Find Perfect Keywords for Your Residential Service Contracting Business

Over the past few weeks we’ve laid a good foundation for an effective Internet marketing strategy. We’ve discussed the basic elements for search engine marketing including page optimization, best practices for metadata and how to quickly get traffic to your site through paid search marketing (pay per click, or PPC). Today we’re going to talk about how to go about forming that perfect list of keywords for both your website and your PPC campaigns to make sure you’re getting the type of traffic you need and not wasting advertising dollars on traffic that will never convert to dollars.

After you’ve built your PPC ads it’s time to select the search terms you want your ads to be displayed next to. Effective keyword research is essential to ensure your PPC campaigns will be a success. There are a few key points to keep in mind when conducting your research and several ways to determine what your best keywords.

Target – Have a clear idea of what your goals are and what you want to achieve. Do you want to generate leads for kitchen and bath remodeling work for homeowners in a given area or are you targeting rooter work and unstops for commercial locations?

Relevancy – Whatever goals you’ve set for your campaign make sure your keywords (and ad copy) reflect those goals. Keep keyword choices on topic for each ad groups’ goal. Resist the temptation to try to be found for every type of service you offer with a single ad and a huge list of keywords. If the overarching goal for your PPC campaign is to increase leads for all types of service jobs then create ads targeted for each individual type of service and use keywords only relevant to that specific service ad group.

Think Like a Lead – This step goes hand in hand with targeting goals for your PPC campaign as well as their relevancy. Here, it’s important that you use keywords and phrases that your ideal prospect would most likely use to search for the service their needing. Avoid technical jargon or industry lingo used to describe what you do unless that would be the most popular way a potential client might search for the service. If the goal of your ad campaign is to attract leads more in tune with the industry-speak associated with what you’re offering you may consider running a separate ad campaign using those specific search phrases as your keywords

Get Specific – Make sure keywords are worth the effort. Too little volume for your chosen keywords will make a campaign seem ineffective, when it’s actually the keyword choices that have limited the campaign’s success. You want to narrow your keyword focus enough to make sure you're only attracting the right type of visitor to your site, but an ad that has a keyword list full of search terms that absolutely no one is searching for will bring you absolutely no traffic or sales!

Get Negative – All PPC services I’ve dealt with have allow you to supply a list of negative keywords to help filter out traffic that you don’t want coming to your site. For example, at ShuBee we sell a lot of shoe covers and have several ad campaigns targeting different variations of that keyword. Unfortunately shoe covers are not specific just to the industries we cater too. There are several different types shoe covers available for cyclists too! I have nothing against cyclists at all, but the odds of a person searching for “Giordana Wintex shoe covers” will find any interest in our ads promoting shoe covers for plumbers. Also, I don’t want to run the risk of depleting my ad budget on clicks from Googlers searching for “women’s high heel shoe covers.” Neither of these search terms match my campaign’s goals nor match up with any of my target audiences, so they’re in my negative keyword list. This is a great way to further refine the focus of the keywords you do want to target.

Check Competitors – Constantly seeing your competition’s ads show but not yours? Use a tool like SEM Rush (http://www.semrush.com) or SpyFu (http://www.spyfu.com) to get a better understanding of what keywords they’re using and possibly uncover some gold nuggets you hadn’t considered!

Still need some help picking out keywords? Luckily there are some great tools available to help make suggestions for you. Google has their own keyword suggestion tool in AdWords to help jumpstart your brainstorming process: (http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Keep in mind though when using this or any other keyword research tool - no one knows your prospects, advertising goals or market like you do and it's going to take your expertise to put together the most effective keyword list to ensure your PPC campaigns are a success!

Buying Traffic Using Paid Search Marketing

Last issue we discussed how to track and measure online success through the use of analytics. Unless your site has somehow automagically blossomed overnight to the most popular site since Facebook, you’ll likely need to find ways to attract visitors to your online property. Paid search, commonly known as Pay Per Click (PPC) ads are a great way to make this happen.

PPC can be a great lead generation tool for any business and also a good method to to keep your visitors (aka “prospects”) searching online and out of the yellow pages. Most major search engines offer some type of PPC service and it’s up to you to decide which ones you want to try.

The big three in this area currently are Google (AdWords: www.google.com/adwords), Microsoft (Bing: http://adcenter.microsoft.com) and Yahoo! (Yahoo! Search Marketing:http://marketinginfo.yahoo.com - Yahoo! has recently partnered with Microsoft and much of their paid search technologies are powered by the same engines that manage Bing’s PPC).

For this discussion we’re going to focus on AdWords. With AdWords, you set a daily spending budget, design your ads, select the keywords for which you want your ad to display and then bid on each keyword. You can even set specific times of day you’d like your ads to display (know as day splitting) as well as isolate very specific geo targets for your ads. This gives you flexibility to pick and chose exactly when and where your ads will show.

Day splitting and geo-targeting are neat features of any PPC management tool, but the real focus here should be on your keyword selections when designing your ads. It’s important to make sure your keywords aren’t overly broad, but not too narrowly focused as well. This goes back to our discussion metatags from the article “Guide to Getting Found Online.”

For example, “plumber” may be a keyword that is entirely too broad. It’s also likely that many competitors could also be using the same keyword driving the bid prices for good placement for that search term are out of your budget. However, “Seattle plumbing contractor” may have fewer competing ads and a lower front page bid. Using a better key phrase like this will also help ensure your ad is displayed to more targeted crowd which will in turn help improve your click-through and conversion rates (which, let’s face it, conversions are really the goal for all this work, right?).

Where in the search results your ads display is another story entirely. As you set your bidding for each keyword, you may notice Google giving you a notice that your bid is too low to ensure front page placement. This means that with your current bid, your ad could be buried on page 2, 3 or 500 of all the ads competing for that search term and will never to see the light of day, let alone ever get clicked. While this means that your ad isn’t necessarily costing you any money, it’s also not bringing any traffic in to your site. The solution to this is to either raise your bid for that keyword, or find a better keyword or key phrase to target.

