My Blog

Office Nomads – Digital Marketing Workshop

admin — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:00:29 +0000

Nomads, thanks for attending my workshop on digital marketing. Below are a few links that you may find useful in beginning to implement your digital marketing efforts. Below is a quick outline of the presentation as well as tons of useful resources.

Digital Marketing Trends

Search is becoming fragmented and data with real answers that consumers want continues to take space away from simple links and descriptions.
Last year was finally the year of mobile, get on the train before it leaves the station.
Your brand is what people say it is, not what you proclaim it to be. Marketing is the whole experience, not just a clever ad.

The Marketing Funnel is still important in digital

Awareness
- Getting Started with Facebook Ads
- Location Based Services (Foursquare, GoWalla, Facebook)
- Daily Deals (Groupon, Living Social, Voice Deal of the Day)
- Most Traditional Media (TV, Radio, Print)
Consideration
- Reviews
  - Online Reputation Management Worksheet
  - Google Alerts
- Search Engine Optimization
  - Keyword Research – Google External Keyword Tool
  - On Page Elements - SEO Moz Web Developers SEO Cheat Sheet
  - Off Page Elements – Open Site Explorer
  - Site Architecture – Google Webmaster Tools
  - Analytics – Google Analytics
- Further Reading on SEO
  - Beginners Guide to SEO
  - SEO Moz Blog (Go Seattle)
  - SEO Book
Conversion
- Online Video Marketing
- Customer Reviews
- Copy Writing
- Landing Page Testing
Loyalty
- Email
- Mobile Apps
Advocacy
- Social Networks

Claiming your local business listing

Owners are encouraged to claim their business listing at Google Local Business Center, Bing Local Listing Center, and Yahoo! Local Listings. Claiming your business information helps you control consistency over your business information and image. It is highly recommend that you use a consistent business name, phone number, and address in all online directories. All online directories scrape, pull, and merge data from other online directories, so the use different tracking numbers can cause an unwanted merger of data and the creation of an incorrect listing for your business decreasing your chance of being found in local search.

Google Places
Yahool Local Listings
Blng Local Listing Center

Tips for creating great business listing:
1. Use consistent Business Name, Address, and phone number
2. List Business Name as you do in the offline world (Do not stuff in keywords)
3. Upload a logo or quality photo of your business. Best practice is use a
4. Use categories to help find more attributes about your business. An update to the Google Places Quality Guidelines suggests you should describe what your business is, not what you do. Example: “Sushi Restaurant” would be preferred over “Sushi Rolls”.

Further Reading – Local Search Resources

David Mihm – Annual Survey of Local Search Ranking Factors (Must Read for Local Search)
Understanding Google Maps and Local Search (Known in the industry as Professor Maps)
Small Business Search Marketing

Circle Craig Baerwaldt on Google+

Marina Marketing: Effectively promote your business online

admin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:54:21 +0000

NMTA Members, thank for the invitation to present at your 10th Annual Marina Conference. Below are a few links that you may find useful in beginning to implement your digital marketing efforts. If you start down the road of claiming your information and it becomes too difficult we offer local search optimization services starting at $400. Below is a quick re-cap of the sites that I mentioned in my presentation.

5 Digital Marketing Priorities for Marina Owners

Claim your local listing
Optimize for mobile search
Online reputation management
Search marketing
Social media

Claiming your business listing
Owners are encouraged to claim their business listing at Google Local Business Center, Bing Local Listing Center, and Yahoo! Local Listings. Claiming your business information helps you control consistency over your business information and image. It is highly recommend that you use a consistent business name, phone number, and address in all online directories. All online directories scrape, pull, and merge data from other online directories, so the use different tracking numbers can cause an unwanted merger of data and the creation of an incorrect listing for your business decreasing your chance of being found in local search.

Google Places
Yahool Local Listings
Blng Local Listing Center

Tips for creating great business listing:
1. Use consistent Business Name, Address, and phone number
2. List Business Name as you do in the offline world (Do not stuff in keywords)
3. Upload a logo or quality photo of your business. Best practice is use a
4. Use categories to help find more attributes about your business. For most marinas I would suggest using Marina as the first category and then using items like Fuel Dock, Restaurant, Yacht Sales, Boat Sales, Boat Repair, Engine Repair, Boat Yard as applicable to round out your listing. The categories work similar to how a category heading worked in a traditional Yellow Page type phone book.

Online Reputation Management

The first step of online reputation management is to listen to what customers are saying about your business. An efficient way to monitor your business listings and business reputation is to create a Google Alert for your business name, phone number, address and an individual web address if you have one. Any time new information about your business is published and indexed by Google you will receive a notification and you can then review whether you need to correct information or respond to a review.

In addition to a Google Alerts it is a good idea to claim your listing at the sites listed on the Online Reputation Managment worksheet and then check back once a month to every few months to see if there any activity that should be addressed.

