Sign Up For Local Business Center Search for Google Local Business Center or go to http://www.google.com/places/ On the homepage, click Sign Up Now. Fill out your Country, Company, Street Address, City, State, ZIP, Main Phone, Email address, Website, Description, and Category. Choose five different categories for your business, if possible. Click Add another category each [...]
Go to http://listings.local.yahoo.com/ and click the Sign Up button. Log in with your Yahoo account if you have one. If you don’t already have a Yahoo account, you will be asked to create one. Do so. In the Listing Details section, fill out your Account Contact Information, Location Information, Hours of Operation, Payment Methods You [...]
Angie’s list is a review site for service and health professionals. It is unique in that consumers actually pay for access to the site. That means more serious, and more qualified leads. Reviews from Angie’s List also find their way to Google Local so an Angie’s List review gives you double exposure. For businesses, it [...]
The funny thing about reviews and referrals is that you get a lot more if you ask! I don’t mean asking in an aggressive way. I mean reminding your customers in a polite way that referrals and reviews are the lifeblood of your business and are much appreciated. Reviews Being listed on Google Local Business [...]
Sign Up For Local Business Center
Search for Google Local Business Center or go to http://www.google.com/places/ On the homepage, click Sign Up Now.
Fill out your Country, Company, Street Address, City, State, ZIP, Main Phone, Email address, Website, Description, and Category. Choose five different categories for your business, if possible. Click Add another category each time you want to add an additional category. Custom categories are OK. When you have finished, click Next.
Fill out your Operating Hours and Payment Options. I highly recommend you upload a photo for your business. If you have a video for your business, add that as well. Add any additional information in the Additional Details section.
Click the Submit button.
I suggest you validate By Phone because that way you don’t have to wait around for three weeks for a postcard to arrive. To do so, just choose the By Phone option, till in the Contact Name box with your name, and click Finish.
Google will now call you and give you a PIN number. Type the pin number in the box labeled Enter PIN. Click the Go button next to the PIN.
Now you’re confirmed and your listing will show up in Google Maps for free. Not bad, huh?
Go to http://listings.local.yahoo.com/ and click the Sign Up button. Log in with your Yahoo account if you have one. If you don’t already have a Yahoo account, you will be asked to create one. Do so.
In the Listing Details section, fill out your Account Contact Information, Location Information, Hours of Operation, Payment Methods You Accept, and Additional Information. Click Continue.
Choose several categories for your business. Try to select the maximum number of categories if you can find enough relevant ones. Click Continue.
Review your listing. Click Submit. Enter the case-sensitive verification code and click I Agree.
Now you’re done and your listing should be up within a few weeks. More free advertising!
Angie’s list is a review site for service and health professionals. It is unique in that consumers actually pay for access to the site. That means more serious, and more qualified leads.
Reviews from Angie’s List also find their way to Google Local so an Angie’s List review gives you double exposure. For businesses, it is free to set up an Angie’s List profile so it is really a no brainer.
To set unlock your account, go to http://angieslist.com. At the top of the page, next to where it says Service or health professional?, click the CompanyConnect link. On the next page, click the large Register Now button at the top of the page.
On the next page, fill out the information in the Personal Information section. Click Continue.
The next step is just search to see if your business already has reviews on Angie’s List. You are more likely to find your business reviews if you only enter one or two fields at a time. Many businesses will not have any reviews.
Whether or not you have any existing reviews, click the link to add you business’s information to Angie’s List. You will be taken to the Confirm Company Information page. Fill out the information they ask for. Click Continue. You have now registered your company.
Click Continue again and you will now be taken to the Angie’s list My Account page. Here you can upload pictures and update the company profile you just filled out.
But rather than spending a lot of time managing your Angie’s List profile, I would recommend using your energy to try to get your customers to review your business on Angie’s List. Remember, a review on Angie’s List will also show up on your Google Local Business listing.
To get reviews, you have to ask for them. Post signs in your office asking your customers to review you if they are a member of Angie’s List. If you get a compliment from a patient, ask them if they are on Angie’s List. If they’re not on Angie’s list, just have them write a review for you on another website like Yelp or Google Maps.
The funny thing about reviews and referrals is that you get a lot more if you ask! I don’t mean asking in an aggressive way. I mean reminding your customers in a polite way that referrals and reviews are the lifeblood of your business and are much appreciated.
Reviews
Being listed on Google Local Business Center is so easy that many of your competitors are already listed there, and sooner or later all of your competition will be.
