Archive for category: Uncategorized

We’ve dealt with many companies and websites in a search engine optimization capacity. The search engine optimization world is one surrounded by mystery. Although there is a thriving online community, search engine optimization is not typically offered as a course at schools or universities around the country. It is very much a skilled learned through experience.

But, often time’s companies or “SEO experts” don’t know exactly what they’re doing. Not only is this unacceptable as you may be paying these companies or individuals good money, but in the long run some techniques employed by less experienced search engine optimizers or those willing to take short cuts can cause your site to become permanently banned by the search engines.

Over the years we’ve learned that education is the key to success. Whether you’ve just begun the process of looking for a company to provide search engine optimization services, are well along the process, or already have a company you’re dealing with and want to make sure they’re doing things correct this is a helpful and simple 5 question guide:

1) Can you get my website to the top of the search engines?

This is an important question, and one you may have already planned to ask. What you want to look for is whether or not the company digs deeper and what their response is. For example you should expect to hear things like:

what would you like to rank for?
are their competitors in your market that you believe have a great web presence with search rankings you would like to emulate?

Without intimate knowledge of your industry as well extensive research it is hard to know what you really need to rank for and whether the terms you think are important will actually drive results.

Additionally watch out for too quick of an answer. Although a great search engine optimizer may be able to get you to #1 for something you want, it should never be guaranteed and it isn’t an overnight process.

2) Once my site is created, how do you make sure I show up on the search engines?

Many search engine optimizers or firms will talk about website submission. In reality all that is really needed for search engines to know that your website is there is a link (from any site on the Internet) back to your site. Some firms may talk about repeated search engine submission, but this is completely unnecessary and could actually end up hurting your rankings as the repeated blasts may be considered spam. One key thing to look out for when discussing this question is the mention of sitemaps and webmaster tools. Many powerful websites (content management sites, shopping carts, etc.) can automatically create a sitemap (a single file that shows the location of every page on your site). When this file is setup under a search engine’s webmaster tool console it can help significantly to increase your rankings and should be a staple of any search engine optimizers toolset.

3) What is link building, do I need it, and how do I do it?

3 questions in 1, I know, but this one is important.

Although on-page optimization (the way your website is built, text, etc.) is important, link building comes in at a very close second. Yes you do need link building! And the company you commission needs to assist in this process. If they don’t mention this run the other way. Your website needs links-in from other websites across the Internet to help you rank well. Links act like votes of confidence – the more you have, the more powerful your site. There are a number of quick ways to get links, but link building is a long process, but well worth the time or expense.

One thing to watch out for in link building campaigns is the creation of many smaller websites that then link back to your main site. Although in theory it is not a bad idea the truth is because of the nature of the search engines it is a colossal waste of time and money that would be better spent actually building quality links to your main site – from existing established sites throughout the Internet.

4) How do you measure the SEO process?

The advent of new tools and technology has made the measurement of search engine optimization and your website’s overall success easier than ever. Another key component to a successful search engine optimized site or campaign is the installation of proper metrics tools and the review both by the company being commissioned, as well as you the site owner. Like many things search engine optimization varies depending on a number of different factors, so implementing techniques is important, but measuring and refining are key next steps.

5) Do you start with pay per click marketing?

A good search engine optimization campaign should start with pay per click marketing and the company you commission should at least suggest this, even if you are opposed to it.

Why should you start with pay per click marketing?

Well, to understand why you have to start with pay per click marketing you have to first understand the difference between paid search (PPC) and organic search (search engine optimization). Organic search engine optimization is a long process. When you first launch your site it can take weeks or months for the search engines to even place you. On top of that, it will take months and sometimes years to rank well for competitive terms. Additionally, organic search engine optimization is not done for thousands of different key terms and phrases. It typically involves just a handful of terms, and is very specific.

Pay per click marketing or paid search on the other hand is immediate; allowing you to get in front of your audience right away and usually includes thousands of key phrases. You will literally pay for ads or listings when certain key phrases are searched for.

So, before you spend the time and money on all of the little details that help your site rank well organically (search engine optimization) how do you know what terms to select?

Research! And the best way to accumulate that research (while bringing in qualified customers) is through paid search. Paid search is the ultimate research tool and will help weed out less popular or less desirable terms and illuminate well performing key terms all while driving desirable traffic that will help your site get customers, leads, sales, etc.

Ask these five questions, analyze the answers questions carefully, and use your best judgement!

Feel free to give us a call at 404-664-8135 with any questions at all.

Are you struggling to create a memorable positioning statement or USP (Unique Selling Proposition) for your marketing? Do you want to stand out from your competition, but the uniqueness of your business seems to elude you? Here’s a sneaky, vital secret that turns conventional marketing psychology on its head. By changing your positioning statement, find out how to transform your weakest link, into your strongest marketing strategy ever!

