Posts by Larry

Yes these American holidays can be real confusing, especially between now and Labor Day Weekend (a topic of a similar post here). The common thread of course is some kind of patriotic feeling, flags, barbeques and yes, mattress sales.  So if you’re communicating as a business, does it really matter if you thank the troops for their service on Memorial Day as if it were Veteran’s Day or theme your promotions as if the last Monday in May was the Fourth of July? I think it does. Clarity in your messaging says a lot about your business and the thought you put into what you do and how you serve your customers. So if Memorial Day is about remembering service men and women that made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, then when if you want to reference the holiday, then that’s what you talk about. Thanking current men and women in the military for their service is muddled messaging. As is Happy Memorial Day; that’s like saying happy memorial service. Unless of course you’re in the mattress business. Then you know what to talk...

I tried to avoid slipping into a New Year’s resolution theme with this because a) it’s been done to death and b) we all know what happens to New Year’s resolutions by February. Still the start of the calendar year is always a great time to refocus on what you need to do to be successful and grow your business in 2023. So here are a few tips: 1. Turbocharge local search   You’ll notice that I don’t use passive words like position, setup or even optimize. If you’re a local public-facing business with a physical location and you don’t do this, you might as well skip the rest of this post and save yourself some time. Quite simply, Google is where the vast majority of people go (usually on their phones) to find a business near them that has what they need. The local results that are returned are essentially the map results and being in the top three (the “three pack”) is the holy grail, the top five fairly solid, the top ten, minimal and anything below that you can forget about it. So you need to claim your free Google My Business listing if you haven’t already done so, make sure your business category and other information is correct, populate your listing with information that points to the key products and services that you provide, post to your listing often with updates and offers, and get reviews, lots of them. Reviews are going to be the single most important factor that will separate you from the pack, so beg, plead, cajole, harass, stalk — whatever you have to do to get them. Just don’t try to pay for them, that is majorly against the rules. 2. Fine-tune your website   And I’m not talking about adding cool new graphics or changing to a slick new theme. Your website is linked directly to your local search performance above, as Google views one as amplifying the other. So your website needs to have markers that point to your location and content that supports the products and services that you have on your My Business listing. Other important adjustments you can make are having a blog on your site...

I’ve had many clients come to be for search engine optimization recently and what strikes me is how so many of them still view SEO through the lens of 2009. What I mean by that is that they’re trying to rank high for certain keywords in general search to get some traffic, without any local geographic overlay while competing against thousands for businesses. And for many of us long-suffering Jacksonville Jaguar fans should know, that’s the recent equivalent of the Jags beating Tom Brady in the Super Bowl — four years in a row. A lot has changed since Google came on the scene, heck my iPhone now has more computing power than my 2003 Mac. And search has gotten more sophisticated too, in the more intelligent answers it gives to people’s queries and most importantly, where they’re looking for answers. So these days search is driven primarily by local search, and performance in local search means ranking high on the map. The tag line for this site — putting your business on the map — was not put there by accident. So for local businesses, here are few key things to keep in mind regarding SEO. First, for most businesses, as we’ve seen, local SEO is going to carry the day. To be strong in local search results, you have to optimize your website for location information and set up your Google My Business listing properly, post to it often and get as many reviews as you possibly can. The reason for this is that to get any action at all from search, you have to appear in the “three pack” that’s tied to the map at the top of the results page. Even being at #5 in the general search results below is not likely to get you that much action. And on mobile (where the majority of searches occur)  that three pack is often all that people will see. In this scenario your website is there mainly to support and strengthen your Google My Business listing on the map, so the stronger your website is for the term (what the user is looking for) the more credibility you have with both the user and Google’s algo. You’ll notice...

The USPS will probably be heartened to learn that I’m getting more and more inquiries regarding physical direct mail — you heard right, the old fashioned stuff made of paper that arrives in your mailbox and delivered by an actual mail carrier. Just like late great folk singer John Prine, the singing mailman! So I thought now would be a good time to publish here information I posted in a business forum:  Good direct mail begins and ends with targeting. The more you parse the available data to identify the best prospects, the better the chances of getting them to open the piece, engage, respond and convert.  Make sure you purchase a high-quality list. This will ensure deliverability, improve your response rate and reduce your cost-per-acquisition.  Design your mailer to get the recipient inside the envelope or package, but contrary to popular belief this doesn’t necessarily mean flashy or unique. It could be intriguing, dimensional, it could have an outer headline that hits home or it could be simple and plain as hell. I’ve had all these approaches work. It depends on the audience, what you’re selling and the overall strategy.  The content and the messaging inside must hit the target directly as soon as they open the mailer as something that has value, speaks to their needs and is worth their time.  Response mechanisms should be clear and easy, but what can sometimes lift response is making them physically engage somehow, by sending something in with a code or by going to a specific response page online as examples.  Track both responses and conversions. Follow-up mail to everyone but have a separate messaging strategy for no response, responded but not converted and conversions (the latter for loyalty or up-selling).  So there you have it. Send me a postcard, drop me a line, give me a call, stating point of view as the Beatles sang (continuing our musical references). Fill out the form or call me at 904-744-8877 before y0u try your next direct mail...

Yes it’s small business week again, brought to you by the SBA. Like many other designated days, weeks or awareness months, Small Business Week is designed to bring awareness to the need to support small local businesses.  Small Business Week has grown over the last 50 years out of a Presidential Proclamation and like many of those proclamations, it’s the kind of sentiment that we call can agree and feel good about. The problem, of course, is that there’s a big difference between a feel-good concept and getting people to change their buying behavior, which is really what the week is supposed to be about. People’s buying behaviors have changed dramatically over the last 20 years, driven by price, online reputation and convenience, and those trends will only grow stronger (especially during the age of COVID, you can read more about that in my post here).  It’s not so much that people are forgetting Main Street, it’s more that Main Street is everywhere now and we don’t have to leave our homes to visit it. So how can you stand out and grab your share this week and every week? Here are a few things to think about: Visibility: This is the number one factor. If people don’t know that you’re around they can’t do business with you, and today people find out who you are, where you are, how to reach you and learn more about your reputation through online local search. And being seen in local search begins and ends with a strong Google My Business presence with lots of reviews (look for a future post with more details on how to build this). Convenience: It can be hard to compete with Amazon when people can order from Amazon in their pajamas and the truck with that smiley, arrow logo on it arrives the very next day, or even the same day. But as a local small business, you can still offer an online ordering option on your website, pre-ordering or reservations, and you can make the in-store experience as smooth, pleasant and enriching as possible. There’s nothing more convenient than that. Selection: It’s true you can find just about anything there is to be found online but it...