The What

First, let’s understand what we’re signing up for: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is simply getting found and ranked highly in the search engines- those being Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. That’s basically it- How to be found when someone is searching for your service or product.

The How

There is a lot of technique and marketing know-how that is applied (or not, depending on your SEO company). Any decent SEO Specialist should be able to get you ranking. If not, they either don’t know how to do it or just aren’t doing the work.

I urge companies to find an SEO company who specializes in their type of service. If it doesn’t exist, hire a company who can at least learn how to get the result. The result being a sale, phone call, lead, or whatever your site is designed to do. If no results- get them to fix it so it works or hire someone else. In my company we push for the result. As a business owner, when I invest a dollar- I want two or more back. Don’t pay for zero return. I wouldn’t.

Just because SEO is technical, does not negate that it is still marketing. Ask enough questions of your provider until you feel comfortable that they actually know marketing and are not just techies- this business takes looking, thought and execution- just like any other form of marketing.

Say you are a nationwide company selling a super-specialized product like Residential Basement Dehumidifiers. You hire an SEO company who does a general-blanket SEO program, and it doesn’t work. The state of Florida practically has no basements. In the more mountainous regions, basements are rarer as the ground is rock. In the Midwest there are TONS of basements, cellars and crawlspaces. Does your SEO know this? A pure techie is not going to do that research. An actual specialist will focus the marketing where the return will be the highest, and get way higher return since they’re not wasting time on areas where there is no business. Find an SEO specialist in your industry and if it doesn’t exist, find an SEO professional who knows actual marketing.

The Why

SEO is like being in the phonebook in the 80’s or 90’s. That is where you advertised. If you weren’t in it, no one knew you existed. If you didn’t place an ad, a potential new customer would call your competitor with the huge full page ad. Google, Yahoo and Bing are the new phonebooks. When your customers can’t find you, they’re finding your competitors. Just because you have a website doesn’t mean you are being found. SEO is the modern day full page ad.

I have heard some companies say that it doesn’t work, and so ignore SEO. This is false. If it doesn’t work, you hired the wrong company. Reread, “The How,” above. Opting out of SEO today is like saying you don’t want to advertise in one place everyone looks for their services and products- like the old phonebooks.

A word to the wise: you will find many SEO companies out there have the same sales pitch, say the same things, promise to get you to Page 1 of Google, blah, blah, blah. It sounds great, but it doesn’t matter if you’re on Page 1 if you’re not getting phone calls, sales or leads. Know the result you want, then shop for providers. Ask questions until you’re confident they know marketing, and either specialize in your industry or are competent and can get the result anyway.

Owen York

President

Stellar-eMarketing

www.stellar-emarketing.com

Let’s get into a quick bit about creating your company’s marketing strategy and where to use your budget.

When you first start to discuss where you want to go with your marketing, forget talking about SEO, Social Media, print and all the other mediums out there. That will come in time, but after the higher level planning.  And forget about all the buzzwords and “newest and greatest” things you hear that “everyone” is doing. We need to know what works for us so our budgets are spent wisely.

You could view your marketing strategy as sort of a large river (your overall goal) that gets its power and speed from the tributaries and runoff (your individual campaigns).  Tributaries and various runoffs can contribute a great deal of flow to your river as would see in any storm or snowmelt. Now, imagine a bunch of tributaries that all started near your river, possibly even from a similar source, but meandered off into other directions at some point, never really contributing to the overall flow of the river.  That is what commonly happens to many people’s marketing programs. They get dispersed & distracted resulting in wasted marketing budgets and no results.  You need to get a clear picture of what you’re selling and then making sure every aspect of your campaign is going to contribute to its future strength and success.

Here are a few quick pointers for you to think with in creating your marketing program:

1. Establish what you want to sell, whether you deliver a product or service. This sounds easy enough; however, many companies offer many different things, each thing needing different marketing programs and some have a tendency to spread themselves too thin too quickly. I always start with what I or my company does best or possibly what is making the most income and start there.  Don’t market “everything”…because you usually won’t win at this. I call that marketing diarrhea – un-patterned, confused & aimless.  Pick one, make it work, stabilize it and move onto the next.

