I will now discuss a typical marketing campaigns for the second scenario posed in the first blog of this series. If you missed it, click here. The situation is this:

An established mechanic finds his business in heavy competition in recent years. Many shops are popping up around his, and he is seeing a steady decline in business and must lower his rates to stay competitive. He doesn’t want to spend a fortune on marketing as his operational costs are significant, but he can’t fathom a 20 thousand dollar a month advertising strategy.

Three key elements of this scenario really stand out as the most important. Once again, we must consider the stated fact that his operational costs are high. Second, the budget is described to be low. The third point, which is that time is of the essence, is perhaps of even higher priority. I will describe these issues in reverse order.

First, time is of the essence. That is to say that no matter the plan, no matter the marketing campaign, no matter the tools used, we don’t have much time. The difference between this example and many others is that while the mechanic cannot spend money like an enormous corporation would, he cannot afford to stay in business very long with the current trends: lowered prices, increased competition, etc. This information is not given, but it comes with knowing the industry. Having had experience in the automotive repair industry, casey troy marketing, has worked closely with clients to develop strategies that would fit their budgets while dynamically adapting to their industry. As such, it has become abundantly clear that there are two ways in which automotive repair/mechanic businesses run. First, they may employ mechanics at an hourly rate. Second, they pay by the job. In either case they face the risk of operating costs running above revenue generated or losing employees if they do not maintain adequate business. In other words, marketing strategies must have a quick turnaround.

Next, the budget must be considered. While we will seek a plan that maximized budget, step one is to determine the type of budget. In this case, the budget is described to be on the low side while taking into consideration the above paragraph’s message.

Lastly, his operational costs are high. This is incorporated in the paragraph above last, but the fact is distinctly important in that the implication that the business needs to see a turn return remains important.

All things considered, a fitting campaign may include the following:

• Guerrilla marketing tactics to hit high yield niche locations and demographics. If the shop is near a school, flyering, direct distribution of coupons, etc. should be inexpensive yet effective.
• Press releases are key if the area is small enough to capture. casey troy marketing, for example has been working with many clients in smaller districts of Los Angeles and its surrounding areas. Smaller area such as Santa Clarita (Valencia, Newhall, Canyon Country, Castaic), Gardena, Santa Monica, Studio City, etc. are areas in which conquering keywords with frequent press releases is feasible.
• SEO… just about always, these situations dictate some basic search engine optimization, search engine marketing, or SEMM.
• Cheap radio/Television publicity. All attempts should be made to gain free or affordable exposure through local TV and radio stations.

These strategies (and others) should give high yields with low costs, fit the industry and business model, and be dynamic enough to strategically change over time.

Stay tuned for more.

In continuation of the previous blog post (if you missed it, click here), I will discuss the answer to the questions posed. That is, what kind of marketing strategy would best fit each of the mentioned businesses?

The first example was as follows:

A law firm is opening a new service which relies upon unique customers calling in. Their marginal cost is low but fixed operational costs are high. It is therefore important that any proposed strategies create a bang. It simply isn’t cost effective to keep lawyers in the office, sitting around waiting for phone calls.

The first thing to note is that the business relies upon unique customers. Next, the call to action is a phone call. These points alone suggest the need to an active advertising strategy. This alone will not promise a successful marketing campaign, but the recognition of these facts is an important start.

Next, the example discusses the business costs. Often marketing consultants take little heed of the advice I am going to give, but the world would be a better place if we could all promise to change our dirty ways. If you are interested in marketing your own business, then this should already be clear. The advice is this: understand the business cost structure. Otherwise, if I didn’t know how the company makes money and how they pay it out, as a marketing consultant, I would just be a salesman shoving another cost down your throat. If I understand your business just enough to see what kind of money comes in, how, and where it goes, I can tailor the marketing strategy just so.

