After almost a year, we have finally launched the beta version of our new Lansing based, business directory called Connect Orange! With nearly 2000 profiles for Lansing businesses, we are confident that Connect Orange will make a splash in the Lansing community.

Connect Orange offers consumers the ability to easily find local companies, rate and review them, add them if they do not yet have a listing, share them with their friends, and do all of this in style! It also allows users to submit coupons they have found to the site for the community to take advantage of. It is our hope that Connect Orange will become one of the top sites in Lansing for local deals.

Connect Orange was also designed with the local business owner in mind. Business owners or managers can create or claim their listing, submit deals to consumers, and even be contacted by consumers through the website. We also have a growing list of premium features that local business owners can take advantage of to increase their exposure and attract Lansing’s eye.

The site is now live at http://connectorange.com.

Advertisers are welcome and can connect with us here or through the Connect Orange website.

The new year is a great time to assess business strategies and to establish a sound plan for your business’s future. Here at Scepter Marketing, we are doing just that! We wanted to share with you what we are planning to do with our marketing so that you have a blueprint to copy. We always try to learn from the experts and have found one of the best ways to learn is simply to copy what they do. We have broken down our plan into two sections: principles that we are endeavoring to apply on a new level and practices that we will be, or will continue doing. So without further ado, here is our blueprint for 2012. Enjoy our cheat sheet

Principles:

Sticking to the Mission that You Love: In the ever growing, ever changing environment of the internet there is a plethora of services we could offer and a thousand things we could do. With so many opportunities in so many different arenas it has been easy to jump from one idea to another. We see our competition starting to offer a certain social media service or an interesting, new package for SEO services, and we want to dive in and do it too. If they can do it, we can do it too right? If our customers want it, we should give it to them right? Nope. This year we are really evaluating our strengths and weaknesses. What are we good at? What do we love doing? What is the mission that we are supposed to be accomplishing?

Every business must ultimately exist for a purpose other than the bottom line if it wants to become a great company. Products and services can come and go. Employees can come and go. A business can grow or downsize. In any case, it must remain true to its ultimate purpose if it is to out last the struggles that face every business. And the leaders of the business should love that mission. It should be their personal mission as well as the company mission. It is important to love the work that you do. There will always be unpleasant parts of any business. That’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about loving your work. We are talking about loving the mission of the business and loving the nature of the work itself.

Here at Scepter, there are some services that just aren’t “us.” They don’t fit our skill sets or they don’t fit our culture. We hate doing them. So we’re going to focus on promoting the services that we enjoy doing, the ones that are “us”, the ones that reflect us and our company. Of course, that means that we will have a smaller customer pool to pull from. It also means that we may turn away business that we could have obtained. But in the long run, this will be better for us and our customers. We will enjoy our work as we pursue the mission of our company, and our customers will enjoy higher quality of services because we are not spreading ourselves too thin or offering halfhearted service.

Bus People: A business is made up of people and ultimately relies on people to function. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes about the necessity of getting the right people on the bus and the right people off the bus. Collins study of great companies showed that one of the most fundamental principles of having a great company was to build a team that had the “right people on the bus” – that is, a solid team of people who work well together and maintain the company atmosphere. This means that new people may have to come on board, and others may need to be shifted to different positions that more closely match their talents. Some may even need to be released from the company to find another company where they might fit.

In previous years we have sometimes worked with people who did not fit with our mission or our goals. We had overlooked these facts because of the potential reward that we thought might be obtained. It didn’t work. Ever. Even if the reward is good in the short run, this type of behavior doesn’t last long term. A business simply cannot be built on unstable people or on unstable relationships. This year, we are taking extra precautions to make sure that we are working with the right people, not just on the right projects.

Practices:

Fix Your Website(s): Keeping with our theme of building a solid foundation, we are revamping some of our website properties. These days people equate the look of your website with whether or not your company is legitimate or not. This makes your website the most important part of your online presence. If you do nothing else this year, make sure your website looks fantastic. It is the first step any business should take.

We have been working diligently on a new web property for the local Lansing area called Connect Orange. While Connect Orange has been online for awhile, it was in desperate need of a facelift which should be complete by the end of the week. Over the next month, you will likely see the chances made to our website as well. We are changing our website in accordance with the first principle listed above – to focus on the mission that we love. We are streamlining our website so that we communicate exactly who we are and what we’re about right up front. If we offer what you’re looking for, our goal is to draw you in. If not, then at least we’d like you to enjoy your experience.