2. Discover who your market is.  A novice marketer will say “this is for everyone”.  Even Facebook’s market isn’t “everyone” even though it may appear that way having a major fraction of earth’s population as part of their social network.  In the marketing world we’d call it “public”. Public doesn’t mean everyone. It means a target audience such as the elderly, tweens, teens, single mom’s, divorcés, lawyers, the chronically ill, pregnant women, whoever. Those individual groups are publics.

So let’s play with this a bit: If you own a roofing company, who is your buyer?  Not teenagers.  Not renters. Homeowners, property managers, commercial management companies even Real Estate Agents (as they have an in with the homeowner) are your potential buyers and referral sources. Watch lawyers, they all advertise to someone specific.  You don’t usually see general lawyer marketing campaigns. They go after DUI’s, bankruptcy, divorce, child custody, etc.  Those are publics. You could say “the drunk driving public”, “the bankrupt public”, etc.  You have to examine this closely with your product or service. From this step, many things will start to become clear including where and how to contact them.

3. Survey/Market Research. Now that you have isolated your public, you need to find out what they need and want.  In this step you may find that you may need to tweak your product or service, or, possibly you’re going after the wrong public. Face to face surveys are the best. Internet research can be revealing, but be careful there as you can’t know anything for fact that you’re pulling off of someone’s website. Find out what is important to them, why they would use your product or service? What would they like/dislike about it? How much would they pay? Why would they refer it to a friend? Where would they go to find it? Would they buy it online or in a store?  Why would they even need it in the first place? Is it a luxury or a can’t-do-without?  Be creative here. Spend no time in your head at this point, get entirely into theirs. Get really curious about everything they would go through in deciding to use you or buy from you. If it doesn’t make sense, ask more questions. At some point, you’ll have your “ah-ha moment” and then you’re getting somewhere. From this step, you will start to flesh out what you need to say to your public.

4. Creative. Now that you know what they want, say it.  Tell them you have it.  And don’t be confusing, artsy-fartsy or nebulous. Remember the old Calvin Klein Obsession commercials?  I’ll let you be the judge on whether those actually got you to buy their stink sprays.  Unless you have a lot of dough in the coffers, you need to be smarter than that.  If a house wife hates pre-rinsing her dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, you’d better let her know that in your commercial that yours does just that. And if she wants a matching kitchen, you should let her know that you have a whole matching kitchen appliance set.  Most of the appliance company’s campaigns are pretty good about that stuff.  If someone wants a uniformed plumber, well then you should certainly say to them “we have uniformed technicians!” That says a lot with saying very little.  It says you’re established, have the tools for the job, probably insured and much more. Keep it short, direct, simple. Get into their heads in 5 seconds or less is my rule of thumb.

 5. Find where to reach them.  If you’ve done the steps above, this step becomes really quick.  Cataract surgery? Don’t advertise on Myspace.  Try the Yellow pages where people in that age group still go for their services. Siding and Gutter service? Will Facebook really work for you? Maybe, but when was the last time you looked for a gutter service on Facebook? I go to Google for that one and so does most everybody under the age of 65 now. So that’s one place where I’d start spending my budget for that one. Private School? Internet and parent mags. People who send their kids to private school look and research online for schools and read mags about this stuff.  Natural solutions for Postpartum Depression? Facebook probably rocks for that one. How many new mothers are sitting in front of Facebook while the new baby is sleeping? A lot. Lawnmowing? Drive around and drop off flyers at houses with long lawns, go after them. You see, it gets very easy once you’ve established what you’re selling, who you’re marketing it to, what they want and the rest becomes almost intuitive.

Now, this by no means is a full outline for a marketing program.  It’s just some things for you to think with to take the confusion out of what you’re about to spend your money on. Be smart, make it work and expand.

Sincerely,

Dan York

1.       Specialize

Ok, so we all remember the old adage “Jack of all Trades, Master of None”.  Well, apparently it’s true in business. Look at the Eye Specialist and the General Practitioner. Who drives the $80k BMW 7 Series?  Not the General Practitioner.  Create and execute a generalized marketing campaign to “everyone” and see how it goes. It will tank. Sell generalized work in a field – overwhelm yourself with work from all angles doing everything and you’ll find you’ll never be a professional at any one of them and your client will suffer, you’ll burn out and your income will never rise in your organization.  Look at consulting specialists – buried in work and successful, specialized construction companies – somehow they’ve weathered the bad recession (even if barely) as the general contractors were folding up left and right. You get the picture. You’ve got to pick something you can get behind, stick with it, do it, become incredible at it, and you have to be able to turn down work that doesn’t align with your specialty.

