Reviews and Testimonials

Business reviews and testimonials help your business.

Reviews and testimonials. What are they? Why do they matter? A testimonial is a statement that supports the credibility of one’s business; aka a positive reputation builder! A lot of a business’ success relies on word-of-mouth and communication. Having written or recorded reviews and testimonials posted for your business will help bring in prospective customers and keep strong relationships with current customers.

Why Do You Need Testimonials and Reviews?

As stated before, credibility is everything for a small or growing business. Of course, you know your services and products work, but how are consumers supposed to know that? Reviews left on Google, Yelp, or your site verifying that your services provide 100% satisfaction for past customers helps support your claim. Chances are, you’re more willing to purchase or invest in something that has high reviews than something with zero reviews. While being conversational and quick with interaction with customers is helpful, they still may not feel ready to purchase or use your services without words of affirmation from past and current customers.

How Can My Business Gain Reviews?

You may think the only way to get reviews is sitting around and hoping a customer will decide to post about your business themselves, but that’s not the case! There’s nothing wrong with reaching out to customers and asking them to leave a review. You can ask them face-to-face, through a personalized email, or even making a post on social media. If your customers feel strongly about your good work and you have a positive relationship with them, don’t be afraid to reach out to them.

What are the Best Ways to Publicize Testimonials?

  1. Google, Yelp, online forums
    Chances are a prospective customer’s first interaction with you is through a search engine, use Google reviews and your website to your advantage.
  2. Images
    Using an image of your customer with their testimonial is a step up. Including a picture of the person leaving the review brings a more personal and direct message to consumers.
  3. Video
    Video is huge nowadays in building a business! Consumers love to be able to visualize what’s going on, and it’s easy to do with testimonials. It doesn’t have to be a fancy production with animations and crazy video effects. It can be a simple video recording of your customer speaking about their experience with you and verbalizing their testimonial. Video makes it engaging and intimate! Having prospective customers being able to watch a real person leave an authentic message is the best way to provide credibility.

What is SEO and How Can Your Business Use It?

Online marketing is an important factor to the growth of any business nowadays, especially through search engines. You have PPC, which are Pay-Per-Click ads and SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization, or in other words, real and organic clicks. Sure, PPC is a great option for your company, but did you know that organic results are 8.5x more likely to be clicked on than paid search results?

SEO can be intimidating and difficult to understand, but we’ve broken it down into simple terms. SEO is a process of optimization for your website to accumulate and receive real, organic, and unpaid clicks from search engine results. When a user searches for certain keywords or topics, search engines scan through websites to figure out which ones are easiest to navigate through, read, and understand.

So, how can your business most efficiently take advantage of and use SEO?

The first thing you can do is make changes and improvements to your website where needed. Search engines file through many different things on your website like your title page, subheadings, internal links, and body content. By making improvements to these things, search engines can better understand what your business is about, dive deeper into understanding your business with internal links, and better find keywords and phrases to match the user’s search.

As mentioned before, keywords and phrases are also important to content marketing. The more content you create around certain keywords, the higher your page will rank on search engine result pages. This can also be carried over to voice searching. Voice search is the new way people are using their search engines, and you should take advantage of it! It’s said by ComScore that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches. When speaking, people are typically more conversational, so your website’s content should match that to better enforce keywords and phrases.

Content marketing isn’t only useful to your customers, but can help out search engines, too. It’s important to have plenty of content, like blog posts, videos, and social media posts to rank your page higher in search results. How is this helpful? Well, let’s say you posted a few blogs and a video on how to use camera drones. Users googling “how to use camera drone” will want to spend more time on your site because there are a lot of tools you have provided for them to navigate through.

Stay relevant! It’s important to consistently add to your site because search engines and users love good content. If you’re in a rut for ideas for a blog post or visual content, take an old post and rewrite it to make it more up-to-date and fresh. Don’t post something just because your site’s due for an update. Take time to search for quality content that people want to read about; quality content makes for a trusted relationship between you and your users.
SEO can be a long process, but by taking the time to really up your content with keywords and videos, and staying active on your site and socials, you’re sure to bring in new and organic traffic.

6 steps to retail marketing

This is a view of a mall from the top floor.

Marketing in the retail world can be a lot of fun. It also can be very time consuming and monotonous. However, without marketing in the retail world, you will not maintain or grow. Retail has an attrition rate and it doesn’t matter how long you have been in business or how great of a reputation you have, there still has to be marketing. You have to replace the people you lose yearly or you might as well shut your doors right now. How do you do this, is the question and how do you do it well?

1. It all starts with building a brand. You have to have a brand recognition or you will not grow. When people think of the typical products you sell, you want your name to come to mind first. In marketing, there is a rule called the rule of seven. Now, some marketers will say it is the rule of 10 or a rule of 5, regardless, it is still important that you follow it. A person must see your brand 7 times before they start thinking about you for a certain product. How those 7 times is achieved can be hard, however, the rest of this blog explains a few tricks.

