What happens when I tap that web button on the Google+Local page? If it goes to a desktop site and I can’t read anything because the type is too small and my other hand is full, I’m thumb-driving back to Google to check out another page, probably Yelp or another review site. The business owner just lost an opportunity to direct my interest and control the message.

On the other hand, if I get a mobile site, and I discover that one of my favorite things in the world is the Special of the Day, I’m likely to give them a try. If I visit and have a great experience, I love the food, I meet the friendly owners, I end up returning with my wife. She loves it too, so now every time she asks “where do you want to eat?”, our new favorite restaurant is on our short list. I download their mobile website so that it’s on my home screen. I’ve gone from discovery to spending $1,000/year (20 visits at $50 average) at this restaurant, and promoting it to a friend at least once per month.

A great mobile website encourages exactly that scenario because it is more than a digital brochure. It encourages frequent visits because daily promotions always up-to-date, it encourages deeper connections through links to the business presence on social media where other friends of the restaurant gather, it encourages viral sharing of coupons with tap-to-share links to Facebook, email, SMS and Twitter, and it encourages saving the site to the phone’s desktop with a “pop-up” balloon that tells you how. And it does all of this with very little effort from the business owner.

I think you have to agree that if a mobile website does all of this, it has value. How much value?, I’d want to crunch the numbers in a Customer Lifetime Value Calculator like the one at What is the Value of a Loyal Customer? | ProSocialTools.com to explore what one new customer is worth to a business, but I can guarantee that acquiring just one customer like the one I describe above is worth many times what it costs for a mobile solution that provides all of the features I described. Keep that customer for 2 years, and get an average of 6 new customers per year based on their referrals, and the customer value is around $26,000.

Competition for clientele is war. Every customer lost to a competitor costs a business hundreds or, more often, thousands of dollars in revenue. A business grows by winning friends and building relationships, by seeing every relationship as an opportunity that is mutually beneficial. Adding a mobile website that provides the right information in a timely manner and encourages sales will win customers. The bottom line is that you can’t leave the opportunity to gain a new customer to chance. You have to be proactive, and a mobile website is a great way to be proactive.

Over 30% of the potential customers visiting your website through Google search are on mobile devices. Is there any good reason to ignore 30% of your website traffic? I didn’t think so.

If you would like to see how your website can come alive on mobile, please talk to us. We’ll discuss the benefits and opportunities with you and offer to build a free demo site exclusively for your business.  You can sign up at MobileReadyNow.com. This is a great time to lock-in introductory pricing, and I hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity.

For example, during the period from September 9 2012 and September 30, 2012, Dharma Cowgirl increased likes by 30%, but decreased “people talking about” by 10% and decreased reach by 66%. There were no promoted posts, and the new fans were acquired through offline promotion. There was no significant change in the posting style and all posts included photos or videos. The two metrics, “People Talking About” and “Fan Reach” should have a direct correlation, and until recently, they did.

One explanation might be that people have been less active on Facebook during the past few weeks. Internet usage in North America tends to pick up in September as people spend more time indoors. So this trend is the exact opposite of what one would expect to see going into the fall season. The only viable conclusions are that either the reporting mechanism is broken or Facebook is manipulating the algorithm that determines reach.

Geoffrey Colon of Ogilvy & Mather reported earlier this week that indeed, Facebook has indeed made an algorithmic change that decreases the number of brand posts in a social stream in order to address the amount of brand content delivered to mobile devices. More to the point, it appears that Facebook is forcing the hand of business page owners by creating a “pay to play” environment for brands. This doesn’t look good for the small business owner, as they will inevitably get squeezed out by the big brands with advertising budgets.

With this new algorithm we can anticipate two changes. The first will be an increase in competition for promoted posts which will drive up costs. The second will be an increase in organic post frequency by pages who want to try to achieve their previous reach by pushing more content. Neither of these outcomes look good for the small business owner.

Facebook users, who have enjoyed a platform where ads have been generally non-invasive, are going to be disappointed when they realize that they’re not seeing the pages they chose to engage with and are instead seeing the ones that can afford to buy their way into a social network. Facebook will need to exercise extreme caution in this high wire act as they try to balance an audience that dislikes promoted media and the market pressures of a publicly-traded company.

To satisfy stockholders, Facebook has to be profitable. If you were given the option, would you pay Facebook to block your exposure to promoted media?

Our ProSocial Golden Seal Award for Facebook Marketing goes to Color Wheel, of McLean, Virginia.