2.       You can’t do it all yourself

Let’s get logistical in this one. You can only work 40-80 hours per week, and even at that higher number, you will burn out and become the workaholic. Hire one person, and right there you can get 80 hours of work done in a week. 3 people?  120 hours per week. Of course you must train and apprentice them and it does come with other responsibilities, but if you want to expand you have to confront that it can’t always be you, others can get good at this stuff too and *gasp* might even surpass your knowledge and skills on that job.

3.       You must have a great team

This is related to #2 above.  Some people won’t hire because of their past experiences with staff.  But without a great team, you will be on every decision point in your company and get bogged down into everything unless you can get some great people who can manage, decide and get something done.  I have a great track record of great hires. This is why, and it’s very simple:

-          I only hire people who look genuinely happy, they laugh readily, genuine communication and personalities – even if they are bit quirky like some engineers are. Genuine = good.

-          They must like the work they are getting hired for, not just taking a job for a paycheck

-          They must be willing to make decisions and contribute to the growth of the company

-          Money isn’t what they talk about in a job interview, they talk about wanting to be happy where they work and enjoying the day to day experience and people they are with

-          They sell me on what they can contribute. Love it. I love being sold by new hires

-          No gossipers, fake personalities, people with bad general manners

-          Spend too much time in the interview complaining about your last employer? Bye Bye.

-          General good vibe.  If you don’t get the warm fuzzy soon, trust yourself, don’t second guess your perception – you’re probably right and you should not pull the trigger.

-          I almost never read resume’s for more than a few seconds. I want face time, real communication. I want to gauge the person I’m going to be spending a large portion of my day with. I have to like them, it’s my team.

-          If you have an employee that is always on your mind (and not in a positive way), don’t waste time, let them go quick. Ever step in dog poo? Know how hard it is to get off and the emotion that comes with it? There’s people like that unfortunately. There’s a reason they’re always on your mind – they are not contributing to your growth and deep down, you know it.  The longer you wait the worse it gets.  Good people RELIEVE your attention in your business and free you up, people you don’t want CONITUALLY BURDEN your attention.  Don’t hesitate, do it and watch you company expand.

4.       Your Service must be killer

You’ think this is standard but today people are too busy thinking with working as little as possible for as much as possible, that’s just not how it goes. Figure that out early.  Whatever you do, you’d better be good. And if you KNOW you’re not, get good quick. Everything suffers without you knowing it is great. Sales, delivery, etc. all suffer because you did not invest the right time being the best. Be the best, know it and you’ll see the result in your expansion.  If you know that, there is no such thing as “competition”.

5.       You must have excellent communication skills

This means inside the company and out – with your clients, with your staff, with your vendors. Take your client’s calls, make them understand, make your staff understand things and don’t cut them off from management. Look at your own personal opinion of people who you try and call all the time and that don’t call you back.  You don’t want to be that guy or gal.

6.       Market like a machine gun

This is related to #1. Once you know your specialty, market what you do like crazy, every week and make it a heavy routine.  Make sure you know what they want, do it like a madman and market yourself to every single person in that niche marker as fast and hard as you can – worldwide.

 7.       Think bigger than everyone else

Small thinkers get small.  Big thinkers get big. Pretty funny but true.  Even funnier, small thinkers actually get less than they wanted. For example, maybe they want to make $100k per year personally, they actually will only make $50k and wonder why.  The big thinker wants to make $50k per week, he’ll figure it out and make it, but later on set an even bigger game. Always keep your head in the future as the President or owner, and make big goals and targets for you and your company. Get conservative with your goals and you get mediocrity. We don’t want that.

 8.       Study, Study, Study

Read your trade mags, keep up with your industry, keep at the forefront of technology.  Don’t become a dinosaur. Or even better:  hire someone way smarter than you and make then train you. And don’t forget to make it worth their while to do so.

