Category Archive: General Small Business

Mar
25
2009

Local Internet Marketing is solved!

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March 25, 2009

Well, after a year of grueling work, Marketing Local Business Online is completed, at least the book with step-by-step instructions. Local Internet Marketing in 2009 is huge!

I remember considering this project almost 12 months ago. I wanted to build a community of people that wanted to listen to me. I wanted to establish re-occuring revenue. I wanted to build a group of loyal readers and followers. I wanted to build something that I love to do and will support my lifestyle for the long term. I was tired of working during so called business hours and tired of having to wear a suit, because someone wanted me to.

I decided I wanted an info-product and figured I really could only teach people something that I’ve been financially successful at. I could teach people to sales in a B2B environment, or I could teach people how to market their business over the Internet. I already own a company that serves companies servicing a local market. When asked about cannibalizing sales from the agency with an info product, I thought….

Businesses need either time or money to grow. You need to work on and in your business or pay people to do that. My agency charges over $800 a month with a minimum 6 month contract for SEO. That’s expensive man for a company generating a $1M in sales at 10% EBIT. So, what about those dentists, chiropractors and attorneys that have young web saavy employees, those interns and contractors that are paid $15 per hour. I could teach anyone how to do this, with the right framework. The local plumber can’t afford my agency, but I could teach them how to do it!

So I tested myself. I found several companies who would pay me $800 a month to teach them how to do this. I did this on my own time and learned with several successes that I not only can do this for others, I can teach people how to do this and now they’re making money. How cool.

There are 23M small businesses in America. Imagine if I could have 50,000 of those businesses reading my material, even if it were for free. I know I could monetize loyal readers and move towards what my passion has been…speaking on stage. The difference is, people now seek me out and pay me to talk. How cool!

So, there is a brief history of MLBO. It’s my third live business venture. They all work together and MLBO is my biggest passion. I just love teaching.

Now I’m just slowly promoting downloads and come September I’ll have the official launch of the video course, workbook and files, along with a member site and private and semi private coaching. Of course that won’t be free, but I assure you will be much, much less than the price paid SEO agencies and affordable even for the one man show local operations.

Exciting times!

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/local-internet-marketing-is-solved/

Mar
09
2009

6 Paths to Website Success

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March 9, 2009

It’s been a while since web designers thought all they needed to do was design the website and just by its existence the work of successful marketing was done. Everyone involved in the online world knows differently today. There are as many different ways to help a website climb to the top of the page rankings for their individual niches as there are types of templates out there today—each one claims to be the best at a different specialty that ensures marketing superiority.

 

But all the sites are as different as the businesses that they represent, and you need to be careful as the business owner to ensure that your specific needs are met and that your website will be seen by as many of the right prospects as possible. To that end there are certain tried-and-true ways to optimize your design.

 

 

Remember to keep things simple. There are many different ways to optimize a website and a myriad of features that you can choose from, but here’s a interesting statistic on what people surfing the net really look at. Most of the experts suggest that web surfers look at about 20% of the features on your site and that you’ve got about nine seconds to hook them so they want to read on. So, suggestions one and two at don’t overdo it and get the content written by a professional are essential. You don’t need a lot of fancy stuff to make your point but you do need it to be well written.

 

The next piece of advice is about putting yourself in the perspective customer’s shoes. Ask yourself what the customer might want and then put that ahead of what it is you’d like for the site. Remember that you’re trying to attract people to the site to buy things—a good way to find out what they’d look for on a site is to ask a sample.

 

 

Be specific and make all the call to actions very clear. You don’t want people clicking all over the site to get to the products. Make it easy for them to click on and buy what you’ve got to sell. Confusion can drive them right into the hands of the competition. Remember the small things can make a big difference so you’ll want to carefully select the font sizes and colors you use. By selecting all these things carefully, a strong message a usually given.

 

Of course you’ll also want to optimize you search engine performance by placing keywords and phrases at strategic locations throughout the text and perhaps even placing a marker for your site on a B2B directory which is essentially a business directory that will give you exposure in your niche and increase your page ranking at the same time.    

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/6-paths-to-website-success/

Dec
12
2008

Video for Small Business

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December 12, 2008

∞$15 Billion Videos viewed monthly
∞52% of all web Traffic is video[i]
∞Video Listings show up in the SERPs within 10 minutes
∞The human brain is optimized for story telling and immersive sensory experience – this is video!

Online video is one of the best venues to connect an audience.  This new avenue allows video creators to communicate a message on multiple levels through visual imagery, spoken words, music and visual text.  This is a huge potential to reach a massive audience with your small business.  This strategy alone can help dominate the entire front page of Google. 

With online video you can also reach a huge local audience for a minimal investment, thus the ROI of online video marketing can be surprising.  According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau; more than 50% of the US population will watch video online next year.  That’s over 150 million!  According to comScore, Americans watched 9 billion online videos just in the month of July.

While there are many sources for your video to be viewed by many, we’re talking local business marketing and many of the online video strategies you’ll talk about just don’t apply.  Online video for small local businesses is more about conversion than driving traffic, yet plays a great role in acquiring links and completing you online strategies.

The question is, how video applies to your small business?  Video help conversion.

Conversion.

We live in a world of video, yet the internet is still in a place where newspapers were a hundred years ago.  Then came television news, and specialized stations broadcasting the news to us in similar formats.  The television has completely changed the way we used to acquire and distribute our information from a hundred years ago.  The Internet is no different, however today we are in the dark ages.  That’s right, the Internet as we know it today will be mocked by our children as they grow up.  You think Granny has seen a lot of change since the early 1900′s?  The rate at which humans have adopted technology has exponentially increased in time.  While I can not support any figures without documentation and supporting evidence, please try and challenge this claim.  For the population of Americans to hit a saturation rate of 95% for newspapers took longer than the telephone, which took longer than television and now the Internet is well on its way to achieving that magic number in much, much less time than them all.  Ironic isn’t it, that the Internet as we know it today is merely a digital version of a newspaper, at least for the small local business.  Follow the trends folks, video is popping up everywhere on the Internet, why not your own business.

Let’s consider this.  Companies like Google want to organize the world’s information.  They have highly paid, MBA and Doctoral grads studying trends all day long.

They know where the Internet is moving; at least they are predicting it better than us.  Didn’t they just buy the largest video broadcasting site in existence?  Ever heard of YouTube?

The point is here is that video is, or soon to become a staple of the Internet.  Broadband is cheap, hosting is even cheaper, technology is fast enough and video creation is fairly easy and cheap.

Video is also a very big thing right now in SEO.  Video on your site greatly increases you’re exposure and ability to be ranked.

Video also vastly increases your conversions on your site.

TO LEARN HOW TO CREATE VIDEOS, SIGN UP FOR FREE AT WWW.MARKETINGLOCALBUSINESSONLINE.COM

 

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/video-for-small-business/

Dec
01
2008

Couriers of the World

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December 1, 2008

I just wanted to take a moment share with you a social networking site I’ve set up called Couriers of the World.  This is a niche social networking site specifically designed for couriers and people in the transportation field.  Please visit www.couriersoftheworld.com and sign up if you’re in this business.

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