What The Yellow Pages Companies Don’t Want You To Know

It’s no secret that most in the modern-day marketing industry have little love for the once-ubiquitous thick yellow book of business listings.  Truthfully, these things used to be useful.  When you needed to look up the phone number for the pizza delivery place, or find a plumber – you went to the Yellow Pages.  Ask yourself though, what do you do now when you need to find out this information?  If you are at work, you most likely pull it up in google.  If you are out and about, you probably just pull out your iPhone or Droid and do a quick search.  At home – you grab the iPad or other tablet.  The device isn’t important though – the key fact here is that we just do not use the yellow pages anymore. So what does this have to do with taking people’s money?

Let Your Fingers Do The Walking (On Your Smartphone)

Remember that old ad slogan from the 80s?  Here is the basic message of the Yellow Pages marketing reps.  ”Hey – our book goes out to 150,000 homes each year. If you want to be found, you HAVE to be in this book”.  I won’t argue that the book gets “delivered” to these homes – but if people really thought about how many of these immediately hit the recycle bin, or worse – the trash can, you would realize two things. 1) very few actually see/use this book and 2) they are filling up our landfills and taking our money to do it!

Yellow Pages = Bad Investment

Most would be shocked to find the vast amounts of money businesses still spend on yellow page ads. They are not cheap. In fact, many of the quarter to half page ads cost hundreds of dollars a month – and that is in a small market.  The full page ads? The ones all the attorneys and air conditioning repair companies buy up? Those can easily run into the thousands.

Be Strong – Don’t Take The Bait!

Rest assured, the yellow page companies know that their days are over.  However, to keep sales up, they mix enough “digital” into the discussion to make themselves seem relevant.  For instance, if you buy this yellow page ad – they will throw in a free website, or SEO services.  Don’t take the bait – in the end, all they care about is selling the ad.  The website they build is going to be amateurish at best, and nothing is free – they are taking a lot of your money each month to pay for all this nonsense.

So, in the end, be informed and realize that yellow pages aren’t worth the price of the paper they are printed on.  The don’t work anymore, and as much as they hate to admit it, even THEY know this is true.  So no matter how they try to sweeten the pot, tell them to take someone else’s money.  Otherwise the only people getting rich off of your advertisement investment are the CEOs of the yellow page firms!

Grumpy Cat is Frustrated with Social Media

In the last installment, we looked at reasons that business owners and marketers are often frustrated with SEO, and the lack of results they see from their efforts.  We concluded that the main problem was that the primary goals associated with SEO alone, were not in line with the overall goals a successful marketing plan will exhibit.  In the same way, many business owners and marketers are frustrated with social media.  They are frustrated with keeping up with it, as well as seeing the apparent lack of results for their effort.  If the solution lies in realigning our social media goals with sound marketing goals, how do we go about doing that?  That is the topic of this post.

Social Media, by itself, is not a marketing strategy.

The wisdom of the day used to sound something like this.  ”You need to engage your customers in meaningful conversation through social media channels to build interest in, and loyalty to your brand.”  Countless books and manifestos were written on this subject.  Conversation and engagement were the big buzzwords during the early days of the social media revolution.  But, what exactly does conversation and engagement get you?  The goal of generating this type of buzz about your company int he social media channels is to gain exposure – or in social media terms, reach.  The simplified version of this is if you have 10 friends who are talking about products to at least 10 of their friends, then all of a sudden – you have reached an audience of 100.  This is the viral power of social media, and this is why it is an integral part of a comprehensive inbound marketing plan  What is reach, though, and does this “reach” put any money in your pockets?  Here is where we have to hone our social media strategy into a sound marketing strategy, and here is how we do it.

Social Media, as part of an Inbound Marketing campaign is a powerful marketing strategy.

This is actually very, very simple.  Way too many twitter accounts and facebook pages are dedicated to the social media equivalent of talking about the weather.  People saying good morning, retweeting news, posting pictures of their power lunch with a colleague, etc.  Sure – you might gain reach when friends, and friends of friends like, follow or retweet these messages, but WHY are you spreading this message?  Here is an illustration:

Company A:  Posts to Facebook and/or Twitter at least once a day with some sort of thoughtful quote, funny picture, the latest facebook meme (hopefully not).  These get a few likes and a bunch of eyeballs, but no activity.  Essentially, these become part of the online white noise we all learn to tune out in our day to day business.

