Category Archive: Local Internet Marketing Training, eBooks and Courses

Sep
08
2011

Have a list? Want me to do a Webinar for your audience?

I’ll keep this short.  I’m available to provide your audience with a free webinar covering several topics concerning building a local Internet Marketing Agency.  I’ve done webinars with Stompernet, Dan Thies, Leslie Rhode, SEO BrainTrust, Adwords for Dummies Author Howie Jacobson, Kristie McDonald, Joel McDonald, Nicole Munoz, Jay Berkowitz (Ten Golden Rules), Austin Walsh, Tellman Knudson to name a few.  Everyone person calls me back for more.

Send me an email to scottg @ localmarketingsource.com.  We can discuss detailed, content packed (no pitching) webinars covering Advanced Lead and Customer Acquisition Strategies, Local Search Ranking factors or high level local stuff such as profile review authority and review acquisition systems.

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/have-a-list-want-me-to-do-a-webinar-for-your-audience/

Mar
17
2011

Local Internet Marketing – Website Usability

Local Internet Marketing is about two things.

  1. Driving Traffic
  2. Conversion

When referencing conversion and Local Internet Marketing, a local business is referring to their website. Website Usability discusses achieving the desirable call to action.

Website Usability

Web usability means designing an online website for your users and visitors instead of for yourself or your client. A website that addresses user expectations will increase the number of visitors who take the intended call to action, or otherwise accomplish the goals set out for the website. Good usability is critical to your site’s success.

As discussed while identifying target audiences for a local internet marketing agency, those businesses that provide high value services or those who provide products or services to businesses will yield the highest revenue opportunity and can allocate the appropriate funding towards marketing online to achieve a desirable return on investment. Therefore, for this reason we are mostly focusing on business to business websites for local businesses.

Business-to-business websites face usability challenges far beyond those of regular B2C sites. The products are more complex, in fact, they are often services, the customers and audience are more diverse, and the buying process has many more steps and complications.

User testing shows that b2b websites have significantly lower usability than mainstream consumer sites. If they want to convert more prospects into leads, B2B sites should follow more guidelines and make it easier for prospects to research their offerings.

Many B2B sites are stuck in 1995. Most B2B websites highlight internally focused design, fail to answer the customers’ questions and simply are a digital version of their brochure. These sites fail to achieve a call to action and in most cases the user leaves and never comes back without leaving any lead information.

These sites haven’t realized that the Web has reversed the company-customer relationship. Most online interactions are demand-driven: you either give people what they want or watch as they abandon your site for the competitions.

Considering that there’s immensely more money at stake for B2B than for business-to-consumer (B2C), it’s astounding that B2B sites offer a much worse user experience

B2B vs. B2C

B2B site goals are substantially more complex than those on the typical B2C site. the more complex the scenario, the higher the need for interfaces that support the user. Therefore, B2B sites need to strengthen usability more, not less, because they must help users answer all of their questions and provide an opportunity for buyers to buy, but not be sold.

B2B purchases are often big-ticket items or service contracts. The sites’ products and services are often extremely specialized. Decisions made on B2B sites can have long-term implications: customers aren’t just making a one-time purchase. These customers often are buying into a long-term vendor relationship that includes support, follow-up, future enhancements and add-ons.

For all these reasons, research and multi-criteria decision-making dominate the B2B user experience. A B2B site has to offer simple facts that are easily and quickly understood by an early prospect that’s just looking around to see what’s available. It might also offer in-depth white papers and information to help prospects understand concepts like total cost of ownership or return on investment. A local business such as an attorney requires many questions answered that focuses on their specific niche.

As discussed in the sales and marketing section of the course, a local business website site must address many different types of audience member with quite different needs. Understanding the various audiences, creating user profiles and addressing these profiles is critical in achieving the call to action. Missing this piece will vastly degrade all of your usability efforts and I spend significant time in outlining this. Please refer to the webinar titled the SEO sales trail.

Push button purchase versus the local business buying process

One of the biggest differences between ecommerce stores, or online retailers and local business might be that most local retailers don’t seem to see themselves engaged in e-commerce. Perhaps this is because most B2B sites don’t have shopping carts. The typical B2B product can’t be purchased through a simple Add to cart button.

The lack of an Add to cart button doesn’t mean that B2B businesses should ignore their websites or make them digital brochures. The site should still support the many other stages of the buying process — including the post-sales, which are crucial to customers’ long-term brand loyalty.

Local business sites can be great lead generators. Prospects use websites during their initial research and stick with the helpful sites during subsequent research.

The website represents the company to prospects. People don’t save brochures because they assume they can find equivalent information on the Web. Most people say that when they were thinking of doing business with a company, their first actions was to check out its website. a site that improperly communicates the credibility of a vendor and its products can seriously hurt incoming website leads

One reason so many local business websites have poor usability might be because the website is much less accountable for sales. This couldn’t be more wrong. With proper tools in place to measure activity, the numbers are simply astounding and how subtle improvements drastically improve conversion, those website visitors who beg to give you their email and contact information.