Color Wheel is more than a Benjamin Moore Paint store. They also include a Frame Shop for custom picture framing, and a home decor showroom featuring wall coverings, trims, blinds, shades, shutters, upholstery fabrics, slip overs, and bedding.

Color Wheel is a third generation family business that has been serving the Washington D.C. area since 1965. Talk to their experts for help with your home decorating projects! Visit their website at http://www.MYCOLORWHEEL.com

Locations:

McLean
1374 Chain Bridge Road
Langley Shopping Center
McLean, VA 22101
Monday – Friday: 7 AM -  6 PM
Saturday: 8 AM – 6 PM
CLOSED SUNDAY
Phone: 703-356-8477

Fairfax
Color Wheel Paint Center
2802-D Merrilee Drive
Fairfax, VA 22031
Monday – Friday: 7 AM – 5 PM
Saturday: 8 AM – 5 PM
CLOSED SUNDAY
Phone: 703-356-8477, ext. 2

Learn more about the ProSocialTools Golden Seal Award

Over the past two years, there has been an explosive shift in how local business services are being discovered. The two factors that are ushering in this change is the combined growth in smartphone use and the popularity of social ratings and review sites. The result of this shift is that action-takers can gain an advantage right now by focusing on marketing programs that increase their online ratings and reviews with mobile users.

Smartphones are wired to share their location, which means a website can provide you with more relevant results based on proximity. You are probably familiar with Google Maps and their ability to provide driving directions to any address when you enter a starting address. On a smartphone, you simply tell Google to use your current location, and Google uses your phone’s global positioning service to determine your starting location. This same technology can be used to show you the 5 closest barber shops, meat markets, or juice bars, giving you more relevant results based on your location.

Ratings and reviews are used by people to help decide whether they want to give their hard-earned cash to a business that they’re unfamiliar with. Business ratings have been around for a long time on sites like Yahoo and Tripadvisor, but there is a fast-growing interest in social applications that allow you to “check in” to a business and share your feedback. Yelp is one of the more popular services, and even Google has gotten into the game with Google+Local.
Yelp and Google+Local combine both your proximity and your ratings score to deliver the best possible results to their users. Are you looking for a restaurant in midtown Manhattan? These services will provide you with a list, sorted by how close they are to your location, how many ratings each restaurant received, and the overall strength of that score. Business owner, do not miss this point! Results are based on proximity and your reviews. The more positive reviews, and the higher ratio of positive to negative reviews, the more likely you will show up at the top of the results, which is an endorsement of your business.

Business owners are starting to catch on to this, and are inviting customers to leave reviews. This is a great idea if you always deliver perfect service, but you also run the risk of inviting negative reviews. A better solution is to put a gatekeeper between your customers and your online review sites. One solution is to provide your customers with an automated system that allows them to rate your service, and then based on the rating, different actions are taken.

At ProSocialTools, we have developed two different rating systems that do exactly this. One is better for businesses who want a completely automated process. When people leave positive reviews, they receive a thank-you message and a suggestion the they copy/paste their review to one of the review sites where you would like to boost your reputation. The other is a more proactive solution where the general manager or owner receives a text message with each review, giving them an opportunity to immediately contact the reviewer to thank them, or resolve any issues.

Both systems work. The difference is that one is more suited to a “set it and forget it” approach, where the other is great for building deeper relationships. If you deal with a more expensive product or service, you probably want to provide a more personalized response to customer feedback.

Mobile is an essential piece of your online marketing program. Google is anticipating mobile search will surpass desktop search in 2013. That means the majority of people in your market who are searching for your products and services will use a mobile device. By optimizing your online reputation today, you can boost your sales in the coming years.

Creating an effective online release is a different process from the old school business of writing in a structured press release format. It’s more important to be conversational and create a story. In essence, you are writing for readers more than journalists, but still providing enough meat for a journalist to call the story newsworthy.

There is also the search-optimization component. This changes the nature of how a press release is structured, because you want to target specific search phrases in your title and body, and link your key phrases to specific pages on your website. Success depends on understanding both on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

There are only two press release services that I recommend for optimum distribution, PRweb and PRNewswire. You can expect to pay between $300 and $400, plus the cost of having your press release properly written optimized for your site, and submitted to the service. Most other press release services I have evaluated, including the majority of the free ones, simply do not have sufficient distribution. When you invest time and money into having a professional release created, you want to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. With most free, and even some paid release services, that simply doesn’t happen the way you’d think.

Ultimately, the real measure of a press release is in how well it performs for you. Over time, a press release campaign can push your site to #1 for specific targeted key phrases, but that doesn’t mean the release will convert into sales. In my own case, the search-optimized release converted extremely well because it was picked up by several popular blogs, putting my site Google’s first page for some popular key phrases.