9.       Be Organized

Without it, kiss your business goodbye at some point in the future due to some “mysterious” factor which if you were organized, could have been avoided. Make sure your files are organized; keep up with your finances every week, keep statistics on your growth or lack of in every single dept. of your company.  I personally watch about 40 production statistics I’ve created and all of my individual finance stats. I know exactly where we are, where we are going, and can actually predict slumps and avert them thanks to organizing.

10.   Unplug every once in a while

My wife kept telling me this one for years. I finally listened.  Go on vacation. Get a sports car or motorcycle and go drive it. Go to the movies…whatever you like personally. Without it this, you will burn out and actually create a counterproductive attitude in your own company. Ouch. Work hard when you’re at work, then unplug when you can. You’ll come back refreshed and ready.

So where to start? First, let’s figure out a few things. What do you need?
SEO? Where? i.e., a local boutique shop serving Tallahassee, does not need to be found in Seattle.
Pay Per Click? Is your company’s product or service something people would click on an ad for- and buy it? Or is your product better for the organic listings? Joe’s Local Pizza would be better suited for local searches, versus a big chain like Pizza Hut who can hack the nationwide Pay Per Click ads.
Social Networking? The new buzz! We gotta do it! While true for some businesses, how often are you logging onto Facebook or Twitter to find insurance, lumber or auto parts?

Once you have some idea of what you want, start talking to providers:
What’s your budget? $100 a month? $10,000 a month? $100 worth of Pay Per Click may be hours. Get a budget together for the right campaign.
Do they answer their phones? Do they care about your business?
Do they rely on robots or customer service email addresses or call centers on the moon?

Maybe you are already signed with a provider:
Do you see results? If not, they are not doing the work. Don’t buy excuses. Any SEO company, even if not the best can get you moved up a bit. Don’t buy lip service- look at the results and buy that.
One last thing that I think some people overlook- Did you like them? Were you left with a bad vibe that you shrugged off?

There are good internet marketing companies that do solid work that you need. You either don’t want to or don’t have the time to do it yourself, and you want good customer service and they should value your business. Maybe it takes a few more phone calls or looking around a bit longer for a good referral, but you will find one.
In any case, going that extra mile looking for a good provider is worth it, will cost you less & make you more. There’s no magic- even in the internet marketing world. In the end, it is still good work ethics and good business.

Owen York
President
Stellar-eMarketing
www.stellar-emarketing.com

1.Do you need a full time SEO?
Usually you’ll find large companies with big websites or many online sales initiates will have an in-house SEO person. This would make sense in that they will get a return on what they are spending for that person and there is a lot of work to do and maintenance to be kept up with.
For small companies it usually doesn’t make sense. A company with a 5-page website for example may only need 3-7 hours of work done on it per month to stay competitive. In this scenario, it would be overkill to hire an internal SEO person.

2.The Cost of an SEO person.
Salaries of SEO people vary greatly. Kids coming out of college usually will start around roughly $35k per year while experienced professionals range from about $75k to $125k per year. The highest I’ve ever personally seen was $210k at a very large agency. The name of the game in marketing is always return on investment. So you have to ask, “will I get that investment back?” For most companies, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Using an agency who does this day in and out, has streamlined processes and specialized staff can usually do for a company on an annual basis what an in-house person can do at fraction of the cost. The monthly costs of SEO can range from $250.00 per month to $2500 per month and sometimes higher depending on the size of the project. Your cost and the return of that cost of using an agency vs. an in-house person must be considered to maximize your return.

3.Where is your time better spent as the business owner?
If you’re like most business owners, your time is better spent running your company. The successful owner knows how to hire, train and fill his company with solid staff & vendors. He doesn’t do everything. He should build and run the machine- not be the machine forever. Plus, with an industry such as SEO, can you or your in-house person dedicate the time to the frequent changes of the industry and technology? Personally, I like accounting and think it’s interesting. But I have a great accountant as I don’t have the time nor patience to specialize in accounting and to be able to keep up with the changes the IRS makes every year – my accountant does. If my car breaks, I don’t go out and “tinker.” I leave it to pros. I would rather make sales calls for 3 hours than fix my car. I get more of a return out of that.

These are just a couple of points for now, but you get the idea. I watch my ROI. If I invest a dime, I want that dime back plus another one. We outsource certain aspects of our business to experts where we are not. Hiring a firm who has a team ready to deliver usually is better and cheaper than hiring someone you’ll find in most cases. If the cost is justified, then do it and do it well.

