I Have a Question for You:

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Dr. K

Richmond Web Marketing

How would you like to get to the top of Google and other search engines?

Only a year ago, some people didn’t even know what the point of that was. Now, almost everyone does. And I bet you do!

After all, you know that people no longer let their fingers do the walking in the phone book but on their keyboards. And when they type in what they’re looking for, YOU want to be right front and center in the results.

Maybe you’re paying through the nose right now with Pay per Click advertising. And you’re getting pitiful results. People KNOW those are ads. You want your listing where it counts — in the main search results section.

And we can help you make that happen…

P.S.: Want some proof we can do it?

Check out this blog post from WAY back on How Richmond Web Marketing Got to the Top Spot on Google!

And then go to Google and type in “Richmond Web Marketing (with or without the quotation marks) and I should still be there, way at the top of the page somewhere.

And, well, I just checked our Google rankings because I havent’ done that in a while and…

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Richmond Web Marketing Top 3 Spots on Google!

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OMG! We’ve got the top THREE spots on Google! (of the organic rankings — the three in pink above Richmond Web Marketing are paid advertisements!)

And yes, I can do that for you too (well, maybe not the top 3 spots, but I can get you up there).

Check out this example of our Richmond Car Mechanic site (and no, it’s not very flashy, but it sure ranks well):

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Richmond Car Mechanic on Page 1 on Google

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It’s the second “organic” listing on page 1, (at the bottom of the screenshot). And there are 227,000 competing pages! Not bad, huh?

Want more? Here one more screen shots for one my other websites:

Check out http://www.myfavoritewebstuff.com, for the keyword Favorite Web Stuff:

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Favorite Web Stuff Number 1 on Google
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Yup. That’s me on the first spot! Oh, and the second spot too! Out of 9,440,000 competing websites!

In the interest of keeping the loading time of this page reasonable, I’ll stop here. Maybe I’ll set up a separate page with a few more screen shots. This is kind of fun!

Here’s a do-it-yourself search: Google “The Blogging Course” and I’ll be on number 2, or, if you Google it as “Blogging Course” I’m still on spot 5 on the first page.

Also, check out “Self Help Blog” — where you will find http://www.myfavoriteselfhelpstuff.com generally within the top 5 (today it’s the third from the top).

And when you look for it under “Favorite Self Help” — I have the first AND the second spot, plus spot 7.

Enough bragging! I think you get the idea… ;-)

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How To Get More Clients and Sales in 2012

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Dr. K

How to get more clients and sales in 2012? You may be wondering about this right about now. And chances are you’re advertising too…

For example, are you advertising with Valpak or do you get new clients through Groupons? How’s that working for you?

Maybe you’re using billboards, or those trusty old Yellow Pages?

Either way, you’re paying THOUSANDS – and your results are… well, how are your results?

Probably not as good as you’d like.

Now I’m not saying you should NOT advertise in those places, but I am saying that you can get a whole lot of mileage out of those advertising venues when you get certain things right! Read on to find out how to make that happen.

How to get more clients – through Valpak

If you’re using Valpak, you’re paying a lot of money – about $300 per zip code I’ve been told, and you have to purchase a minimum of 3 zip codes. That’s almost a thousand bucks.

And who are you getting with those? Bargain hunters, penny pinchers, people who want to save a buck. Nothing wrong with that, but what happens after they’ve gotten their bargain? Will they be back?

Maybe, if you manage to let them know about another special. But most people won’t be able to because they miss the opportunity to get the permission of their new clients to follow up on a regular basis. Ask me about what that means, and how you can create your own coupons.

Others are really using their Valpak pricing as a loss leader, hoping to sell more at their regular price. Good luck with that.

Well, I don’t want to sound quite so flippant. You can benefit from those new clients and from your Valpak ads if you do a few things right…

What about Groupon?

Ahhh, Groupons. Let’s do some math. You’re selling your services for half price, and Groupon gets about half of your net take. So you’re basically selling your goods or services for 25% of their normal price. Or 75% off. Whichever way you prefer looking at it.

Are you making money? Really?

Or are you hoping your new customers will be back for more. A few of them might be, but most of them…. uhm. Probably not.

That’s because they too are bargain hunters and penny pinchers. They’re not all that interested in paying full price. They’re waiting for the next Groupon, advertising your competitors’ deals.

How to Get More Clients With Billboards? Or Not

Let me tell you about the four billboards I drove past the other day. Actually, it might have been five. All of them advertising the same basic thing, jewelry, from four (or five) different companies.