If you (or your developers) have set up all your tracking code correctly you should be able to see a breakdown of paid search traffic vs. organic traffic in your analytics. A good rule of thumb is to aim for 75% of your traffic to come from organic search results (meaning your site has been well optimized for the keywords you’re wanting to target) to 25% paid search traffic.

So today we’ve covered the basic strategies for paid search advertising and identified the importance of keywords as search terms. So how do we select the perfect keywords for our PPC ads? Stay tuned…

Using Analytics to Track Everything

In my last article ‘Guide to Getting Found,’ we discussed four steps to create a strong foundation for your business' online presence: building a website; listing your site with only directories and search engines; developing a metatag strategy and the importance of creating content. With these blocks in place we can really start to pump up reach and begin measuring ROI. So today we're going to discuss how the heck to keep up with everything your website is doing for you (which is probably a lot more than you think!) using the basic features available in most analytics packages and later talk about how to begin using you site as an effective sales tool.

Track Everything

One of the beauties of Internet marketing is that every interaction can be tracked clicks. With the right tracking (analytics) devices in place, you can easily tell where your website visitors are coming, learn which pages on your site are the most popular, determine where you lose visitors and even drill down to see where your website visitors are located.

If you don’t have some type of analytics tracking built into your site you won’t have access to any of this information or know where your areas of improvement exist or what your site’s strengths are.

There are several analytics packages available ranging from free to unnaturally expensive (but also equally impressive). When researching your options, make sure that you’re able to drill down to the specific information you need without a lot of hassle. Google has a great solution with their analytics package (www.google.com/analytics). The tool is free (unless you want to upgrade to their new Premium offerings and shell out around $50k/year) and is a breeze to install. There are other “free-mium” options around, such as Clicky (www.getclicky.com), Yahoo! Web Analytics (web.analytics.yahoo.com) and more. To get started with most of these options, you'll be required to set up an account (usually free) with the vendor and install a small snippet of code somewhere on your website.

Google Analytics is by far the most popular and widely used analytics tool available. It’s my choice in tracking since Google offers a slew of other tools that can be used in conjunction with their analytics, and the fact that I can create and share custom reports is a plus too. To monitor your site with their tool, I'd recommend installing the code they supply in a part of your website that will be included with each and every page load. If you only installed the tracking code on your home page, well, that's the only page that will publish any tracking data. Google currently recommends installing their code in a header file of your site between the tags.

Once installed, visit your analytics dashboard a few hours later to see all the glorious data your website has to offer about your visitors! The variety of built-in reports available in whatever analytics package you choose should be a great start in gaining some insights to your website. To gain a good high-level understanding of your website some points of interest would be: total number of unique visitors in a given time frame, overall bounce rate (a bounce by most analytics engines is considered a visitor who enters your website, does nothing else and then leaves), average time on site, average page views and conversions.

Again, this is good high-level data but won’t give you much actionable insight. You can, however, use this data to start establishing benchmarks for your website and SEO/SEM performance. No visitors yet? We'll talk about traffic generators a little bit down the road. Next issue we'll discuss analytics data mining and what to look for beyond basic analytics reports!

Guide to Getting Found Online

At the end of every year I put together a list of goals. Not a list of resolutions, but goals I want to accomplish during the upcoming year. (great article on those differences here and why resolutions tend to be forgotten here). One of my goals for 2012 is to improve the ROI of ShuBee's Internet marketing efforts.

My first step towards accomplishing this goal was to establish benchmarks of where we are currently as well as document what helped us achieve that success. From there it was on to numbers crunching so I could establish a budget for 2012, then on to growth projections and finally planning some new strategies.

It was at this point in the process that I remembered an article I had written for theBuzz in 2009 about getting found online. As often as Google keeps changing the game when it comes to businesses getting found online, keeping first page rankings and determining what they feel is most relevant to your search much of the meat of this article still rings true when establishing best practices and strategies for SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing) for business.

I've made some tweaks here and there to any outdated practices and also added a few new ideas to help keep the content current. So here goes, my “Are You Getting Found Redux”:

Tech awareness is rising. Business owners are becoming more hands on with social media, web analytics, SEO/SEM and have a better understanding of Internet marketing. Even small home-based one and two truck service contracting businesses are becoming aware of the need for an online presence and realizing the effectiveness of online advertising. As technology grows we as business leaders need to either learn how to embrace and harness it to become more productive and more efficient or get out of the way. So how do we start the embracing process when it comes to Internet marketing strategies?

First things first, get a website
It’s been said more times than I care to count, “The Internet is the new phone book.” People are looking for you, are you being found? If you don’t have a website for your Michigan-based HVAC business, people searching online for “Detroit heater repair” will never know you exist. In today’s instant information age, it’s more important than ever to have an online storefront.

Let’s take this scenario: It’s January and Suzy Homemaker just put the kids down for a nap. The house is starting to get a little more chilly than normal so she goes to adjust the thermostat. Twenty minutes later she’s shivering. She picks up the phone to call hubby at work to tell him how cold it is in the house. He clicks over to Google and searches for “Detroit heater repair.” Does he find you? If the answer is “No,” how can you ever expect to get that job? If he did find your site but passed over you because of a outdated looking site or lackluster information, he still may as well not have found you. Either way, you need a site and it should be optimized for both search engines and humans alike. This means strategically using keywords you want search engines to find you for as well as having the content on your landing pages that’s relevant to what the visitor (aka, prospect) is looking for.
Work with a developer who has knowledge of your industry. There are quite a few industry specific offerings available. Be sure to do a portfolio review before signing any agreements to make sure the developer has a design style that suits your needs.

Next, get listed.
The first priority with most new service-related businesses after having set up shop is getting an ad in the local phone book. Think of the first step in your online success after building your shiny new website is getting your business listed with the search engines. Most major searching engines now have a listing section specifically for businesses. Just like with their printed counterpart, the basic business listings are free, but if you’d like to add a few bells and whistles to your listing in hopes of pumping up your reach and ROI there are a few pay services that promise more traffic and better conversions.