Company B:  Posts a little less often, but posts original content or insight that positions them as leaders in their field.  These posts contain valuable information for their intended audience and as a result, are liked, shared, tweeted, retweeted, etc.  THIS is the kind of reach that is valuable, but ONLY if the posts ultimately do something to bring the viewer back to your website where they can continue the dialogue through inbound marketing channels. You want them to subscribe, download something, or otherwise interact with your company online.

Don’t be part of the white noise!

In wrapping up – way too many businesses find themselves in the Company A boat, because someone told them that they have to post something every day.  Quantity over quality.  Don’t fall for this, otherwise you’ll end up being part of the general roar of noise that we ignore every day.  Stand out!  Be like Company B and post timely, valuable information that captures the reader and inspires action.  Quality, not quantity, will rise above the noise and get your the kind of attention that turns into leads and more business rather.

The most common problem businesses face with their own SEO strategy or their SEO consultant’s strategy, is that the goals of SEO are not in line with the overall goals of your business!

Your Goals vs. SEO Goals

Let’s look at this further.  If your SEO consultant comes to you after 6 months of work and proudly shows a report indicating that you have taken the top slots in search engine results for all of your desired keywords, that’s a win right?  Well – it is for the SEO consultant.  In fact, that’s all the SEO consultant is really worried about – your site ranking high in the search results.  In the end, that is the primary goal of SEO – building a rank and placement advantage over your competition.

Now, let’s look at it from your point of view. If your boss or shareholders ask to see your progress after 6 months, what are they going to be most interested in?  I’ll give you a hint – they likely could care less about search engine ranking.  They care about leads and sales.  They want to see movement in the bottom line.  As a leader in a business, growth and sales are YOUR primary goal.  So while your SEO takes his monthly check and pats himself on the back – you are left to puzzle over your new traffic, making sure it is a) relevant traffic and b) it is actually engaging with your website in a way you can leverage it for business.

So What Can I Do? Have a seat!

The first thing to do is realize that SEO, as a strategy, is not bad.  In fact, SEO is a crucial element to a good inbound marketing strategy.  The key, though, is that a good inbound marketing strategy is a COMPREHENSIVE marketing strategy.  Think of inbound marketing as a three-legged stool.  Here are the legs:

• First Leg: Generating Website Traffic
• Second Leg:  Converting Traffic Into Leads
• Third Leg: Converting Leads Into Sales

We’ve all heard the three-legged stool illustration. You take away any one of those legs and the stool falls over.  So many business rely too heavily on SEO alone, and as a result, find themselves frustrated and questioning their investment of money and time into SEO

Stop the frustration, transition to Inbound Marketing

If you find yourself frustrated by SEO or any other area of digital marketing, having a good understanding of Inbound Marketing is a great place to get your bearings.  When you understand the whole playbook, and how every component fits into the strategy, it takes the mystery out of these individual technologies and services and you begin to see how they all work together to drive traffic, generate leads and close deals – which, by the way, moves your bottom line and makes you a hero at your next board meetin

Inbound Marketing Makes Heroes Out Of Marketing Professionals

It is hard, as a marketer, to know truly how important your job is while also knowing that to the top decision makers – you are basically a necessary evil. Your department produces nothing, can prove nothing, and costs quite a bit of money!  In the business community – most leaders know that they need marketing, and they are scared to do away with it. However, they are not convinced that it really makes all that much of a difference.

Why Can’t My CEO Get Excited About Marketing?

This is the universal problem we all face as marketing professionals.  You just spent $2500 on a display ad in the local business journal, or $7500 on a local television campaign.  When your boss or manager asks if the ad was successful, what do you say?  Most likely your response has something to do with circulation, viewership, or something along those lines.  To the person managing the budget, this isn’t good enough. They don’t care how many people SAW the ad, they care about how that ad directly affected sales.  Unfortunately, with the vast majority of traditional marketing outlets, this is just the way it is.  We deal with potentials and probabilities.  If a mailer is delivered to 10,000 households and is opened by roughly 10% of the audience (1,000) and then 2% of those that opened it pick up the phone and call (20) and the sales staff can close 5% of those that call (1) then you “might” gain 1 customer out of your 10,000 piece mailing that probably cost you $1500 to produce, print and mail.

