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Chapter 1
Why 95 Percent of Local Businesses Are Failing Miserably with Their Marketing
by Talor Zamir
I recently spoke with a lawyer who used to do over a million dollars a year in business. But my conversation began when he said:
You have to help me. These young lawyers out of law school who know how to do this internet marketing thing are taking all my business, and my business has been almost cut in half.
He went on to tell me how he went from over a million dollars a year to around $600,000. That’s no small drop in revenue, and he still had the same overhead, so it pretty much wiped out his profits.
This lawyer had advertised in Yellow Pages for the past ten years or so and had been running the same ad the whole time. The only difference was that he recently started taking out bigger ads (and paying a lot more) than he used to, but the leads have not been rolling in anymore. As a result of the big drop in leads, revenue, and profits, he got to the point where he could barely afford to do any type of marketing. Death Spiral.
Do you feel like you’ve heard this story before? Have you experienced something similar with your local business? It’s not uncommon for established local businesses to find themselves in a similar situation.
Alternatively, there are many local businesses opening their doors for the first time. Opening a local business is no small undertaking, and most people don’t realize all that goes into it. It means signing a long-term commercial lease, furnishing the place, hiring and training employees, registering the business, getting insurance, and on and on. Depending on what kind of business you’re in, you could easily sink $100,000 before you even open your doors!
WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH YOU IN LAW (OR ANY PROFESSIONAL) SCHOOL
After you open your doors, you may ask, “Where are the clients? Why aren’t new clients coming in my door?”
The cold, hard truth is you can be the best lawyer/dentist/plumber/chiropractor/etc. in the world, but if you don’t have new leads coming in, then you’ll be the best broke lawyer/dentist/plumber/chiropractor/etc. nobody ever heard of.
Unfortunately, they probably didn’t teach you any marketing in school, and that’s a shame, because it is the most important part of your business. Our goal with this book is to show you the most effective strategies for marketing your local business.
WHAT YOU WILL NOT LEARN IN THIS BOOK
This book is not about branding. We’re not interested in any form of marketing where there is no way to measure your ROI (return on investment) and how effective your marketing efforts are.
Not to say that branding does not have its place and does not work. But branding typically costs millions of dollars, so you better have a really big budget if you plan on doing a branding campaign that actually gets you an ROI.
We’re assuming you don’t have millions of dollars to spend on advertising that may or may not get a return for your local business. And we’re not here to throw a bunch of random ideas at you that may or may not work.
“REAL” MARKETING
This book is about direct response marketing. That means that you have real, measurable results and are able to track your ROI down to the penny. That is what we call “real” marketing.
We’re here to show you a system that has worked for thousands of other local businesses, and we’re extremely confident that, if you follow our instructions, it will work for you, too. This system has huge upside potential and could double or triple your business in less than a year.
HIGH POTENTIAL—LOW RISK
One of the biggest benefits of the system you are about to learn is that it has a very high potential upside with very little risk. Again, you have the potential to double or triple your business, however, your risk is only two or three thousand dollars to test out this method. That’s a pretty good risk/reward ratio! While we can’t guarantee that what we teach in this book is going to work 100 percent of the time, we will say that we have got it down to a science where it works a large majority of the time. And because this system is completely transparent and trackable, if for some reason it’s not working for you, you’ll be able to see very quickly that it’s not, and you will be able to cut your losses.
This is about getting real measurable results and scaling a business. It is not about how to increase your business by 10 percent per year. Our goal is to arm you with tools that can potentially double or triple your business and give you a consistent flow of new leads coming in the door.
LIMITED BUDGET? NO PROBLEM!
This book is designed to help you grow your small to midsize local business on a limited budget with very low risk and a very high potential upside. The method you are about to learn does not require huge investments in branding or any other type of advertising. You don’t have to do billboards or TV. Of course, if you are doing any of those things (and if they are working!), that’s great. If your prospects are already familiar with your name, it can only help.
However, none of that is necessary, and the goal of this book is to show you how. Whether you have zero employees or a thousand, you can use this system and test it on a very low budget, see real and measurable results, and scale up massively from there.
There are countless businesses whose number-one source of leads, income, and business are the exact strategies we’re going to share with you. And we are confident that if you follow our step-by-step instructions and implement these strategies, there is a very high likelihood they will work for you, too.
SEO LAST, NOT FIRST
One of the first mistakes local businesses make is focusing on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) early. This is backwards, because Paid Search generates nearly instantaneous results. So unless you want to wait around for six months, start with Chapter 1 and get pay per click right. SEO comes in Chapter 27 and it’s a powerful chapter.