Start with Google Business Listing (www.google.com/local/add). To do this you’ll first need to set up an account with Google, but that’s easy and free (and you’ll find you’ll be using it a great deal down the road in your online marketing campaign). With your Google Business Listing, you can also incentive customers for their business by using coupons in your business listing.

Once you’ve built your website and set up your business in Google, check the other major search engines for similar business directories, currently the top five search engines are Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Bing and (gasp, still) AOL. All have similar offerings for businesses, but for this article, I’m going to focus on Google because in my opinion they have the most comprehensive options and are the most user-friendly.

Metatags: Some say they’re dead… but I still love them!
When you’re working with this industry-knowledgeable web developer professional make sure they’re including metatags on each and every page for your site. If there’s the slightest inkling that he’s unsure what you’re talking about, run. Metatags are the descriptions, keywords and key phrases that work behind the scenes of your website to help search engines identify what your pages are about.

Many SEO professionals claim that metatags are unimportant now. While search engines have changed their ranking algorithms to focus more on page content than metatags now, these hidden page identifiers still play a big part in how your site is found and listed.

For instance, the title tag of each page controls the text that’s displayed in the very top of a visitor’s browser and can differ (read: should be different and relevant to the page, giving the visitor a high level overview of the page’s content) for every page on your site.

The description metatag for your page will be what’s displayed in Google’s search results under your link when you pop up there. So if your site came up in as a result you’d see a link to your site at the top of your listing followed by your description. Generally, you want to keep this description around 80-100 words. Many search engines use this description in their search results.

Keywords or Key phrases should be your next metatag project. Keywords help to further drill down the relevancy of your site to a user’s searches. Include unique keywords for each page and make sure they are relevant to the content on the page. If you want a certain page in your site to be listed when a user searches for “new construction plumbing contractors,” make sure those keywords are in your tags and on your page! Keywords are a good starting point identifying what the content of your page is about, but a well laid out key phrase may help bring more qualified traffic to your site. For instance, the keyword “contractor” is extremely broad and probably in use by hundreds of thousands of competing sites. However, if you drill it down a little more by including the key phrase “Atlanta Georgia flat rate plumbing contractor,” you’re likely to see much more targeted results. It’s generally a good rule of thumb to include seven to 15 keywords and key phrases per page.

The Internet is content-driven, meaning that people are actively searching for specific content and they are returned the most relevant results search engines can find for their inquiries. It’s up to you to provide the most relevant content about your business as it would relate to your prospects and customers. Posting an article to your website on what you ate for lunch won’t help at all when it comes to finding prospects looking for someone who can install a water main. It may make for an interesting post and help people choose where to go for a good hoagie, but other than that – there’s no real benefit.

Use a section of your site to frequently post relevant industry-related news, press releases about your company, tips for consumers, etc. This helps establish you as an industry expert, increases your keyword density (the number of times a desired search term appears on your page), and gives your current customer base a reason to come back to your site.

This rounds out part one of this online primer. Next issue we’ll look at ways to expand your Internet presence beyond your website. We’ll cover PPC (Pay Per Click) ads, social media and more!

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Five Tips for Successful Advertising

Successful business growth relies on one thing: expand your client base faster than the rate of inflation.

Enter “Advertising.”

Back in the day, owning and operating a successful business consisted of establishing a brick and mortar business, hanging a sign on the door and telling all your buddies where you were and what you were selling. Today’s competitive markets have introduced a slew of ways to attract new business as well as cultivate existing clients into more profitable ones. In fact, it’s estimated that the average American is exposed to more than 3,000 commercial messages a day, and as a whole $620 billion is spent each year by businesses with the aim of making their product more desirable to the public (Union of Concerned Scientists, http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/).

So how do we maximize our advertising spending to make sure we’re capturing and keeping as much business as possible? Read on to learn the secrets to successful advertising:

1. Define your goals – For each ad you place, whether it be in print, television, radio, pay per click (PPC), outdoor advertising, etc., have a clear goal of what you want the piece to do for your business. Are you trying to generate interest? Make the phone ring? Schedule a specific number of presentations? How do you want your audience to respond? Write down your goal for the advertising piece and make sure that all decisions leading towards the execution of the ad support that goal.
2. Develop a plan – a no-brainer, right? You’d be surprised how many advertising dollars are hastily spent without thought to overall marketing goals. Set a budget; prepare a calendar; profile your clients and/or prospects. Without a plan, you’re advertising could potentially do more to harm your business than propel it if you send the wrong message to the wrong audience.
3. Qualify your audience – Knowing how to deliver your message is as important as the message itself. Who are you targeting? As a group, what are their interests and how can you appeal to them? What delivery method (platform) do they accept best? To maximize your impact with this group, list specific features and benefits the client will see by choosing to work with you.
4. Keep your message simple – Don’t get overly wordy or too clever with your advertising. You may spend days working on an advertising project to get it “just right,” but your audience is going to spend about .6 seconds looking over it before making the decision to respond or ignore it.
5. Establish a clear call to action – Tip #5 goes hand in hand with Tip #4. Having a single call to action will help funnel your audience to the goal you have set. Use distinct words and phrases to outline what it is you want your audience to do. For example: Click Here; Call Today; Register for your free gift, etc.

Remember, advertising is much more a form of art than it is a science, but by knowing how to systematically deliver your message, set measureable goals and track campaign successes and losses will certainly help you make better educated decisions on how to spend and maximize your overall advertising, capture more market share and ultimately grow your business to new levels of success.

Create a "Stickiness Factor" for Your Business

Over the years, many trends have caught on that most people would not have expected, like the surge of popularity of then-terminally-uncool Hush Puppies shoes in the 1990’s, which were previously only popular among a handful of hipsters in Manhattan.  Television shows which many thought would surely flop reached great success, such as Sesame Street.  People underestimated the cognitive levels of children, but the show’s new approach to teaching gained widespread popularity and fostered literacy in preschoolers.  Books, like The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, have climbed from little known cult series to best-sellers and messages that seemed to hold little importance at the time, such as the dangers of smoking, took hold and are now hot topics all over the world.  It seems that there is a pattern to these phenomenons, which many businesses could learn, replicate and benefit from greatly.

