If you are a business owner, you only have so much time to do everything that needs to be done. You have a lot on your plate, and then there is marketing.
What you need to know, as a busy business owner, is where to spend your limited marketing time and money so that you can get the biggest bang for your time. That’s what I’ll discuss here.
There are 3 big things every local-based business should have in place. If you don’t have these in place, this is where to spend your marketing time and energy until they are set up. Now, they don’t have to be perfect. Get them in place so that they’re “good enough”, then you can spend time on them as you can.
And let me be absolutely clear about this. “Good enough” does not mean having an “Under Construction” page on your website, or just claiming your Google Business Listing without filling anything out. You want them to be optimized and ready for visitors.
And yes, if you need help with any of this, or anything else, we can help here at Cyber Mage Marketing. Just click the button below and let’s build an amazing business relationship.
Now, the 3 big marketing assets we are about to discuss are your website, your Google business listing, and your e-mail list.
1) Your Website
Having a website is not the same as having an EFFECTIVE website. And what makes a website effective?
Well, there are a lot of different little and few big things that all add up.
DESIGN
You want to have a modern professional-looking design for your website. If your website looks amateurish or outdated, then some people are going to associate the word “amateur” or “outdated” with your business.
*Example: If you are using tables for your layout instead of CSS, it is outdated. Like it is last century outdated. Please fix that.
ON-PAGE SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a strategy used to rank your web pages as high as possible in the search engine results for a given term. And with on-page SEO, you are optimizing individual pages of your website.
Things like keyword density, and including the keywords you want to rank for in the important places on the page become important. Important places to include your keywords include your title, headlines, alt text, meta description, file name, directory structure, etc.
TECHNICAL SEO
This relates to other factors outside of keywords. Things like your website being SSL-enabled, being mobile-friendly, having an updated sitemap, having a correct robots.txt file, and having a fast load time are important here. There are lots more.
Modern search engines (like Google) now have hundreds of little components that go into ranking pages in the search results. The more of these little factors you can verify on each of your pages and on your overall site, the better score you’ll be awarded by the search engines, and the higher your pages will rank in the results.
USABILITY
This is mainly referring to how easy it is for visitors to find what they are looking for and get around on your site.
If you have 200 links stacked along the left side of your website, it is going to be extremely difficult for visitors to find what they need. That is poor usability.
If a visitor needs to click 3 links in a specific order because your hours, address, or phone number are buried on some never-used page deep within your website, that is also poor usability.
Usability also deals with the colors used on your website. If you have light blue text on a dark blue background that no one is able to read, that is very poor usability.
2) Your Google Business Profile
Now that we’ve briefly discussed your website, let’s talk about the next digital asset that you have to optimize before moving on to other marketing. Your Google Business Profile.
This is the profile you are able to access through Google Maps. And if you haven’t yet claimed your business, that is step 1. If you have – fantastic! But you aren’t done.
COMPLETE YOUR PROFILE
What you want to do now is check and update your business listing and verify that the listed business information is all correct. You also want to make sure that you have filled out every single one of the fields Google is asking for. Try not to leave anything blank here. Google even provides a nice little green circle letting you know how complete your profile is. These informational fields Google is looking for you to complete include:
- Business Name
- Business Categories
- Description
- Opening Date
- Phone Number
- Website
- Social Profiles
- Business Location
- Service Area
- Business Hours
- The “More” Section
BUSINESS CATEGORIES
Most of these are self-explanatory, but I want to expand on the “Business Categories” section. These are categories that are predefined by Google, and you can select up to 10. I always recommend selecting as many as you can (up to 10 obviously) that make sense for your business. There are Chrome Add-Ons that show the business categories each business has selected when you view that business in Google Maps.
I use the Chrome plug-in “GMB Everywhere”, but there are several different ones. Use whichever you like. What this will do is allow you to check out your competitors and see what categories they have listed for their business. It just may give you some ideas for your own business categories.