User impeding Design

Local business web sites often prevent users from getting the information they need to research solutions. Sometimes this is deliberate, as when sites hide the good stuff behind registration barriers. Like when confusing navigation prevents users from finding information, or when the information they do find is written in such a marketing language that purchasers and influencers simply get confused.

Many sites use website segmentation, in which users must click through to the appropriate site segment. Unfortunately, these segments often don’t match the way customers think of themselves, and thus require them to peek through multiple site areas to find the right one.

Another common local business tactic is to require users to register or complete lead-generation forms. We typically call this an opt-in. Users are sometimes reluctant to do this. I like this approach and has worked well. In most cases, thought I recommend moving more information outside the opt-in barrier so it’s available to users during their initial research. You must establish a certain level of credibility before people are willing to give out their contact information.

Offering an instant download of a video or report is an easy was to capture their email address, and people are much more likely to provide just their email address rather than their contact information. Business people are too busy these days to have time for sales calls. This is education sales.

The product or service information that you provide without registration must be complete enough for users to judge whether your solution applies to their circumstances. if you sell highly technical products to a highly specialized audience, you can’t assume that all users understand industry jargon or the key considerations that distinguish the product or service from the competition. We learn that selling is solving problems. If you can properly capture how people think about their problem, you’re half way to selling them.

The most user-impeding element of most local business web sites is a complete lack of pricing information. From a study done by Nielsen, when they asked users to prioritize which of 28 types of B2B site information mattered most to them, prices scored the highest by far. This was 29% higher than product availability, which ranked second.

Sites have many excuses for not wanting to display prices, but they are just that: excuses. Users expect to get a basic understanding of products and services during their initial research, and they can’t do that without some idea of what it’s going to cost. Even if your company can’t list exact prices, there are several ways to indicate price level, which is really all people need initially.

The average local business website user experience is not very supportive of customers. As a result, the websites fail to provide business value because they ultimately turn prospects away rather than turning them into leads.

Guidelines

Here are some very basic, high level guidelines that you should follow for any local business website. It’s best to have fresh eyes on a site to ensure each of these guidelines are met. They are pretty simple, let’s take a look.

  • Clear and Simple Navigation. This is obvious. Don’t reinvent the wheel. We know that navigation should be easy, with clear navigation in the top or the left side of the side. It’s like you driving my car, you know where the steering wheel it and the brakes, but you might fumble with the less important controls like the radio. Your navigation is like the steering wheel. I cover this next.
  • Clear and Simple Content. Consider the education level of your audience. Consider culture. Consider objectives and motivations. Use your audience profile extensively here. Write for you audience, not your client.
  • Brand Support. This is obvious and is accomplished through imagery and repetition. Find a unique way to mention the business in content. Have a memorable, solid logo prominently displayed in appropriate places on the site. Get the logo out there.
  • Visitor Feedback and Support. Using Web 2.0 channels, forms, contact information of whatever other tools you chose, the site is a doorway to the business. Make sure visitors can easily communicate through various methods, not just one form.
  • Measuring and Testing Conversion. Google Analytics and Website Optimizer. Refer to the website video in the ‘setting up your agency’ module under Online Properties.
  • Testing Design Usability. Get feedback from users. Do they recongnize the major CTA on the site? The fallback CTA? Are they just confused? List perhaps 10 questions for new users to accomplish, such as ‘find this’ or ‘if you are in the market for a widget, does this website help answer your questions?’.

Website Navigation

Website navigation is the function of providing the user with the easiest and most logical information on how to get around the website and what can they do.

A good navigation system should answer three questions:

  1. Where am I?
  2. Where have I been?
  3. Where can I go?

There are a variety of ways to answer these questions and there are several methodologies on the thought process for this. There really isn’t a cookie cutter process for this, but following these key points will unequivocally help you implement the desired navigation system.