To make a press release more effective, target a key phrase in your title that has very high popularity. Also try to incorporate your brand and if you are a local business, your location. For example, “Best New Jersey Attorney James Michelson to Sponsor Race for the Cure” After a couple dozen press releases like this, when someone in New Jersey searches for “Best Attorney”, whose name do you think will pop up? You can bet it will be James Michelson, regardless of whether he is indeed the best attorney in New Jersey.

Are you working on a budget? You may want to go the DIY route, and get some practice writing releaes here are six free press release services that will help you get coverage. I cannot vouch for their authority in terms of distribution, but you will, at the very least, get a PR4 or PR5 backlink to your website which helps boost your search engine rankings.

1. SBWire.com –

2. OpenPR.com –

3. free-press-release-center.info –

4. TheOpenPress.com –

5. NewsWireToday.com –

6. Live-PR.com – Publishes Photos Free –

Press releases can help your business, whether you are launching a new website, introducing a new product, or building your local business search traffic. You should try it as a component in your marketing mix, and see how well it works for you. If you need help, you can always give us a call at (877) 800-1236.

In case you haven’t been watching the financial news, Best Buy reported a $1.23 billion dollar net loss for the fiscal year that ended in March, 2012. Many customers visit their local Best Buy store to window shop. They use the chain as a showroom for products that they might be interested in, and then they go home and purchase them for less on the web.

In essence, Best Buy is a showroom for Amazon.com.

The answer and Best Buy’s salvation is in getting way out of the box of big box retailer thinking. They see Amazon as a competitor, rightfully so. Every time a customer visits Best Buy and then buys on Amazon, that is a lost sale. But if Best Buy becomes an Amazon affiliate, they could give customers the option of buying at Best Buy, or paying the lower price at Amazon.com with an affiliate commission going to Best Buy.

Best Buy would still get a small profit from the sale, and they wouldn’t have to work as much. They would not be responsible for warranty repair, product returns, or inventory management for products sold through Amazon.com. At the same time, they would be able to point out the advantages of buying locally, the extras that justify the in-store price.

When customers are presented with the option of taking it home now, or waiting a few days to a week to have it delivered, they just might decide that for a few dollars more, they would rather take it home with them, plus get the extra support. Once they leave the store, it’s a much less persuasive argument, because they need to factor the time and inconvenience in going back to the store.

This would not be a difficult program to implement. Items in the store can include cards printed with QR Codes which the customer can either scan with their smartphone or insert into a conveniently located kiosk. They can get all of the product information and comparison shop in an environment that Best Buy can exercise some influence. Customers can compare the difference in price and benefits, an make their purchase directly from the kiosk. If they purchase from Best Buy, they can take their item home, and if they purchase from Amazon, they simply walk out the door, understanding that they chose to buy from Amazon, but they are still supporting their local retailer.

Would this work? If you were given the option of buying items from Amazon while inside Best Buy, would you? Would you be more likely to buy from the local retailer? Why?

About the Client: Canfield Brothers manufacture and sell high-performance downhill mountain bikes for professional racers and mountain biking enthusiasts. They specialize in bike frames, including their Formula One Jedi, The One, Yelli Screamy, and Nimble 9. They also have specialized components, including wheel sets, crampon pedals, a direct mount stem, and rear hub.

The Challenge: While their website at CanfieldBrothers.com gets several thousand unique visitors each month, all of their search-related traffic came from searches containing their product names and company name. We know this based on Google Analytics. Virtually none of their site traffic was coming from terms that matched their product categories, such as “downhill bike frames” or “downhill bike components”, which meant that nobody was discovering their brand through search, only learning about it from exposure to the sport and on other websites that talk about the brand. Clearly they were missing out on a huge audience and countless opportunities to sell more bikes.

Our Analysis: Upon studying the site programming and content style, we quickly realized that the website, while attractive and very functional as an online shopping experience, did not have content or internal programming that supported basic search engine optimization practices. This wasn’t surprising, because we often run into great-looking websites (and not-so-great-looking) that have no onsite SEO. We determined that the best way to proceed would be to identify the most likely keywords that would help new customers discover their brand, then optimize their website for those keywords and key phrases.