So how can you differentiate yourself from your competition? Reviews. Lots of good reviews. The best way to get reviews is to ask for them. For example, you could ask in your email newsletter. Also, when a customer thanks you for your services, you could mention that a Google maps review is much appreciated.
Another good idea is putting a link to your Google Local Business Center profile in your email signatures along with an invitation to leave a review.
At the end of the day a prospect is going to try to learn more about a photographer that has multiple good reviews. That can be good news for you if you can take advantage of it.
At present, it may not be that difficult for you to do this. Very few of your competitors are asking for reviews. When you don’t ask, you often get a disproportionate number of disgruntled customers leaving reviews.
Referrals
Referrals are, of course, the lifeblood of your business and the cheapest way to get new customers. You can remind your current customers of that and ask for referrals through your email newsletter.
You can remind current customers about referrals as they are inspecting a job well done.
You can include your referral reminder, along with how to submit a referral, in your personal and newsletter email signatures. That is a very passive, but persistent, way to remind folks of your referral program.
You can offer some type of incentive for referrals, such as a restaurant gift certificate. This is a very individual choice for a business, but a thank you card is definitely in order for those who do refer you.
What is the best time to ask for a referral? If there is one time to really make it clear how much you appreciate referrals, it’s when you receive a compliment from a customer for a job well done.
Google Adwords can be challenging, but it is a very powerful tool that is well-suited to your business. Once you get things set up right, it can be a cheap and effective customer acquisition strategy.
The concept behind Adwords is that you bid on keywords and if you bid high enough, your ad will appear in the area to the right of the search results. You can bid on any keyword, but your goal is to bid on keywords that people are actually searching for when they are looking for your service.
Adwords accounts are just a way to divide up your keywords and make sure the right ad is assigned to each. The accounts are hierarchical. Each account is divided into campaigns. Your campaigns are divided into ad groups. Your ad groups contain ads and keywords.
Many entire complex books have been written about Adwords. So obviously there is a lot that I will not get to. I’m just trying to tell you what you need to know to begin generating leads online.
Your goal with Google Adwords is to get people who are considering hiring a photographer to come to your site and click to your Free Consultation page.
Go to adwords.google.com. Click the Start Now button in the upper right hand corner. You will be asked if you already have a Google account. You should already have one from setting up your Google Local Business Center Account. Enter the email account details you are asked for.
Enter your Country, Time Zone, and Currency. Google will send an account verification email. Go to your email and click the link in that email.
Now go back to adwords.google.com. Login with the username and password you just created. It should take you to the Home tab where you will see several options.
In the upper left hand For new advertisers box, you will see a button that says Create your first campaign. Click it.
After, and only after, your Adwords account has achieved a return on investment that you are happy with, add your PPC campaigns to Yahoo and Bing.
Yahoo and Bing combined will only provide a fraction of the traffic that Google provides, but any extra clicks are welcome once you have an acceptable ROI.
Getting your ads to show on Yahoo and Bing is easier than it has ever been before. When Yahoo and MSN Adcenter’s partnership is finalized, you will only have to upload your ads to one place in order to get them to appear on both search engines. By the time you read this, that may already be the case.
The one place that you have to upload your campaigns to is Microsoft Adcenter.
I will just give you a brief overview of the process of copying your campaigns from Google Adwords to Microsoft Adcenter.
First, you have to set up an Adcenter account. You can do this at http://adcenter.msn.com. The process for signing up is very similar to Google Adwords.
Then, you have to export your campaigns from Google Adwords. To do this, you should download Adwords Editor. Adwords Editor is a software program that runs on your computer that allows you to make bulk changes to your account. It’s really handy.
From Adwords Editor, you will want to choose File then Export Spreadsheet then Export Selected Campaigns and Ad Groups.
Then login to your Microsoft Adcenter account. Click on the Campaigns tab. Click the option located above your list of campaigns to Import campaigns. You can then select the tile you downloaded from Adwords Editor.
Your campaign should be uploaded now. Check in Adcenter to make sure your cost per clicks are correct and your campaign is active.
You can add Microsoft Adcenter conversion tracking much the same way you added Google Adwords conversion tracking.
To do so, go back to the section of this book on Adwords conversion tracking. Open the tile where you inserted your conversion tracking code. Insert your Adcenter conversion tracking code directly before your Google Adwords conversion tracking code. Click Save.