Your website should communicate the same things about your company.

Buy Local Real Estate: One of our primary techniques coming into this new year is to buy up domain names for locally based keywords that we want to target. It is often much, much easier to get a page ranked that has what is called, “an exact match domain.” For example, if you were trying to get your website ranked for Gyms in Lansing, it would be easier to get the domain name http://gymsinlansing.com ranked for that term than it would be to get a name like http://bstrongfitness.com. The great thing is that domain names are very affordable, so you can likely afford several.

A website should be created for each domain name and several blog posts should be written for each one with relevant, unique articles. Once this is done, the blog should be listed in several local or quality directories. This will provide a good base for the site and in some cases will land the new domain on the first page of the search results in Google and/or Bing. If that is not the case, following a fairly simple link building process should help significantly. (I would be remiss if I did not mention that we offer these services for our clients! If you need help, you can contact us about doing this for you here.)

Help Bring People Together: This last practice is a bit unusual but it is one of the biggest things we’re working on this year. The concept is a simple one to grasp and goes like this:

There is more information on the internet than is necessary or helpful. Because of this, one of the best ways to attract more visits and links (which are good for SEO) to your website is to set yourself or your company up as a mediator of information. There are many different ways to do this, and what you do depends on you, your skill sets, and your business. Here are some examples to think about:

• Take initiative to bring people in your industry together in an association. Creating an association conveniently helps showcase you or your company as an expert in your field while simultaneously helping to provide consumers with the information they need about your industry. It also has the side benefit of turning your competitors into allies. Instead of fighting all of them for the next customer, you can work together to create a network of trusted companies. There is always enough business to go around.
• Find local outlets where consumers are gathered to learn about the types of products or services you offer. Local colleges, associations, or community projects can be great places to showcase what your company does and help the community at the same time. Quite often, these organizations or event sponsors have their own websites and will gladly link to yours if you help them which will definitely help you get higher rankings.
• If you’re in business, it is likely that you have a lot of knowledge that you could share with consumers. While your company’s blog is a great place to do this, you can also consider guest writing for local blogs or news sites. Some local sites like IAmLansing.com allow anyone in the community to write an article and post it for the benefit of the community. The more local you can find, the better. While you will still get some link benefit from big article directories or question and answer sites, you will likely benefit more but staying on local sites.
• Lastly, if you have the cash or expertise, you can have websites created that function as a local hub for your industry. This is very similar to the first example of creating an association. For example, if you are a roofer, you could create a website for roofers in your local area to showcase their work, submit articles about how to pick a good roofer, or similar things. In doing this you profit in two ways. Firstly, you can use this hub to promote yourself or your company either by directly plugging your companies products or services or by simply linking from this valuable hub to your company website. Secondly, you get to steer the conversation about your industry in your area. While you must be careful to provide value those who come to your site, you can do so in a way that is also incredibly valuable for your company. Again, you are setting yourself or your company up as the experts in the area.

And there you have it. As you can see, we are going with a “less is more” approach this year. Less scattered, less crap, less stress, more focus, more fun. These are things that we are taking to heart this new year and we sincerely hope that you will take them to heart as well. As always, we are here to help you with your website and marketing needs. Just get a hold of us and let you know what you need. We’d be happy to help you start this year off on the right foot!

You’ve probably seen the commercials, but in case you weren’t paying attention you ought to know about Bing. Bing is a search engine designed by MicroSoft and is the biggest competitor to Google in terms of search. Bing actually merged with Yahoo’s search awhile back as well making Bing a major player in the search engine space. While they are still a distant second to Google, a recent interview with a Bing representative on SEOmoz unveils a whole lot of reasons why any business, including small businesses, should not only be aware of Bing, but should start to take advantage of it.

Here are a few VERY interesting stats given in the interview:

• Bing has 69 million searches that ONLY search on Bing, not Google!
• These users have  a 4% higher spend rate
• Bing’s searchers are 23% more likely to make an online purchase
• Overall, Bing has 30%+ Market share in search

And here are some of the things that got me excited about what Bing is doing in terms of tools and/or information available to website owners:

• You can actually talk to Duane Forrester (a Bing representative) who says that they 1) want our feedback and 2) actually take it into account in their tool creation (the link is to his twitter)
• They seem to have an honest interest in providing web masters with the data they need to find out how to help their rankings whereas Google is notorious for hiding this type of information
• Bing is going for “more relevance” in search but “less creepy” which I love, because Google is getting kinda creepy (and so is Facebook by the way)

So what does this mean for small businesses? It’s simple really, it means that if you are not paying attention to Bing, you could be missing out on over 30% of the potential business that clicks more and spends more than those in the 70% group! So what should you do about this?

