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Expert Answers to Biz Questions
Listen in! Pick up some expert advice to a reader's question that we selected from CyberSchmooz.
Three Marketing Emergencies and How to Fix Them
A business owner wears many hats, and one of them is the marketing hat. Sometimes you can hire companies to take care of your marketing for you, but you should at least have an idea of what is going on so that you can determine whether you’re getting the value you’re paying for. Let’s face it: If your marketing efforts are not providing a return on your investment, you’re wasting your time and money. Here are three common marketing emergencies that business owners face, and how to fix them.
No. 1: Your Website Is Nowhere to Be Found on Search Engines
Let’s say that you own a business that provides tile contractors to home builders. If you can’t find your website when you perform a search on any of the major search engines for tile contractors in your area, you have a problem. There are two ways to deal with this problem. One is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and one is called Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
With SEO, you work on your website so that it rises through the ranks and starts to naturally--or, organically, as it’s known--appear in the search engine results. With SEM, you purchase advertising so it shows up in the sponsored results section of the search engine results. Ideally, your SEM campaign works while you’re waiting for your SEO campaign to kick in, which can take some time. Then you can choose to either let your SEM campaign go and rely entirely on the results of your SEO campaign, or you leave it running so that you almost have a double-whammy effect.
Either way, if you’re in the tile contracting business, you may prefer to hire a company (or companies--sometimes SEO/SEM companies specialize) to handle this for you. However, if you wish to receive business leads from your website, you’ll definitely want to invest in this type of marketing.
No. 2: Your Website is Getting Visitors, But No Leads
Okay, so now your website is getting found in the search engines, either through your SEO efforts, your SEM efforts, or both. You can look at your website traffic and see that a decent amount of visitors are seeing your site. But you haven’t had a single email or phone call.
There are a few matters you should check if this is the case. First, do your forms work? Have you tried filling out the contact form(s) on your website to see what happens when you press send? Second, is the phone number that is listed on your website correct? It’s a good idea to double-check any contact information on your website, be it phone number, address, or email address.
If everything works as it should and you are still not getting leads, you should examine your calls to action. Perhaps your website simply does not inspire its visitors to contact you. You can often hire website agencies to specifically work on this aspect of your website.
And finally, you should start asking your customers where they found out about you. You might be surprised to learn that many of them found you through your website.
No. 3: Your Competitor’s Billboards Are Everywhere
If your business is struggling because your competitor’s billboards are everywhere and you simply don’t have the marketing budget for billboard ads right now, remember that there are other avenues for advertising. You can wrap your work vehicle, advertise on the shopping carts and checkout dividers at your local grocery stores, sponsor a Little League team, and so much more. Think of it as a matter of David vs. Goliath. Goliath has a flashy, expensive marketing budget. You just have to be smarter and think outside the box.
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