The Ebb and Flow of Storm, Seasons & Time
This article first appeared in my Everyday Marketing Advice blog:
This post was initially inspired in part by the passing by of #HurricaneDorian (passing by Florida; our thoughts and concerns are now focused on the Carolinas and other states up the coast, I hope they pull through fine).
When a major disruption like a hurricane arrives, or even seasonal interruptions like vacations and back-to-school, many of my clients lament the ebb in their business flow, as if they were helpless observers of the business cycle. That perspective is indeed the problem.
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It’s Back to School (And Who Cares?)
Well obviously parents care for a variety of reasons and kids care for the obvious reasons and people in neither one of those categories care because of the inevitable extra congestion on the roads once school starts. But what I’m referring to in caring is how much attention people pay to business promotions with a back-to-school theme.
Or any seasonal or holiday theme for that matter. A recent study revealed that holiday-themed promotional emails had less engagement than promotional emails that did not try to tie into a holiday theme. These results may not be all that surprising.
Too often, every local business will try to jump on a seasonal or holiday theme no matter what products or promotions they have to offer. So it essentially becomes a flimsy temporary outer coat on what they do that may not always be a good fit. And it can become like white noise. Take Labor Day for instance which is not that far away. A host of businesses will run Labor Day specials and unless you’re selling mattresses (and one can make the reasonable argument that Labor Day should be renamed Mattress Day) you’re more than likely to get lost in the static.
So the takeaway? Tie your promotion into something specific related to the season in question. If it’s back-to-school and you’re a spa, give the Moms a chance to relax from the getting ready for school stress. If you’re a restaurant, offer a special for a lunch break from that back-to-school shopping. And if you sell clothing, well that’s obvious.
If you need help with any local business promotion, give us a call. The advice is free.
A Rose By Any Other Name
The great Bard once said that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. So in other words, no matter what you call it, it’s still a rose. Now some business owners that I’ve talked to seem to believe the same holds true with how they describe or categorize their business. No matter what they say, it’s still what they do that’s most important, right? Wrong.
How you describe your business on your website, in your marketing materials and most importantly on your Google My Business listing is of paramount importance, because that’s how people discover you, learn about you and frame their opinions of you. And although it may seem deceptively simple, the business category that you choose in Google My Business may be the most critical thing of all.
I’ve come across energy consultants categorized as gas stations, massage therapists listed as health spas and printers listed as advertising agencies amongst other mayhem. And the worst part of it is that these wounds are mostly self-inflicted.
If you don’t actively manage your listing Google is going to choose a category for you, often based on inaccurate information pulled from their business databases. In other instances, businesses pick a category that they think sounds more enticing, or is something that they aspire to. But if the category doesn’t reflect the services you supply now, people are not going to find you and engage with you for what you actually do.
So it’s simple, choose the business category that most accurately relates to what you provide (it used to be that Google would allow you to add custom secondary categories, but those days are long gone). Then add more detail in your business description and the other input fields that Google now makes available for greater clarity and visibility.
If you need help with any of this you can always give us a call at 904-744-8877.
Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime Blues
Or is there? This is the time of the year when many of my clients complain to me of that summer business slump, with school out, the weather hot, vacations in full swing and gas prices rising.
But the summer slump has more to do with what goes on in your business throughout the other times of the year, before the summer season hits. How you build and maintain your customer base during busy times can help get you through lean times. So here are some tips.
Actively Promote Your Business Throughout the Year
Maintain your Google My Business (map) listing, get reviews, run promotions, optimize and update your website with blog posts, use paid search and other targeted advertising both on and off line. All of these activities will give you a broader customer base to work from. Look at it this way, if your monthly customer interactions are 1,000 and you see a summer slump of 20 percent, you’re down to a still healthy 800 customers. If your monthly interactions are a borderline 500 and you slump to 400, you could be in for some hurt. Plus, the bigger base gives you more people to market to during the summer off-season, which brings me to my next point.
Build a Customer Base to Market to During the Summer
They may have bought and engaged with you or they may have been window shopping. If you’re a provider of services, they may have called during your busiest times and you weren’t able to accommodate them. All of these people can be a powerful pool to re-market to when things get slow. Get their contact information and interests and reach out to them with targeted offers, reward programs, insider deals and more,
Make the Summertime Special
Do things during the summer you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Create a summer-themed event. Hold an open house. Conduct a seminar. Stage a customer appreciation day.