  • Consistency. The navigation system should be in the same place on every page and have the same format. Visitors will get confused and frustrated if links appear and disappear unpredictably. As discussed in the Website section of ‘Setting Up your Agency’ of this course, using a CSS based page and creating a 3 template system works best for most local businesses. Don’t veer too much from top or left navigation.
  • Use appropriate text inside links. This is a critical component in search engine optimization. Don’t make the website visitors guess where a link is going to take them. Visitors should be able to anticipate a link’s destination by reading the text in the link or on the navigation button. Make it plain and simple. Don’t get fancy and use words that depict the best page for the user. This is covered in Driving Traffic section, search engine optimization for a local business.
  • Blue Underline links. Some designers don’t like underlined text links inside page content – although visitors expect to be able to click on underlined text. If you’re using CSS as recommended, this can be controlled globally on the website.
  • Always include text links. You can create some great looking menus using JavaScript or other scripting language, but never rely completely on a dynamic menu system. I personally recommend staying away from these good looking JavaScript menu systems all around. Every page should have basic text links that link to all major sections of the site.
  • Add a text-based site map. All sites should have a text based sitemap in addition to text links. Every page should contain a text link to the site map. Lost visitors will use it to find their way, while search engines spiders will have reliable access to all your pages. This is a great time to remind you this video doesn’t cover a majority of the factors for search engines, but this is an important factor. This video is about the user experience.
  • Include a home page link inside your main navigation system. Visitors may have entered your site through an internal page. Having a homepage link on your top or left navigation in the same spot on all pages will help those find their way and possibly they’ll want to head for the home page.
  • Site logo links to home page. Your website should include the logo somewhere at the top of every page – generally in the top, left-hand corner. Visitors expect this logo to be a link to your site’s home page. They’ll often go there before looking for the home link in the navigation system.
  • Include a site search box. A robust site search feature helps visitors quickly locate the information they want. Make the search box prominent and be sure that it searches all of your site – and only your site. Google has a great tool for this and be sure to include your company blog in the search.
  • Breadcrumb trail at the top of the page is nice to help users navigate back up the website hierarchy (e.g., Home > Solutions > Customer Relationship Management).

You may attract visitors with an eye-catching design, but content is what keeps them at the site and encourages them to return. Content is also the best way to boost your site in search engine rankings.

I believe every business should have a blog, period. There is no better way to have an informal voice to your audience members and this is an easy way to publish content weekly without having an ounce of programming knowledge. I recommend only the WordPress blog script. The blog software is free, relatively easy to install and can be customized easily. Visit wordpress.org to download the software and install on your favorite hosting company.

Always keep search engines in mind when you write content, but remember that your ultimate audience is human visitors. Keyword research is important step in website creation and is covered in the research section, under Driving Traffic. Remember that evidence has shown that sites that conduct user performed keyword research above using tools like Google’s keyword tool will give you your best list of keywords. Present your content with humans in mind with your well rounded keyword research beside you.

User Tips

Here are some tips on content from a user’s perspective.

  • Don’t save the best for last. Place your most important content high on the page; we call this above the fold.
  • Think of a newspaper: the top story is always prominently displayed above the fold. Just like press releases, use the inverse pyramid approach. I discuss the reverse pyramid writing style when I’m discussing writing press releases. At the time of creating this video, the most popular resolution is 768 x 1024 for a website. Make sure you accomplish this goal in that resolution.
  • Make page content easy to scan. Format your content so that it’s easy to scan. Emphasize important points with italics or bold, headers and title tags. This is explained and emphasized as some of the on the page factors for search engine optimization.
  • Avoid using text inside images whenever possible. Text in images is invisible to search engine spiders and to visitors who may have images turned off in their browsers. Use h1 or h2 tags instead.
  • Add ALT and TITLE attributes to all images. Each image should have a ALT tag and TITLE tag associated with it especially if images that are also links to other pages. That way, they can quickly jump to the page they’re interested in and when their mouse rolls over the image, the ALT and TITLE attributes are displayed on screen. There are search engine optimization qualities to this as well.
  • Website contrast Be careful with background images and colors because they can obscure the text content on the page. Make sure you have a good reason to deviate from the successful dark text on a light background model. Visitors can’t buy your products if they can’t read the content.

Company and brand support

A great brand creates and reinforces a user’s impression of the site. When the site is strongly branded, it means that visitors will think of you first when they go shopping for your product or service.

Branding on a Web site takes time, effort, and detailed attention to page design and layout.

  • Consistent colors, images and fonts. . You should c and fonts cautiously and use them constantly throughout the site. Visitors should never click on an internal link in your site and wonder if they’ve left your Web site because they landed on a page that looks different. If you have a link that goes to an outside source, which all websites should have throughout the site, should open in a new browser window.
  • Keep page layout consistent. Again, this is discussed in website design using the 3 template system, one template for the homepage, one for product or service pages and one for information pages. Visitors should be able to predict the location of important page elements after visiting just one page in your site.
  • KISS colors and logo. You’re not reinventing what works and after nearly 20 years of the internet, users have become accustom to certain elements. The KISS theory, keep it simple stupid, should always be followed with templates. Think Google. Think craigslist. Think Facebook. They all have white backgrounds, with simple fonts and most links use a blue underline. Their logos are always in the same spot and it just feels clean. They are internet marketers too, they just happen to be very good and test everything. Follow their lead.
  • Taglines and usage. You value proposition, something that shows why you are the best choice, is your tagline. A good tagline clearly and concisely explains your “value proposition. This is what makes your site stand out from competing sites. It should be memorable and reinforce your brand in one quick phrase. Your tagline should be on every page in the same spot.

Visitor Feedback

Visitor feedback and support is a very important way to enhance user interaction and here are some ways to do this:

Provide for visitor feedback. Forms are significant to the success of ecommerce sites. Without forms, you can’t have a shopping cart. But any local business website needs at least one form to allow for user feedback. A form helps you control how user feedback is formatted and sent.