Owen York, President
Stellar-eMarketing
www.stellar-emarketing.com

So how does this apply to marketing exactly? Let’s say you send out a general message to a broad marketplace. What is the result? Low response rates! Why? You sent out a generalized message that does not communicate anything to anyone.  Teenagers and senior citizens are at two different points in life.  A pregnant mother and business executive have different priorities. The environmentalist may have a different view on the environment than the executive at a big oil company. Ever run into a company that is making millions doing something and you thought to yourself, “I could’ve done that!”  They simply found a niche market. They were probably already in it. My brother told me about a guy who was making over 2 million dollars per year selling Pontiac Fiero parts online. That car hasn’t been in production for almost twenty years! That is niche!

When marketing, if you want bang for your buck, market yourself to a targeted niche audience. Only in getting into a niche will you learn what’s important to them, how to “talk the talk”, who’s in it, what do they do, who are their vendors, competitors, etc. Then you learn exactly what to say to them in your marketing pieces and true communication will occur.

There’s is a tendency to scatter your promotion and take what you can get when business gets thin. But avoid this wherever possible. Find a niche. Learn about it, study it in all aspects. Become a professional and then dominate it. If business is getting thin, market more and deeper into that same niche.

If you find the situation where your niche industry is dying, then you have to get busy studying and preparing to take on a new one. Foresight is always a key thing in business anyways. Foresight being 20/20 is probably more lucrative than hindsight being 20/20.  Predict!  Avoid becoming the pack of rats in the burning building. You tend to waste more time and money acting like that than you would make back as a result.  As far as niche marketing from your SEO company– it is even more important how the search engines are seeing you compared to 30 other competitors all at once.

Sincerely,

Dan York

Noise: Confusion caused by too many messages trying to be delivered at one time.

You could almost group that in with the slang definition of Noise: “empty talk; nonsense” because that is what the public do with your message if you can’t break through the noise.

I’ve always viewed noise as anything that gets in the way of someone receiving the message I’m trying to convey in my marketing campaigns. From this, you should certainly understand that “blending in” with all of your competitor’s messages and copying them may not be your ticket to success. And if you do, it had better be really good.  The risk you take is that your message is ignored.

For example, in the early 90’s, you could write an ad with the words “cutting edge” regarding a new procedure you were offering or a new strategy you were delivering  to your public.  “Cutting edge huh?” they would say. And you’d say, “Yep! Now sign on the dotted line, you won’t regret it.” Boom – deal. Then, a year or so later, all of your competitors were saying “come in for our cutting edge new service!”  Everyone is now getting a piece of your pie. But it gets worse… After a while, the public becomes numb to “cutting edge” altogether as unfortunately for you, some of your competitors were less than “cutting edge” and now the public KNOWS none of you are cutting edge and they’ve heard it all before.

How can we factor this into our internet marketing and advertising strategies?

Here are some good tips for you to keep in mind to help you compete against all the “noise” out there:

1.    Write your copy with the other person in mind who’s going to read it.  Does it read very smoothly from left to right? Spelling, Grammar? Is it insulting? Try to get the concept of what images will come into their mind, what will they think of when they read it? Does it compel them to do something? When marketing, your job is to get into their head, not stay in yours.

2.    Always look for what they want.   They will only do what YOU want if you communicate to them what THEY want.  Never assume you know it already. Look at text-message marketing which was supposed to be the “next big thing” for the marketing world a couple of years ago.  Millions and millions of Venture Capitalist’s dollars pouring into these start-ups doing text-marketing. Lo and behold, they soon find out no one wanted to get texts on their mobile phones with ads in them. Companies ate up a lot of money trying to jam it down people’s throats. Lesson learned. Some market research well done and intelligently executed could have saved hundreds of millions. Now, what if you have a new product that people don’t know they want? You of course enlighten them on how it helps them with some problem that they know they have. Very simple. Microwaves: ovens were great, but as the world moved faster, a new invention comes out called the microwave. Show a commercial on how it cooks a meal in 1 minute – sold. The problem of course being busy Mom, lots of kids, dinner, crabby husband – fast food needed. Never mind the radiation injections into the food, but that’s so 90’s now anyway. People didn’t know they needed it yet, but it was still a problem that they knew they had, and it took someone to tell them that there was a solution. You just need to understand that it’s your job to find out what they ARE looking for, what they NEED,  rather than what you think they SHOULD look for or what you think they need. A little surveying goes a long way and can save untold amounts of money.

