Service Business SEM

Rexburg Idaho Temple Chrome Theme

2013-04-24T03:47:09Z

Checkout and download my Rexburg Idaho Chrome Theme. Thanks My Chrome Theme Extension for helping me make it.

How I Made my First Instructographic

2013-04-07T05:09:53Z

I used both of these to make my first instructographic in Powerpoint then put in on my website. Here are the 4 easy steps I took.

Create it - How to Create Five Fabulous Infographics in PowerPoint by Hubspot
Place the right code on your website - Make the neat embed feature under your images
Then pin it on pinterest
Then share it on social media sites and email it out to friends

Here is my first example – Norseman Secret Weapon Fruit Breakfast

Norseman Secret Weapon Instructographic

2013-04-07T04:59:44Z

Service Business SEM

Embed this on your site

</br><a href="http://servicebusinesssem.com">Service Business SEM</a>

The True Power of Reviews & Testimonials

2013-03-12T03:20:31Z

Background

69% of local consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. And 67% of local consumers will be reading your online reviews before choosing you. How did this happen? In the past people used to ask their friends for a reference when they needed something now they can get just about the same results by going to the web even faster.

Reviews vs. Testimonials
The difference between a review and a testimonials is who collects the customers experience and where that experience will display. If a shares their experience with you this is a testimonial because you collect the experience and you post it typically on your website. A review would be someone hops on Google+ or kudzu, logs in and drops a star rating with a comment and say a few other fields. The directory site is the collector and they display it typical on their website. This adds an added level of trust and a greater reach to new potential customers because Google for instance displays star ratings display right in their results. What this means to you is now the customers circle of influence and potential to send referral business is increases to the whole internet potentially.

A successful review program will do these three things sustainably
1.       Ask for a review
2.       Provide the easiest way for leaving a review possible
3.       Gain customer contact information

Asking for a review is important. You probably already do so but with no success ongoing. Actually asking when the customer is most happy about their purchase has proven to increase customer reviews. But when coupled with a follow up medium such as an email that provides a link to your Google+ or yelp listing then you have a sustainable program. This is sustainable because you have now made it easy for them to do what you just committed them to do. I’ve head or a car dealership that gets at least a 10% response rate. Do you think they get more business because of this, you bet they do.

Here are 6 potential mediums you could use to solicit reviews and what is necessary to do so.

Needs customers contact information
·        Email
· Phone call & follow up email
· Postcard or thanks you letter
Happens in person or in store
· Hand out
· Card tent
Happens passively
·         Website widget (How to, Informative,Direct, WordPress Plugin & Funnel)
·         Email signature

5 biggest mistakes companies make when going for reviews
1.       Posting reviews for others or hiring a company to do this for them
2.       Asking for a review but not making it easy
3.       Not responding to reviews bad or good
4.       Trying to incentivize reviews
5.       Never asking for a review

How Important Are Reviews to Your SEO?
At least for a local business reviews that take place in Google+/Local platform it’s the 7th most important factor for SEO.

Tools / Tips
Place your reviews on your website in Schema review markup. Google, Bing & Yahoo came together on this. This is number 82 in the local ranking factors. Here is an example of using Schema for reviews. Once on your website Google has provided a neat tool to test your Schema markup to see if it works properly.

What is the value of a direct mailer vs website leads?

2013-02-26T23:45:15Z

I thought I would share what I have learned from tracking hundreds of leads. I often hear these complaints when it comes to leads and methods you use for advertising.

I’m not getting any leads
I’m not getting enough leads
My leads are costing to much
I don’t know what my leads are really costing me

If you aren’t getting any business then when you change something, it’s really easy to tell if what’s new is working. But what if you have a few things going on like home shows, direct mailers, and a website? Attribution to the source can be a guessing game. And often the stakes are high when a magazine ad costs $4k or that new website will cost $1k.

