NEW FEATURE!
Find How Your Business Website Ranks Against Your Local Competition. No Name Or Email Needed. Just add your business phone number and instantly receive your "FREE" Ranking Report. Get Your Report
Find How Your Business Website Ranks Against Your Local Competition. No Name Or Email Needed. Just add your business phone number and instantly receive your "FREE" Ranking Report. Get Your Report
Check for new blog posts
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Feb | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |||
Important Tags
avoid keyword mistakes
keyword research
Local SEO
SEO
Small Business Development
Small Business Marketing
7 Common Internet Marketing Mistakes Most Small Business Owners Are Making
This is a shortened version of a recent report I’ve written and also use as a presentation for local business owners. These recommendations are crucial for Small Business Development. Use any one, or a combination of them, & you will most likely see new customers in your business and see old customers coming back to see you again.
Common Mistake #1- You have no call to action.
What is a call to action exactly?
Simple…
A call to action is a statement somewhere on your website telling the visitor what you want them to do.
Before you can have a great call to action you first need to decide exactly what action you want a visitor to take. Do you want them to sign up for a free quote, purchase your service or product right then, or should they contact you for a consultation?
Once you know what action you want them to take. Make sure it’s on your website so it stands out. There should be no confusion what you want your future customer to do. Here are some examples:
“Just fill out your information below to receive a comprehensive, no-strings-attached, completely free quote from one of our representatives.”
“Call now to receive a free quote from our sales team.”
“Simply fill in your name and email to get special discounts and deals sent directly to you.”
“Text “50% Off” to 41513 to receive Fifty Percent off your next pizza.”
Tell your visitor exactly what you want them to do. The more detail, the better.
Profit Tip: Focus on the benefits your visitor will have if they purchase your product or service. What will change in the way they live their life? Will their coffee be better in the morning? Will they save more money on taxes? How will their life be better because you showed up?
Common Mistake #2- Not Capturing Email Addresses
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a local business owner in League City. To protect the innocent we’ll call him John. He’s has an average business with an average income. He worked about 60 hours a week and spent the weekend at home with his family.
His company is a service business and he provides a good service that helps his clients. John is good at what he does.
There was a problem though… he wasn’t getting enough clients. This is something most business owners can relate to. At times, it’s hard to bring customers or clients through the door.
John’s business had a pretty good website. It had great information about John’s service and showed up on the first page of Google. What John didn’t realize was he was leaving a lot of money on the table.
It wasn’t until I showed him how to start collecting email addresses through a simple form on his site that he realized just how much he was missing out on.
I recently checked in with John and not only is his schedule full, he’s been able to raise the prices he was charging. He’s cut back to about 40 hours a week, instead of 60. Not too bad for one small change.
Even though the use of email has slowed some, it’s still effective. The newest capture method is SMS text messaging, where you offer a discount coupon if your customer will text a keyword phrase to your account. You will automatically capture your customers phone number and then be able to text them valuable coupons instantly. Works great and text messages are opened 68% of the time, increasing your conversation rate significantly.
Profit Tip: Offering a free report that shares valuable information with your customers is a great way of bringing new buyers through your doors.
Common Mistake #3- No Google Places or, A bad Google Places Page
The best way to make sure your business has a strong online presence is through the use of Google Places. If you’ve ever done a search for a local business on Google, you’ve probably noticed the Google Places listings at the top of the search results. They appear before the standard results, making them especially lucrative. It’s very important to make sure your business has a presence here! I can’t cover in this short report all the details of what makes a good Google Places listing, or how to make sure your business gets in the top spots.
Profit Tip: The first step is to claim your listing. Simply go to your businesses place page and click where it says “Business Owner?” Can’t find your page? Call me at 340-998-4715 and I will show you how to activate it.
Common Mistake #4- Your Business isn’t on Facebook
Facebook has more than 800 million active users. (An active user is someone who has been on the site in the past 30 days.) At any given time half of them are logged in. Throw in the fact that almost all smart phones have a Facebook app and this is a place your business needs to be.
First, if you don’t have a Facebook account, go to http://www.facebook.com and set one up.