All of these tactics can help ward off the summer time blues. As the song goes: “My Mom and Poppa told me you’ve got to earn some money…”
Small Business Week Fades Again
Believe or not, another Small Business Week has come and gone, just like Christmas. Only many of you may not have realized this past week was Small Business Week and neither did your customers, and that may be telling.
Like many other designated days, weeks or awareness months, Small Business Week is equally a way for you to promote yourself to customers in your area and for people like me to sell methods to you to promote to customers in your area. Small Business Week has grown over the last 50 years out of a Presidential Proclamation and we all know how vital those can be. And of course, since small businesses are a vital part of our national economy, everyone loves them. I mean no one talks about hating their mother on Mother’s Day, unless it’s to their therapist.
So during Small Business Week people are encouraged to patronize their local businesses (you knew I’d be tying in local marketing sooner or later) the way people are encouraged to send flowers to their mothers in Mother’s Day (only without most, but not all, of the guilt). But are feel-good bromides, or even eat-your-broccoli admonishments, enough to get people in your area to buy from you? Probably not, so here are some things to keep in mind, depending on what you trade in:
- Convenience: It can be hard to compete with Amazon when you can order from Amazon in your pajamas and the truck with that smiley, arrow thing on it arrives the very next day, or even the same day, which can be embarrassing if you’re still in your pajamas. 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 takes time. If you have something unique to sell, let people know you have it and how convenient it is to get it. I can help you with that (it is Small Business Week after all).
- Personable knowledge and expertise: Sure you can review online reviews and such or chat, but there’s not like stopping by a local store and getting advice from a real human that will actually smile on occasion. In my particular case with the musician side of my life, it gives me a rare chance to get out of the house, chew the fat and keep talking about the glory days (sorry Boss).
So customers will not be guilt-tripped into buying from you even though you are the salt of the earth. Give them a reason to.
Do You Need to Maintain Your Old Google+ Business Page?
Many of my clients recently have gotten this email from Google:
It looks like the Google+ page for ACME Roadrunner Rentals has not been used in a while. To simplify your Google My Business listing, we will be removing this additional page from our system in 30 days.
This change won’t affect your Google My Business listing – you can still be found on Google Search and Maps. You can download a copy of your old content before it’s deleted by visiting this page. Alternatively, you can post or comment on someone else’s post within 30 days to keep your Google+ page active.
Thanks,
Your Google My Business Team
So what’s up with that and why are so many people confused? The reason for the confusion comes from Google, and more specifically from it’s handling of Google+, which was supposed to be the next big social network thing for individuals and businesses, then was supposed to go away, then didn’t but – and this is the most important point – Google separated Google+ from its map-driven businesses listings, known now as Google My Business.
Once upon a time they used to be the same thing and the information and posts you submitted to your Google+ local business page is what people saw when the clicked on your map listing. (And not to add to the confusion, but these pages were different than a Google Plus Brand Page, which is not associated with a business map listing).
So what’s essentially happened is that Google carved those Google Plus local business listings pages off and turned them in effect into brand pages. And what you post to your Google My Business listing no longer automatically posts to your old Google Plus business page (and likewise, descriptions, photos and the like were not automatically migrated over to your current Google My Business listing).
Whew! To answer the question at the top of this blog, for most businesses the short answer to that question would be no, there’s no need for that old Google Plus business page; most people won’t be able to find it, unless they search from within Google+, which of course nobody does. The longer answer is unless you have a lot of followers on that page or really dig the custom URL, then there really is no reason to maintain both pages.
One last word of advice, before you let it die, go to that old Google+ Business Page (you can find it by going to your personal Google Plus account and look under brand pages) and scrape any descriptions, posts and photos that you’d like to have on your Google My Business listing.
So What About Facebook Now?
Admittedly this has not been a good year and a half for Facebook.