If you’re going to have one form, it should be on the contact us page of the site. I usually include the email address as well, but in an image form to avoid those scammers that scrape websites for emails.

I suggest a small form in some capacity on every page, built into the template.

  • Short forms. Keep feedback forms short and clearly note which information is required to successfully submit the form.
  • Phone number. Many users, prospect or customers, navigate to the website to obtain a phone number and call. It is very common place to have a phone number on every page, located in the top right hand side of the site. I like to keep the phone number large and prominent.
  • Instant chat. This is becoming common place on ecommerce sites and I’ve seen local businesses begin adopting this feature. Albeit won’t be a large source of traffic, offering another means to communicate with prospects and customers will only help in conversion. Chatting online removes all emotion and studies show prospects feel less intimidated and have greater control when chatting rather than speaking to a person.
  • Complete contact information. A street address is preferred. During the Driving Traffic section for Local Search Engines, I discuss the implications of a real address. Try and follow the directions in that video when disclosing address information. Visitors will probably prefer to contact you using email, chatting or a form, but they’ll feel more comfortable with a site that allows other contact methods. This can be found on the contact us page. If you’re a walk in business, including driving instruction, parking information or bus information is very valuable. Linking to navigation software such as Google maps is also very easy. Embedding a map is even better.

Measure and Test

I discuss measuring and testing in many areas of the course, because it’s so important for so many online assets, in fact, it’s one the biggest benefits of online marketing over offline. For now I’m taking 5 minutes to cover some basic information to complete the overview.

Since this video is on usability, I’ll be spending some time to create usability tests and give you resources to accomplish this.

On another note, website testing requires measurement. As previously mentioned, I cover Google analytics as a measurement tool and identify with screen shots and animation exactly what to measure in Google analytics and how to customize Google analytics to fit a local business website in another section of the course, the ‘Setting up your agency’ module in the Online Properties section.

For now, let’s talk about testing usability.

Test the site on real users. Remember that you’re the marketer so of course you can easily use the navigation system, love the content, and understand the value proposition. Before the site goes live, conduct some real user tests.

Usability testing helps you imitate the experience of the average Website user and fix problems before visitors find them. It also gives you valuable answers to other questions like

  • Do visitors enjoy using the site? If so, don’t you think they’ll stay longer and read more content.
  • Do they understand the purpose of the site? If not, there’s no compelling reason to return.
  • Is there any incentive to return after the first visit? Your client’s website should be the ultimate authority on the Internet for their topic in their local area. In our case the website should dominate all competing local businesses. I promise this is still very easy thing to accomplish. A site with depth encourages visitors to bookmark it and refer friends interested in the same topic.
  • Can they recover from errors? Usability testing is the best way to test how well your site search, site map and forms pages function. They should all work together to guide a visitor through the site and help them get where they’re going. Frustrated visitors aren’t likely to return – ever.

Usability testing components

Your visitors have little patience to read through your crafted marketing message. They want to get to the content they need with a minimum amount of effort.

Visitors immediately want to validate that:

  1. They are in the right place.
  2. They understand what they can do on your website
  3. They can get the information they need or take the desired action.

Like we already talked about, some of the most common questions visitors have include:

  • What does this company offer?
  • What can I do on this site?
  • Where can I go next?

Providing answers to these basic questions will immediately give your prospects a sense of place and encourage them to explore further. Here are some more components to think about when blueprinting the website and during the usability testing.

Key Pieces of Info – Think about your site. What key pieces of information will people need to find on your client’s site? Consider writing a task/question for each of your key pieces of information.

Top Ten – Have too many key pieces of information, then test for the “Top Ten” things people need to get from your client’s web site.

Audience Versions – Don’t hesitate to write a slightly different version for each of your target audiences. Different target audiences have different needs on your site. Most local businesses will have one core group and several sub groups that are intended to land on different pages. The homepage should be focused on one core group and links to inner pages for other audience members.

For example, take a courier business. Their core group is their prospects, other companies who have a need for repetitive same day, typically inner city deliveries of products in varying sizes. This courier company also recruits independent contractors or drivers and should cater to them. They deal with delivery agents. They have prospects who want to use them once. They have customers who place orders.

Non-leading Questions - When writing the text of the question for the audience you’re testing with, do NOT lead your test subject to the answer. Use common vocabulary and specifically avoid the jargon that you are using with your links.

For example, if I was testing the same courier business and I wanted to test the ease of finding information relating to retail same day delivery, and the link text was RETAIL SAME DAY DELIVERY, I might word the question like this,

“You are the VP of purchasing for best buy and you are wondering if this company provides solutions to get your store products to your customers on a national basis in less than 3 hours.”

Realistic Scenarios – The questions should be accurate scenarios that your target audience would really experience.

Simplicity – The questions should be a real simple scenario of a typical audience member, clearly identifying who the audience is.

