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5 Ways to Use Social Media and Your Online Presence to Drive People Offline

Posted on 15. Feb, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, google places, Groupon, living social, olark, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, yelp

5 Ways to Use Social Media and Your Online Presence to Drive People Offline

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

No matter what your business sells, how it sells it or how and where people buy you it, people are going online to find it, pure and simple. That’s as true for those one of kind hand made earrings as it is for the spa and auto repair shop in their neighborhood.

Explore The Bruce via Flickr

And, it’s increasingly true for the local insurance provider, landscaper, plumber, attorney and tax professional.

So, what does this mean for the local small business? You’ve got to start thinking about your online presence as a central tool for driving people offline and into your store, sales presentation, meeting, demonstration, appointment or evaluation.

Below are five ways to think about your online activity as an offline opportunity generator.

1) Online calls to action

When people do find and visit your site make it easy for them to use your website to get a free pass, coupon or trial product.

Enable tools like click to call or chat from Olark, so they can get in touch right now and get their burning questions asked

Put a tool like GenBook on your site they can find a time and schedule appointment without needing to call.

Make sure that you have turn by turn directions and links to maps so they can find your business and even send the directions to their smart phone.

2) O²O advertising

Most people run ads to get people buy, what if you thought about your online advertising as a way to simple drive people offline – O2O?

Create local campaigns using Google Adwords that drive people to your website to take advantage of the calls to action, such a the free pass or coupon, that I discussed in the previous point.

Make sure that your Google Places page is complete and compelling and consider the coupon and advertising options available for this tool.

Look into Facebook targeted ads for your calls to action. You can target local Facebook folks all the way down to targeting fans of your competitors.

To make your O2O advertising even more effective create local landing pages for each campaign or even neighborhood you are targeting.

3) Networked networking

Offline networking is still a great way to create and build potential relationships, but you can really amplify this tactic when you add some simple online tactics to your networking efforts.

When you connect offline with a prospect at say a Chamber event, move to also connect online and watch how much faster you can build a relationship.

Employ Social CRM tools like Rapportive or Nimble so you can easily connect the social profiles of anyone you meet to their record. This will make it much easier to learn how to connect.

Look at tools like MeetUp that make it easy to create offline events and gatherings using an online marketing system.

4) Local social groups

Most social networks give you the ability to create groups. Some organizations have had tremendous success by creating and facilitating local, special interest groups on networks like LinkedIn.

The key here is to think “interest group” and not something that’s clearly a promotional tool for your business. If you can create an industry group or some other niche topic that allows your customers to explore and expand an interest they have, you’ve hit on a formula that’s very potent.

5) Online and on the go

Increasingly, our prospects are not only online they are mobile while doing so. There are some very creative ways to take advantage of this fact and drive people with great buying intent offline.

First off make sure you claim your location on sites like Yelp, Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. This way you can enhance the details and make sure people using geo location services can check in at the right place.

Create and test an offer on a service like Foursquare that can help highlight your business when someone checks in at another nearby business.

Look into the group coupon tools like Groupon, Google Offers or Living Social, but make sure you’re ready to capture the leads these programs produce in a way that allows you to turn a low profit sale into a long term customer.

Think about ways to create check-in games that you could use as part of a promotion. Get a group of strategic partners to participate and offers special deals for people that have checked in at a number of your partners on Foursquare of that take a photo of their purchases at a number of partners and posted it to Twitter or Instagram.

As you can see, the way you can employ this kind of thinking is limited only to your imagination, but there’s no denying the importance and effectiveness of this strategy.

5 Tips for Content Marketers on Google Places Optimization

Posted on 27. Dec, 2011 by Ashley Zeckman in B2B, B2C, Blog, google places, local marketing, Local SEO, mobile, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Local and mobile search is being used more frequently by customers on their smart phones and other devices now more than ever.  As local search becomes more and more prevalent, marketers must ask themselves what can they do to incorporate this marketing strategy into their arsenal.

According to a recent release by ComScore, nearly 3 billion search queries contain local terms each month.  For companies that have a local presence, top visibility on local search is essential or that traffic will simply go to competitors.  Google Maps is one of the most frequently used local search destinations and even comes standard on many devices including the iPhone.  Google Places provides a great opportunity to begin marketing on a local level to your potential customers.

A best practice approach to local online marketing will greatly increase your chances of success.  The Google Places optimization tips listed below will help you create or modify your Google Places page to become more relevant to both search engines and potential customers.  I’ve also included suggestions on how this .