Sound good? Great! Let’s dive in.
Chapter 2
Search Engines Are the New Yellow Pages
by Talor Zamir
I did not quite finish the story about my conversation with the lawyer I shared with you in the last chapter. After venting to me for a while about his huge drop in leads and revenue and how ineffective his Yellow Pages ads are, this was my response:
That’s because Google is the new Yellow Pages. Twenty years ago if someone needed a plumber or roofer or lawyer or whatever, they would go to the Yellow Pages and find a business there. These days, when was the last time you’ve even seen the Yellow Pages? Personally, I have not seen an actual physical Yellow Pages in years.
The point is, if you need a plumber or a roofer or a dentist or a lawyer, you’re going to Google them. (Note: There are other search engines besides Google, but for the purposes of this book, we will focus on Google because it is, by far, the dominant search engine.) As you are reading this, your prospects are searching on Google for a business that does what you do. These are people in your local geographic area who need help with a problem you can solve, and they need that help now.
Will they find you there?
WHY THE YELLOW PAGES WAS (AND SEARCH ENGINES ARE NOW) THE HIGHEST-QUALITY LEADS
The reason why Yellow Pages ads were one of the most effective forms of advertising for local businesses for so many years and why
search engines have now taken over as one of the most effective forms of advertising for local businesses is this:
These leads are from people that have already made a decision that they need a lawyer, dentist, chiropractor, roofer, plumber, or other local business, and they are actively searching, finding, and calling you.
This makes them a much higher-quality lead than just about any other form of advertising.
If you have done any sort of sales or marketing, then you know the difference between “cold calling” or “cold prospecting” someone and when someone searches, finds, and calls you. The difference is like night and day, both in the quality of the lead as well as in the conversion rate (turning them into a paying client).
Think about it: If someone goes to Google and types in “Personal Injury Lawyer in Dallas,” that means they are probably looking to hire a personal injury lawyer in Dallas right now.
You’re not going to get a higher-quality lead than that from any other form of advertising!
In fact, the only lead that’s higher quality than a search engine lead is a personal referral. If your friend says, “This is the best personal injury lawyer in the world, and you need to work with him,” that would be an extremely high-quality lead which would most likely turn into a client.
However, you can’t get referrals if you don’t have enough clients to give you referrals! That’s why it’s so crucial for local businesses to constantly be bringing in high-quality leads that turn into clients for their business. Then when you treat those clients right, that should turn into referrals, which means new business that comes in for free. But remember, you would never have had that (free) referral business if you didn’t generate the initial lead from Google.
Let’s say every 10 clients generate two referrals for you, but you only have 150 clients. Then in this example you would only get 30 referrals. But if you had a constant stream of new high-quality leads coming into your business every day, and let’s say you got 500 clients from that, then in this example you would get 100 referrals (free clients).
As you can see, the referral machine works in tandem with the advertising machine, but you must feed the machine (your business) if you really want to grow it fast.
WHY TRADITIONAL FORMS OF MARKETING ARE LESS EFFECTIVE
It’s not only the Yellow Pages but also other traditional types of advertising and marketing that are far less effective compared to Google advertising. Let’s look at the issues with some of the common sources local businesses try.
First, let’s look at billboards. Billboard companies will almost always lock you into a long-term contract, and it’s very expensive. They know those billboards will get stale, which is why they lock you into long-term contracts. The first month that you put up a billboard, you might get some strong, new exposure with people in the area. But by the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth month, it’s the same people typically driving by that same billboard and the effectiveness tends to drop.
Most local businesses are priced out of TV due to the high cost to produce a good TV commercial and buy the airtime. There are some lawyers, cosmetic surgeons, and cosmetic dentists who can afford it, yet even those that can afford it are receiving an extremely low ROI. These days, many people are using DVRs to record shows and skip the commercials completely.
Similar things can be said about radio, newspaper, and magazine advertising. You tend to reach the same audience over and over, so your ads go stale; you often get locked into a long-term contract; and/or have a very low ROI (if you are even able to track your ROI).
And here’s what you need to understand about the ROI: Let’s say you’re doing a billboard, and it costs $2,000 a month. Then a six-month contract means you are on the hook for $12,000 before you even know whether it’s working and you’re getting an ROI or not! You’re locked into a $12,000 commitment no matter what! Whereas the method we will teach you in this book is something you can test for a couple thousand dollars and, if it works, you can scale it up massively. And, if it doesn’t work, your risk was only a couple grand, and you are likely to at least get something out of it.