In the book “The Tipping Point,” author Malcolm Gladwell connects the dots for a pattern that can move any idea, message, product, or in our case business in the residential service industry from a small, unknown group to a front-runner in their field.  The main thing you can do to propel your business to its “tipping point” is to create what is known as “The Stickiness Factor.”

At ShuBee, we are constantly encouraging businesses to do things that make them stand out from their competition – and that’s really what making your business “stick” is all about.  It’s the small details that will make you stick in the minds of your customers, and it’s usually details that aren’t expected or considered to be the norm.

When a client calls a plumber to come to their home to do some work, they’re probably not expecting a well-dressed, professional looking, nice smelling technician to knock on their door.  If that person does knock on their door and announce that he or she is there to fix the toilet, the image of that employee and ultimately that business will “stick” with that customer, without a doubt.

If you can make small alterations to make your business “sticky,” you will influence the public’s future behavior.  By doing things that are out of the norm for the industry, you make yourself memorable.  People remember what they don’t expect.  What they don’t expect is what “sticks.”  At ShuBee, we answer the phone in a way that callers never forget.  With a smile on our face, we answer the telephone, “It’s a great day at ShuBee.  How can we make you smile today?”  In an instant we’re able to ease any tension that may be felt from making a business related call.  It’s a small gesture that doesn’t cost anything, and people also remember.

The smallest changes can be the most critical for taking your business to the next level.  The image both the business and the employees present should be different from that which has been expected in the past or from that which others are presenting.  In the case of service industry workers, the more professional of an image you can present, the more memorable you will be to your clients.  All humans instinctively try to explain the world and the things around us in terms of people’s obvious attributes.  That means you have the power to control how people will perceive your business and its employees.

Something as simple as the way you package or present information can increase your business’ “stickiness factor.”  When giving your client information, use presentation folders with your business logo on them.  The smallest acts can help increase your “stickiness.” By tinkering with the smallest details you can increase the momentum of your business, reach your “tipping point” and run circles around your competition.

Grow Your Business from the Inside Out

In any company, no matter the size or the industry, it’s important for a business to put together a great team of employees to help propel the business forward.  It’s equally, if not more important to keep that team united and working towards the same goals.  In a society where everyone is focused on winning at all costs, the idea of teamwork has been pushed to the backburner in many businesses - that’s unfortunate when you really think about it.  Without a doubt a business is a team.  It’s made up of employees in different departments with different roles, all doing their individual parts to reach the same goals.  Individually, when employees are satisfied with their jobs and motivated, they use and strengthen their skills maximizing their benefit to the company.  Happy employees work hard on they’re own, but when they work together, the outcomes are multiplied exponentially!

There are several factors that play into keeping your employees happy, in turn keeping the best interest of the company at the forefront of their minds.   Possibly the single most important thing you can do to attract good employees, keep them happy and ultimately watch your business prosper is to empower them!

You don’t have to use cheesy team-building games or outdated techniques; you just have to find a way to instill in your employees a sense that they are an important part of the team and that they matter.  Doing things as simple as having meetings with different groups, such as the sales team and the marketing team, to get input into what’s going on in the company and to address concerns or praise achievements as they come up can make a world of difference.  It doesn’t hurt to throw in fun, shared activities so that employees can have fun together and build relationships outside of an environment of “work, work, work.”

Last week at ShuBee, for example, employees had a “Painting Party.”  Employees were encouraged to hang out after work and paint their offices to create spaces all their own.  It was just another way to make them feel more a part of a place where they spend a good bit of time.  The people who see one another every day in their work attire got to hang out together in their comfortable painting clothes, make the office more personal and bond over pizza.  Employees not only had input into what they wanted their work space to feel like, they had free reign to make their offices whatever they wanted them to be.  They had a sense of ownership.  Another great example of team building comes from one of our customers and Nexstar member, Rosenthal Plumbing, located in Santa Cruz, California. 

“Nexstar members are encouraged to use creative training to get the best quality retention,” Service Manager Tim Sjobeck said.  And get creative, they did!  The group decided to put together a retro rap video to use as a training tool for employees.  Incorporating every member of the Rosenthal team into the project, they produced a video highlighting their belief in the highest quality of customer service and other key focuses of the company.  The video turned out to be educational and extremely entertaining.  As far as team building goes, Sjobeck says he could not have anticipated the overall impact the project actually had on the Rosenthal group, for several reasons. 

Sjobeck says that after making and airing the video, employees developed a new and even stronger sense of accountability to the company.  If, for any reason, they weren’t before, they now HAD to deliver the kind of service the video promised.  It didn’t hurt that Rosenthal offered a discount to customers who mentioned seeing the video, so employees knew that they and the claims they made (through a rap song, nonetheless) had been viewed and customers expected them to be backed up.

“So our customers are now receiving real customer service, service the way it used to be,” Sjobeck said.  He says making the video improved their team strength and the companies positive attitude overall.  Possibly the outcome that proved to be most beneficial for everyone involved, he says, was the project created a sense of ownership.

“Pride of ownership is off the charts,” Sjobeck said.  “Our employees walk around with a confidence that we had not ever seen around here before.”

When people outside of the company saw the video, they were able to get an idea of the fun had at Rosenthal, the commitment of their employees, and, really, what the company was all about.  Everyone was impressed; some even wanted to be a part of it.  Sjobeck says several potential employees came in just from seeing the video and, now, all potential new employees are asked to watch the video.  He says having them watch the video has been a vital tool, helping to determine if the candidates are “down with [their] unique working environment.”

Creating a culture of teamwork has tremendous benefits for a business and really isn’t hard to do, once everyone gets in the “team” mindset.  Efforts can be fun and elaborate or as minimal as the team leader prefers, as long as they are effective.  Different techniques work for different people, but the fact is that creating a team culture is not only possible, but easy and benefits both a company’s employees and the company as a whole. 

