It’s strange that in today’s world many marketers throw so much money at campaigns and advertisements. We live in a time where information and tools run our marketing but we don’t know how to use those tools or where we should be investing our time.

If we had a magic button that we could push to kick-start our companies marketing engine, we would! Since we don’t, we spend our time running marketing campaigns in every channel that the online community tells us. After all that work creating new accounts and learning how to use every single program or website, we’ve spread ourselves so thin that we have a hard time even getting off the ground. There is such a thing as spreading your-self too thin, and in a world filled with technology and focusing on a few things rather then everything isn’t such a bad idea.

The most common areas of focus for anyone are SEO, Your Website, and Google AdWords. Why? Well, all three are tied together to begin with. If you have a website you’re probably going to want to get traffic to that website. Google AdWords and Organic SEO are the two biggest ways to generate that traffic.  Yes, using social will boost your search. However you want to focus on a few things then slowly expand to other channels. Everywhere you read nowadays its “you need this and you need this, you need to invest in this, you should be doing this”…emerging “new and better ways to market” are always going to be invented and sold to everyone. However in the world of digital marketing the basics, having a good website,using Organic SEO, and Google AdWords are always going to be the foundation that helps you expand your business.

You need two things…

• Content Strategy:  It’s good to have words on your website, but without a focused Call to Action they are and always will be just words to your audience. “Let us help you develop a content strategy”.  THAT is a Call to Action, and it’s linkable too! Go ahead, Click it!
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Google/Bing/Yahoo are multibillion-dollar search engines! So let’s take advantage of them! Your area is filled with potential clients, clients trying to find a solution.  Most people consider SEO to be expensive or out of their budget but SEO is all about your target area.

If you are in Los Angeles and a doctor, let’s face it: it’s not going be cheap, but that’s not true for all locations. We’ll create a comprehensive analysis of your area, your industry and your competition and from there we can formulate a strategy that often times gets your company on the first page without breaking the bank!

A professional, researched Content Strategy combined with a cost effective SEO investment can increase traffic to your website. It’s never a bad thing when you more people visit your website.

“What does a dirty bathroom have to do with a website,” your asking me.

I would respond, “Everything.” It’s easy as business owners to overlook aspects of the business if it doesn’t directly result in increasing profits. This is particularly true in small businesses where most owner’s time is restrained by the multitude of responsibilities they carry due to a limited work force. For a restaurant owner, I’m certain most of their attention is aimed at keeping their kitchen and seating area the cleanest they can afford, because they are typically the two places a customer, and health inspector, is going to focus on. Who has time to maintain the bathroom every fifteen minutes?

Now you’re in a world where, much like it’s important to have restroom facilities in your restaurant, it is important to have a website as part of your company. The days of growing your business from a small location in an empty strip mall with no marketing are growing to a close, and the time of marrying online marketing with street traffic is here. As a consumer, it is far easier to ask Siri on our iPhone what the nearest, and highest rated, store around them is and if you don’t have a web presence you won’t exist to that consumer.

Being seen is only half the battle, though. Where your website falls on a search engine result is important, but even a number one site won’t win you a customer if it’s impossible for the customer to fulfill their need. Even long established “Mom and Pop” shops need to harness the power of the web to continue their business’s growth into the next decade or fear losing to the rapidly growing audience that learned early the convenience of sites like Amazon.com, iTunes, and Google.

And so I ask you, “Where’s your website at today?” If you have a website, when was the last time you interacted with it? Is it built to take advantage of today’s search engines or is still that same fifty dollar template you bought years ago on a late night infomercial?

My challenge to you as a business owner is this:

1. Review your own site and find the golden nugget. What do I mean by gold nugget? Well, if you are a lawyer hoping to get new divorce clients, then the gold nugget should be the page or contact information that makes that happen.
2. Gather a group of friends, or hire someone to administer a poll, to see if people can find what you want them to. Additionally, ask them for their opinion on how easy it was to accomplish.
3. No site should come away perfect, there’s always room to grow. Take the information you receive and use it to work with your internal programmers and marketers, or contact an experienced professional marketing group that can help you focus your online presence.

Otherwise, your company may be passed up by another company who always keeps their paper towels well stocked in the bathroom.

If your small business has a location that your clients can visit, it is absolutely necessary that they can search for your company location. This allows easy access to your business address, and phone number incase they need to pull up directions or have questions about your products.  For example if you are looking for a clothing boutique in California, I’m sure there are thousands that will show. But if you are specific to a certain town or city for example Sacramento; there will be far less clothing boutiques in the search which will optimize the chance of your local business showing in the search engine.

Your small business will benefit by:

• Generating a localized search
• Incorporating blogs, video, and image search

If you would like to learn more about Geo-modify, or would like a free consultation, contact us.

• Make it Fun – There is a big difference between fun and childish and done correctly and professionally your website can leave a lasting impression.
• Layout – Easier is Better. The sooner they find what you provide the more they’ll stick around.
• Content That Matters – “People don’t come to my website to read!” While that could be true, content is just not text. Content also includes your pictures, videos, testimonials, case-studies etc… All of this creates a memorable experience for the user.

Remember everything on your website can be used as a take-away. There was an age of the internet where it was insanely simple to manipulate search engines, and this included Google. All a clever website owner had to do was load a page with keywords regardless of whether or not the words together made sense. Tactics such as these are considered “black hat” SEO tactics, and are either already obsolete or are quickly being deprecated by the largest search engines in the world making any money you may invest in these plans a waste.