1. Go to Bing Local and set up your business with a profile
2. Set up your website in Bing’s Webmaster Tools and add your site (don’t worry it’s easy)
3. Sit back and wait for the data to come in so you can evaluate how your site is doing!

For Immediate Release: 10-28-11

This coming November, Scepter will be launching a revamped version of their Lansing business directory. This directory will provide a great place for Lansing consumers to connect with small businesses and vice versa. The directory site is similar in concept to the Yellow Pages but exclusively for Lansing. This directory will provide businesses with the ability to either create or claim their business listing on the site. Consumers can then contact the business via the contact information on these profiles as well as add businesses of interest to their favorites.

Additional features include:

• Yipit Daily Deal Feed. This feature allows Lansing-ites to see deals from Groupon, Living Social, and other daily deal sites simply by coming to Connect Orange rather than having to sign up for several daily emails.
• Ratings and Reviews. Like any good business directory, ours will allow users to rate and review local businesses as well as add them to their favorites and share them on Social Media websites.
• Coupons from local businesses. We will push for businesses to give exclusive deals to our users that come only through Connect Orange.
• As the website develops, we hope to add even more features!

From the business’s perspective, owners/managers will be able to:

• Create or claim their own business profile fore free that has their phone number, email address, business address, and links to their facebook and/or twitter.
• A link to their website from their profile which ought to help with their SEO
• A medium of connecting exclusively with Lansing consumers
• The ability to get “Featured Listings” to get higher visibility to locals

We are pleased to be able to offer this site to the Greater Lansing Area and we think it will help to fill a need that is not currently being met well. Stay tuned for more information.

A link to their website from their profile which ought to help with their SEO

There are several amazing things brewing here at Scepter and we wanted to let you in on one of our latest projects. As is the case with most of our projects, we are extremely excited to be announcing this new project which, God willing, is one of many to come! So with that… Meet the Lansing Network

Being that Scepter Marketing is based in Lansing, MI, we want to do all we can to ensure that our city grows and prospers. Those who don’t live in the Capitol City, may not know that we’ve have had some relatively tough times over the last few years. Like much of Michigan, our economy has been greatly influenced by the car industry and has not fully recovered.

However, despite all of the hard times, it is our firm belief that Lansing can and will not only survive these turbulent times, but that we can come out of them prospering. This concept has come out of our belief and is the beginning of our attempts to see it come to fruition.

The Lansing Network is a network of Lansing-based websites that will provide a great deal of value to the Greater Lansing Area. From small businesses owners, to writers, to investors, to church goers, to everyone else – our network of websites will provide places for people to connect in new ways with people and organizations in this community.

Over the next few months, we will be releasing several websites in addition to those we are currently beta testing. The network will consist of a combination of several different types of websites. At the forefront will be a small business directory to help people in the city find the service providers that they need. From restaurants to contractors to doctors and more, consumers will finally have a good way to find and connect with local businesses. This site is tentatively set to launch in mid November.

Other sites in the network will include things such as classified ads, a blog/news site for Lansing writers, billboard-type sites for small businesses to advertise on and through, a site that works to organize churches and other organizations together to take care of the community, a site that makes it easy to find a job here, and more. We have already launched three sites which we are beta testing as a start to this Lansing Network: GymsInLansing.com, StorageInLansing.com, and CarsLansingMI.com – all of which are geared towards helping small businesses advertise by providing a means of getting them in front of consumers who are already looking for them.

The overall goal of this network is to help foster a sense of community here in Lansing while also working to connect people with other people and with organizations that will help improve their lives. With the help of God, we believe the 517 can be a great city and we are committed to help making it happen.

Many business owners are overwhelmed when it comes to the internet and they aren’t quite sure where to start. Here is a quick 3 point guide to help any small business get started marketing their business and website online. We are going to assume that the business already has a website and a Facebook page like we’ve talked about.