2. How you are found is important and that is where listings come into the equation. There are literally hundreds of sites that your business should be listed on depending on exactly what your product is. Personally, I believe that if you are listed properly on the top sites then the rest will follow over time. What people do not realize is that everything HAS to be exactly the same across all of your online listings, right down to the dot in the same place.

3. Social media marketing is going to give you the most bang for your buck. Depending on your demographic you will utilize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Anyone of these 4 are going to be important, however, the two most important are going to be Facebook and Twitter. The most important thing with these platforms is to not post just 1 time per week about your store and expect people to flock in. You have to post regularly and you have to not only educate the consumer about you but also about your products.

4. You have to create a personalized experience. Just as we talked about social being important well, so is mobile marketing. It is said that 58% of people will look on cell phones before they look for your store on a desktop or laptop. With the world of artificial intelligence growing it is very important to learn new ways to use personalized mobile marketing in order to attract new clients.

5. Reward programs are becoming very popular. Create an awards program through email marketing and offer a free product for being a member of your newsletter program. Once you start getting emails from consumers, do not miss a single month of sending newsletters out. I would suggest that you send out an email at a minimum of bi-weekly. One can be a newsletter talking about anything new that you have done and the other can be an offer of the month for members of the group.

6. People will come in and spend more if they know you are supporting the community. Your local chamber of commerce or business group will have a list of events that are community-based in order to help you find a great charity or event to support. Once you find one, offer your support or sponsorship then market about your contribution. Millennials today want to know that you support a charity or local event. They will remember that and come back to you because of it.

Having a retail establishment is a very exciting and fun thing. In today’s world, you have a great opportunity to provide a great location for people to get what you need. The more people that know who you are, the better. With the digital world, you have a great opportunity to tell the world about you! Have fun with it but remember to be respectful and responsible. You will be successful with these suggestions.

On page and Off Page SEO what is the difference?

This is decorative text of SEO, Search engine optimization.

The latest and most important thing about websites is SEO also known as Search Engine Optimization. However there are 2 different kinds, so what is the difference and why are both important?

First, lets cover On page SEO. Searchmetrics defines On-Page SEO as, “Onpage optimization (a.k.a on-page SEO) refers to all measures that can be taken directly within the website in order to improve its position in the search rankings.” This involves a few things:

Meta Description – This is the page description of a webpage that is keyworded to match. They should be no longer than 16 characters and must be relevant to the page they are describing.

Title Tags or Meta Tags – This refers to the description in the URL. These are not seen on the page but they are both seen and ranked on the search. These are also referred to as page titles. These should be no longer than 70 keywords and they must not repeat keywords.

Headings – We refer to these a lot as H tags. H1, H2, H3…. These are tags that are used for the creation of headings. They will most likely be the heading for the post you are creating.

Site map – As the name implies, it is a map of what is on your site and where exactly the content is. Google uses this to crawl your site and create the roadmap of your site.

Now, let’s cover Off-page SEO. This is a technique that is used to improve the position of a website in the search engine results page (SERPs). This includes many items but most importantly are:

Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Linkedin and Pinterest are just to name a few. Social media allows you to create stories while linking and creating a web of links that go back to your site.

Listing Services – Sites like Yelp, Yahoo, Google and Facebook all have to be tied and linked back to your site. More importantly are the smaller spaces like Hotfrog and Citynet. The key to this is that everything must be EXACTLY the sames right down to the dot in certain places, otherwise it hurts you.

Blogging – Writing a weekly, monthly or even quarterly blog with links back to that section of your website will increase your backlinks.

Podcasting – Again, this helps create backlinks to section of your website. It also shows you as an authority of the market you are in.

This list could go on for many pages but you get the point. The more backlinks and associations that you can get to your website, the more it helps get you ranked. Ultimately you can think of On page SEO as your website and how it is created and maintained and Off site SEO as everything else you should be doing across the web. Both are very important for your website and where you show up. Off site SEO also creates a relationship with your company prior to them getting to your website and On page SEO carries that through to the ultimate step which is conversion.

Who cares about Voice search? You should!

This is a Google Home device.

We keep hearing about voice search and how important it is going to be, therefore, we want to take the time to explain what it is. Voice search is asking an intelligent device a question and getting an answer.

The four most popular devices that use voice search are:
Alexa – Made by Amazon, some say that it was the first “Voice Assistant” available. It also utilizes the Bing network for answers.
Siri – Mostly used on Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad. It was utilized by Bing originally, however it switched to Google services towards the end of 2017.
Cortana – Microsoft made this available on many laptops and tablets. It answers via the Bing network.
Google Home – Created by Google to compete against other “Voice Assistant” platforms. It uses the Google search engine.

You are probably thinking, “Who cares? I don’t have one!” However, this couldn’t be more wrong if you are a business owner. “40% of adults now use voice search once per day,” according to Location World. Furthermore, “50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020,” according to comscore. The no screen revolution is coming and you need to be ready!