What do you think will happen next? If anyone happens to be on the market for some such services or goods, they’ll go home and barely remember whose billboard was the most appealing. so they check out – no, not the Yellow Pages.

They go online and type into Google something like “Richmond Jewelry” or “Richmond Jewelers” or whatever aspect of jewelry they’re the most interested in.

Anyway, so they type that into Google, and up pop – several of those businesses plus their competitors. Lots of different names. What makes them stand out?

Stars!

Reviews!

And none of the businesses on the billboards had ANY of that. In fact, they didn’t even have a decent local online presence.

There’s a big section of local businesses ABOVE the regular listings, all of them selling jewelry, and NONE of the four billboard advertisers were among them.

So chances are that they just wasted a few thousand bucks. Because not terribly many people are going to go and type in XYZ company when they go looking. They type in the type of product or service!

And if they want these people’s business, they need to look good. What does it take?

How to Get More Clients – For REAL?

It’s actually not that hard, nor is it as expensive as full-page ads in the yellow pages or big billboards along the interstate.

Find out how to optimize your local listings by giving me a call. I’ll tell you what you need to do next, and I’ll be happy to help you do it too.

Do what? Get really visible, and look really good to your prospects.

Request my special report by filling in the form at the top right of the page. And find out what you need to do to look good online.

And sell more stuff!

Happy New Year! Let’s make this year a total winner!

Elisabeth

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Double Your Business in 2012

Posted on March 26, 2011 by Dr. K

How would you like to double your business this year?

Does that sound a little too much like hype? Trust me, it’s very doable!

And by the way, I mean not just double your business, but double your profits or double your revenues! After all, it’s not about making more work for yourself, but about making your business work for YOU and make you more money — while providing excellent products and services for your clients and customers.

Can you really double your profits? Sure you can, but of course, there are differences in how to go about it, depending on just where you are already.

Still, the principles of what I’m going to suggest will work for almost any business, and they will work especially well for small businesses and micro business, solo professionals and solo-preneurs, and those are the ones I especially enjoy working with.

I’m not going to cover EVERYTHING here, but here’s the biggest factor:

Double Your Business Tip #1:

Get More Leads!

And there are a number of ways in which you can get those leads.

Considering that all other factors stay the same, if you increase the number of leads that come your way, you’re going to increase your business, just as long as you convert those leads at the same rate as you have converted your previous ones.

Here are the first few steps you need to take:

1) Find out how many leads you get currently

This is really a matter of getting a baseline so you can measure any improvement. And it’s the thing to do whether you’re dealing with number of leads or profits.

2) Don’t waste your time on getting the wrong kind of leads!

Don’t just go for the numbers. You want leads that are actual prospects. This means people who are interested in what you have to offer. You wouldn’t market high-end real estate properties to a crowd that is searching for bankruptcy lawyers, or to college students looking for bargain pizza. They’re simply not your market.

Instead, focus on attracting people who are looking for exactly what you have to offer, and you’ll get many more sales.

Case in point. If you were hiring someone to find you leads and that person would find you thousands of leads really fast, but 99.9% of those leads are duds, iimagine what would happen!

You’d be spending a HUGE amount of time and effort sifting through all those leads, with minimal results.

On the other hand, if you get a few dozen really targeted leads, with the majority being serious candidates for what you have to offer, you win big time! Almost no wasted effoirt in following up with those leads, because almost all of them will be happy to hear from you, and you’re likely to turn most of them into customers.

Make sense?

Then again, you probably knew that, right? Now the question is how to find them!




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3) Discover what’s working for you NOW

Why throw out the kid with the bath water. Find out what IS working for you right now. Then start by doing more of that.

Also take a look at your customers. You managed to attract them after all. So how did they end up becoming your customers. Do more of that.

4) Get more leads online

Whether your business is strictly local or not, you can get many more customers if you go online. That’s because these days people let their fingers do the walking on their keyboards.

Read some of the other posts to find out more about how to get in front of people online.

5. How to get those leads to come to you

You may also want to check out some cool tools I’m using myself to get the information out and website traffic coming in. Really targeted website traffic that is.

One of the tools that just became available is Marlon Sanders’ Traffic Dashboard. You can check it out here:



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But traffic is only part of the story…

If you’re truly ready to grow your business…

CLICK HERE to request my FREE report with not just one but FIVE ways you can double your business.

I look forward to helping you double your business!

Elisabeth

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How to Get New Clients? Getting Leads Is Just the Start!

Posted on March 12, 2011 by Dr. K

How are you doing with getting new clients? You know you need to get new ones all the time, to make up for those that fade away, for all sorts of reasons…

Why would they fade away? Well, some of them literally move away, and others have changing needs and preferences. Who knows.