Remember, the best ROI and the highest-quality leads come from people who are actively searching for you.
Now, we don’t want to sound like we are totally bashing traditional forms of advertising and that you should completely avoid them. If you have billboards or are running TV/radio ads already and people in your area are familiar with your name, then when they do a Google search, they’ll only be more likely to click on your ad. So if you are doing billboard, TV, radio, etc. and are happy with it, then don’t stop! It’s only going to make what we are going to show you that much more effective.
Chapter 3
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs. Pay Per Click (PPC)
by Talor Zamir
I talk to local business owners all the time. As soon as I mention Google, their defenses go way up. I don’t blame them. A lot of it comes from being burned in the past by online marketing companies whose results failed to live up to their promises. But there is another factor at play here: confusion.
The world of internet marketing is endlessly confusing, and the people who sell it deliberately make it worse. Marketers throw around terms like SEO, SEM, PPC, Google Maps, Google My Business, Google+, and Google Places. And those are just terms related to advertising on Google! Add in social media, email, and other forms of internet marketing, and it’s enough to make your head explode!
Because of this, most local business owners are very confused when it comes to internet marketing. And when people are confused, their defenses automatically go up, and it is very difficult to get them to act (an important lesson to keep in mind for any marketing you do, by the way).
So before we go any further, we want to clear up any confusion you may have about what it is we’re going to spend most of our time focusing on in this book. While we’ll have a couple of guest chapters from experts, one on Facebook and one on local SEO, the majority of our time will be focused on PPC, specifically Google AdWords, because that’s what we have consistently seen work best for local businesses and generate a real and measurable ROI (when done right following the strategies you are about to read).
THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SEO AND PPC
Now that you know that Google is the best place to reach your ideal prospects, the big question is: “What’s the best way to get in front of those prospects and get them to contact you?”
There are two main ways a local business can reach prospects on Google, and it’s important to understand what they are and the difference between them. The two strategies are search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing.
■ Local SEO is concerned with getting your website ranked highly in the map and organic search listings on Google for keywords related to your business. You cannot pay for placement in the organic results. Google has an algorithm that determines where each page on your site ranks for various keywords and, with local SEO, you’re essentially trying to game the algorithm to get your site ranked higher than your competitors’ sites for the best keywords related to your business.
■ PPC is paid advertising on Google. PPC ads are displayed above the organic search results as well as down the right side of the search results.
Figure 3–1 on page 11 shows a screenshot from a Google search with the PPC ads, local map listings, and SEO organic results labeled so you can see exactly what we are talking about.
(Disclaimer: Google is continually changing the way their search results pages look, and they are constantly testing new layouts. This screenshot is what things looked like the day we took it, but it may look very different if you go to Google and do a search while you are reading this. In fact, one rumor we just heard is that Google is going to add a paid maps listings above the current organic maps results. This hasn’t been released yet, but go to www.UltimateLocalBook.com to stay up-to-date on the latest strategies and news for marketing your local business.)
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sp; THE ADVANTAGES PPC HAS OVER SEO
Prime Positioning
The main thing to notice about the screenshot in Figure 3–1 on page 11 is how prominently the PPC ads are displayed at the top of the page. Usually the top three results for a local search are ads. (This is one thing that will very likely not change about how the search engine results page looks because Google makes most of its money from these ads.)
FIGURE 3–1. Google Search with PPC Ads, Maps, and Organic Results
Under that are the maps listings, and then the organic search results follow. It is important to understand that most people will click on the results at the top of the page, which, no surprise, are exactly where the ads that make Google money are positioned.
Take a look at the screenshot in Figure 3–2 that shows the “above the fold” search results. (The “above the fold” results are those you see when you first land on the page before you scroll down.) Notice how the majority of the pixels here are taken up by the paid ads. There are two map listings visible and no organic results. People are lazy online and will not scroll unless they have to. If they find what they’re looking for above the fold, they won’t go any further. Because of this, one of the main advantages PPC has over SEO is its prime positioning on the search results pages.
FIGURE 3–2. PPC Ads DOMINATE Above the Fold
How Patient Are You?
With PPC, you can launch a campaign and, almost immediately, your ads will start appearing on page one of Google. SEO, by comparison, is a long-term investment. You have to wait at least three to six months to typically start seeing any type of results, and in a competitive market, it could take over a year.
Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business Page 27