1) Get Your Site Listed in Directories – Believe it or not, people still use directories to find local businesses. The “big 3″ of local business directories are Google’s Places pages, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local. If you do NOTHING else, list your website in these three directories. Don’t be afraid to take a couple of hours setting them up to make sure that you properly optimize them, upload pictures, etc. These are important, very important. If you have time left after submitting your site to these directories, submit your site to directories such as Yelp, Super Pages, Yellow Pages, Local.com, ConnectOrange, Yellow Book, and Mojo Pages. There are billions more but getting listed in these ones is a good start.

2) Get Mentioned on Local Sites – Google and other search engines put a lot of weight on what other sites link to your sites. The more local sites that link to yours the better. If possible, try to get yourself written up in local news stories that link to you, get listed in your local chamber of commerce, get listed in local association websites, and get sites from any other local sites you can get access to. Good places to look are local blogs, local news sites, local job posting sites, local organizations, etc. You may have to donate, you may have to help out an organization, you might have to submit your own pre-written blog post that links back to you – whatever you have to do, it will usually be worth it. How many of your competitors do you think are doing this stuff? Exactly.

3) Start a Blog – Once you get the local listings and the local links taken care of and if you still have time, you can start a blog on your site or off your site. If your site is built on a platform that makes blogging easy, do it on your own site. If not, you can use a site like WordPress.com or Blogger.com for your blog. Write blog posts that add value to your customers in some way. For example, if you are running a restaurant that does catering, you can write posts teaching people how to plan events, showing how people have used your restaurant for their events, etc. If you are a contractor, you can write about how clients can pick the best products, contractors, price, etc. You can even throw in a few “do-it-yourself” articles. And please, please, please link back to your own site and your own services as the answers to the problems or questions that you raise your on your blog. You can check out BrunetteHomeImprovement.com as a great example of this type of thing in place.

These three steps are going to help you in your marketing tremendously (which means I’m following my own advice!). Let us know if you have comments or questions in the comment section below! If you would like help with your marketing, please review our Local Internet Marketing Services. We’d love to help you take your business to the next level.

Lately I have been working on some lead capture pages for a website called The Sponsoring System. While this website is not really a small business website per se, I thought that the lessons small businesses could learn from a brief walk-through of the lead capture pages might be beneficial since the same essential concepts apply for any website which is trying to convert visitors into customers.

A lead capture page, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is a page that is specifically designed to compel a visitor to connect with the business in some way. Traditionally, this has been done through email but now days it is also done through social media.

The process is simple. Create a page on your website which gives away something of value related to your business in some way. The most common way of doing this with small business is for them to offer either something for free or something at a discounted price in exchange for the visitor’s email address. Once a business has made this type of connection with a person, it can continue to build the relationship with the person as well as introduce them to new products, services, events, etc. that the prospect may find valuable or helpful.

This process of connecting with potential customers through capturing their information in some way is generally referred to as “list building.” This type of list is extremely valuable because it represents a group of people who have already shown interest in what the business offers and have made themselves available for extremely cost effective marketing strategies.

In fact, according to the Direct Marketing Association a few years ago, email marketing had a whopping 54% return on investment, more than any other type of internet marketing. This is why we work to help small businesses implement local email marketing systems in their companies.

Here is an example of one of the lead capture pages on The Sponsoring System website called How To Get More MLM Prospects

Irregardless of how you feel about network marketing, there are some very valuable things we should note about this page that apply equally to capturing leads for small businesses.

1. Lack of distraction – as you can see, there is virtually nowhere for the visitor to navigate to on this website. Of course this exact model will not work for every business but the principle stays the same. The more options people have, the less likely they are to make a decision. If the goal is to get them to connect with you buy giving you their name and email address, then that should be the most obvious thing on the page and all other aspects of the page should be designed in a way to minimize distractions
2. Attention Getting – You’ll notice that the two most prominent things on this page are 1) the title and 2) the huge button that says “Instant Access.” A quick glance at the page simply tells them what the offer is what to do to get it. The title is designed (being almost too big and at the top) to attract the visitor’s eyes to it. The same is true of the button. This type of effect can also be gained in through the use of underlines and/or bolding as well.
3. Lastly, note the verbiage that is used. Words life “free,” “instant,” “quick,” “easy,” etc. are words that help people understand they don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get to what you are offering. In a small business, for example, this could be difference between saying something such as “Sign up for a free appetizer on your next visit” to “Sign up and immediately receive a coupon for a Free appetizer.” You’ll notice the subtle shift in communicating what the customer gets right now as opposed to sometime in the future.