There was its unfortunate culpable influence on the 2016 election through fake news posts and the tendency of its users to believe and share anything in their echo chamber (perhaps while hurling snarky insults at those outside said chamber). Then there was the fake followers scandal, where businesses discovered that many of the real followers they thought had maybe came from the place in China where they produce farm-raised fish. If that wasn’t enough, then came the revelation that Cambridge Analytica mined the profiles of 68 million users and their friends (without user permission) for political-targeted behavioral marketing. But wait, there’s more! After that came the revelations that Facebook shared user data and friend profiles without their consent to hardware manufacturers, including a Chinese company that was on a US espionage watch list.
Whew. That sure has Mark Zuckerberg’s makeup artists working hard before each public appearance.
So many of my clients ask me, should I be active on Facebook, market on Facebook, even be on Facebook? To answer that question we have to go back to a place before all the sensational headlines and examine the premise of trying to market on Facebook itself.
The Ideas Behind Marketing on Facebook
The two basic premises for marketing on Facebook was that you can get a lot of traction for free and everyone is there. Well Facebook took care of the first premise by making it harder and harder to get into people’s feeds so you now have to pay for it. As for the second premise, just because tens of thousands of people are in the park for a Fourth of July fireworks display, is that a good time to go out and try to sell them life insurance? They may be there, but they’re not there to buy anything in particular, the reason to be there is to have fun. So is it an audience, sure, but a receptive one? That’s another thing entirely.
Targeted Marketing on Facebook
So pivoting back to the top of this piece, what about paying to advertise to selected user profiles al la Cambridge Analytica above? Well behind all the hysteria of the breach of privacy is the fact that there is little evidence that Cambridge Analytica’s tactics actually worked. The reason? The whole flaw about drawing inferences between who your friends are, what you like and what you click on is that it is inferred. You may not have the same tastes as your friends and you may no longer be in the market for what you clicked on. Or what you Liked may not predict your buying behavior (or voting behavior for that matter).
Profiling and clustering based on where you live, what you buy and other lifestyle characteristics have been around long before social media or even the Web itself and it has not had a solid track record of response. Evidenced behavior (search marketing) or demographics based on hard data (income, age, home value) has always been the better bet.
So my advice? If you are the kind of business where people want to share and talk about what have to offer, sure, have a Facebook presence and carefully maintain it. But the idea of that being the primary marketing channel and driver of your business? Well that certainly would be fake news.
Learn more about how we can help you with your social marketing efforts here.
Yes Your Google Listing is Important
When I launched this specialized website focusing on local marketing, I was fully prepared to talk about how businesses could improve their presence in local search — how their listing could get a higher ranking on Google search results and better placement on the map driven by the results. What I wasn’t prepared for is that many local businesses don’t realize how critical the Google business listing is, where to find it and how to claim it.
Not claiming and populating your Google business listing is akin to having the latest technology and swank furniture in your office and not having a telephone. For almost any local business it’s absolutely essential and building an effective listing is easy to do, as a matter of fact a lot easier than it used to be:
A True Local Marketing Hero
This is another post from the Everyday Marketing Advice archives. Some of the mechanics of managing your Google My Business Listing have changed, but the basic tactics for improving ranking in local search remain the same:
Why spend money on a human directional dressed as a chicken or a giant submarine sandwich? If you’re a business with a local trading area, your best bet to get seen by your potential customers is through local search. It’s really just a matter swimming with the current (or dropping your line where the fish are swimming or whatever aquatic metaphor that you prefer) because that’s how most people begin to search when looking for a place to go or something to buy. And with Google looking to return localized results with every search and mobile searches growing exponentially (where local results are most prominent) needing to succeed with local search is as essential as paying the electric bill to keep the lights on. In fact, it may just be the most effective way to keep the lights on!
Measuring Your Social Effectiveness
No, I don’t mean whether you invariably spill drinks on people at parties or find it hard to start up conversations with strangers (although there are probably virtual equivalents to both). I’m referring of course to your social marketing efforts.
Plenty of businesses spend lots of time on social marketing. Some measure effectiveness by the amount of followers or likes, how many comments they get, reach, or how many “influencers” they create (people that can affect other people’s purchase decision). Others even trot out the vintage Larry Tate (of Bewitched fame) or Madmen adage of brand awareness. Few can tell you what they’re actually getting out of it when it comes to booked business.
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