Show Marketing ROI and Be a Hero!

What if for your next budget meeting, you walked in and delivered a report to your CEO that stated exactly how much you spent on marketing, exactly how many phone calls it produced, exactly how much it cost, and exactly how many sales directly resulted from it. Not only would you have the CEO’s attention, but you would be a hero!  Not only would the CEO be happy with the work you and your marketing staff did that year, but assuming the ROI was positive – they would likely want to increase the marketing budget for the following years!

The Moral Of The Story

We all know that inbound marketing increases traffic, generates leads and results in more sales. That is fantastic for the bottom line.  However, I am talking to other marketing professionals here.  You know what you face, day in and day out, fighting for your existence and knowing that other department heads all think your department costs too much and produces too little.  Well, let’s forget business growth for a minute and consider the other fantastic effect inbound marketing has.  It turns mild-mannered marketing professionals into super heros!  So take off those Clark Kent glasses and don the colored tights. You might just end up being the CEOs favorite department after all!

As marketing professionals, we groan every time we have to tell management how much this tv spot or that display ad costs.  They are expensive and we know that a) we can’t really measure the success of the ad and show marketing ROI, and b) once the ad is gone, it is gone!  This is not the case with content.  Unlike various forms of advertisement that either disappear into the airwaves or get thrown out in the recycling bin, online sticks around.  Not only does it stick around, it actively works to get your message in front of anyone that happens to be searching for it.

Always Invest In Durable Assets

Good investors know that the more money they have tied up in volatile stocks and risky investment schemes, the more risk they incur. Conversely, the more they have invested in durable assets that appreciate in value, the less chance they have of losing their investment.  The same goes with how you invest your time and money in marketing.  When you spend money on a display ad, television or radio spot, billboard or any other kind of traditional marketing expense – you are buying a temporary bit of exposure that you “hope” will bring in some business.  Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. You can’t really measure it.  What’s worse is when it is gone, it is GONE!  These kinds of expenses are most definitely not durable assets.

Content = Durable Assets

As an aside, developing content is a key part of what we call “The Gravity Strategy”.  Your business is a planet, you grow your planet with content, and the bigger your planet the more customers you will attract.  It’s a really helpful illustration and way to understand Inbound Marketing.  If you haven’t seen it, we strongly suggest you check out The Gravity Strategy!

So how is a piece of content a durable asset?  Content published on your website or in social channels does not go away easily.  Ordinarily that is a good thing (unless it’s an embarrassing picture from the office party last week).  Here is an example though of how good content can be a durable asset in your marketing portfolio.  Let’s say that you write a blog post on a subject that attracts 10-15 new visitors a day.  What if your next 9 blog posts are all equally well written and targeted, and each one also attracts an additional 10-15 new visitors a day.  After your first 10 posts are published, you’ve increased your visitation by 100-150 visitors a day and they won’t stop working, even as you move on to writing posts about other topics.  This is only blog posts.  eBooks, white papers, reviews, testimonials and social posts are all types of content that are indexed by the search engines and are there at the ready anytime a customer searches on one of those topics.  You will never get this kind of repeat performance out of any traditional media ad.

Focused Marketing vs. Broad Marketing

Another distinct advantage we have with content marketing is that it lets us focus on one specific topic for each piece.  For instance – this post is strictly about content marketing and durable assets.  We don’t talk about everything that our business does – we focus on one small part.  When you are designing a display ad – one of the biggest problems is in trying to distill everything your company offers into a couple of key bullet points or sentences.  Ads tend to be very broad in nature which means they get much less attention in the long run.  With content marketing – you can have 20 pieces of content specifically targeted to 20 different segments of your audience, and that will bring about more results any day over one ad that is generic enough to apply to all 20 of those segments.  Content marketing can be very refreshing to marketing professionals. No limits of page size, word counts, colors or seconds.  You can take your time and sell your idea the way YOU want to.

Start Building Durable Assets

If you do not have a way to easily publish content on your website to grow your business, then the first step is to make that happen.  You have to have the right kind of website that allows you to either write blog posts, or that is accompanied by a system where you can publish content easily and frequently.  If you haven’t checked out The Gravity Strategy yet, please do so.  We explain how anyone can start this process and be more successful online in a very clear and easy to understand manner.  What’s more – we also have many services to help our clients succeed with this strategy.  There’s no time like the present to take control of your future and start growing your business!