Avis Is Only Number 2. So Why Go With Them?

Years ago, in the rental car market, Hertz was chugging along merrily, with Avis a distant second. With one Problem-Based USP, Avis closed the gap. Their catch phrase, We’re No.2, We Try Harder, ignited the minds of the target audience like a rampaging bush fire. They turned a liability into an asset.

Southwest Airlines took to the skies with a similar message. We’re Smaller Than Everyone Else, they told us, while gently explaining why their service was dramatically better, as a direct consequence of their size. They also turned a liability into an asset.

In 2001, Harley Davidson proudly boasted how their CEO was 38th on the waiting list for the company’s then, new V-Rod motorcycle. And they took pains to describe how each Harley was lovingly rolled off the plant. The waiting period, which normally would be perceived to be a negative, was turned into a publicity coup that burned a stamp of quality and a uniqueness into the brains of every prospective Harley owner.

All of these companies took a cold, hard-nosed look at reality. The superlatives in their business had been taken. Instead they unearthed their USP, in what most people would consider a disadvantage of sorts.

Are You Doing What Sally Did?

Sally is one heck of a real estate agent. Barely six months into real estate, and she’s already forging a red-hot path into the top ten salespeople in the country. While her talents and persuasive powers are formidable, there’s a little something that puts her head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.

That Little Something Is A USP On Steroids!

If she chose to be unimaginative, Sally’s USP or tagline could have ended up as pretty run-of-the-mill. It could have ranged from a tacky, Residential Properties for every budget, to utterly boring, Getting Top Prices for Your Home. All of which would see her struggling to stand out, in a dog-eat-dog me-too marketplace.

A goody-gum-drop USP would get her nowhere in a hurry. She needed a USP with rocket fuel in its tanks. Something that would reach out and demand your attention without hesitation.

If You Sold Your Home In A Week or less, You Probably Got Too Little

That’s the USP that Sally created. Can you see what I mean? Doesn’t that USP go for your jugular? Sally’s target audience is sellers, not buyers. If you just sold a house, wouldn’t you feel a twinge of regret? What if you were about to sell a house?

Wouldn’t you be curious to find out just a little bit about what Sally does to lasso in a higher return? And wouldn’t you be just a little bit wary if the next real estate agent you met told you that she could sell your house in next to no time?

You’ve just witnessed the psychological power of the Problem-Based USP.

How To Create A Knockout USP For Your Business

Let’s assume you’re in the wine selling business. To own real estate in a customer’s brain, you’d have to do battle with about a zillion other wines. Yet decades ago, Paul Masson cut through the clutter with a simple statement. We sell no wines before their time. With charming simplicity, they turned a negative waiting period into an exploitable advantage.

You too can turn your liabilities into assets. Stop screaming about how magnificent you are, and look for the apparent glitches in your business.

The Biggest Reason Why You Should Search For The Hiccup In Your Business Strategy

Finding what makes you beneficially different is a notoriously difficult task. However, just about any client or potential buyer will very quickly identify your weaknesses and liabilities. If it’s a technical problem, you can fix it. If it’s a conceptual problem such as speed or price, it is much harder to fix.

This, however, is the key to your success. The more you try to keep your weaknesses and liabilities under wraps, the more customers will uncover them. On the other hand, take a liability and turn it into an asset. Expose a problem to the harsh glare of the spotlight and transform your frog into a prince.

This brave act will gain the instant admiration and support of your clients, while giving you a USP that others simply won’t have the guts to match.

Can You Make The Leap?

Creating a negative USP is a tricky, dangerous tactic, and one not to be taken lightly. “We’re slow and proud of it!” is hardly a selling point, yet fulfills the requirements laid out in the article. However, if you’ve been struggling with your USP, as many companies do, this is a tactic that may work well for you—as it has with some of the companies above.

It’s time you tickled your customer’s brain with some sharply focused psychological marketing jujitsu. Find the weaknesses and liabilities in your business, carve them into a dynamic USP, and the attention your business has been craving for, will be yours forever more!

Have you had current or potential customers die on you while you’re speaking to them? You’re giving them this outstanding description of your process and capability and it’s going bing, bong, kazoom over their heads. Want to know why this happens? Read on because you’ll find the whole problem is actually your SOLUTION.

Doesn’t Make Sense?
Don’t worry. Within the course of this marketing article, you will find out just what it is that gets your clients attention and how to keep that attention, by shifting your marketing strategy from solutions to problems.

The Problem With Solutions
When you ask someone what they do, they usually spit out their process that they see as being a solution to your problems. So a person who cuts trees and mows lawns would say, ” I cut trees and mow lawns.”

I have a lawn mower, so that eliminates him completely, doesn’t it?

Bringing the problem to the fore, triggers a totally different response altogether. If the same person said, “Do you have a less than immaculate garden?” My response to the query would be, “Yes, maybe I do”.