Our Strategy: We analyzed the competition and created a list of 25 traffic-driving keyword phrases that were likely to be used by people searching for bikes used in downhill riding. We combined keywords so that shorter phrases were extended into “long-tail” keyword phrases. In other words, the long-tail phrase “downhill bike components” also include the phrases “downhill bike” and “bike components”, providing three different phrases to generate traffic from. Since their site was build on WordPress, we added two plug-ins to help with onsite content optimization. We then created a site title for the home page that embedded the long-tail phrase “high performance mountain bike frames and bike components for downhill racing”, which included several of our primary keywords. We also optimized the site by making small modifications to the content, category titles, page descriptions, and image descriptions. Then we waited to see what the result of these basic changes would be.

The Result: Inside of 24 hours, CanfieldBrothers.com was ranking on Google’s page #1 for several of our selected keywords, and as of this writing, CanfieldBrothers.com remains in position #2 for “downhill bike frames” and position #1 for “downhill bike components”. Their year-over-year site traffic  increased to 37% after our changes, and they continue to increase the number of new visitors to their site who discover the brand through search engines. If Canfield Brothers sell one extra bike this year, they will have more than paid for the project, and the site improvements will continue to deliver results for years to come.

Why it Worked: Search engine optimization is accomplished by having a website that is properly coded (we call this onsite optimization), and other websites providing links to that site, indicating importance (we call this offsite optimization). In the case of CanfieldBrothers.com, they had fantastic offsite optimization with several thousand links to their site from other important websites. But because the site was not optimized for terms like “downhill bike components”, the search engines only categorized the site for the specific product and brand names.

Our Next Project: When it comes to increasing site visibility, we are experts. We can evaluate your market competition and help you formulate your keyword strategy, then implement that strategy both onsite and offsite. If your business needs to be more visible to customers, make sure your website is optimized for results.  If you would like to learn more, call or contact us today. We will provide you with a strategy, an implementation plan, and will continuously measure your site visibility with daily, weekly, or monthly reports so that you always know how  your site is performing.

People need to know about you before they can be your customer. That’s why advertising still works. But if you rely solely on advertising for your business, you are missing out. There are a world of opportunities for making your business more visible on the internet. From social media to search engines, what you do makes the difference between growing your business and missing out on great opportunities.

Here are the essential steps every local business must take to maximize your online visibility. Most are not difficult, but they do require your attention.

Step 1: Ensure your website is “content optimized” to attract local customers. This means that you are providing hours of operation, and business location information in a format that the search engines understand. You also want to make sure your site is optimized for important search terms. To learn more about onsite optimization, see our case study, Canfield Brothers Bicycles.

Step 2: Make sure Google and Bing know that you are a local business. You can assume the search engines are going to visit your website and figure things out for themselves, but that isn’t necessarily the case. You can increase your visibility by claiming and completing local listings, such as your Google+Local page. The more places you are listed with complete and accurate information, the more likely a customer will call or visit your business.

Step 3: Create a mobile-optimized website. Searching for a local business on a mobile phone increased 400% in 2011 and growth has since accelerated. If you check your analytics, you will probably find that 20%-40% of the visits to your business website are coming from mobile devices. When Google sees a search is on a mobile device, they try to please their customers by providing mobile results. Your mobile website increases your business visibility.

Step 4: Claim your business on ratings and review sites. Word of mouth reputation carries weight with customers who have never been to your business. Online reviews provide a way for new customers judge which business they should choose, based on what others have experienced. When you are able to respond and interact with reviewers, you tell new customers that you are concerned about their satisfaction, and that’s something they appreciate!

Step 5: Build customer relationships on social media. While the specific approach you should use varies according to your products, services, and customers, social media is a tremendous marketing platform for every business. You simply need an effective strategy that will help you connect with customers, and then maintain your presence by joining in the conversation.

Step 6: Offer online promotions that attract customers. When someone finds your business on a website, social media site, or in search results, you want to entice them into becoming a customer. Provide incentives exclusively for your customers, and you will be able to measure the impact of all of your efforts. Incentives will tell you if your online marketing efforts are successful, and when done right, they can even increase your visibility when people share your offers with their friends.

Each of these steps can be completed entirely by you, or you can get help with the ones you are not sure of. Explore this website and you will find more information that will guide you through the steps you need to put each of these steps into practice. And if you’re not sure what to do, please contact us for a little free assistance.

We love to help!

Every business is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to your online marketing challenges. We understand how each of these promotional tools can be leveraged to maximize their effectiveness and you get more customers. We’re happy to provide you with some free feedback and see if there is an opportunity to help you. We can provide you with options that match your goals and meet your budget. It doesn’t cost a dime for an initial consultation, so why not call us to set up an appointment today?

(877) 800-1236 (toll free)

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