Build a team of committed, forward-thinking employees and foster a team culture.  While doing so, though, never lose sight of the ultimate goals.  To keep your team on track and ensure the, there are some things you need to do to ensure the success of the teams, thus ensuring the success of the business.

Make sure that expectations for the team’s performance and outcome are clearly defined.  Explain why the team was created, their purpose, mission and what resources will be provided to help them meet expectations.  Employees should not only understand the team mission, but be excited and committed to it; if they’re not, allow them to voice concerns and address those concerns.  If you have to - compromise, as long as the team’s ultimate goal is reached and employees are happy.  Every individual employee needs to know that he or she is an important part of a team.  They need to feel empowered and have a sense of ownership in what they are working for.  The more empowerment and ownership they feel, the better employees they will be and the better your business will become.

While there’s no cookie-cutter way to build a culture of teamwork into a business setting, keep in mind that there’s also no cookie-cutter way to run a business.  Business leaders should work on finding and implementing ways that work best in their particular settings.  The more of a teamwork environment you can create, the more empowerment and ownership employees will feel, the more efficiently your business will run, the less turn-over you will experience and the quicker you’ll reach your business goals.  Your business can grow stronger than ever by working from the inside out.

Customer Service is the New Gold Standard

Wrapped up my report on Joseph Michelli's book "The New Gold Standard," this week. Now I'm talking to him on Twitter. How cool is that?!! GM's report on the book can be read here: http://www.shubeebusinesstips.com/2009/06/the-new-gold-standard/

Anyone who works in a customer service focused business needs to read this book!

Join the Hive!

Are you up to speed on all the buzz? ShuBee wants you to join in and contribute to the hive’s online presence.

Did you know we’re on Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? FriendFeed? and more?

Did you know we’ve launched our own affiliate sites to help contractors succeed?

ShuBee Business Tips is a magazine-style website containing a full archive of all business tips we’ve included in our email newsletters and theBuzz. Visitors can browse all our knowledge from 30+ years of running successful plumbing/HVAC companies.

Service Industry Tips is an industry-related news and tips hub designed to keep contractors in the know about the latest in products, tools, techniques and more.

We’ve got even more tools in production to help ensure the success of our clients. Spread the word, join the groups, engage the visitors and become an integral part of the hive today!

Tons of industry news today! Check our channels @ShuBeePlumber @ShuBeeContractr @ShuBeeElectric @ShuBeeHVAC @ShuBeeRealtor @ShuBeePestCtrl!

5 tips for increased customer retention

In times of economic molasses, it’s important for businesses to shift sales gears from customer acquisition to customer retention. Most companies know approximately how much it costs in advertising and marketing to attract each new customer. Currently, the average cost per new plumbing/HVAC customer is around $230. By refocusing your selling strategy on repeat business rather than new business you can quickly cut acquisition costs and increase revenue. Use these tips to get the most from the customers you’ve already paid for, and hopefully lower the costs associated with bringing new customers on board.

You’re too reactive – It’s easy to become swamped with work, frustrations and anxieties while out in the field or in the office. Don’t let this turn your decision-making process into a reactionary one. Instead, focus on ways you can be proactive in your customer communications to avoid any knee-jerk reactions that may cost you a sale from a long-time customer. It may even be beneficial to script out responses to frequently asked questions in order to remind employees how they’re expected to handle and react in common situations.

No reason to call back – The key to driving repeat business is knowing your customer’s buying cycles – which will help you dictate when to run different types of promotions. In the retail world, a customer will visit a department store or website five times or more before actually making a purchase. Many times these visits are so they can simply see what’s changed. Keep this in mind with your customers. If you ads are stale or your promotions are non-existent, your customers are more likely to shop around before they call. However, if you can keep their interest through newsletters, emails, changes on your website, etc. they will be more inclined to call you first when they are in the market to buy your products or services.

You don’t know your customer – Despite your best marketing efforts, your message will never convert to another sale if you don’t have your customer’s correct information. With people constantly changing their contact information it’s likely that 15% or more of your current client information is incorrect. Enforce a customer update policy company-wide. When any employee communicates with a customer, have them verify their contact information.

Your customer service stinks – According to a recent retailer survey, “Companies that place emphasis on quality, customer intimacy and revenue generation stand to reap the greatest competitive advantage and return on investment… Improved quality of service correlates directly with customer satisfaction.” To see what you’re actually delivering to your clients, put yourself in the communication process with your company. Plan an unexpected call to your main customer service line and rate your own experience. How would you rate your customer satisfaction? What can you do to improve it? By mapping out a clear and concise strategy aimed at the customer experience, you’ll keep your customers happy and coming back.

Your first impression may be their last – It’s been said countless time, “you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” That solid first impression is your key to capturing more repeat business. You never know when an existing small customer may turn into your next million dollar account. Give all your customers a reason to call you again with a solid communication, purchasing and fulfillment plan.

Rare to find a company like this:

This gem was sent to me at work today by Tim Sjobeck of Rosenthal Plumbing in Santa Cruz, California. Not only is this piece fun and entertaining - it works so well on so many different levels. This video does a perfect job of boosting company morale, improving team-building, making workers aware of the company's stance on employee empowerment, establish a clearly defined company culture - all the while sprinkled with a bit of consumer education and viral marketing. Kudos!



Excellent job Rosenthal Plumbing!

People are looking for you, are you being found?

It’s obvious that as technology grows, we need to either embrace it or get out of the way. In several recent conversations I’ve had with industry leaders and business owners I’ve been surprised at the amount of buzz and focus there's been on website visibility and online social marketing. More and more people in our industry - even down to the one and two truck businesses - are becoming aware of the need for an online presence and realizing the effectiveness of online networking through social media. I wanted to take this opportunity to go through an online visibility primer and hopefully shed some light on search engine optimization (SEO), social marketing, this Twitter thing (and a few others) and how the whole ball of wax can affect your bottom line.