Having established the problem, he now is in a position to know that I have a need for his service. Even better, he has brought to my notice, a problem I didn’t realise I had.

Always Work With A Problem
If you notice people around you, all of them are beset with problems. If you were to stand up and say, “Who has a cold that they just can’t fix?”, you will get about 6-7 hands going up instantly.

This happens because you’re attacking a problem. Obviously, they assume you have the solution, but by bringing their attention to the problem, you are targeting their specific needs. Once you’ve got their attention, it’s now time to make your pitch and give the specific target audience the solution.

The Beauty Of Problems
Solutions fall far short of the mark. Problems however go the full distance and more. If you noticed, in the previous example, I had two target audiences. One was the immediate target-the ones with the cold. The other- was the ones who were going to get the cold (no doubt from their illustrious colleagues). The secondary audience has no need for my product because it doesn’t have the problem. But in a week or so, as the germs move homes, the second audience too will be potential customers.

A solution on the other hand does less than a quarter of the job, if at all. It has been proven time and time again, that you cannot sell to anyone who doesn’t want to buy. The only reason someone would want to buy a product or service from you is because, it is solving some problem that is not being tackled currently.

Your First Task Is To Qualify The Problem
Find out what is your current client’s problem and then call their attention by reconstructing your statement in a problem-solution-target audience sequence.

Problems tend to perk up the ears of your target audience. Once you’ve achieved that, you then give them the solution (sometimes one crafted specially to their needs) and they understand the concept and respond to it.

Be Aware Of Your Specific Target Audience
Ask anyone who their customers are, and they usually say everyone. Then take a look at the newspaper classifieds. Businesses are always looking for specific positions to hire, people are always specifying exactly the kind of person they would like to meet in the personals.

Yet, you look at major advertising and the target is everyone…So which advertising actually works better? I don’t think I’d be too off the mark to state that dollar for dollar, the classifieds (thanks to their positioning) achieve far, far more than huge multinationals.

An Example That You Can Learn From…
One of the recent advertising campaigns that has done well to learn the concept of sacrifice is Jeans West. They have sacrificed colour, style and any other tags that competitors are running. They focus totally on their positioning which is Fits Best. The ads go on to demonstrate the price of time. One woman says, “These jeans cost me 2 hours.” Another says, “These jeans cost me 45 minutes.”

Can you see the target audience here? It’s specifically people who have a problem getting the right fit. Simple, isn’t it.

Most people would look at that and say, “Isn’t that too small a niche?” You think so? Think again. By getting their tiny little niche, they have stamped themselves very clearly in the minds of customers.

It’s quite clear how Jeans West, and their really smart ad agency have done their homework and created a targetted marketing strategy.

Problem: Wasting time finding the right fit
Solution: Finding the right fit in no time at all
Target Audience: Jean lovers that need the right fit

Empower Me, Don’t Tell Me!
I get e-mail from a travel agent every now and then. In the e-mail he gives me information that I could get just about any where. It has prices of airfares, new destinations and other such things that I could find with a little help from the newspapers or the Internet. Notice there’s no problem there. It’s all about solution, solution, solution.

I don’t have any need to travel right now and so I delete the email because it provides me with no tangible solution. When I decide to travel, the situation will have changed and none of their wonderful solutions will apply to me.

On the other hand, do you have trouble getting 10kg past the check-in counter? Or would you want to know of a foolproof way to beat jet lag? Or wouldn’t you like to know the tricks to get upgraded on your flight?

Most of us would answer yes to almost all these questions because they present problems that need to be solved. The travel agent has spent years in the business and knows stuff that you and I haven’t got a clue about. Important tips that we could carry around in our heads for years to come and use them as and when the problem presents itself.

How People Respond
Every problem is a trigger and when people run into that situation, they respond to your solution. Be sure, however, that the solution is not a passing fad, here today and gone tomorrow.

Also remember, when you empower people it adds to their knowledge. If you’re selling an expensive computer to a company, it’s not worth it telling the purchaser about the technical specifications and how it runs.

Figure out the problem and tell him how the technology will solve that problem. Remember he has to report to his boss and the boss has to report to the shareholders.

When you empower them with the problem and the solution, they can relay that on further, thus giving the whole process a sense of legitimacy.

It doesn’t matter however, whether you sell computers, air tickets or wine. The same principles apply and you will find that not only your sales, but your thought process and alertness increases in leaps and bounds simultaneously.

Your Strategic Action Plan
1) Find the unique solution you provide.
2) Differentiate it from all your obvious competition.
3) Find out the problem it throws up.
4) Target your audience very carefully.
5) To stay top of mind, give out information that throws up problems for which you provide solutions.
Hungry? Try the 85c McDonald’s Burger!
See the problem? See the solution. Great communication in advertising comes from great marketing. And great problems!

Go out there and find yours!