As you can see, a local business website is not about paying someone a couple of grand and you have something that looks nice. I remember my first website and I was happy to have one. Now my companies are responsible for hundreds of websites, my students and readers bring that number well into the thousands. I know that a local business website isn’t like a digital brochure. Building a quality website requires many roles.

Think of it like building a house. You require a carpenter, plumber, electrician and project manager. Neither of these roles sell the house, that’s the responsibility of the realtor. You are the realtor, the marketer.

By taking the time to properly understand the objectives of the site and the intended goals, the audience and the business, you can build a website that will greatly surpass any of your competitors, in any region, in any market for a few years to come.

Remembering that measuring the conversion is very important. You will need to learn some items like

Google analytics; which is used to measure.

Items to measure, and how to customize Google analytics

Website components to test, such as using this color or that form versus this form. This is done through a product called Google website optimizer. This is a free tool, however complex and very powerful.

I also cover a little on multivariate testing and its framework.

Remember, success on the internet is a simple equation

Local Internet Marketing equals Qualified Traffic plus Conversion.

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

Mar
19
2010

Google Analytics – Giving Users Choice to NOT be Tracked

analytics logo Google Analytics   Giving Users Choice to NOT be TrackedAnnounced yesterday, Google announced on their blog that they might be making the move to give users a browser wide option to disable tracking of their behavior on websites that have Google Analytics.

Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.

Read the blog post from Google here.

Google is all about it’s users first, at the cost of advertisers and marketers.  This is a great tool for marketers, but if it diminishes the perceived value and experience of a user, it appears Google is willing to remove the value of the tool to marketers in order to remain congruent with it’s philosophies for it’s users.

Google believes in their motto “Don’t be Evil”.  I guess this means to them that their users want control and don’t want to be tracked.  On the other hand, their entire business model is delivering information to marketers, better than their competitors.  This is a very tough balancing act.

Fortunately there are other options for us marketers for tracking.  However I don’t like that I might be moving away from such a powerful tool.  As far as ‘don’t be evil’, I’ll argue that every piece of information we collect is entirely to help us increase visitor value.  Following the fundamental principals of marketing, just like Google, and putting the users first should always put a business ahead.  Therefore, this move just might hurt us ethical marketers in an effort to rid the web of those that use information for self interest.

This is something that will be released in weeks.

I don’t think this will ultimately get us to change.  I think this is a political move on Google’s part, anticipating that a small percentage of the population will use this feature.  This means, from a statistical perspective, that our data will be skewed, however not enough to sway the data enough to change our business decisions.  This feature might be quietly released, being there, but not highly promoted.  I just can’t see Google making a move to deter us marketers from recommending Google Analytics on our client’s site.

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/google-analytics-giving-users-choice-to-not-be-tracked/

Mar
02
2010

How to Sell SEO

You see, selling SEO, or Internet Marketing related services, requires another skill set you may have, or need to develop.

Every business sells something.  Every business buys something.  Almost always, a business buy only to solve a problem, consumers buy on emotion, businesses don’t.

Selling services like SEO, Internet Marketing, SEM, email marketing or SMM is no different than say selling a consulting service to a business.  We know that one methodology works, and that’s called Solution Selling.

Solution Selling is a unique process, the selling process used by most successful sales forces.  According to Wikipedia, Solution Selling is “Rather than just promoting an existing product, the salesperson focuses on the customer’s pain(s) and addresses the issue with his or her offerings (product and services). The resolution of the pain is what constitutes a true “solution”

Selling Internet Marketing Services to Small Business requires a special process.

I have pioneered something called the SEO Sales Trail.  This is a step by step approach to selling Internet Marketing services to local businesses.

Learn How to Sell SEO on my company blog and I cover several strategies and tips to help you learn how to acquire these local business clients.

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/how-to-sell-seo/

Nov
07
2009

Marketing Local Business Online

The Marketing Local Business Online Agency Coaching Course is almost ready to launch!  Local Marketing Source, LLC plans to launch the course on Thursday November 12, 2009.  Make sure to register to your right if you want to be informed when the course goes live.

LMS has been providing some great content lately, such as the Selling Local Internet Marketing Services video.  This is about 25 minutes of a 60+ minute webinar with open questions.

You can check out our Squidoo Lens on Marketing Local Business Online.

Below you’ll get previews of three of the 39 videos included in the course.

Introduction Preview

Here is a preview to the Introduction video of the course.  This video is shortened from it’s 20 minute length.

This video is the preview from Chapter 5,

Website Conversion for Small Local Businesses

This is a short preview video of Chapter 4

Driving Traffic and Conversion

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/marketing-local-business-online/

Oct
14
2009

Internet Marketing Seminar for Local Businesses

In an effort to help educate and provide guidance to help those not only in the execution of Internet Marketing Services to Local Businesses, I am also here to help you with acquiring customers.  I mean customers that pay you, month after month.