First things first, get a website

It’s been said more times than I care to count, "The Internet is the new phone book." People are looking for you, are you being found? If you don’t have a website for your Michigan-based HVAC business, people searching online for “Detroit heater repair” will never know you exist. In today’s instant information age, it’s more important than ever to have an online storefront. Let’s take this scenario: It’s February and Suzy Homemaker just put the kids down for a nap. The house is starting to get a little more chilly than normal so she goes to adjust the thermostat. Twenty minutes later she’s shivering. She picks up the phone to call hubby at work to tell him how cold it is in the house. He clicks over to Google and searches for “Detroit heater repair.” Does he find you? If the answer is “No,” how can you ever expect to get that job? If he did find your site but passed over you because of a outdated looking site or lackluster information, he still may as well not have found you. Either way, you need a site and need it optimized for both search engines and humans alike.

Work with a developer who has knowledge of your industry. There are quite a few industry specific offerings available. Be sure to do a portfolio review before signing any agreements to make sure the developer has a design style that suits your needs.

Next, get listed.

The first priority with most new service-related businesses is getting an ad in the local phone book; think of the first step to your online success as getting your business listed with an online phone book. Just like with their printed counterpart, the basic business listings are free, but if you’d like to add a few bells and whistles to your listing in hopes of pumping up your reach and ROI there are a few pay services that promise more traffic and better conversions. Start with Google Business Listing (www.google.com/local/add). To do this you’ll first need to set up an account with Google, but that’s easy and free (and you’ll find you’ll be using it a great deal down the road in your online marketing campaign). With your Google Business Listing, you can also incentive customers for their business by using coupons in your business listing.

Once you’ve built your website and set up your business in Google, check the other major search engines for similar business directories, currently the top five search engines are Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN and (gasp) AOL. All have similar offerings for businesses but for this article, I’m going to focus on Google because, in my opinion, they have the most comprehensive options and are the most user-friendly. From there, expand your listing to smaller, more locally focused options like your local Superpages listing (www.superpages.com)

Metatags: The keys to your online success

When you’re working with this industry-knowledgeable web developer professional make sure he’s including metatags on each and every page for your site. If he’s unsure what you’re talking about, run. Metatags are the descriptions, keywords and key phrases that work behind the scenes of your website to let search engines know what your pages are about. For instance, if you wanted Google to know that your business offers plumbing and HVAC services to the Nashville, TN area, you may have a metatag description something like “Plumbing and HVAC contractors for new construction, installation and residential repair serving the Nashville Tennessee and surrounding areas. Flat rate pricing for all jobs and technician guaranteed to be on site within one hour.” The idea with your metatag description is to give a brief elevator speech about your company, but also use some of the key words you want to be targeted for (plumbing, Nashville, installation, etc.). So if your site came up in as a result you’d see a link to your site at the top of your listing followed by your description. Generally, you want to keep this description around 80-100 words. Many search engines use this description in their search results.

Keywords or Key phrases should be your next metatag project. Keywords help to further drill down the relevancy of your site to a user’s searches. Include unique keywords for each page and make sure they are relevant to the content on the page. If you want a certain page in your site to be listed when a user searches for “new construction plumbing contractors,” make sure those keywords are in your tags and on your page! Keywords are separated by a comma, key phrases are a group of keywords separated by a comma. Keywords are a good starting point identifying what the content of your page is about, but a well laid out key phrase may help bring more qualified traffic to your site. For instance, the keyword “contractor” is extremely broad and probably in use by hundreds of thousands of competing sites. However, if you drill it down a little more by including the key phrase “Atlanta Georgia flat rate plumbing contractor,” you’re likely to see much more targeted results. It’s generally a good rule of thumb to include seven to 15 keywords and key phrases per page.

Content

The Internet is content-driven, meaning that people are actively searching for specific content and they are returned the most relevant results search engines can find for their inquiries. It’s up to you to provide the most relevant content about your business as it would relate to your prospects and customers. Posting an article to your website on what you ate for lunch won’t help at all when it comes to finding prospects looking for someone who can install a water main. It may make for an interesting post and help people choose where to go for a good hoagie, but other than that – there’s no real benefit. Use a section of your site to frequently post relevant industry-related news, press releases about your company, tips for consumers, etc. This helps establish you as an industry expert, increases your keyword density (the number of times a desired search term appears on your page), and gives your current customer base a reason to come back to your site.

All the world’s a-twitter

I’ve been involved in many conversations recently that have revolved around the question “what can online social media do for my business?” Tons. As your business’ leader, the more you can use online tools like Facebook (www.facebook.com), Squidoo (www.squidoo.com), Digg (www.digg.com), Twitter (www.twitter.com), etc. the more people will know your business exists. Think of these outlets as an online version of your local “business after hours.” This is your opportunity to meet other business owners, form alliances, seek out prospects, promote your company and hopefully earn more business –all in a casual, low pressure setting. The key to using these networking tools effectively (as Randall Hilton – www.plumb-biz.com pointed out in a recent conversation on Service Roundtable’s discussion board www.serviceroundtable.com) is to make sure you’re a “contributor” and not just a “promoter.” As Randall states:

“Social sites are driven by the users. If they find you, it's because they're hunting for you. If you hunt them down and pitch your services to them, don't come crying to me because you got the door slammed in your face, accusing you of spamming. Think about it: When at the Labor Day cookout do you find yourself gravitating towards the guy who is always trying to sell you a pre-paid legal plan?”

Probably not. Instead, you’re more likely to hang out with people who share similar interests or who have helped you out somehow along the way. The same can generally be said for everyone else in your online social networks. Make sure you’re providing something valuable to the community and individuals will remember you when the time comes that they need your services.

Paid ads

So now we’ve got our business listed in the online phone books, our pages are search engine optimized, our site is packed full of current and valuable content and you have 3,492 fans on your Facebook page. We should see a new flood of incoming customers, right? Well, maybe not yet, but we’re on the right track. The next step you’ll need to take is to search out local “online phonebooks” to see what other offerings are out there for you. You can start with a simple Google search like “Dallas, TX plumber business listing” and see what pops up for you. You’ll find there are many, many online services available for businesses like www.findaplumber.com which you can register you business and for a fee, they’ll send you hot leads, usually broken down by ZIP codes that you offer your services to.