Now you can monitor and adjust your Microsoft Adcenter campaigns the same way you did with your Adwords campaigns. When Bing and Yahoo’s integration is complete, you will be able to choose whether they appear on Yahoo as well.
If you’ve made it this far, your business now has a pretty robust Internet marketing presence. You’re probably ahead of the vast majority of your competition.
Your site may not be perfect. You Google Adwords campaign may not be fully optimized. Your email marketing lists may still be small.
Don’t worry about it! Internet marketing is an ongoing process. You shouldn’t feel like you have to make everything perfect immediately. The truth is that you’re never finished.
Look at that as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to take the process more seriously than your competitors. It’s a chance for your business to come out on top!
Internet Marketing is an ongoing process. The truth is that you’re never finished. See the process as an opportunity.
Maintain Your Presence
Most photography businesses put up a website and then call it a day. That is the end of their commitment to online marketing.
You have an opportunity to handle your online presence in a way that can give you a permanent advantage over those competitors.
Here are some things you can do to ensure that you’re getting the most out of every minute and every dollar you spend online.
Blog
This one is simple enough. Maintain your blog. Write the recommended number of posts per week (at least one).
Treat blogging as a process that must be done, just like cleaning your office or maintaining your equipment. Put someone in charge and check on their results. Don’t let them make it more complicated or time consuming than it should be. It’s just pictures of recent work and how they came to be.
Collect Customer Emails
This is another process that must be integrated into your everyday operations. You should ask for emails during someone’s first visit or even on the phone beforehand. You should follow up with them after a predetermined amount of time if they do not confirm their subscription.
The ability to communicate with your customers and prospects is very powerful. You can use your email list to bring in new customers, find referrals, and drive customers and prospects to other online marketing channels such as Facebook.
It is also important that you email your customers and prospects often enough that they remember who you are. Many people are subscribed to so many lists that they can’t keep up with them all. If they don’t remember signing up for your list, they might report it as spam.
Promote Your Facebook Fan Page
Remind your customers that you are on Facebook and invite them to follow you. Many won’t be interested, but some will. At the rate that Facebook is growing, increasing your number of fans will really pay off in the long run.
Be sure to post to your Facebook fan page occasionally as well. See the chapter on Facebook for more details.
Optimize Your Presence
Small improvements can lead to big results. That’s the Internet marketing mantra. Here are a couple of ways that you can really take your online presence to the next level.
Test Google Adwords Ads
With Google Adwords, there can be a thin line between success and throwing up your hands in frustration. Testing and optimizing your ad text can go a long ways towards making sure you end up successful.
The best part is that it’s pretty simple. All you have to do is add a second ad to each of your adgroups and then wait for the results. The full process is explained in the chapter on Google Adwords.
This technique is for the more adventurous photographers. This is not something you have to do, but if you would like to tackle it, it can profoundly improve your results.
Google website optimizer is an amazing tool that allows you to compare two variations on your site. For example, you could test the text above your form on your Free Consultation page.
To do so, you would tell Google website optimizer (GWO) what the two variations of text you want to test are. GWO would show half of your site visitors one variation and the other half would be shown the alternate variation. GWO will figure out which block of text is more effective at causing visitors to fill out the Free Consultation form.
Keep in mind that small improvements can make a big difference, especially in the world of pay-per-click advertising.
To use Google website optimizer, Go to www.google.com/websiteoptimizer
Follow the instructions. To use GWO with WordPress, you will need to download a plugin called Google Website Optimizer for WordPress. You can find information about it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-website-optimizer-for-wordpress/
To install it, go to your WordPress dashboard, click Plugins then Add new. Then search for Google Website Optimizer for WordPress and install it.
Here’s where their true power of conversion tracking lies: When you get more than 50 conversions in a 30 day period you can set Google to automatically set your keyword bids for you to maximize conversions.
That usually means more leads at a price you’re happy to pay.
That’s why we set your conversion up to be a visit to your Free Consultation page. Since it is an easier conversion than filling out and submitting the form, you will have more of them. You also don’t have to worry about the problem of counting folks who call instead of filling out and submitting the form.
The bottom line is that by using a visit to your Free Consultation page, you can get to 50 conversions faster and get CPA bidding turned on more quickly.
When you get to the point where you can set up CPA bidding, this is how you do it. Log into your Adwords account. Click the campaign that has 50 or more conversions in the last 30 days. Click the Settings tab. Click Edit next to the Bidding Option. Select Focus on Conversions. Then click Save and you’re done.
If you get this far, you are well on your way to mastering Internet marketing.