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I've made some tweaks here and there to any outdated practices and also added a few new ideas to help keep the content current.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!