Recently, we started thinking about this in relation to how inbound marketing works and through conversations we’ve had with prospects and in seminars we’ve led, the feedback to this model has been amazing.  Inbound Marketing is based on certain laws of marketing that are outlined here:

1. Every business has an audience out there comprised of potential customers.
2. This audience of potential customers IS looking and researching the very products and services you sell.
3. These potential customers will be attracted to somebody’s website or business, essentially the marketing version of gravity.
4. The business that exhibits the most “mass” will attract the most visitors.
5. The business that attracts the most visitors stands the greatest chance of converting more visitors into customers, increasing sales, and dominating their market.

These may seem fairly simplistic, but you have to understand that these mechanisms exist. They are already in place and should you choose to harness their power, you will be attracting visitors and generating leads with the best of them.  So how do we do this?

The Gravity Strategy

This discussion I mentioned, that we have been having with our prospects, has come to be called “The Gravity Strategy”.  Following the 5 statements we made above – there are customers out there looking, and they WILL be attracted to someone’s business through the gravitational forces of marketing.  If you want to make sure that they are attracted to your business first, you have to understand how to manipulate these gravitational forces and use them to drive more customers to your website.  The number 1 secret to manipulating gravity and growing your business is… “drum roll”… CONTENT.

Your Business = Your Planet

Remember when we said that planets have a lot of pull?  Let’s say you have 3 competitors in your market.  Think of these business as planets.  Including yours, that makes 4 planets in your market, all attracting potential customers.  If we follow Newton’s law – the planet with the most mass will attract the most customers.  The trick is increasing the mass of your planet so that yours will naturally attract more visitors.  Now, we’ll show you how to use content to increase the mass of your planet.

Content = Mass

We have established that consumers are searching for your products and services.  When they search, what comes up in the search results?  Ideally, blog posts, white papers, eBooks, reviews and other items mentioning YOUR brand are showing up.  These items are the content that adds mass to your planet.  Still with me?  You can effectively control the mass of your planet by producing these pieces.  Creating targeted blog posts, engaging customers in conversations through social channels, offering eBooks and other resources to download – all of this increases the mass of your planet and as a result, attracts more visitors.

Inbound Marketing Success

In the end, the business that produces and publishes the most relevant content WILL attract the most viewers.  Once you get the traffic, it is as simple as engaging those visitors through landing pages, downloadable offers and other marketing tactics to convert those viewers into prospects, leads and eventually customers.  All because you were wise enough to invest your time and energy into creating content.

The following list of “Johnson City Superlatives” was compiled in April 2013.  Data may not be accurate in the future . . .

The busiest intersection in Johnson City is at State of Franklin & West Market. Source Rofo.com.

The lowest recorded temperature was -21 in 1985. Source The Weather Channel.

Johnson City’s Most Famous Musician is Kenny Chesney who has sold more than 27 million albums. Source Wikipedia.

The living Johnson City author who has sold the most books is Steven James.  He has sold over 500,000 copies of his Patrick Bowers thriller series. Source Steven James.

The tallest building in Johnson City is the ETSU Mini Dome at 121 feet high. Source ReelScout.com.

The busiest stretch of road in Johnson City is Interstate 26 between Unaka/Watauga and Roan Street. Source Johnson City Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization.

The strongest recorded earthquake was a 4.7 magnitude on 11/30/1973. Source City-Data.com

The highest recorded temperature was 99 in 1988. Source The Weather Channel.









The oldest cemetery in Johnson City is Oak Hill Cemetery – 1870. Source JohnsonsDepot.com.

The Johnson City author who has sold the most books (all time) is Catherine Marshall, who authored the “Christy” series of books.  Over 16 million copies have been sold. Marshall was born in Johnson City and wrote part of her best-seller “Christy” while staying with relatives in Johnson City. Source Wikipedia.

Johnson City’s oldest independent restaurant is The Peerless, established in 1938.  Source The Peerless.

The oldest church in Johnson City and the state of Tennessee is Sinking Creek Baptist Church – founded in 1772.  Source Sinking Creek Baptist Church.