Hopefully, this post helps you understand the importance and the anatomy of a lead capture page. If you are would like help designing a lead capture system for you business and/or website, please contact us today for a free quote!

WordPress Coffee Theme

This is a minimalist wordpress coffee theme that is perfect for anyone wanting to write coffee related content. The header and footer have a burlap sack texture which gives this theme an authentic feel. The beautiful tan gradient cascades from tan to white as one scrolls down the page coming into full white just in time for the beans that appear to be spilling out of the footer.

This theme is a two-column theme and is equipped with the ability to change the top advertisement spot to whatever you would like.

Click here to preview the theme or click here to download it

I remember when I first started learning the ins and outs of SEO a couple of short years ago. Anyone starting to study SEO will quickly learn the basics of SEO which can basically be stated in two rules:

To get higher rankings you need to…

1. Optimize your website for Google, Bing, and other search engines
2. Build links to your website

That is the bottom line of SEO. However, there is a ton of information out there that is just plain fallacious, usually because it’s old. In case you didn’t know, we now live in the 21st century where things (especially web-related things) can literally change over night. This is even more true of the SEO arena. Outdated methods and techniques can waste your time and even do damage to your rankings. So all that to say, make sure that you get up to date information about SEO before you start working on optimizing your site or getting those links!

Here are a few quick guidelines that I follow for staying up to date on SEO:

1. Don’t bother to read anything SEO related that is over 2 years old. I don’t care if it has 3,000 re-tweets and likes on Facebook! I won’t waste my time.
2. Learn from the top SEOs that you can. There are some companies that know their SEO stuff and other ones that don’t. Here’s a hint, if a company ranks highly for a term like “seo” they are obviously, in the nature of the case, knowledgeable about what they are talking about! Personally, I stay away from companies or blogs that have an Alexa traffic ranking of less than 500,000. If they aren’t getting traffic to their site, how are they going to help you get traffic to yours?

And lastly, here’s a great video that will help to blow away some of the bad information you’ve probably already received:

What is Google’s Page Rank Good For? from SEOmoz

Nearly everyone uses the internet to search for information that interests them. People search for information about companies, schools, local businesses, products, services, certifications, and just about everything else. Because of this, the internet has become the place to be for those companies who want to bring in new customers and new business.

In order to be effective online a business needs two things. Firstly, it needs a website. Having a professional website allows your company to make a great first impression with the prospective customers who visit your site. But having a great website is not enough. The second thing that a business needs to be effective online is a steady stream of traffic (visitors) coming to the website. Simply put, a website is no good if no one ever stumbles across it.

One of the absolute best ways to get people to come to your website is the strategy known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is the process of getting a website ranked highly in search engines such as Google for keyword terms and phrases which are related to the products and services that a company offers. Simply put, the higher your website is ranked in Google for terms that people are searching for, the more traffic you will undoubtedly get to your website.

The unique and great thing about search marketing is that it allows companies to capture the attention of people who are actively looking for products, services, or information that you provide. This means that the leads generated through search engine marketing are usually of a much higher quality than other, less targeted ways of advertising such as TV and radio broadcasts or newspaper advertisements. The point of search engine marketing is to get as many targeted prospects to your website as possible in order to convert them into customers.

Think about how successful you could be if you only marketed to people who were already looking for your products or services? How could you not sell more products or services? That is the POWER of SEO. You get in front of hundreds or even thousands of people who are already looking for the type of product or service you offer. You just have to have a website that converts that traffic into visitors and BOOM! You can be a success.

The process of SEO is fairly simple because it requires only two things. Firstly, it requires content on your website that properly optimized for Google and the other search engines. The more quality content the better. Secondly, it requires your website to have “authority” in the eyes of the search engines which is gained mostly by which other websites out in cyberspace link to yours, how many of them link to yours, and how authoritative those websites. “Link building” is the art of building these links to your website in a way that helps your website move up the rankings.

So get started doing SEO today. It’ll help your business. To learn how, check out these links:
Scepter SEO Consulting – Our very own consulting services where we can help you understand SEO and take your business to the next level!
Scepter’s Posterous – Scepter’s more intimate blog with all kinds of random, cool stuff to help you get insight into the web and grow your business