Next you’ll need to create a business fan page. A fan page allows your business to have presence on Facebook and gives you more control on how people on Facebook can interact with your page. For instance you can allow people to leave comments or not. Caution: Do not mix personal & business pages.
A fan page also gives you a great way to communicate with your customers. Just remember…
Profit Tip: Never use your personal FB account for business. When you separate your personal and business account it creates a professional look for your business.
Common Mistake #5- You don’t have a mobile version of your website
Cell phone usage and popularity is growing 8 times faster than the explosion of computer desk top usage in the early 90’s. Morgan Stanley Research estimates that by 2015, mobile web usage will be bigger than desktop usage. Your business can’t afford to overlook what Google calls “the mobile revolution.”
However, it’s estimated that 82% of businesses still don’t have a “mobile-friendly” website.
The problem is that traditional websites are built to be viewed on a computer screen instead of a small mobile phone screen. So viewing a traditional website that has not been “mobilized” is almost impossible. You have to scroll all over the place just to find the information you’re looking for.
In addition, most “non-mobilized” websites take forever or don’t even load on many mobile devices. Since 65% of people accessing the Internet use their smart phones to search for local businesses, as soon as they hit a website they can’t navigate or use, they quickly exit the site and move on. Suggestion: Try searching for your business site & find your contact information. See if you get the results you think you should have.
Can you start to see how businesses are missing out on some SERIOUS sales by not having mobile-friendly websites?
Profit Tip: While only 37% of emails sent from businesses are opened, 95% of all SMS or text messages are read within the first five minutes. Also in a study commissioned by Google, 75% of the test consumers said they would rather get notifications from businesses by text. Using text message advertising is a steadily growing method to build good relationships with your customers.
Common Mistake #6- Not Monitoring Your Online Reputation
People are talking about your company online whether you like it or not. That includes good AND bad reviews.
If you’re not monitoring your online reputation, you’re going to have two problems when this happens.
1) The negative review could wind up ranking high in the search results, so whenever somebody searches for your business, this could be one of the first things they see. The review might be accurate if a mistake really was made, or it might be completely inaccurate, but that potential customer has no way of knowing for sure (and is more than likely going to accept it as fact).
2) You won’t have a chance to explain the situation and fix it.
The solution here is to be a part of the conversation. Connect with your customers where these kinds of things might appear like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc. so you can try to correct any mistakes quickly, or explain your side if necessary.
What makes these sites so important is many of them have apps for the iPhone or Android smartphones, so a lot of people use them to look up local businesses when they’re on the go. If they find a listing with low ratings or bad reviews, they can just choose another one and you will never know you lost a potential customer.
Profit Tip: These sites aren’t only about reviews, however. Many of them let you make special offers to your customers, in the way of discounts, giveaways and more. These special offers can be another great way to draw in both new and existing customers through their smartphones and other mobile devices.
Common Mistake #7- Your Website isn’t Search Engine Friendly
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the closest things to friends your website will ever have. So you have to make sure they play extra nicely together.
By following a few simple local seo rules, you can have your website ranking well in the search results for popular terms in your local area.
Let’s say you wanted to rank well for the search term, “Galveston Spa”. You’d want to make sure that you have that term on your main web page at least three times.
The best places to put search terms are…
The title tag
Some of these may sound like Greek to you, so talk with your web developer about them and make sure that your website is up to date with terms you’d like to rank for.
Profit Tip: As a local business, you have a huge, wide-open opportunity to dominate your local competition by getting a free, prominent listing at the top of Google, using Google Places local search features. Google has made a large investment in becoming the most relevant search engine to its users, as Google understands that if you live in Texas City and you do a search for pizza, they know you want a pizza place in Texas City—not in Austin.
Thank you for taking the time to read through this short report. I’d love to have a chance to talk with you for even just 10 minutes about your current marketing strategy and check your local SEO to see if there is any way we can improve your traffic by using the power of the internet.
It’s possible that by making a few small changes, you could see huge results. So please, give me a call at 340-998-4715 and we can set time aside for a short 15-20 minute meeting & get to know each other.
Thank you again for reading this report.
Yours in business success,
Terry Hudson
If you would like to know more about small business development and how proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can build your business, get my Free 20 page SEO report by going to www.webmarketingme.com and click the Get Free SEO Report.