Are you wasting your marketing budget $$$ on Google and Social Media?
Thank you for all the emails and calls from Cranial Crush’s last article. I’m glad we were able to help some of you immediately! We promised more free advice and here it is… This will hurt and you might throw something, so take a deep breath first. Or go to the Scottsdale Gun Club for awhile.
Here are the two most common mistakes we have personally witnessed and corrected over the last few years.
- Google Advertising Account is not setup correctly or is on auto-pilot.
If you are advertising on Google and not tracking your key words, clicks, calls and conversion, you are wasting your money. I have seen thousands of dollars lost on business owners who look at Google impressions and jump for joy - but the conversion is not driving any new customers or traffic. Google Adwords does work, but you shouldn’t setup the account and walk away from the details. Google provides an amazing opportunity to connect with a prospect who is actively searching. It’s important to login at least once a week and look at your reporting, evaluate your clicks and tweak your ads and measure everything you can. Every business is unique and based on your product/service and location, you will need to tweak your account to bring in the best results for your investment. You should have a basic plan or goal in mind before creating your Google account and you should develop your ad and keywords over time, while constantly tweaking your landing page. A prospect who searched for you and found “$10 haircuts” on your Google ad, then clicked to a web page that didn’t reference $10 haircuts is most likely going to click away and not visit your salon. A lost sale simply because your Ad didn’t lead the customer to a web page that repeated the offer or message. Check your Adwords, read the free reports, study your customers and key words and please make sure your Ad message is clearly repeated on your landing page. You have a few seconds to gain a stranger’s trust in your business – so make sure to do everything you can to make that connection. - Spending too much time and effort on Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and Social Media, without a measurable plan.
This is a fairly new area of marketing that is very confusing to most people and not a good fit for every business. Additionally, without a measurable plan, your effort and time on Social Media will be a lost – you might as well go to the casino and just play slots for a few hours. A prospect does not care what you had for dinner last night, nor do they care that you are tweeting every hour. It’s just noise. Of course, if you are Charlie Sheen, you can tweet all day long and you’ll attract new followers – but Scottsdale Airpark Entrepreneurs are not Charlie and should not use his example as a role model. Many of you are so excited about the number of followers you have and are spending hours on your Facebook pages without gaining new customers. You are wasting your time. Facebook ads are also tricky – you can spend thousands of dollars to generate ads on Facebook and get millions of impressions – but are you reaching the right prospects? Or, are your ads for “$2 draft beer during Happy Hour in Scottsdale” getting seen by teenagers who can’t go to Happy Hour and are not interested in seeing that ad at all. It’s a fast moving world and you have to consider every vehicle to reach your customer, but without doing it right or managing your budget – you might as well have a billboard in the middle of the desert. And, I am sure your target market is not the coyote or the javalina who is walking by your signage. So, plan your social media strategy, decide what the follow-up communication best practices should be to connect with your customers – addressing both the good and the bad posts, and unless you are a celebrity – remember no one cares about how many shots of tequila you had last night. Those posts belong on your personal page – not on your business page.
As submitted to Scottsdale Airpark News April 2011
Entrepreneur Bootcamp
Does Your Website Suck?
Hello fellow Airpark businesses. After doing what I do for more than six years now and speaking to many of you about your domain names when I managed Domain Services at Go Daddy (I actually had to manually transfer each domain name by fax, remember those days?), I’ve noticed a thing or two about websites.
Here’s some free information that I hope will help out each of your businesses. Most of you guys have a decent product, service, idea or retail establishment. The Scottsdale Airpark is chock full of smart entrepreneurs who know what they know. But here’s the sad truth: Most of you have been ripped off by a bad web designer or spent time, money and marketing effort without success. Your websites generally suck. Why? Here are my top three reasons.
- Your website does not have your phone number listed anywhere, or it’s so small and hidden away that no one can find you. Then there’s the scenario where a web designer (who really doesn’t like talking to people) told you to tuck it away in flash or on a Contact Us page because that’s the “rule.”
Here you’ve spent money getting someone to click on your site, and then you lose all those prospects who wanted to call and make sure you were a “real” business and maybe ask for directions. Because they couldn’t find your number in less than five seconds, they moved on to a competitor.
A phone number that’s a click away is too far away. List your number, and answer the phone with a smile. You’ll be one step closer to getting paid. - Your website is confusing. I find your site but can’t understand if you sell to hairdressers, if you’re a salon, or if you’re a beauty supply store. You don’t describe what you do on your websites well.
Even worse, let’s say you have a beautiful picture and invested a ton getting your website designed, but once I get there, the site doesn’t speak to me, and I’m your target customer.
Tell your customers what you do and who you do it for. Make a clear statement such as “We sell the best scissors to hairdressers direct.” Done. Now I know what you do.
Read your content and take ownership of it. Too often web designers neither write nor read content. They copy and paste. - Your website lacks a call to action. I land on your site and like what I see. I try and click around to buy something or make a reservation, but I’m given no reason why I should buy from you right now. Maybe it’s midnight and I’m getting tired. I click away, forget about what I was doing and never visit your website again.
As submitted to Scottsdale Airpark News March 2011