One of the strategies we use at our agency is providing education to local business owners on the options available to them in their marketing toolbox.

We do this by collecting email addresses and then inviting them to a webinar, or this case, a live seminar.

In this example, we are hosting 23 local businesses in our office.  We fed them, watered them and educated them.  Some are, or are in the process, of becoming customers.

Here is the video of the entire seminar.  Make note of the content delivered, and how it was delivered.

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/internet-marketing-seminar-for-local-businesses/

Oct
12
2009

Local Search is the Next Big Thing

Wow, what can I say about this?  I remember starting my first local search internet marketing agency several years ago and speaking with local business owners about this idea of finding new business using the Internet. 

I got the deer in the headlights look!

Well, it didn’t take long for my niche to get educated as I provided teleseminars, webinars, speaking engagements and guest author in trade publications.  I learned very quickly that my prospects required education prior to buying.

Well, my first clients received first mover advantage in the local game.  Let me take you back a little bit.

I knew how to sell the service, however I was challenged in managing the execution of this service.  I knew I could not grow my busienss if I wasn’t the expert.  I sought out to become one of the top marketers around the globe in the arena of local search.

Several years later, this little blog that makes no money ranks very high for search phrases like [internet marketing for local business] among several thousand other keywords.  The keyphrase [local internet marketing] is rather competitive, and this blog managed to get fairly high.

My agency has now grown to several hundred clients paying us monthly to get them results.  They must be happy, they keep paying us.  We’re happy, we’ve built a long term, sustainable business.  We have several employees, documented processes and a true, full fledged Internet Marketing Agency catering to local businesses.

You need to sell SEO first before you can execute!

What I didn’t realise what was about to come.  This blog turned into my first book, Marketing Local Business Online.  I didn’t not understand that I was three or four years ahead of my time.

The typical local business spends somewhere around $1000 monthly on Yellow Pages Advertising.  There are over 5 MILLION locally based businesses in the United States that can benefit from local search.  I mean, the dentist, chiropractors, plumber, accountants, attorneys, couriers, pizza delivery.

I mean, the trend was happening.  People were flocking to the Internet to find a local business, but most businesses were not showing up.  Google introduced their Local Business results in 2006, but didn’t include it in their mainstream results until 2009!  Ask 10 people, how would you find a local business these days?

Download the free report to learn processes in SELLING SEO

Point is, the search engines realised that people were using the search engines to find a local business.  What blew me away, in October 2009, 43% of all searches on the Google network are local!  This comes directly from Google, Ari, product manager for Google local, made this claim at the Local Search Summit in August of 2009.

Think about this.  Google, with around 80% market share, controls international commerce in a split second.  They can chose to list business A or business B.  They know that the #1 spot gets 40% of the clicks.  This is a big deal.

So, if the trend is that people are using newspapers and yellow pages less and less and migrating to the Internet, Google introduced Local Search in 2009, and businesses aren’t listed that deep in the search results, there are a lot of opportunities for agencies like mine to capitalize!  It’s a fact.

The size of the market is HUGE.  Much bigger than any agency could cater to.  I mean, there is room for 10,000 agencies in the US alone.  Perhaps 20,000.  How many web developers are there?  Universities, colleges, private institutes are pushing out developers like crazy.  Put it this way.

You don’t hire a carpenter to sell your home!

You don’t hire a web developer to market your website.  Granted, it’s a natural fit for these developers to learn the skills to sell the website, just like a carpenter can’t sell a home, without skills in real estate.

Over a year ago I was approached by a very successful entrepreneur.  This individual was seeking an opportunity to invest in, their time and money.  He realised the opportunity and suggested that we use the processes, skills, execution and management that I developed at my agency.  I mean, this company started with a laptop and a kitchen table and within four year, 48 months, the company grew several employees, in fact, over 13 team members, hundreds of monthly paying clients, broad client base and years of projected revenue. 

Because I had visions of building a large, international agency, I knew I needed systems and processes from the get-go. 

Little did I realise I was building something even bigger!

Everything that I built can be taught.  In 2005, there was a handful of Internet Marketing Agencies catering to local businesses.  Today, there isn’t much more.

Everyone one the Internet wants to call themselves an expert.

Now I see so many bad pieces of advice, even in my own community if I search for pizza delivery, not a single company shows up!

The point is simple.  There are a lot of opportunities for learn how to properly provide Internet Marketing Services for Local Search to Local Businesses!

In any event, like this blog, this new business has a lot of free stuff to offer. 

The biggest challenge in building a profitable agency is NOT the execution, it’s the management.  This includes sales.  This includes processes to manage the volume of customers. 

I’d like to introduce you to Local Marketing Source.  I’d like you to visit this site, opt-in to get the FREE report that will help you to exactly sell SEO services to local businesses.

