And how do you measure the success rate of your efforts?
|
|
|
|