Consistency Is Key

It is important that your Google Place profile contains the same information as any other profiles your company may have online. Google Place pages create another opportunity to build trust and consistency as part of your marketing strategy. Be sure to audit your other profiles and answer each question as consistently as you can.  There are some additional ways you can create consistency on your profiles such as:

• Linking: improve searchability by linking your additional profiles together
• Imagery: utilizing the same imagery on multiple place pages will create consistency
• Branding: consistency in naming and referencing your brand is extremely important

*Content Marketing Tip: Go back to basics.

• Are you using the same contact information for each of your social profiles or business pages?
• Do each of your social profiles or business pages reflect your current management team or employees?

Complete All Information (Even if it is Not Required)

Have you ever heard the expression “better off safe than sorry”?  Take the same approach when setting up or editing your Google Places profile.  There may be questions that you consider irrelevent but could ultimately have an impact on how you are found online.  Make sure that you are filling out all standard information including:

• Company Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• Website
• Email Address

Adding additional elements to your page such as photos or videos are also an opportunity to optimize your content and share a little bit more about your company with your prospective clients.

*Content Marketing Tip: Take an audit of your other local and social based marketing initiatives.

• Have you completed each profile to the best of your ability?
• Can you repurpose some of your existing content for your Google Place page?
• Brand focused images used on other social profiles can be repurposed for your company Google Places page.

Encourage Interaction & Reviews

User generated content can be a very powerful optimization tool.  Actual customers may be using additional or different keywords or phrases to describe their experience with you.  Reviews also add validity to your statements and information written by your company.  Nothing speaks higher of a company than the testimonials of it’s customers.  I would recommend encouraging customers or clients to participate or simply urge them to visit your page and see what they think.  Some additional ways that you could encourage interaction would be:

• Posting video testimonials on your Google Places page
• Encourage clients to upload photos of themselves at your establishment or with your team

*Content Marketing Tip: Moderate, moderate, moderate.

• Are you currently moderating comments on your blog, website, or social profiles?
• Are you making a point to interact with your potential customers online?

Keywords

Including relevant and purposeful keywords in your Google Place profile is a strategic way to increase optimization.  However, you will want to avoid over stuffing your description with keywords or utilizing keywords in your business name that are not relevant to your offering. Do your research up front utilizing your analytics account to determine what keywords are appropriate for your business.

*Content Marketing Tip: To create an effective strategy you must research, implement, and adapt.

• Use keywords in your file names to improve optimization
• Update your information frequently to provide fresh content

Focus on Your Specialties

Do not be afraid to add details about your service offering, solutions, or products that will help your customers find you.  A simple analysis of your google analytics account can tell you what keywords users are searching for to find your company.  Do your best to use those descriptions in your company overview and specialities area.

• Think of what your customers will be looking for and provide imagery or documentation that will show your expertise.

The example included above separates this company from their competition.  I would venture to say that of the companies that came up in my search this for “Tire Repair, Minneapolis” their profile was the most consistent and complete.  Instead of having to further investigate on the company on their website I was given adequate information which would led me to contacting them immediately.

An optimized Google Places page is a marketing tactic that does not take a lot of effort but can have a very large impact on your searchability.  As with any online marketing strategy it is important that you present factual and consistent information for your customers or clients.  If you are ready to get started or make some change to your existing profile be sure to visit Google’s Getting Started page which will help you through the process.  Do you have an idea of how many of your customers have found you on Google Places? If so have you encouraged them to interact with your page and share feedback?

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Optimized Reviews May Be the Next Local SEO Edge

Posted on 14. Jun, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Descriptive Terms, google maps, google places, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media

Optimized Reviews May Be the Next Local SEO Edge

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I’ve suggested often that reviews in your Google Places and Yelp pages have become a very necessary aspect of trust building as well as local SEO. So much so that getting proactive in stimulating reviews in all the right places must be on the checklist of marketing action steps.

Today Google added an interesting twist to Google Maps searches called Descriptive Terms that injects another dynamic – search optimized reviews. Google has started indexing local search results with phrases that accompany things like reviews. So if you search Marketing Agencies Kansas City, MO you get one set of listing and if you add something like “digital work” to the search the list changes based on words in the reviews.

Right now this is just a Google Maps function, but Google claims it will spread in Place search on Google.com and Google Maps for mobile soon!

Better start suggesting keyword phrases for those reviews people are anxious to write.