Once you’ve figured out what lead generation services you’d like to work with and you’re starting to see some real income coming in from your online presence it’s time to start considering a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. Again, all major search engines offer some type of PPC service and it’s up to you to decide which ones you want to try. Let’s look at Google’s AdWords (www.google.com/adwords). With AdWords, you set a daily spending budget, build your ads, assign the keywords for which you want your ad to display and then bid on each keyword. The idea is that as long as you haven’t exceeded your daily spending budget for a campaign, your ads will be displayed for the keywords you’ve assigned when a user searches for that word.

Where your ads display is another story entirely. As you set your bidding for each keyword, you may notice Google giving you a notice that your bid is too low to ensure front page placement. This means that with your current bid, your ad could be buried on page 2, 3 or 500 of all the ads competing for that keyword, never to see the light of day or be clicked. While this means that your ad isn’t necessarily costing you any money, it’s also not bringing any traffic in to your site. The solution to this is to either raise your bid for that keyword, or find a better keyword or key phrase to target. This is a similar discussion to metatags. “Plumber” may be a keyword that is entirely too broad, too many competitors are using the keyword and the bid prices are out of your budget, however, “Seattle plumbing contractor” may have fewer competing ads and a lower front page bid. Using a better key phrase like this will also help ensure your ad is displayed to more targeted crowd which will in turn help improve your click-through and conversion rates.

Know your visitors

Now that you’ve improved traffic to your site, both in quantity and quality, you need to make sure you’re using some method of tracking your visitors. Google provides a great analytics tools for doing just that. Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) can easily be installed on your site and in a matter of a few minutes tell you worlds of information about who is using your site, what other sites out there are linking to your site, what the most popular pages of your site are, where you lose the most visitors and tons of other site metrics.

In keeping with the “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” mindset, knowing how changes to your site affect its performance is vital to effectively gauging your online marketing. Is the newsletter or press release section of your site having the biggest draw? What can you do to further beef up that section or encourage visitors there to visit other parts of your site? Do most of your visitors leave your site after they’ve reached the About Us section? How can you improve that page to keep their interest and turn that into an email or call? What other sites link back to you? In general, a site with tons of backlinks is considered more important and relevant to search engines and will be listed in search results before those without (which is why it’s important to place links back to your site in all of your online business listings and social media bios)!

Know who’s talking about you

Google has recently unveiled a new tool called Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts - told you that free Google account would be getting plenty of use). You can sign up for email alerts for specific keywords and any time Google comes across new content that contains those keywords, they’ll send you an email and a link back to the page for your review. This is a great way to keep on top of what’s going on in your industry, what your competitors are up to or just to keep dibs on what people are saying about your business.

This rounds my primer on SEO, online social media and how it can be put to use for your business – but in no way does this do more than scrape the tip of the iceberg when it comes to increasing online visibility or how to harness the potential of the Internet for your business!

Don't just survive – Thrive!

We may be in the midst of a recession, but not all is doom and gloom. In fact, it's important to remember that many of the largest companies around today were started during depression eras. In fact, the Great Depression created more millionaires than any economic times to date.

The Federal Government defines a recession when we experience two consecutive quarters of negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. What this translates to the business owner is a general slowdown in business activity and consumer spending - but it doesn't have to be that way for you.

Hope is still there for the small business owner – companies who spend wisely during economic slowdowns can actually thrive and come out of recession periods stronger than ever (think Microsoft, GM - not the current GM, but the one 10 years ago, General Mills). The key to working a slow economy to your favor is simple: take advantage of your competitor’s cutbacks by marketing aggressively. Companies that continue to spend on direct marketing will continue to grow, even during a recession. Because many business owners reduce or eliminate advertising budgets during slow economic times there are fewer companies competing for business. Which translates into a higher impact on your marketing. If there are fewer businesses competing for a fixed market, odds are in your favor that any advertising efforts will have a higher impact, allowing you to capture a greater portion of the market.

The important thing to remember during economic slowdowns is that consumers don’t stop spending. They may look for better a better deal or be more selective which whom they spend there money, but they are still buying the goods and services they both want and need. This is why it’s also important to focus your marketing efforts on customer retention, not just acquisition. Use your advertising budgets to find ways to show your customers how well your business is doing – or the savings you’re providing them. Keeping in front of your clients in this fashion will add additional value to the products and services you provide. Cutting back budgets and reducing your exposure can cause clients to feel abandoned, create a sense of financial mistrust or a lack of staying power.

Turn off the news and put on your marketing cap. Brand your way to a bigger, better business.

Not really diggin' this

Ok, so I like the overall look of this them by Blog and Web, but it's buggy. The more I dig and use, the more problems I uncover. It doesn't help that parts of it are in Spanish either (not that I have anything against Spanish, it was a fun subject in high school and my college roommate majored in it - we had post-it notes all over our dorm room labeling everything in Spanish... but I digress. It's just, that was like 14 years ago. I barely know how to order a burrito at Taco Bell now... Anyhow.).

So I'm gonna start playing around with other templates. Maybe even create my own if I find enough of that "free time" stuff floating around.

In the meantime, make sure to check out all my latest creations at ShuBee: www.shubee.com and check out our Buzz newsletter. Also, don't forget to tweet @shubee and @chris_hood

New day, new template

Ok, so I'm fooling around with this blogging thing again at Larry's suggestion/request. Larry's got a good thing going with his BlogRoundTown service (www.najeradesign.com, www.goroundtown.com and now www.blogsroundtown.com). I used to have a pretty legnthy blog back in the day when I had my own design studio but let it fade into the ether when I forgot to renew my web hosting after coming on board at ShuBee.

I do miss writing, it's strong in my background. So what the heck. It's midnight and I don't have much else going on.

