by 1localbusiness.com | May 10, 2011 | Digital Marketing
After not so much feedback concerning our last post, we decided to do a super simple follow-up examination of how to profit from local Carlsbad small business social media efforts.
While we’re at it we’ll throw in some local search for good measure, the two actually go hand in hand toward taking your marketing digital.
It’s still pretty amazing how many retail establishments and small businesses out there have yet to take advantage of the social media marketing and local search opportunities out there in today’s digital (and increasingly mobile) world.
Local business owners are concerned with how neighborhood mom and pop stores can possibly compete with big box retailers…social media and local search are a good place to start that battle.
Take advantage; develop, nurture, and continually participate in your social local small business identity.
Return on Investment
Return on investment (ROI) is probably the number one calculation most small business owners need to be concerned with when figuring the bottom-line long-term success of their business.
Although calculating and analyzing ROI is sometimes more than confusing, defining that magic number is essential to get an idea of how your products and services are generating profit.
Generating increased profits (more new customers) should be the end goal of any local retail or small business marketing campaign. When it comes to social media for local small businesses, calculating that profit is relatively simple.
A few benchmarks can at the very least give you a clearer picture of how well your chosen marketing avenues are performing.
ROI = (Revenue – Investment) / Investment * 100
For example, let’s say you spent $200 on your monthly Pennysaver advertisement. And taking into consideration the fact that you have accurately tracked the response from that ad…let’s say you’ve grossed $2000 in revenue for the given time period (say one month):
ROI = (Revenue – Investment) / Investment * 100
ROI = (2000-200) / 200 * 100
ROI = 1800 / 200 * 100
ROI = 9 * 100
ROI = 900%
Not bad for a $200 investment…let’s just hope your real Pennysaver ad delivers similar numbers!
Now that we can calculate our success with our Results Oriented Information, how can we go about obtaining it with social media and local search?
Get Started
In order to profit from social media efforts and local search visibility, you first need to be part of the community. Don’t delay any longer; use this simple 3 Step Beginner’s Checklist to move forward with your social local marketing plan. We won’t force you to…but if you like the checklist, then please ‘Like’ us on Facebook and let us know!
By simply initiating social media profiles for your local small business and confirming (probably existing) local search profiles, you are immediately increasing local online visibility for your small business.
But be careful, that’s only the beginning. Now that your business is part of the social media and local search community, you need to take advantage of every single opportunity the media outlets and search engines make available to enhance your listing.
A user-friendly, concise environment inviting conversion from prospect to customer is the end goal.
The key to profiting from social media and local search efforts is controlling your online business identity with a well planned course of action.
The first step in doing so is to join the community – get started with your social media profiles and confirm your local search listings if you haven’t already.
Then be sure to populate your listings and profiles with photos, website links, video, coupons, promotional offers, customers reviews…lather, rinse, repeat for all local search environments and chosen social media outlets.
If you want to start profiting from social media and local search efforts, first you need to start planning for success. Launch your business into the social local stratosphere, then accurately track and calculate your return on investment.
What is your second biggest fear when it comes to local social digital and mobile marketing?
We’re sure the primary fear is losing money!
by 1localbusiness.com | Apr 19, 2011 | Digital Marketing
Is Pennysaver advertising dead?
We feel it should be for some small businesses after a recent review of a client’s ad performance over the past year. Sure maybe that front page ad space is worth something to someone somewhere, but is it worth the price of placing the actual ad?
Gone. Through. Finished. Kaput.
We were inspired to share this recent marketing epiphany after talking with one of our clients about their Pennysaver advertising performance over the past 12 months. As with any advertising, tracking return on investment often presents the biggest challenge. So, we started there with the client – trying to identify what the actual return on investment was from the given print campaign.
Let’s call the company XYZ Landscaping for the interest of this post – and if an actual XYZ Landscaping exists, rest assured we’re not talking about you and we apologize for any confusion…but hey, consider it free digital marketing!
When trying to identify ROI information for the XYZ Landscaping ad listing in the local Pennysaver, we were amazed at the cost involved with the advertisement. We couldn’t get past the staggering rate XYZ was paying for the local print exposure. The number of actual words amounted to all of 8, not including address and phone info. For those 8 words – and associated contact info – the ad cost the business owner $200 a week. Not a month, or a year – $200 a week, for a simple two-line, text only listing, buried somewhere between $.75 Elvis plates and free washer/dryer pickup. The ROI to date, according to the business owner, was exactly zero %.
In the span of a year XYZ Landscaping received exactly zero new customers from their Pennysaver advertisement. With the challenges of tracking and calculating ROI for the average small business owner being what they are, we’ll admit they surely could have missed a few here and there.