Apparently, in this example, the fixed costs are high, but the marginal costs are a fair bit less of a worry. This is not uncommon for a brick and mortar business. Often rent, equipment leasing, and even the most basic employee payouts are the most substantial of costs. Therefore producing sixteen pieces versus fifteen pieces has a far smaller impact on the overall money flow than anything else. This situation (high fixed costs and low marginal costs) are indicative of the need for a BANG! type of marketing strategy. That is, there is no time to sit around waiting for customers to stroll around and find the business. Costs are too high, so even if it is pricy, it is very worthwhile to make sure that any campaign will let the product (or business) hit the ground running.

Now let that percolate for a few. Done? Okay, read my proposed strategy below.

I would suggest an extremely content heavy website campaign about six to nine months ahead of launch. This would give the hardworking internet marketing team plenty of time to hone in on important keywords, put significant content up, and get the social media marketing juices going. Over time, this will help the company’s web presence gain some seriously important rankings. But what will get people to the website?

I would then suggest the most proactive advertising media that the budget will allow. I utilize what I call a “tiered budget diagnosis.” Don’t look it up—it’s my term, but I am thinking that it will stick one day soon. What I mean by that is that if you can only afford a small viral Youtube-esque, blog-commenting, direct mailing style campaign, go for it. If the budget allows for radio, do that, but (here’s where my term comes into play) do NOT cut out the lower tiers. They are a give-in, they are successful if done right, and they should not be neglected. Further, if the budget allows for television ads or billboards, etc, etc, great! Then get those going, but don’t, no matter what, forget about the lower tiers.

The idea is this: Any of the (coincidentally) more expensive strategies will inherently advertise for the competitors as well. That is, if a law firm advertises for a call-in service on the radio during morning commute, any law firm boasting such a service will reap benefits of increased consumer interest. Inevitably, though, the potential customer will forget the name of the company, probably the location, the number, the website, and basically any bit of information that would make that campaign give a decent return on the investment. What will stick, however, in the minds of the important listeners (the paying customers) is the idea to check the service out online. The interested potential customer may get on Google and try out a few search strings, say “los angeles law firm phone” or “radio ad law firm klos.” Whatever the search strings may be, if the first step (the web marketing one) was deliberate in nature and successfully planned, these string should turn up the company in question. If not—if another company dominates the strings—well then the company who bought the radio ad just wasted a lot of money.

And it all comes full circle.

Stay tuned for discussions of marketing strategies for the other examples.

In my experience, clients are often concerned about their site’s ranking, but they don’t know how to tell if their site is truly utilizing their website to its fullest capacity.

The fact is that one of the most important facets of search engine optimization isn’t the actual optimization but rather determining the current flaws in the website and considering practical and desirable goals. Perhaps even more important (and something you can start yourself, even if you aren’t a computer expert) is investigating to see if your site is in need of help (and it probably does).

Below are some of the initial steps I take when analyzing a website for a client. These are the questions you need to ask yourself. In future posts, I will discuss in more detail what exactly you want the answers to be and what you can do to get there.

On first look:

1)      Is the site text heavy?

2)      If there is a lot of text, are the keywords placed in the top and bottom of the document?

3)      Are there hidden keywords?

4)      Is the text dynamic?

5)      Is it all flash or images?

6)      Are the titles the same for each page?

7)      Are there even titles?

8)      In the titles, where is the company name placed?

9)      Is it among keywords?

10)   How many words are in the titles?

11)   Are there many links?

12)   Are they outbound? Internal?

13)   Are the links utilizing good anchor text or are they words that are not beneficial?

14)   What is the domain name?

15)   Does the domain name contain any keywords?

16)   Are there any bad redirects?

When looking at the source code/file structure:

1)      Are the images named descriptively?

2)      Do they use alt tags?

3)      Are there meta tags?

4)      Is the description tag filled out well?

5)      How many characters are in the description?

6)      Are the page links nofollow?

7)      What about a robots.txt?

8)      Is there a sitemap?

9)      Are there hidden divs?

10)   Is the site w3c compliant?

11)   Does it matter—is this messing up the site’s ranking?

12)   Is Google Analytics being used? Who’s monitoring the site’s status?

After heading over to Google:

1)      Where is the site placed for the most valuable keywords?

2)      What is the Alexa ranking?

3)      How about page rank? Yahoo… etc…

4)      What does Google Analytics think about the keyword use?