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/local-search-is-the-next-big-thing/

Sep
12
2009

How to Sell SEO and SEM – Selling SEM, SEO and other Internet Marketed Services

Selling Internet Marketing Services, selling SEO or selling SEM is typically sold to a business, and in turn, we are conducting a B2B sale.  Selling to businesses are much different than selling to consumers.  For the last 20 years, fortune 500 companies through locally based firms are teaching their sales team the concepts of solution selling.  Sales is art, but like SEO, has a science behind it.  Selling SEM and SEO has a different flair, but if done properly, you have tools available to you unlike any other selling experience, ever.

NOTE:  Register now at and receive a step-by-step package on how to sell SEO for free.  Read to learn more.  Register on the box to your right.

Selling SEO is Different

Over the last 17 years selling to businesses, I have taken many B2B sales course and have sold product to large, small, online and local businesses.  I worked for Sharp, selling photocopiers, AT&T selling wireless products and telecommunications solutions, all to businesses.  I have adopted and continued to learn.  Most importantly, I achieve consistent and predictable results in sales.  I share this with you because I’m very confident I can teach almost any business sales, but I’m not here to do that.  I want to show you how to adopt these solution selling practices and apply it to the Internet Marketing Business.

How to Sell SEM to Businesses

I have adopted and created a very successful strategy to sell SEO services, including SEM and other related services to small and medium sized businesses.  I have created a step by step strategy, providing your prospect with the necessary education, identifying the challenge the prospect faces and a very understandable method to present the information to your prospect, placing you as the solution to your prospect.  In three steps you:

  1. Create and Identify the Pain (problem) to the Prospect (ie, show the client there is activity on the Internet for their niche or keywords)
  2. Agitate the Wound (ie, show the prospect the competition who is taking the real estate and traffic on the varying areas of the Internet)
  3. Provide Relief (ie, show the prospect you have results and identify why the competition is outranking them.  Explain what needs to be done to rank at the top).

I have created a complete step-by-step report and manual showing you exactly how we sell SEO and SEM services in my Internet Marketing Agency.  This is the process I use internally to teach my employees and contractors.  I share three unique tools to help you in your efforts, and best of all, each of the tools are completly free.  One tool I discovered is rarely discussed in the Internet Marketing world and is hands down, my secret weapon in selling.  Oddly enough, the software developer never intended this as a tool to help sell SEO, but it works like a freakin’ dream!

I’m not offering any quick opportunities to make a quick buck, but offer a valuable sales meeting for your prospect.  I’m so confident in our process, the numbers speak for themselves.  Once we get to the proposal stage, we average a closing rate of over 40% and have achieved closing rates as high as 58% in a single month.

If I can teach you how to sell SEO, there’s a chance you’ll be interested in our Marketing:  Local Business Online product.

This product will teach how we manage our clients and exactly, step-by-step, how we execute each service for our clients.  Yes, we’ll also teach you exactly how provide these services to your clients, consistently getting results.

Or you might just be interested in my free material.  Actually, I’m not selling a thing on this blog, nothing, ever.  I am selling products through Local Marketing Source, LLC, which if you sign up on this blog, you’ll be marketed to by LMS.

I digress.  Simply give me your name and email address on the upper right.  This is just an amazing report on How to Sell SEM.  Remember, you can opt-out of my list once your get the report.  That’s if you chose to never get anything else of value, for free, from us!

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/how-to-sell-seo-and-sem-selling-sem-seo-and-other-internet-marketed-services/

Jul
31
2009

Local Business owners aren’t yet Educated on Internet Marketing for a Small Local Business

Today we’re launching a  fairly extensive campaign for my Internet Marketing Agency.  Apparently we’re in a recession, but the agency would never know.

June 2009 we had a record month, and thus far in July we’re set to break another record.  The funny thing is that June and July are hands down, the worst business to business months on the calender.  Not to mention we’re apparently at the bottom, the worst, of the global recession of 2009, the worst recession in 80 years.

So why is an Internet Marketing agency that caters to small local businesses doing so well?  Timing is a key factor.  This is the time because the local business is being transformed, despite the negative factors.  I’m excited and terrified as to what is about to come in September of this year.  What happens when the economy does turn around?  It’s a good thing I’ve built a business that is highly scalable.

I share this with you because I want to talk about our largest marketing campaign we’re launching.  It’s costing us peanuts and I want to show you the objective.

Most people just don’t get it!

Yesterday I had a prospect from Toronto tell me we’re 4 times the price of a competitor and that my competitor promised #1 results in 4 weeks.  Good for you Mr. Customer, spend money on your business in times of recession is good, just make sure you are cheap and buy the lowest cost provider.  We’re all the same.  I’m just immoral and decided to charge more so I can enjoy 4x times the profit.  I’m also not as good as your competitor, because I can’t garantee you #1 spot.

WHAT?!

Selling Internet Marketing to a Local Business owner is tough and easy at the same time.  They really don’t know know better.  The Internet is scary, unknown, different, uncomfortable and simply unchartered territory.  Some will take opinion at face value.  The next challenging aspect is that there is no magic formula.  Us Internet Marketers can make stuff up.