I'm used to Wordpress - it's what I've always used for my own blogs and client installations, but again at Larry's suggestion, I'm trying out Blogger. Seems cool. Templates are easy enough to install and update. Lucky I know a think or three about CSS though. The guy who wrote this template has some overlapping issues that still needed to be worked out as well as some odd text coloring. Getting there though...

So this is my introduction to the world I guess. Knowing my AADD I'll burn through a dozen or so templates before I find something I'm happy with for a week or so. Here goes.

Trying out a new cross-posting tool. Anyone played with Ping.fm? Good? Bad? Ugly?

Say No to Overpriced, Ineffective Advertising!

This Buzz tip may ring a bell - it's a topic we've covered before, but certainly bears repeating. The service industry is a heavy player in phone book advertising. How can you make the most of your advertising dollars in a highly competitive market? Well, let's take some things into consideration before we tackle that question.

First, phone book usage (particularly in the yellow section) is on the decline. If their own launch and heavy promotion of a dot com doesn't indicate their print division is hurting, here are a few facts from a recent report in PHC magazine that look to further backup the fall of phone books:

Overall advertising page count is dropping 8% a year
Phone book usage has dropped 25% since 1999
Usage continues to fall around 5% a year

So what options are available to help you maximize the impact of your yellow book business listing? There are numerous avenues to take to achieve advertising bliss, let's take a look:

Run a smaller size ad - It's not always the full page or double truck ad that gets the most attention.
Test this for yourself, open your phone book to the yellow pages and look up auto dealers. Did the biggest ad catch your attention or was it one that was designed better, had more effective use of color or a catchy call to action? Take the time and effort to have your ads designed better with a clearly defined call to action and you can have more impact in less space.

Don't pay extra for front placement - When you looked up that auto dealer, was it the first ad in the section or did you find your choice in the middle? Phone book salespeople will typically try to upsell you on that front placement, promising better results, but the fact is few people start at the front of the section!

Have your ads professionally designed - Phone book salespeople are not designers, and generally their "design team" back at the office is already behind the eight ball on production of the book, limiting the amount of time they can spend on your ad. If you decide to do a display ad in your local phone book, hire a design professional or agency to draft your ad for you. It may cost a little extra up front, but the results from having a jam-up ad will payoff in the long run through increased calls due to a more professional appearance, clearer calls to action and being able to reuse your ads across multiple medias.

Don't buy a special phone number just for your Yellow Page ad - This is simply an add-on service with no real return. Don't buy into the "metering" game for your ad. Now... that said, it's important as marketers we find a way to track everything. Having a phone number dedicated to your print ads is a great idea IF you're actually going to take the time track the number of calls to see what's being effective. If this is a metric you're interested in monitoring contact your phone service provider about setting up a separate number. Their rates are likely to be much cheaper.

Use a Border - It may sound trivial, but make sure your ad is designed with a border around it to help it stand out from the other ads around it. Ads without borders typically have a "floaty" and "unfinished" look.

Make your Phone Number the Primary Focus - Remember, the primary purpose of any directory ad is to have prospective clients call you, make sure your phone number is the main attention grabber in the ad. Use one phone number and make it large!

With these few tips, you can easily maximize the impact of your ad space and even save hundreds or more a month in advertising dollars which can then be utilized elsewhere - like newspaper ads, new vehicle graphics, printed marketing collateral, call back tools or even a website!

Take Back Control of Your Company

No one readily hires a "bad employee." All new personnel are selected with the highest hopes and the best qualifications needed to help move the company along a desired path. During the course of employment though, many forces can change an employee's feelings about the company and subsequently have a negative impact on their performance.

For business owners and managers, balancing personalities and work habits among multiple employees can be a difficult task. Dealing with lack-luster enthusiasm from techs, installers who are chronically late to work, laborers who frequently damage client's property, employees who punch out at five with more precision than they practiced during their previous eight hours- leaving after-hours calls for "someone else" - can easily corner the entrepreneur or manager into a scenario where employees are running the company more so than the people intended to be in charge.

With less-than-optimal employees running the show, the entire company can quickly lose sight of management's vision and even spiral its way out of business. Here's a couple of ideas to help instill the desired company culture in your employees and put you back in the driver's seat when it comes to running your operation.

Fill Your Truck's Empty Passenger Seat

The best asset any service-based company has is the passenger seat in their trucks. To get on the fast track to regain control of your company, assign assistants to your prized veteran techs. When picking assistants for your techs, it's important to focus on individuals who are motivated, eager to learn and positive. An assistant may not be able to do your most complex jobs initially, but will be eager to learn what needs to be done to earn a veteran tech's respect and pay levels.

Having an assistant ride along side your model techs will teach them how you expect the company to operate and soon add another valuable member to your team. This type of on-the-job training helps instill the values you want to promote within the company. Assistants will be able to tackle smaller jobs quickly, allowing their mentor tech to focus on the more challenging work at the jobsite. Also, with this type of training in place, your work force will be able to recover quicker when a problem employee decides to cut and run. Let your competition deal with those employees for a while, your company will be a stronger one because of it!

Connect Brain to Pocketbook

Many companies reward employees for working above and beyond normal calls of duty by paying commissions for upselling while on the jobsite or completing a certain number of jobs within a given time frame. Use a similar principle with any accidents that may occur as well. Hold techs, installers and other employees accountable for any damages they cause to company vehicles, tools or (even worse) client property while on the job. Keep inventory on company owned tools and hold your techs responsible for missing tools or tools damaged through obvious abuse. In some cases like vehicle or property damage, the company insurance policy will cover the bill; have the employee repay the company for any deductibles or increases in premiums resulting from their actions.

Showing employees the costs associated with their clumsiness or inattention to detail will certainly stick with them next time they're in a similar situation and they will surely use more caution to avoid having to fork over additional money for repeated mistakes. This management style may temporarily increase turnover, but you're really only losing the prima donna attitudes and unqualified employees not willing to conform to your company's commitment to excellence - these are the exact employees who were holding your company hostage in the first place.

Utilizing these simple practices will put the reigns back in your hands and your company back in line with your original visions of quality, excellence, growth and success.