The library with the most books is Sherrod Library at ETSU with 477,469 books. Source Sherrod Library.

The only player to win a Heisman Trophy after playing for a Johnson City team is Steve Spurrier. Source Wikipedia.

The longest stretch of straight road in Johnson City is Unaka Avenue with 2.37 miles. Source MapMyRun.com.

The most expensive home on the market is at 191 Degrassee Lane.  The home is priced at $4,850,000.  Source Zillow.

Have some more interesting facts about Johnson City?  Leave them in the comments.

What People Are Saying

From a webinar to marketing professionals . . .

“I have heard a billion presentations on inbound. Yesterday, you guys kinda blew my mind. This is the first time someone explained a long-tail keyword to me. #MindBlown” – Jason Diller, The DSM Group

“This presentation is out of this world! Love the universal principles.” – Mark O’keefe – HubSpot

“Love the concept of orbiters and gravity.” – Ken Stevens, Accelerated Marketing Partners

“This planet analogy is working really well! Very smart! This is awesome.” – Lamees Abourahma, Webbright Services

“Loved it! Shared it with 45 sites. Hope it creates some buzz for you.” – Dave Presher, Involution Digital

“Great job today on the call!! Love this!!” – Rebecca Graves, The Spot On Agency

From a 45-minute conference presentation . . .

“Found out how much I don’t know about social marketing but really want to learn! Thank you! Very entertaining!” – Diane Zepaltas

“You boosted my confidence in starting a blog.” – Meghan Brown

“I really enjoyed the session – very engaging, and I learned something new! I would love more info on how/where to get started blogging, and how to create a searchable website to increase referrals.” – April Rozza

“Your analogy of gravity & associated content is great.” – Elizabeth Oatz

“Nice balance of relating new information to practical/easy steps to get started.” – Sherry Robison

“Great info! Presentation was attention-grabbing because it was unique and not typical powerpoint.” – Amanda Ontinelli

“A great presentation, well-organized. The Gravity Strategy was explained in an easy to understand manner.” – Robin Sirochman

“Great presentation skills – clear & concise strategy overview.” – Lori Garvin

Video Transcript

A wise man once said “Gravity cannot be blamed for falling in love.”  That’s true.  But we would say that Gravity CAN be blamed for customers falling for your business.  In the next four minutes, we’ll explain how the marketing universe has changed and how you can use gravity to attract and keep enormous amounts of new customers.  We call it The Gravity Strategy.

In days gone by, power was in the hands of the marketer.  Picture your business as a planet in a wide galaxy which is your market.  Consumers were floating aimlessly through space with no good way to find you on their own.   So you blasted your signal out to the galaxy as widely as possible.  You placed interruption ads on the radio, TV, newspaper, billboards, direct mail, and phone book.  It worked.  Consumers listened.

But then two things happened which changed the course of marketing forever.  In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin created a free map of the universe.  It’s called Google.  Consumers suddenly had the ability to find anything they wanted when they wanted it.  And in two-thousand-six, Facebook and Twitter came on the scene, giving the consumer the ability to ask thousands of their friends for recommendations on anything.

The result is a huge shift which put power in the hands of the consumer.  With the map and social tools in hand, consumers have stopped paying attention to interruption ads.  They just don’t work like they used to.

Smart businesses have recognized the shift and they’re doing something about it.  They are using The Gravity Strategy to become findable and referable in the altered universe.

Remember what you learned in grade school–the larger the planet, the stronger the gravity.  By increasing the amount of content on your website, you are growing the size of your planet and increasing your attractiveness.  Regular blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, videos, how tos, and product tips snowball the number of pages on your site in Google’s index.  You start pulling in a lot more potential customers from The Map of The Universe.  And it gets better.  The more content you put out, the more you are recognized as the expert in your galaxy and you get more and more referrals and social shares.

Now you can use very strategic gravity tools to bring those new visitors in for a landing on your planet as a customer.  There are four stages in this process.  Visitors see your site for the first time.  Some of them bounce back out into the galaxy.  But some like what they see and decide to check you out a little more.  They become orbiters by liking your Facebook page.   In one of your posts, they see an offer of a free ebook.  They give you their email address to get it.  They are now in your atmosphere.  They are a Lead.  With their permission, you send them a strategic set of automated emails leading them closer to buying your product or service.  In one of those emails, they see an opportunity for a free consultation and they sign up.  They are now a hot Prospect.  Your sales guy easily finishes the deal and you just landed a customer on your planet.