5)      What is the competition for the major keywords?

6)      What about location—are there better keywords for the business’ physical location?

7)      What are the inbound links like?

8)      What is being done to get more?

9)      Is Google Adwords being used?

10)   Does it have to be?

When considering the client (or your own business):

1)      If they had to choose ten keywords that would make them millionaires, are they practical?

2)      What kind of money/time (they’re same thing) do they have to put into search engine optimization?

3)      Is anyone on staff able to do content management/generation?

4)      Can they handle the task of learning about keywords?

5)      Who will research market trends, keywords, and client interest?

Lastly, after everything (that mentioned above and much, much more):

1)      What is the priority of each of the goals?

2)      Are they practical, and what do we do if not?

3)      What kind of return on investment are we looking for?

As you can see, it’s really not as simple as thinking about valuable keywords and color schemes. In fact, the major questions come lower on the list, which ask if the proposed methodologies are realistic and beneficial.

Don’t let this discourage you, though. SEO is a lot of work, but it is worth it, and the results do come. In fact, not all of the issues need to be resolved immediately—any progress can have dramatic results on your site ranking.

As a short anecdote, I have been working (as I mentioned before) with an established web-based company just north of Los Angeles (Santa Clarita—Valencia, California to be exact) for the last month or so. These questions were the first that I considered when beginning to take them on as a client. The answers have directed our work thus far, and they still help us keep on our goals. Proper analysis is invaluable from start to finish.

Good luck on your quest for first page rankings.

One thing that you will hear my repeat over and over is the importance of a comprehensive marketing plan. There many levels to this, and like I mentioned in the last post, the first step is always consumer analysis. Many marketing consultants bundle this together with market research or “industry analysis,” but I prefer to single out the most important focus—consumer analysis. After consumer analysis, what’s next? In essence, the big question is, “So we know our consumers now—what they do, where they eat, how old they are, and the like, but how to do reach them?”

As you might suspect, finding answering this question is not a simple, “Do A, do B, and then do C, and I promise success.” Rather, this is a new tier of the marketing conceptualization. No matter the solution however, your market research, specific consumer analyses, and other marketing and advertising expenditures are for not if your product is not up to par. When discussing web marketing, your product, whether it is actually you company’s physical product or not, is the website. As such, here are some tips to help your company develop and implement an original, attractive site design.

1. Keep a consumer focus. Notice that the last few weeks, or perhaps months, have been dedicated to knowing your consumer. Now that you know what they like, make them happy to be treated to the look, feel, and functionality of your site.
2. Get inspired. Go through design catalogs, and see what you like. I often make use of inspiration I get by looking through architecture magazines, beauty products, interior design examples, and other web sites. If you take a gander below at one website for which I designed the layout, you may see hints of the classic Paul Mitchell shampoo bottle. I have appreciated that bottle since I was quite young, and I was able to make use of it on the home page of a client’s blog.
   
3. Abide by the rules; break some, but don’t feel like a vigilante—you might be sorry. There are times to break rule and times to fall in. When considering the aesthetic appeal of your website, go for the gold! Dream it, and make it. When it comes to conventions, however, remember that there are reasons that the W3C meets. You want your website to accessible through different browsers, in different resolutions, and for years to come. Make sure to go by their coding guidelines, or newer browsers and newer standards could leave you in the dust.

In summary, the issue is this: when developing a comprehensive web marketing strategy, remember that after putting in all the effort and funds it takes to get to the top Google listings for valuable keywords, the last thing you want is for your bounce rate (high rates indicate that visitors quickly leave your site—often due to disinterest) to be enormous. Remember, if your site is poorly designed, there is always a competitor’s listing below yours on Google, and if their site is designed better—and their bounce rate is low—well then site design is the difference between a good return on investment and a bad ROI.

Take some time to make your website representative of the great product or service your business should be famous for.

web design, website design, site design, comprehensive marketing, business web design, web design marketing, successful businesses, los angeles, santa clarita, valencia, seo, search engine marketing, traditional marketing, guerrilla marketing, steps, tips, how to