Online Marketing Strategies to Make Your Business Shine in 2017 | Part 7

(Video Transcription. See video below.)

Stephan: First in the areas of the circles you’ve identified on the worksheet. Meaning on this particular worksheet what I am going to tell you to do, whatever is highest.

So, let’s say this first row is word count, whoever the competitor is that has the highest amount of word count I just circle them. Just circle them and then you know that is the goal you want to shoot for.

For sure Google Analytics is tracking your website, specifically monitor bounce rate, visitor flow and overall traffic. Monitor your website rank with our rank finder tool, I tell you that more from a negative SEO standpoint than anything, and I guarantee you guys this year one of you guys is going to get whacked with negative SEO. It is we are seeing it ramp up. Why? Because it is a lot easier to take somebody out than to get somebody to the top. So, lazy SEO, unethical people are doing negative SEO.

And have an implementation calendar for ongoing updates. If you use Gmail or if you use Outlook just have a calendar where you hold yourself accountable and you say, “Alright. This month we are doing these fives things. Next month we are doing these next five things.” Just plan it out. When our back plans go about six to 12 months out depending on the client, and then we actually tell the client, “Okay listen, remember in three months from now we’re going to need this.”

So, if you have downtime next weekend you may want to [crosstalk]. Don’t procrastinate.

A couple of website tips as we are kind of wrapping things up here. For those of you guys who don’t want to do pay per click and you don’t want to do SEO, that is perfectly fine. Let me tell you guys a couple of things that we know will make a difference on your website.

Number one, explain to people who you are. People love a story. Go overboard telling a story. Let them know why they should care, why should they care to hire you? Let them know what your reputation is. There are great little plug in codes where you can now show what your Google reviews are, what your Yelp reviews are and so on and so forth. Place those on your website. Let them know how you can help them.

People buy with emotion and then justify the purchase with logic. I’m going to pick on you ladies for a second, that is especially true from you guys. So, if the product is purchased a lot by the ladies or hubby says, “I have got to go talk to my wife” it’s the emotional sale that is really what matters. Everybody knows your pool contractors. Everybody knows you probably have some pretty pictures of pools, and we know all that. But they bought you.

Make sure that you, who you are is what is actually on the website. Don’t make your homepage all about the fact that you are a pool contractor. I already know that I looked for one. Tell me how you are different, tell me why I should be picking you. Don’t tell me you’re the cheapest, don’t tell me you have the best quality. I am going to shoot myself in the head. Just tell me why? What is the passion?

You talk to us or we email you we are going to tell you how passionate we are, and we are. We are crazy. We are downright fanatical about this stuff. Why? We live and breathe it. And anybody that joins our company that gets hired, we know very very quickly if they are going to drink the Kool-Aid or not okay. It is very very exciting stuff.

There is nothing greater, and I am sure this is even happening to some of you guys where you have built your pool and somebody calls you or the end they just said, “You know I absolutely love what you did.” We are just thoroughly enjoying it, it is more than we have ever imagined. That is what we live for when somebody calls us and says, “Wow. My leads are way up. You guys rock.” Okay? That is what drives us and that is what you guys need to put on your website and let people know that is what drives you. Because we buy a promotion.

Everybody has to have a point of difference, if you don’t have one find one if you can’t find one ask us we will help you find one. Come to our booth.

By the way if any of you guys want to talk about something just come talk to us about the booth. We are not going to drop close you guys. If you think we know what we are talking about then you guys can make the decision if you want to buy in to this. We are here as a resource. So, any questions you guys have beyond this, please don’t hesitate.

Let me know how you have helped others, that is just a great reputation thing. If you have been in business for a long time, if you are involved in your community. If you lay any cherry work. Just let me know. It tells me part of the story and then have a call to action. Tell me what I need to do, I’m an idiot. Tell me what I need to do? Should I call you? What do you prefer? Tell me.

A lot of this I already touched on. A couple of points here. Your website is a scale score on a market and I already said that. There are two types of people that will come to your website, it’s the now prob versus the later crowd. The no prob will contact you now, the later they’ll come back. Here is the funny thing, on average about 87% of all website traffic is the later crowd. But you as business owners, what do you want? That next leap. So, what do you do? You build you whole website for the little 13%. Don’t do that.

Really be a resource. A great way to do that is with videos. Be a resource so that people can go, they have a reason to go to your website and get re-exposed to you. It also sends a message to Google that you are very relevant and that you have authority.

We’re a for profit company but we have three SEO tools, we do we need to do that? Why? Because I want you guys going to my website. I want you guys looking at this and saying, “Wow they really know what the heck they are talking about. Okay, maybe I should hire them”.

And that is the whole thought process here. But people buy different. Some want to do it now, some want to go ahead and do it later. Yes?

Male speaker: I just wanted to make a quick point. Something you brought up earlier with YouTube. I love YouTube but especially in our industry you have to be careful to kind of stay away from the how to videos because that promotes the unlicensed work or the homeowner trying to do it themselves and could potentially be bad for your company. But I like what you are saying about is that what you thought was the expert but do it in a careful way where you are talking about the benefits of products rather than here is I can install a pump. Please don’t accidentally touch the wire to the ground.

Stephan: I appreciate what you are saying but I fundamentally disagreeing with you and I will tell you why. Because again I am a big numbers guy. If you want to protect yourself that is fine throw a little disclaimer on the video. How to is one of the biggest things that are searched on YouTube.

If you want a video on how to electrocute yourself, knock yourself out. But you want to go ahead and have how to videos up there. One of the best performing videos that we ever put together was how to replace a roof shingle. Now do I really want somebody going up there and replacing their roof shingle and maybe falling off the roof or hammering and they nail in to their hand or whatever? No I don’t. But that is a very subtle disclaimer that you guys can go for.

On top of that there is a risk in everything that we do in business and for that I have insurance. So, I appreciate that comment, but I will tell you guys if you want to go the video route and express yourself as an expert how to videos are absolutely phenomenal. If you don’t want to go crazy on risk you can do something as simple as how to change the filter. It just kind of depends on what you want to do.

What is the website called? The bald guy where you can punch a keyword term and then it tells you–

Female speaker: Answer the public.

Stephan: Answer the public, write this down. Answer the public dot com. Thank you young person helping an old guy.

Answer the public dot com you can punch in any search term on for example pool pumps and it will tell you how many times how to replace my pool pump has been searched. How to do this, how to do that. And from that you can literally decide what videos you want to go ahead and make and then go from there.

Be a monster killer, we buy with emotion which pretty much means we buy with fear. There is an emotion that drives our purchase. The unknown frustration fear so on and so forth. So, you want to go ahead and be that monster killer on the website.

I touched on PR briefly. Implementation retention tools, don’t make the mistake of just chasing after a new customer. Also, maintain your existing customer base and use your website for that.

Kind of brushed through a couple of things here at the end. If you guys have any other questions please feel free to ask, if anybody did not get a worksheet, if you did not get our workbook– Which by the way that workbook is awesome, it is nothing but a bunch of checklists that you guys can hand to your web developer, that you can use to implement yourself. You never have to listen to me again, you can go ahead and use that particular booklet. Otherwise you are free to come talk to us or you can reach us there.

Thank you very much, you guys have an awesome day and an awesome life.
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