Maybe the regular who showed up almost every week at your Italian restaurant now is into sushi or Chinese food, or maybe Thai. Who knows.

It’s a fact of life though that you have to refill your funnel of leads and turn them into clients on an ongoing basis. So how do you do that?

First, you need to get more leads. That’s the topic for another post (or you can go look in some of the older ones on getting more traffic).

And then, you have to actually capture those leads and turn them into clients.

All too many business owners skip those two steps. They have a website, and people visit that website, but then, they either appear on their doorstep or they don’t.

Unfortunately, those who don’t tend to be in the majority, but with a little extra effort you might have been able to capture their info and follow up with them, turning them into clients or customers too, sooner or later.

So here’s the key. Getting those people to your website cost you enough already, especially if you’ve done any kind of paid advertising, including Google’s Adwords.

Why not get the most bang for your buck and actually get their contact info so you can follow up. All it takes is a customer capture mechanism that allows you to preprogram a series of email messages that will be sent to them automatically in regular intervals.

And those messages are tempting enough to get them to open their email and read them.

That means, go easy on the sales pitches and provide value instead. Whether that’s tips or coupons or a combination of both, you’ll find that you’ll get a much better response than if you just tell them to come to your store already.

And of course, if you want some help with setting up such a system, I’ll be happy to help. Just request a complimentary website review at the top right of this site, whether you have a website or not. If you don’t have one yet, we can fix that fast.

After all, people still let their fingers do the walking, except now, they tend to walk on their keyboard, checking out what Google has to say, as they look for whatever it is they want.

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New Leads and Clients for 2011

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Dr. K

How’s 2011 going for you so far? I have a really good feeling for this year. Of course, it does require some action to make it into the best year yet…

And some of those actions have to do with getting new leads and clients. So what are YOU doing to get more leads and clients?

I’m going to share a few strategies that will help make that happen.

1) Make sure your prospects can find you on Google

That’s right. If they can’t find you when they’re looking for your services, your potential clients will go to your competitors. Ouch!

So what can you do? A LOT of things. For starters, make sure you can be found on page 1 for your major keywords.

Not sure what I mean by “keywords”?

Here it is in a nutshell. Consider how people would search for your products and services on Google…

If you’re an Italian restaurant, they’ll probably look for something like “Italian restaurant Richmond”. Okay, now type that into Google and see where you come up.

First page? Congratulations.

Nowhere to be found? You’ve got work to do.

This basic principle applies no matter what you do. If you’re a personal injury attorney, you better try to rank for “personal injury attorney Richmond” or whatever your location may be.

if you’re a plumber, you want to be found when people look for “Richmond plumber” or “plumber in Richmond” — preferably both.

If they can’t find you, they won’t hire you.

Need help? Just get your FREE website evaluation and I’ll give you some pointers and tell you want it takes to rank for those keywords.

2) Get out there

Here’s what happens when you really get yourself out there:

It’s great if people find your website, but you can maximize your results by creating more ways for people to find you. Here are just a few examples:

a) Twitter

That’s right! You need a Twitter account, gather followers, and tweet on a regular basis.

Tweet what? How about tips. Or let people know if you have posted something new on your blog. Or have written a new article. Or you’re offering a special.

And don’t forget to be a good citizen. Twitter is a community, so ask and answer questions, retweet or post good resources, and just be a pal.

b) Facebook

Facebook works a lot like Twitter, except that if you want to post offers and such, you better get a “Like” page. That’s what used to be a “fanpage.”

Watch for a post on how to do that in the very near future. In the meantime, just make sure you have a Facebook account and set up a “Page” for your business.

And start posting… (see note on Twitter). In fact, you can set Twitter up to post directly to your Facebook account. Just be careful. Facebook does not take kindly to overposting.

c) Articles

Aaaargh! Yes, I mean it. Write a few articles (or outsource that task) and post them in article directories (you can outsource that too).

I’m a huge fan of article marketing because I see the power of that strategy every day. If you play your cards right, you can accomplish a number of things by doing that, from increasing your visibility, increasing your perceived authority, thereby becoming the go-to person, and yes, you can even increase the rankings for your own website. Very cool.

So if you want to make 2011 the best year yet by increasing your website visitors, your leads, and your revenue, do some or all of the above.

d) Get help

And don’t forget to request your FREE website evaluation by signing up for one at the top right of this page and then replying to the email you get.

Looking forward to helping you boost your business.

Elisabeth

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