What you can do on your own

Something that you can do is ask your customers how they heard about you. If you’re not you should be. I recently spoke with a dealer who ran the numbers on all his leads sources solely from this data for 2012. What he found is it costs him about 20% of every job just to generate the leads for everything he does offline. And his website efforts were about 15%. The key for him was to write it down and review it at the end of the year.

But what if you have employees or are forgetful what then?

What you can do with tracking technology

Every lead can be tracked back to the source in a more perfect way using technology. I have learned this by implemented phone call tracking on door hangers, online advertising, and web lead forms to name a few. And in so doing have revealed the true value of a lead source. And I don’t have to wait until the end of the year. It’s done in near real time.

What medium do you use and where to do go to get the data you need?

Web traffic – Google Analytics Unique Visitors
Web form submissions – Google Analytics Goal Tracking
Phone calls – Call Rail / Google Analytics
Spend on advertising – You or your tools
Direct emails – You
Value of a sale – You

Once you collect and place this information together on a per lead basis you can run some very insightful reports. Here are 2 examples of what you can see based on your participation. This data isn’t meant to be reflective of typical results but rather relative in formula only. Your results should very significantly.

Partial data participation

Medium	Expenses	# of Leads	Cost Per Lead	Conversion Rate %
SEO	$654	10	$65	5.13%
PPC	$770	9	$86	5.45%
Direct Mail	$809	10	$81	4.13%
Door Hangers	$400	5	$80	9.00%
Home Show / Brochure	$1,800	40	$45	14.00%

Full data participation

Medium	Sales	Expenses	# of Sales	# of Leads	Cost Per Lead	Cost Per Sale	Conversion Rate %
SEO	$3,230	$654	3	10	$65	$218	5.13%
PPC	$2,326	$770	1	9	$86	$770	5.45%
Direct Mail	$4,050	$809	2	10	$81	$405	4.13%
Door Hangers	$1,800	$400	2	5	$80	$200	9.00%
Home Show / Brochure	$5,000	$1,800	10	40	$45	$180	14.00%

And

Medium	Close Ratio	Ave. Sale	Cost as a % of Sale
SEO	30%	$1,077	20%
PPC	11%	$2,326	33%
Direct Mail	20%	$2,025	20%
Door Hangers	40%	$900	22%
Home Show / Brochure	25%	$500	36%

What I have learned from tracking hundreds of leads

It’s usually not that business owners aren’t doing the right things to bring in business. It’s that they aren’t tracking everything. And when it’s not tracked it can’t be improved. What this really does is cause owners to miss allocate their time and money.

5 duh moments I have had

Track everything
Stop doing things that don’t work
Spend more money on things that are working
Spend a lot of time in finding the right team to do lead generation for you
Then spend less time doing anything but working on perfecting your sales process

Facts & tips when dealing with leads

61 percent of people go with the first company to contact them. “Lead Response Management Report”

Making contact within the first 5 minutes of receiving a lead should double your current contact rate.

Have your web form SMS you in addition to email you

Have your forward calls emailed to you in addition to routed directly to you

Have your calls routed to a call center if you don’t pick up within 30 seconds

Do you need to do online research for your Brand?

2013-02-08T15:44:11Z

Between my friend and an associate asking me questions about online research, I figured I better share what I have compiled. So here are some of the good tools out there for customer and competitor research. I hope these tools help.

This article breaks down many of the tools out there. More than what data they show how they get their data is different and how accurate it really is matters too. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/monitor-competitor-traffic

Compete.com
Spyfu.com
Google Similar Search
HitWise
Quantcast
SEMrush
Google Trends for Websites
Google Insights
Google Ad Planner
ComScore
Alexa
Opensiteexplorer.org
Serpiq.com

If a competitor adds any type of code to their customers websites, you should Google search that code and compile a list of their clients. That would help you find out the type of customer that he is attracting. Same goes for any ads they place in the web world.