And while we’re at it, here’s a simple question to ask every new customer; “How did you hear about us?”
OK, back to the point. We feel there are many better advertising alternatives out there for the local neighborhood business than a zero point zero return on investment, and we communicated that to XYZ Landscaping. We recommended immediate expulsion for the Pennysaver ad, and double secret probation for the XYZ ad budget. A minimum of $9600/year for a Pennysaver Ad?
They’d be better served plying their trade with blinged out lawn mowers. Sure, we know the Pennysaver gets the free circulation numbers, but when was the last time you even opened the thing?
Ours goes from mailbox to recycle bin without even breaching the doorway, literally. At least the phone book is holding up some computer monitors, or offering our vertically challenged employees a more advantageous sight picture while driving. The Pennysaver lacks the bulk for such alterative application.
We’re happy to report that XYZ Landscaping eclipsed their Pennysaver ad performance within the first week of starting a Facebook page and initiating a few online local business listings. All for a heck of a lot less monthly financial investment.
An ad that is not performing well should be examined to ensure you are effectively communicating exactly what it is you are offering to the prospective customer.
- Does your ad clearly communicate your business and/or products and services offered?
- Is there a call to action?
- Is your contact information clearly displayed?
- Is the advertising medium chosen popular within your local community?
Let’s hear some more due diligence questions to share when it comes to small business local advertising. And tell us what you think of the Pennysaver as an effective advertising and marketing medium.
Not so legal disclaimer: We’re sure the Pennysaver is still an effective advertising medium for some local small businesses, in some areas. The abovementioned ad performance is for this particular business owner only…Results may vary…What you see now is happening now…
If you’re one of those local businesses, please share your story with us. Enquiring minds want to know!
by 1localbusiness.com | Apr 12, 2011 | Local Search
Yes, and we certainly recommend increasing your ad size to a double page spread to further increase your YP ad return on investment. Does that sound familiar?
Some business owners have had the unfortunate experience of dealing with a local YP ad rep that pushed bigger is always better. A long-standing rule of thumb in phone book advertising is to look at your competition, then go one size bigger for your ad. Ipso facto, more local customers that found your business in the phone book!
Sometimes, and sometimes it’s a waste of time and money. How can you be sure?
You need to be sure, before you increase ad size or before you cancel the ad altogether. If you’ve tracked your YP ad performance since inception, this should be easy to determine.
First you need to design the ad content; text, copy, images, logos, calls to action…etc. This can be a significant investment, but one important to overall ad performance. It makes no sense to pay up to several thousand dollars a year to place a substandard ad. After you nail down the design, call to action, and benefit points, you then you need to buy the space in the particular phone book that is most popular in your area, and most often it makes sense to look at several books in your area. Some key things to think about are readership or circulation, and where your competition is represented within the particular publication.
This all sounds like a lot, and we know for sure that your local phone book ad rep can certainly help your business advertise in their book, from soup to nuts. They’ll design the ad, place it, give you online options, connect your website, and everything else involved with initiating a phone book ad for your small business – just ask them…
But that doesn’t answer the question of phone book advertising performance in the digital world. In our experience, having a phone book ad for your small business is a good thing – if only to confirm your important business information for the digital environments out there that are sure to become more popular in local searches for products and services. To be clear, this means maintaining at least a cursory listing of business name, address, and contact info (website, email, phone number) within one(or more) phone books in your local area.
Having this most basic phone book listing allows other internet-based search environments to confirm your actual place of business, contact info, and sometimes even products and services offered. In the digital world, these connections to your business info are citations – and the search engines love citations. Just like citing correct sources for your PhD dissertation research, your business citations give the search engines a place to confirm your business information. The more listings out there with correct, verified, and owner-controlled business information, the better for online small business visibility.
But guess what?
An offline phone book ad can be a great place for search engines and other online directories to confirm and connect with your local small business.
Here’s a list of 25 other online places to build your citations – in no particular order or rank. There are hundreds more, and we’re working on compiling a ranked list for you, check back soon and let us know if you have any suggestions:
- http://citysearch.com
- http://cityvoter.com
- http://insiderpages.com
- http://localbiznow.com
- http://hotfrog.com
- http://merchantcircle.com
- http://angieslist.com
- http://yelp.com
- http://kudzu.com
- http://bbb.org
- http://superpages.com
- http://yellowpages.com
- http://local.yahoo.com
- http://dexknows.com
- http://judysbook.com
- http://showmelocal.com
- http://chamberofcommerce.com
- http://local.yodle.com
- http://switchboard.com
- http://magicyellow.com
- http://facebook.com
- http://twitter.com
- http://topix.com
- http://allpages.com
- http://manta.com
Just like with traditional search engine optimization, a slow and steady approach will serve you best when compiling citations for your small business. Don’t sit down with 196oz of coffee and expect to knock out 300 citation listings for your San Diego small business in one marathon session. Visit these sites and determine the relevance to your products, services, and location. Some will choose to list themselves everywhere and some will be more selective, and as rankings change we can begin to identify only the most advantageous connections by constantly monitoring the environment.
