5 Things Your Local Business Could Do Today to Increase Business and Reduce Costs

Brought to you by

Jeff Dahlberg

Fargowebsitedesignandseo.com

Email: localwebdirectories@gmail.com

Call us at 701 429 0864

I’d like to explain some ways that my company can help you not only increase profits, but also allow you to provide better service to your customers, so that they will be less likely to visit your competitors.

First, as you probably know already, you can increase profits for your business in different ways without raising your prices in this competitive environment:

Attract new customers.

Entice prior customers to visit more often.

Convince existing customers to spend more money per visit

If I could show you how to do all three of these, without raising your prices, would you be interested?  If so, this little report might be an eye opener for you.

What my company does for local businesses is two things:

Improve their visibility on the Internet.

Allow them to stay in contact with their existing customers.

Picture this.  Someone is looking for an electrician in our area.  How will they find you?  They might look in the Yellow Pages.  They might ask a friend or neighbor for a recommendation.  They might look in the newspaper.

But increasingly, they’ll look on the Internet.  Typically they’ll go to their favorite search engine (Google is the most widely used now) and type in a search phrase like Fargo electrician

If they were to do that, is your business shown?  If not, we can help you get on that crucial first page of results.  If you are shown, that’s just step one.  From there the prospective customer will probably click through to the web page of a few of the results on that first page.

Are you happy with your web site?  Is it converting site visitors to customers?  Are you capturing the names and email addresses of those that access your web site?

If not, we can help, those are our two primary services in a nutshell:

Increased visibility on the Internet.

Email capture and follow up.

Increased Visibility On The Internet

You see, regardless of what you were told when someone designed your web site, “if you build it, they will come” was not reality, it was a movie (darn good one, in my opinion, but still, just a movie).

So what you need to do are things that will make it more likely for Google and other search engines to find you, index you in their engine, and like you enough to put your business at or near the very top of the results, instead of your competition.

Studies have shown that if you’re not on the first page of listings for what someone is searching for, like Fargo electrician, they’re virtually invisible.

And really, if you aren’t listed in the top 3 results on the first page, the likelihood of a customer visiting your web site, and then your business, is drastically reduced.

Now, I need to explain something.  You may have had other people call on you in the past, and explain how they can get you to the top of Google.  They quote a search phrase, and say how would like to be #1?  And they guarantee results.

The thing is, I can quote you a specific search phrase, and indeed I can get you at #1, but there are tricks to their techniques.  First they pay for the listing (and pass the cost off on you), and second, the phrase might be something that nobody searches for.

When we work with you, we learn about your business, do research to find the search phrases that will bring real traffic to your site, and optimize your web site for those phrases.  If you had your choice for the following search phrases, which would you rather have:

Fargo electrician which gets 590 new searches a month from people looking for an electrician

or

www.Marks electric.com  which would get very few searches and only from people that already know about his company. You usually will show up for your website address without doing much of anything. But if people don’t know who you are they won’t be searching for it.

Email Capture And Follow up

Once you do get a visitor to your site, you have just a few seconds to capture their attention.  Put an ugly site in their face, or a page of unorganized and unattractive information, and they’re gone forever.

In fact, at least 98% of your visitors will click away before taking any action at all, never to return.  It’s as if they sped down the street that your business is on, and just got a brief glimpse of the sign in your window, but they were not interested at the time.

Surely one day in the future, they will be interested in what you have to offer, but they’ll have forgotten about where they saw you.  Unless …

Unless you make it worth their while to allow you to communicate with them.

Suppose you were driving down the street, and you saw a sign saying “Mattresses for sale, save $100”, would you be interested today?  Probably not.  Maybe 5 years from now you would, though.

But, suppose you saw a sign saying “Mattresses for sale, $100 cash free to the next person to walk in”.  Do you think you might stop, find a place to park, and visit that store?

Now I’m not suggesting that you give away $100 cash to people, but I am suggesting this.  If you can stop the people that visit your site dead in their tracks, and give them something of value, in exchange for their email address, you would then have permission to follow up with them as many times in the future as you want.

And that, my friend, is the key to the kingdom.  You see, on the Internet, as well as in your business, you want customers to be loyal.  You need them to know you, like you, and trust you.  That takes time, especially for new customers, right?

Well, once you get them to agree to exchange their email address for a free report on something you’re an expert on, and they’re interested in, you’ve accomplished that:

They know you, because they’ve found you, and your report gives them good information.

They like you, you’re a great guy or girl because you gave them something without having to spend their hard earned money.

They trust you, because you’ve shown that you know what you’re talking about, inside your report.

In fact, now that your report is in their hands, once they’re done reading it, chances are they might pass it on to a relative, friend, or neighbor.

Now, the title of this report is “5 Things Your Business Could Do Today to Increase Business and Reduce Costs”.  Here are those 5 things:

1. Another way of finding customers.  Do you currently advertise in the Yellow Pages, in the newspaper, on radio or television?  How’s that working out for you?  Pretty expensive, isn’t it?  If you aren’t doing that, how are you finding new customers?

   Once your business is on the Internet, though, and optimized for all that free traffic from Google and other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and other methods that I explain to my clients, you have one more customer acquisition tool.

2. The Internet can’t be shut off.  Your web site is working for you 24/7/365.

   How often do you visit a new business based on seeing their ad in a newspaper?

   How often do you open up the Yellow Pages looking for someone, except possibly in an emergency?

   How many local TV ads do you think are actually seen, in this era of TIVO, or people flipping channels during commercials, or people watching the big networks and ads of the companies with mega budgets?