Some great Persona stuff: http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=30&pageName=Segment%2BExplorer and http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp

Building A Brand – CMO of NetMark

Some Other Resources

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/testing-accuracy-visitor-data-alexa-compete-google-trends-quantcast
http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/seo-tips/seo-tips-to-find-competitors-keywords/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/alexa-hitwise-and-real-numbers-oh-my

Idaho Web Marketing Meetup New Website Launch

2012-12-22T00:48:48Z

Our local meetup just launched the new website we have all been waiting for.

Two goals of the new website

Educated people on internet marketing
Give back to the community with an internet safety and security event.

Checkout the Idaho Web Marketing Meetup New Website

Google Analytics Tips & Tricks by Matt Dyer

2012-11-16T14:58:19Z

Updated Post Meeting 2012-11-14 – View the video recording and participate in the discussion – Free to join

Google Analytics Tips & Tricks by Matt Dyer - Idaho Web Marketing Meetup

Matt starts at 3:06 seconds – the audio is very scratchy this time.

Matt Dyer former marketer at Get Found First, Rexburg (Internet Marketing Agency) and current internet marketing guru at Gearhead Inc., Rexburg (Motor Sports Parts/Accessories) will speak on Google Analytics tips and tricks. He has done some great things with tracking Bing conversions through Google Analytics. Come ready for a trip down analytics bliss lane.

Also he may be the best redheaded internet marketer there is: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matt-dyer/10/18a/b7b

Video & Discussion Recap
Our Most Recent Meetup: Local SEO Strategy & Tips by Mike Ramsey CEO of Nifty Marketing
http://www.meetup.com/idaho-web-marketing/messages/boards/thread/28607762
We will have all new meetups added to the discussion form within a few days after the presentation.

Local SEO Strategy & Tips by Mike Ramsey CEO of Nifty Marketing

2012-11-09T14:12:51Z

Updated Post Meeting – View the video recording and participate in the discussion – Free to join

Local SEO Strategy & Tips by Mike Ramsey - Idaho Web Marketing Meetup

Mike Starts at :57 seconds

We have a surprise guest speakers visiting us, Mike Ramsey. Mike is a BYU-I Alumni and CEO of Nifty Marketing, Burley ID (Internet Marketing Agency) and will speak on Local SEO strategy & tips. Many of us first heard Mike speak at Local University put on by GetListed.org a while ago. And since then he has traveled around North America education businesses and marketers about the secrets to his success. People usually pay $100+ to hear him speak, we are very lucky to have him address us. Please come and support Mike and show the world Eastern Idaho is ready for such high caliber speakers.

When: Thursday, November 8, 2012 5:00 PM
Where: BYU-Idaho Manwaring Center (MC) Room 380

http://niftymarketing.com/about/

RSVP now to see who is going! RSVP

………

Video & Discussion Recap
Last Month’s Systematizing by John Broadbent:
http://www.meetup.com/idaho-web-marketing/messages/boards/thread/28013462

Systematizing – October 17th by John Broadbent

2012-10-20T16:54:46Z

Updated Post Meeting – View the video recording and participate in the discussion – Free to join

Systemitizing by John Broadbent - Idaho Web Marketing Meetup

Starting at 1:16, John Starts at 3:20

John Broadbent will speak this Wednesday. He is a big gun when it comes to internet marketing and especially when it comes to putting in place a system to get things done. If you ever wanted to know how to test online and then implement what works this guy can find the fastest and most efficient way to do it. I love how he introduced me to Trello.com and it has revolutionized how I manage my own time and those under me. And it does a great job when you add the Trello Clone Chrome Extension of cloning common tasks. But don’t let me spoil all that you will learn from John. Come to the meeting. I promise if speaker will blow your mind it will be John.

Systematizing – October 17th @ 11am

BYU-Idaho Manwaring Center (MC) Room 176B, Rexburg, ID

Or join in via Go To Meeting

I’m most excited about the after lunch.

Feel free to ask him any questions on his Meetup profile or Linkedin profile before the meeting so he will know to cover them. And if you haven’t joined the group for notifications of future meetings do so.