Google Alerts
Online Reputation Management Worksheet

Search Marketing
Contact Local Inbound Marketing for Search Marketing services. 206-552-8605

Social Media

Remember there is no “set it and forget it” in Social Media.
LinkedIn (Great place to network with other community business owners)
Facebook – Create a Page for Your Business
Twitter

Thanks for attending my session and please contact Local Inbound Marketing if you have additional questions.

Circle Craig Baerwaldt on Google+

Marketing Success: First step, get on base.

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:15:05 +0000

Once upon a time I used to follow all the major sports. Now, married with two kids I only have time to follow college football and catch a few college hoops games a year. Although I am not a big baseball fan, America’s pastime – baseball does set the stage for a great marketing metaphor. Marketing success will be yours if you keep your eye on the ball and consistently get on base, instead of chasing the glamorous home run.

Frequently I meet business owners who are looking for the silver bullet to their marketing woes. I like to jump in and say “Well do I have the cure for you! were looking for,” however my cure comes in the form of long hard work and commitment, rather than a magic potion or silver bullet. I know lots of tactics, tips, and suggestions on how to optimize a marketing campaign, but any of one tactic on its own will not deliver monumental results overnight. The secret to almost all succesful marketing programs is a steady program of well thought and executed strategy.

Home runs are sexy, they put fans in the stands, and the players who hit them are well compensated. Unfortunately a home run in business, followed by a several quarters of strike outs will lead to some serious cash flow problems. Success in business comes through delivering predictable profit over an extended period of time. When it comes to online marketing you can use tricks to temporarily improve results, but just like steroids, quick gimmicks will catch-up with you sooner or later.

Increasing traffic, building trust, and increasing conversion rates each require multiple steps and a commitment to improving and adjusting over time. Just like baseball, just learning the basics will make a major immediate improvement to your performance. Once you know the basics it takes lots of practice, hard works and a dedicated coach to get to the big leagues, or just to make the varsity team. Great leadoff hitters occassionally strike-out, but striving to make small improvements over time will prove more valuable than trying to make one big splash followed by continued silence.

Circle Craig Baerwaldt on Google+

Local Search Engine Optimization

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:25:05 +0000

Thank you for coming to the Local Search Engine Optimization workshop Saturday in Nashville. If you made it to this blog post you probably liked what you learned and are ready to roll-up to sleeves and get to work. The links and notes below should provide some assistance in helping your business get found online. If you still have questions please visit our contact page.

GetListed.org
How local search data providers impact local listings
Why the consistent use of Name, Address, and Phone Number is critical.
Keep a list of the usernames and passwords you create on each of the local listing sites so you can make changes in the future.
Choose your categories wisely. On Google you may choose up to five categories, make sure to use all of them. It is okay to change your categories to reflect the seasonality of your business (Deck Repair – Spring/Summer, Christmas Lights – November/December).
Add Pictures to your profile. A 60 x 90 logo image, loaded into the first image position, is optimally sized for display throughout Google Maps.
If you don’t upload your own image, Google may insert content from other sites, which may not always favorable, as demonstrated in the image below.

Add videos to your profile
Encourage customers to write reviews of your business
Monitor your businesses reputation
- Create a Google Alert for Business Name, Phone Number, and Address
- Marchex Reputation Management Tool
Claim your listing on Bing
Claim your listng on Yahoo
Claim your listing on Best of the Web (Free version)
You can only do so much to optimize listing with the elements you control. A good rule of thumb is that 15% of optimization comes from things you can control on page, the remaining 85% of your ranking comes from off page elements such as, links, citations and third-party reviews.
Remember the silver bullet to Local Search Engine Optimization is doing a lot of little things right. Just like your business success is achieved by keeping your eye on the ball every day and continually monitoring and reviewing your progress. If you have further questions, please submit them using the contact form.

Circle Craig Baerwaldt on Google+

Social Media: The Digital Cocktail Party

admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:20:59 +0000

Welcome Mr. Handyman Franchise Owners, thanks for taking the time to check out my blog. I recently re-launched my website and plan on publishing a great marketing content to help your business Get Found, Build Trust and Get Results. You can subscribe to updates via RSS, or via email by click on the contact form and typing “subscribe” in the message box. Once you have opted in, I will email you future content updates. Below is a quick re-cap of the sites that I mentioned in Friday’s social media presentation.

Pre-Session The State of the Internet
The Conversation Prism
Google Alerts
Marchex Brand Management
Twitter Search
Mr. Handyman on Twitter
Mr. Handyman on Facebook
Mr. Handyman Blog
Most Reviews are positive
All Photos in my presentation were Creative Commons licensed via Flickr

If you have any questions or feedback about my presentation or the session in general, feel free to leave a comment below or submit them privately via the contact form. Thank you for the privilege to present at your convention and keep in touch.

Circle Craig Baerwaldt on Google+