The point is here it’s up to us in the know, those who are properly educated, to properly educate our buyers.  Those who follow me know that I’m as white hat as it comes.  We don’t chase the Google algorithm.  We are simply marketers.  This is confusing to many, many potential buyers.

Here’s what do to sell SEO

We invest significant time and effort into each prospect.  We take the time to show the business owner that there is in fact business on the Internet, using a trusted source, Google.  We show them their competitors and provide basic education on key points that our prospect need to know, in order to properly manage their campaign.

See, they know they need to invest this money.  The questions now is, with who.

See, if I could garantee you 100% return on investment in one week, why wouldn’t you invest every single penny your owned?  Why would you invest only $10?  The point is….

Smart Business Owners buy on VALUE, not PRICE — period.

People don’t buy a product or service, they buy a state and a state is an anticipated feeling received from that product or service.  Perceived value.  Therefore, demonstrate value!!!

This is what we do with our website assessment.

Take a peak and check out our opt-in page.

This process is fantastic for us.  We provide great value to the prospect through education and solid research, enabling them to better decide their next step.  Our goal is to close 33% of our assessments.

  • 1/3 goes to the competition
  • 1/3 decides now is not the right time
  • 1/3 buy

We achieve a higher closing rate

We have had months where our closing rate is as high as 58%.  Most of those who don’t buy don’t end up buying for over a year, and I’m sure several of those ended up buying from us or will buy from us.  At that point, it’s about strengthening the relationship, that’s a whole different post.

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/local-business-owners-arent-yet-educated-on-internet-marketing-for-a-small-local-business/

Jul
31
2009

Local Business owners aren't yet Educated on Internet Marketing for a Small Local Business

Today we’re launching a  fairly extensive campaign for my Internet Marketing Agency.  Apparently we’re in a recession, but the agency would never know.

June 2009 we had a record month, and thus far in July we’re set to break another record.  The funny thing is that June and July are hands down, the worst business to business months on the calender.  Not to mention we’re apparently at the bottom, the worst, of the global recession of 2009, the worst recession in 80 years.

So why is an Internet Marketing agency that caters to small local businesses doing so well?  Timing is a key factor.  This is the time because the local business is being transformed, despite the negative factors.  I’m excited and terrified as to what is about to come in September of this year.  What happens when the economy does turn around?  It’s a good thing I’ve built a business that is highly scalable.

I share this with you because I want to talk about our largest marketing campaign we’re launching.  It’s costing us peanuts and I want to show you the objective.

Most people just don’t get it!

Yesterday I had a prospect from Toronto tell me we’re 4 times the price of a competitor and that my competitor promised #1 results in 4 weeks.  Good for you Mr. Customer, spend money on your business in times of recession is good, just make sure you are cheap and buy the lowest cost provider.  We’re all the same.  I’m just immoral and decided to charge more so I can enjoy 4x times the profit.  I’m also not as good as your competitor, because I can’t garantee you #1 spot.

WHAT?!

Selling Internet Marketing to a Local Business owner is tough and easy at the same time.  They really don’t know know better.  The Internet is scary, unknown, different, uncomfortable and simply unchartered territory.  Some will take opinion at face value.  The next challenging aspect is that there is no magic formula.  Us Internet Marketers can make stuff up.

The point is here it’s up to us in the know, those who are properly educated, to properly educate our buyers.  Those who follow me know that I’m as white hat as it comes.  We don’t chase the Google algorithm.  We are simply marketers.  This is confusing to many, many potential buyers.

Here’s what do to sell SEO

We invest significant time and effort into each prospect.  We take the time to show the business owner that there is in fact business on the Internet, using a trusted source, Google.  We show them their competitors and provide basic education on key points that our prospect need to know, in order to properly manage their campaign.

See, they know they need to invest this money.  The questions now is, with who.

See, if I could garantee you 100% return on investment in one week, why wouldn’t you invest every single penny your owned?  Why would you invest only $10?  The point is….

Smart Business Owners buy on VALUE, not PRICE — period.

People don’t buy a product or service, they buy a state and a state is an anticipated feeling received from that product or service.  Perceived value.  Therefore, demonstrate value!!!

This is what we do with our website assessment.

Take a peak and check out our opt-in page.

This process is fantastic for us.  We provide great value to the prospect through education and solid research, enabling them to better decide their next step.  Our goal is to close 33% of our assessments.

  • 1/3 goes to the competition
  • 1/3 decides now is not the right time
  • 1/3 buy

We achieve a higher closing rate

We have had months where our closing rate is as high as 58%.  Most of those who don’t buy don’t end up buying for over a year, and I’m sure several of those ended up buying from us or will buy from us.  At that point, it’s about strengthening the relationship, that’s a whole different post.

Permanent link to this article: http://www.scott-gallagher.net/local-business-owners-arent-yet-educated-on-internet-marketing-for-a-small-local-business-2/

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