Now that customer can always run off to another planet and do business with them.  But The Gravity Strategy is not done working for you.  Your customer is subscribed to your emails and social feeds.  They are constantly learning how to use your product or service better, understanding your value, and grasping your expertise.  By increasing your gravity through your content, you hold that customer on your planet.  It is much harder to blast off and do business elsewhere.

These four minutes have given you just a taste of the new marketing universe.  You are just beginning.  It’s time to develop your very own customized Gravity Strategy.   Download our free eBook to learn about the roll of Calls To Action, Landing Pages, SEO, Inbound Marketing, and all components of The Gravity Strategy.  Today is the day to get started harnessing those marketing gravitons to grow your planet and rule your galaxy!

We launched a new site for an Inbound Marketing client last month. Here is an 8-day snapshot of the client’s organic search traffic. Keep in mind this is not branded traffic based on the client’s name. This is a brand new site no-one had ever heard of.

That’s 155 visits based on 58 keyword variations within a week of launching the site.

So how did we do it?

The client’s brother works at Google. We’re not kidding. He really does, but that had nothing to do with it.

0 to 155 in 8 Days

We did it by posting a single blog post about a local trade show. The trade show got a lot of local off-line publicity via traditional media. But they did absolutely nothing online. So we reaped the free rewards on all the trade show’s expensive outbound marketing.

When we talked with the client about what they had coming up back in January, they mentioned the trade show. When we searched we were delighted to find a single four-year-old post about the trade show and nothing else.

The alarms went off in our heads: FREE TRAFFIC! FREE TRAFFIC! FREE TRAFFIC!

The client, of course, was busy and we needed their help getting a little content. It wouldn’t take much. We finally talked them into it, got some good content up a week and a half before the 3-day event.

Pre-Event Blogging For Instant Traffic

We made sure to include basic information on the trade show. How much it cost, times, giveaways, etc. since that’s what people would be searching for. We also took a picture of the client’s trade show display and used it in the post, so viewers would recognize the client when they got to the show.

9 days out, we noticed Google hadn’t indexed the new page. This was a brand new site and Google’s spider initially crawls new sites at a slow rate. Once every few days or even weeks. So we used Google Webmaster Tools to request an index of the page. 7 days before the event, the page had been indexed and we saw traffic start to trickle in. The end result you see in the graph.

The traffic was looking so good, we went to the show and updated the post with several pictures. We also posted to social media and tagged some of the attendees on Facebook. Tagging is a great way to get images to show up in News Feeds.

In my experience, i think there are three ways to classify potential Hubspot customers.  I am making the assumption here that all three have heard about Hubspot and are at least somewhat interested in what it can do for them.  That being said, here are the three types.

1) Sold on Hubspot, and has the budget to implement it.  This person has done their homework, and they are in a position personally, or their company is in a position to implement Hubspot.  In this case, Hubspot is a no-brainer.

2) Sold on Hubspot, but doesn’t have the budget (or so they think).  These prospects are fun to talk to.  They balk at the sticker shock of Hubspot, but when you start peeling back the layers of their current marketing activity, you quickly find that they are spending a lot more in far less effective marketing channels.  Once we help them prioritize their marketing spending, they can see how diverting dollars from less effectice marketing to Hubspot is not only be more cost effective, but more effectice period.

3) Sold on Inbound Marketing, but for whatever reason, really can’t afford Hubspot or Inbound Marketing consulting right now.  This isn’t a bad place to be at all.  This person is likely just starting out, or has never spent any money on marketing in the past.  There are ways to get started with Inbound Marketing without Hubspot.  You will find that you put considerably more “sweat equity” into this kind of Inbound strategy, but once you get momentum moving in your favor, you’ll quickly get to the point where you can give Hubspot a second look.  By then you will have worked with Inbound long enough to have an even better sense of just how many ways Hubspot can save you time and money.

I will close by saying, if you are in the fourth category – someone who has never heard of Hubspot or Inbound Marketing, do yourself a favor and check it out! While Hubspot Pricing can be an initial shock to some, it is an investment that pays for itself in no time!