3.    Always communicate what your reality is about your service. Your customers like what you do and refer others to you…but why? Why are you surviving the bad economy when your competitors are closing their doors?  Is it how you treat people? Is your service incredible? Why?  Don’t make vanilla statements and throw in a few buzzwords to sound “professional”. For example, we have a car dealership and we have lots of cars to sell. So we tell the public, “largest inventory in the state of TN!”. Maybe it works, but based on what I see the car industry is really struggling and everyone has a lot of cars. So maybe we say, “best deals in the county!”. Well, everyone else says that too. I would wonder if people even listen to that stuff anymore. But let’s take a common reality that we’ve all had when car shopping- the cheesy “what-do-I-have-to-do-to-get-you-to buy this-car-today” sales guy. If it were my dealership, I wouldn’t have hired one of those guys in the 1st place because I don’t like them. Second, I know other people would appreciate that as we all know it’s a headache to work with them. It’s common knowledge these days. So my statement would be something real to me, real to them like -”Come to our (dealership). You’ll get great prices and a huge inventory, but you won’t run into any corny high-pressure sales people!” That might get people to check you out.

Communicate what you know and don’t underestimate the general public’s intelligence. In the digital age, they are moving very, very quickly and most can tell a tall tale from a mile away, which brings me to my next point:

4. Be honest. People are very perceptive and no one likes the bait-and-switch. It’s the way-hot and romantic husband you married who is now the beer-bellied lifeless couch potato or the cute puppy who grew up to bite your neighbor’s kid to land you your first huge law suit.

If you don’t like your product or service and can’t stand behind it, then you certainly shouldn’t be selling it let alone marketing it. Let’s look at why I feel this is so important: Let’s take the used car salesman stigma again here. We’ve all met them. Painful is the word. They’re cheesy, sometimes even slimy, But why? Most people in the world are good people – including them. Here’s why they come off the way they do – they are occasionally selling something they know to be sub-par, but that is their job, their manager will beat them to get sales and they need to eat too don’t they? In their head they’re thinking, “this may not be the best car for my customer, but I have to keep my job and I have bills to pay so I’d better sell it to them anyways and this beats flipping burgers.” It’s an integrity thing.  I never market anything that I think is not a good product or service, and funny enough I look at my client roster and I think they’re all great people who try to do the best that they can for their clients. That allows me to market their services and products with a clean conscience. I sleep well. So, unlike the used car salesman that is selling junk to make a buck, don’t lie to yourself, don’t lie to your public – they can tell. Even in print, speak the truth to your public. They’ll get it and you’ll gain a client.

Sincerely,

Dan York

Marketing certainly has changed in the digital age, no doubt about it. If you’re not changing with it, it’s really your loss. Newspapers are dying left and right and most people I know throw their Yellow Pages in the Recycle Bin these days. Not to mention everyone seems to have an Iphone or Blackberry. But that doesn’t change the marketing basics, they just get adapted to a new medium. So let’s define marketing:

marketing [mahr-ki-ting] –noun

1. the act of buying or selling in a market.

2. the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.

Origin:
1555–65; market + -ing1

So as you can see there, marketing encompasses quite a bit. It’s not simply “getting the good word out”. I’ll tell you right now, a large number of the internet marketing guys out there I know miss this point completely. Website traffic has been the buzz forever it seems like now. And it is very important – it can make or break you in the online world. But when we look at web traffic in relation to the definition above, it should quickly become apparent that it’s just one of the many legs of your internet marketing relay-race.

So you need some real basics under your belt. Without those basics, PPC, SEO, web 2.0 and all the other internet marketing techniques out there can be fruitless. Case in point: remember a time when you met someone that you were attracted to. The package was good – nice hair, fit, well-dressed, maybe even a nice car and a giant wallet. But then…they opened their mouth. Out spewed their repulsive verbal personality traits. You knew right then and there, without another second’s thought…they could never win you over. Not with all the sales jargon in the world.

Sincerely,

Dan York