Besides that fact, some of these places cost money to list your business and some don’t. Then if you do list, be prepared for the sales calls that result from some of these sites. They’ll certainly invite you to spend a little bit of money for listing prominence, profile enhancement, connectivity, and overall return on investment – at least that’s the promise. Take your time, be selective, and learn more before you burn cash investing in something you don’t know how to maximize.
Also, be sure to check out this cool tool from our neighbors in the Great White North: http://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/#
And having a business listing with the large data aggregators like InfoUSA are good too – http://www.expressupdateusa.com/home.aspx
by 1localbusiness.com | Mar 29, 2011 | Social Media
Facebook sounds like it would be a great new way to amplify online customer word of mouth, and Twitter seems like an ideal place to broadcast your new shipment of jock straps or fresh catch of Chilean Sea Bass – but how do you know if your efforts are a waste of time, or a new and cost-effective way to maintain communication with your customers and surrounding local community when they are not actually shopping in your place of business?
Tracking and measuring your progress is key to any digital marketing campaign, social media is just another avenue of exposure to not only showcase your products and services, but also simulcast how the surrounding local community feels about them too!
Even if you are only at the inception point of your small business social media sojourn, tracking should be a primary concern. Don’t make the mistake of planning for success without be able to measure what success amounts to when it comes to your Carlsbad retail business. If you list your business in the Yellowpages, or advertise in the Pennysaver, or even maintain a website and blog, you want to know how effective the marketing communication medium is, and how much did it benefit your bottom line?
Here are some normal benefits you should realize from your small business social media plan:
- Increased new customer volume
- Reinforced return customer percentage
- Decreased negative word of mouth
- Elevated online local business visibility
- Amplified (digital) positive word of mouth
The key to making sure your efforts do not go unrewarded is effective tracking. If you know how much is going out the door, doesn’t it make sense to understand how much return on investment is being generated by these efforts?
If you may ‘X’ for a Pennysaver Ad, you want to know exactly how much business that ad generated.
How to measure your social media return on investment?
With social media for the Carlsbad retail small business, the tracking issue is relatively simple – and will continue to evolve. Technology makes it possible for the average small business to conveniently organize social media efforts to maximize return on investment while minimizing time spent managing your marketing portfolio.
Here are some easy ways for you begin tracking your small business social media efforts:
Facebook Analytics
Facebook makes it very easy to see how your page is performing. Simply login to your business Facebook page, and click the ‘View Insights’ link located on the upper right-hand side of your page. This tracking section is split into two sections; Users and Interactions. The Users section gives you all the basic page information; such as fans or likes, active users, and even age and gender info on page viewers. The Interactions section gives you information on specific page activity – say what wall post was most popular for example.
Facebook makes it easy to track how your connections interact with the page, and what content you place on the page is most popular to them. By understanding even the simplest of tracking metrics you can continually dial-in effective topics of local social media discussion, beneficial promotional offers, and engagement tactics that result in new viewers and content sharing about your business, products, and services.
Trackur
With Trackur, you sign up for a free account and enter the keywords you wish to track. Start with things like, your name or “your town + your business.” You can easily refine the results with some simple search filters, then just sit back and let Trackur scour the web for your chosen keywords. You’ll be able to see at a glance; the date published, source, title, and summary of each item discovered by Trackur. You can then tag discovered items with a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. This enables you to keep track of who’s saying positive things about you and who’s attacking your online reputation.
Topsy
What Google is to the Internet, Topsy is to social search on Twitter. Ok, maybe that’s a reach, but you can use topsy.com to track your Carlsbad business social media plan performance. See how many of your followers retweeted (shared) your content, and easily filter by hour, day, week, month…you get the picture. A real-time Twitter search engine, for lack of a better term. Think Twitter is a waste of time; prove it by tracking your business tweets via topsy.
There you have the beginnings of an efficient tracking and measurement platform from which to judge your Carlsbad small business social media plan performance. These tools are simple to use and will cost you nothing – at least in terms of entering the social media fray. You’ll soon find with all this information at your fingertips, your thirst for more needs quenching. That usually involves more time, participation, and financial investment. Not to mention more tracking and measurement tools…