OPENING DATE
I also want to mention your “Opening Date”. If you are brand new, you can maybe leave the “Opening Date” empty depending on your business. For example, a new restaurant or retail store would have no problem listing the open date. On the other hand, perhaps a brand new structural engineer or plastic surgeon would not want to state they just opened 3 days ago if they don’t have any previous experience. You can use your best judgment here.
Otherwise, fill everything in!
LOGO & COVER PHOTO
Next, you want to upload a logo and cover photo. The dimensions required by Google change every so often so you’ll want to check. Right now, the optimal logo dimensions are 720×720 and the optimal cover photo dimensions are 1024×575.
There is a stealth SEO trick used by the pros where you take your image and you geotag them with your GPS coordinates. I’ll create a separate article detailing how to do that and post the link here. In the meantime, if you just google “how to geotag my image using geoimgr.com” I’m sure you’ll be fine.
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
After you’ve completed your profile, and uploaded your logo and main cover photo, you’ll want to start listing your products and services. The services Google allows you to choose from are set, so go through and find the best ones for your business.
The products can be anything, and it is best to include at least one image. And yes, you want to geotag every image you upload to your Google Business Profile for anything.
REGULAR POSTING
Finally, you want to post something at least once a week! Yes, you want to treat your Google Business Profile just like your social media assets. Smart marketing folks have done studies and found that whenever you post something to your Google Business Profile, you actually get a spike in your search appearances.
Some people even recommend posting daily for this exact reason.
3) Your Email List
We’ve covered your website, and we’ve gone over your Google Business Profile. Next up is your email list.
ISN’T EMAIL DEAD?
“People” keep saying email is dead. It isn’t. And it won’t be for a while yet.
Maybe you’ve been collecting emails from your customers and clients, and maybe you haven’t.
If not, start now.
Why? One key reason for email, and social media posting for that matter, is to stay top of mind. People don’t need your service or product 24/7/365. (Unless you’ve cornered the market on breathable air)
But when they do need your product or service, you want to be the one they think of! That’s the whole point of having repetitive touchpoints from many different sources.
EMAIL FREQUENCY
You’ve been convinced. Email is your friend. You have or are building an email list, now what?
You want to email your list at least once a week. There are various ratios regarding the number of sales emails versus the number of non-sales emails. Some say 3 non-sales emails for every 1 sales email. Some say 4-1, some even go as high as 5-1.
The reason is that you don’t want to be one of those emails that people see in their inbox and just roll their eyes thinking:
- “Oh boy another 10% off coupon”
- “Oh boy another Buy One Get One 50% Off coupon”
- “Oh boy another spend $20 and get $5 off”
- “Oh boy another store-wide sale”.
You want to share with your email recipients. You want to continuously build the know, like, and trust factor so that they’ll try, buy, repeat, and refer.
That’s not to say you can’t include a PS with some kind of sales or call to action. And that’s not to say you can never send a sales email. Just don’t make that the main purpose of every single email you send.
I’d say a good strategy would be to send a personal (non-sales) email once a week, and then send an additional 1 or 2 sales emails a month starting out. Maybe one day you can do these crazy countdown sales emails and batter your audience with 12 emails in 2 days. But I urge you to start slow and build up to that.
EMAIL TOPIC IDEAS
Now having said that, what could you possibly email about every single week (or more)? There are tons of ideas, a few are
- a great customer experience
- a terrible customer experience, and why and how you won’t let that happen again
- a new product or service, or a change to a current product or service
- a funny or inspirational story from a team member or customer
- an event you attended, you led, you sponsored, or at which you had a vendor table
- a tip, trick, or how-to to show off your amazing expertise
- an example of your product or service saving the day for another satisfied customer
You get the idea. This is only scratching the surface.
CONCLUSION
You want to get your website, your Google Business Profile, and your email capability set up now. They don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be started.
And again, if you need help with any of this, click the button below, and let’s get in touch!