3. Reduce advertising cost.  If you’re advertising elsewhere, you already know that getting yourself in front of your prospective customers is essential.  So maybe you don’t want to totally turn off the faucet for the Yellow Pages, radio, television, and newspaper.  But certainly you can reduce the size or frequency of your ads.

   Therefore you’d be removing or reducing your current costs, in exchange for an Internet presence that costs much, much less.

4. Your Internet presence, once established, requires very little follow up investment.

   Let’s say your Yellow Pages ad costs $500 a month, this month, next month, month after month, year after year.

   Your TV ad, what does it cost? $50 or $100 every time it runs?  Stop running it, the results stop, right?  Same with radio.  The spoken word is like the air.

   Newspaper and magazine ads have a little more staying power.  A little.  More so for a magazine, since you can find year old magazines in your doctor’s waiting room, right?  But still …

   But your web site, it’s there today, tomorrow, next month, next year, constantly working for you.  And here’s the great thing …

   Your web page can be easily updated.  You can’t change the prices quoted in that year old magazine ad in your doctor’s waiting room.  You can’t even change the prices in the TV ad without an major expense to reshoot the video.

   But you can change your web page quickly.  We can even show you how to do it yourself, if you want, or we can do it for you.

5. Most importantly, you can contact your customers whenever you want.

   I’m not going to kid you.  Results in Google and the other search engines fluctuate.  If you’re at the top today, you might not be next month.  We can help with that, of course, but it’s an ongoing process.  Your competition is trying to improve his results also.

   But what is guaranteed, is that if you capture email addresses of people visiting your web site, and even more importantly …

Capture email addresses of people visiting your business …

Then you can follow up with them in the future.  You can send them a quick email when you’re having a sale.  You can send out reviews of merchandise or services that you recommend that they might not have heard of.  You can continue to send out free reports as often as you can write them (we can help you with that, by the way).

You’re continuing to build upon that relationship with them where they know you, like you, and trust you.  And guess what?  They’re more likely to choose to visit your business again the next time they need what you have.  And they’re more likely to refer their relatives, friends, and neighbors to you.

And guess what?  An email follow up campaign, while being deadly effective and targeted, is probably the most cost effective advertising method there is.  There is no limit to the number of emails you can send, no limit to how often you send them, and no limit on the size of the message.  Ask your newspaper ad rep if you can have a full page ad, every day of the week, and see what that costs you.  Email follow up is virtually free.  So …

I hope this little report has been of value to you.  Again, my name is Jeff Dahlberg and my company is Fargo web site design and seo.  We can help you improve the performance of your existing web site, set up a new one, or start capturing email addresses of your current and future customers, as well as show you or help you follow up with them.

For more information on what we do, please call Jeff at 701 429 0864 or email  localwebdirectories@gmail.com

Before we get to the SEO information, let’s cover a few must-haves for your local business Web site. If you want to save a lot of money on advertising, you need to get the emails of your customers. If you can get thousands of them, you can make extra on sales or get the word out about a new product. I have 5,500 e-mails on my e-commerce list. I send a newsletter once a month and usually get orders of $1,000 or more on the day I send the newsletter.

Of course, they are not going to give you their email unless you offer them something of value. I give a coupon customers can use on the Web site. It could be anything depending on what your business is. Once you get your site set up with a way to capture e-mails, you should be getting a lot of people signing up. If you don’t, you need a better enticement to get them to sign up. I would go as far as to give them 10% of what a lifetime customer is worth to you. Happy customers buy more and tell a lot of potential customers about your business.

There is another great way to get your current customers that are buying from you in your store to sign up for your list. Look on the side of your cash register or your credit card machine. There is almost always an 800# where you can call them and have them put any text you like on your receipts. Give them a call and have them add something like: Go to www.mystore.com and sign up for our newsletter to get a great deal on your next purchase.

If you are a restaurant, pizza place or any business that can benefit from getting the word out fast, you should also try and get your customers to enter their mobile # (cell phone #) with their e-mail address. Let’s say Tuesday’s business is always a little slow. You can send them out a text message saying, if you buy 1 meal you get one free for the next hour. You would be surprised how fast people would show up. It can work for any business with slow times in the day. If you have any questions about how to set up your email capture form, add them in the comment box or contact me.  Talk later. Jeff

The business has to be in Fargo or Moorhead and be on the third page of google or worse. You can be on the first page for your url or business name but not for your keywords. Just enter you business name on the facebook page   http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=search&gid=21251889133#!/group.php?gid=124113860940796&ref=ts and I will contact you through facebook if you are chosen.

I could give you a fancy answer but the real deal is SEO helps you get customers from Google.com and other search engines.

To help you get a really clear non-techinical understanding I’ve made this video explaining SEO and what it can do for you.

If you can conquer SEO then you can get really really cheap customer acquisition costs! We’d like to become your marketing partner and we’ll do all the SEO for you and for cheaper then you could hire it in-house.

If that sounds like a good deal to you then call us at 800-758-2651 today

Since 2006, I have been hogging all the money to myself. What I mean is I stopped taking on clients in 2006 and just used all my marketing knowledge for myself. I’ve sold over $500,000 worth of my own products  and to this day they keep selling because I’ve automated the process.

Why would I ever want clients then?

Because I’m bored and like a challenge!

For me the fun is in the journey… I like climbing the mountain – Not sitting at the top of it. You might consider that a little backwards.

When I think of just sitting still and enjoying my spot at the top, I dunno, that just sounds like a really dull life. So anyways, I’m for hire now and I think that’s good news for a few lucky businesses in the Fargo Moorhead area.

P.S. I’m sorry but we can only accept ONE type of business per city. Our services just can’t be provided for two people doing the same thing in the same place. Two Dentists from Fargo can’t be #1 on google. Only one king can be crowned and the other will just have to try and keep up.