How do you get ready? Well, it all comes down to SEO!

First of all, the way you think about keywords must change. Most voice searches involve more than five words that are spoken. People do not talk in Keywords. When was the last time you said “Restaurant near me” to anybody? You may have even typed it into a web browser this way. When we speak to voice search we say something like “Hey Alexa, Who has the best fish fry in Milwaukee?”. Your site needs to reflect these words to be ranked. So having keywords is great but you also need to keyword how you speak. Put yourself in the shoes of the potential client, the way that you would ask questions would most likely be the way they do. Of course, this means that your keyword research is going to require a lot more work.

One great way we recently read about is creating a frequently ask questions page with the answers. Brainstorm with your team the top 20 questions the team gets asked and create a page for the questions. Say the top one you get asked is, “What is the best process for creating a great website?” then use it and keyword it. This way, when someone asks Alexa “Hey Alexa, what is the best process for creating a website?” your information will come up and say, “According to www._____.com the best process is…..”

Many experts have different ways of dealing with voice search as it is still so new. We are all figuring it out, however, rest assured it is here now and it is here to stay. There is no fighting it, you must embrace it, and not only embrace it but get ahead of it.

Why do I need an SSL for my Website?

Before I explain why you need one I should probably explain what it is. A SSL is a Secured Socket Layer. It is a level of security that is put on your website to keep all information encrypted between the clients computer and the main server that it is talking to.

Imagine going to a store and you paying by credit card. They write down your credit card number, your address, phone number and all other important information and they put it in a drawer. How many people will see that throughout the day? How many people will have as much information as they need to steal from you? I would say that is pretty unsafe, correct? So why would it be okay to give information on a website that does the same thing and makes it easy for hackers to take your information? It wouldn’t!

By installing a SSL certificate it takes your information and encrypts the information prior to sending it to the main server, you are sending it to the site you are purchasing from.

  1. There are a few reasons why you need to have a SSL.
    It affects your rankings. Google and other sites give priority to sites that have https:// instead of http:// in the url. As a matter of fact it is expected that in the future it will be required to have a SSL on all sites.
  2. Your clients want to know that they are safe, whether you accept credit cards or not. We are in a world of knowledge and people are educated more than ever because of the internet so they look for the little lock icon or the https:// on a site.
  3. Hackers are getting smarter everyday and it is now quite possible for them to get information through back channels within the URL to your clients desktop, laptop or mobile device.

So why doesn’t everybody have them? It is an expense is the simple answer. We have seen SSL’s range from about $65 to $85 per year. Small businesses do not like the additional expense and have not found a reason to spend it. For 23 cents a day I feel it is worth keeping your clients information safe, don’t you?

To Be Found Or Not To Be Found, That Is The Question

This is a woman searching something on Google on her laptop.

When you go into your phone and you type in air conditioning repair you get a list of people nearby that do that, right? Imagine if you are the business owner and somebody is 20 feet from your location and they type in air conditioning repair but your name doesn’t come up? That would probably upset you, correct? Well that is because you are not listed correctly with the major search engines. The last I checked there are over 700 online directories that you can be listed on. Do all of them make sense to you? NO.

There are many directories that are specific to industries that do not make sense for everybody. If you are a doctors office then it makes sense to be listed on WebMD however if you do AC repair then it does not. How do you know which ones you should be listed on? How much time does it take to go into each one individually and make sure everything is exact. That is where a Marketing company comes in with listing expertise.

Listings are very important to SEO for a website. There are a lot of decisions that have to be made with listing and no matter how little you think they are it is very important that you make decisions prior to starting the project. Decisions like Spelling Avenue or using Ave with or without a period? What phone number do you want to use? What email? What are your hours? If you are a restaurant do you want the menu? What pictures do you want to use? What keywords do you want to use? These all seem like basic things but they are very important because ALL of your listings need to be EXACT across all platforms!

Furthermore if you take this project on yourself you have to go in and fix these on a very regular basis. There are crawlers that will go in and change the information within 6 days of fixing it. At first it is one or maybe 2 sites. After 30 days over half of the sites you fixed are changed. That is why it is much more cost effective to work with a Listing Power user service like we are. We constantly fix listings and once they are fixed the crawlers can not change them. There is a fee of course, however how much would it cost you to have to go in and fix them all the time?

What I hear all the time is that I will hire an employee to do this and make sure I stay up to date. Let’s figure this out mathematically. You pay an employee $10 per hour to go in and fix your listings and keep them up to date. Each listing service will take about 30 minutes to fix. That means you are paying that employee $360 every time they have to go through all 72 sites. Now only about half of them get changes monthly. So you will have to pay an employee $180 every month to keep them fixed. These numbers do not include taxes, insurance and all the extra payments you need to make for every employee you have. For a listing professional to come in and have them constantly fixed it will cost you between $100 – $150 per month. So the math is easy right?