When talking about websites and online marketing, “what do you think” is one of the questions I hear the most often. It makes sense – to a lot of business owners, dealing with their own business on the Internet is the equivalent of being at sea without a map. Obviously, some business owners do get it. But for those who don’t, one of the things I hear the most is, “take a look at my website and tell me what you think.” The thing is, that’s a very vague request. In an earlier post, I went through what really needs to be on your website. But often, when a business owner asks me about their site, what they really mean is, “Am I getting all the business I could be from the Internet?” Fortunately, that’s a very easy question to answer. I can answer it by asking one yes/no question. And that question is, “Are you using Mavidea’s FirstSearch Internet Marketing package?”
Ok… maybe that was a bit pretentious. But…. not very. I’ll show you why. But first:
It is easy to see how you stack up against your competition on the Internet. Just do what your prospective clients would do. Go to Google and type in words that they would use to find your business. If your business is primarily focused on local clients, then use the city and state. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples:
Example 1: A dentist
I simply typed in “dentist bloomington, il.” It doesn’t need to be more difficult than this. 99% of your prospective clients aren’t going to be any more specific than that. You can see the results in the picture above. You can see the top three listings are advertisements (specifically, those are Google AdWords ads). The first “local” listing is The Foehr Group. Let’s look at another.
Example 2: An insurance agent
Again, I kept it simple. I used “auto insurance bloomington, il.” You can see three big companies in the ad slots at the top – State Farm, Geico, and American Family. Underneath that, you’ll notice Miller Insurance Agency is in the number one and two slots right after the ads. How about one final example?
Example 3: A plumber
Again, we keep the search term simple. This time, you will see D&R Plumbing in the top two slots right underneath the ads.
These three businesses are definitely doing it right. They are maximizing the amount of traffic they get. And the formula here is pretty simple: more traffic = more clients = more profit! And how are these businesses getting all of this traffic? How have they captured the top slot in their respective categories? This is an especially important question when you consider that Miller Insurance is competing against national companies like State Farm in their own backyard. And they are winning. And how? Because these three companies are all Mavidea clients. So, while my earlier statement may have seemed a little pompous, you can also see the proof to back up the validity of that statement!
Now that we’ve established our credibility in this space, I want to spend the next few posts on this topic. Keep your eyes open for a lot more discussion on the topic of online marketing.
