Local Business Marketing Case Study
Local Business Marketing Case Study
Are you ready? Sit down grab your favorite beverage and just like learning the secret to an amazing trick you just saw embrace the simplicity and maybe even the mad genius!
When you purchase a magic trick the instructions are broken down into 2 major parts. The effect or what the spectator (in this case the client) sees and then the secret.
What makes the ‘trick’ work?
The Effect:
The spectator (Business owner) wants to increase their internet presence and may not be showing up in the search engines.
After a few weeks and lo and behold you are moving up in the ranks! After a little while longer you are on Google Page 1 and slowly but surely dominating the SERPS (You can ALWAYS add video to take over even more position! And when you ask new clients how they found them they say ‘Online’
The Secret:
You list your business in a bunch of local directories.
See I told you sometimes the secret isn’t as amazing as the outcome!
Now there is a little more to it than that. In the next section I’ll show you how to optimize them, and some tricks to ‘reverse engineer’ your competition.
After a month or so of this I also noticed this…
On average the directories were about 16% of his traffic!
I also noticed that he was creeping up (if you call from being on page 12 to going to page 1 in less than 45 days creeping) in the search engine results!
At one point the client told me that he had 4 phone calls and new patients that found him ‘online.’
Why Directories:
There are many reasons why you as a business owner would want to get listed with the top directory sites.
Here are a few bullet points about why a business should be listed in online directories.
· Searches within local directories account for a whopping 10 billion of the searches that are made every month. ~GetListed.org
· 90 per cent of users on Yelp say that if a business has a positive review, they are more likely to buy from them. ~Mashable.com
· Approximately 45 per cent of users say that when they perform a local search, they are doing so with the intention of making a purchase. ~InternetWorldStats.com
· When looking for a local offline business, 70 per cent of online users will use local directories to find them. ~Kelsey Group
· 72 per cent of users say that they treat positive reviews just as they would getting a personal recommendation from a friend or family member.~Mashable.com
· 88 per cent of customers who look for a local business through their smartphone call or visit that business within 24 hours. Google Mobile Movement Study~Yola.com
Here are 10 of the top directories business owners
should be listed in. (In no particular order.)
1.Yelp! Currently this is the 800 pound gorilla in the directory world. I’ve seen Yelp! results appear in the top search results not only for a business name, but in a business category for a city.
2. Google+ This is even more important coupled with reviews since Google merged the reviews with the website listings.
3. Bing Places Although Bing does not have the market share that Google does the amount of searches and traffic is still significant. While most marketers don’t bother with Bing, I include it in my reports. As a marketer, I like to take credit for everything that I’ve done.
4. Merchant Circle
5. Foursquare Foursquare is a pretty popular site with strong social signals.
6. LinkedIn While not a typical directory per-se, this is one site that a business should have a presence in.
7.Manta
8.City Search
9. Kudzu This site also has ‘badges’ you can earn by getting favorable reviews. You can then use these to advertise that you were ‘Voted the Best’ in your category in your city.
10. Local.com
Those are the top 10 that every business should be listed in. Later in this report, I will show you exactly what directories I placed the client in to achieve the results listed in the example.
Here are some of the benefits of being listed in directories.
· Increase traffic to a website. I’ve seen as much at 16% of overall traffic to a website coming from directory sites!
· Helps a business stand out in front of potential customers.
· Helps with SEO.(Search Engine Optimization)
*IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT SEO*
I’ll also talk about this late, but I want to make sure that you are aware of this. While it does have some positive SEO like effects, it is NOT SEO!
Getting Started:
The first thing you need to do is gather some information in one place. You will need a picture of yourself, a picture of your logo, what your business hours are.
Step 0: Now this might seem strange to have a ‘step zero’ but this is something that I do before I even start to do the actual listing. I do step zero, (which takes 5 minutes)
You need to track some urls, and some keywords. What I use is a product called proranktracker.com. The free version will let you track up to 20 keywords across multiple search engines.
I usually have these keywords tracked for 3-5 days to get a baseline on their rankings.
As I mentioned earlier, this is NOT pure SEO, but it can and more often than not DOES have some pretty drastic impact on some kw rankings for the main website.
Step 1:
After you have compiled all of the information above the first thing you need to do is establish a master Gmail account for your business. I use generic information.
One thing that I recommend that you do is use your business name as the Gmail account.
The reason why you need to have a generic Gmail account is that you will have to verify their accounts as you create them and by agreeing to the Terms of Service most of the time you get placed on a marketing list. You DO NOT want to be getting a ton of emails cluttering up your primary email account.
After you have established the Gmail account, make a master list of passwords and accounts in your google drive. You will need this for a couple of reasons.
*WARNING* DO NOT use the word passwords in any of your google docs. There is a chance that Google will delete access to the doc, because they think you are compiling passwords. What I do is just put the password in the spreadsheet, but I don’t label it as a password.
If you need to go back and make some changes or add more details. Sometimes you will need to re-verify and some directory listings are only good for a year so you need to go back in re-verify or in some cases’ redo them.
*NOTE* You can use LastPass or Roboform to keep track of passwords for you as well.
The other thing is to keep track of WHERE you are placing yourself and your listings.
Step 2:
The next thing you need to do is to go to your website. While you are there you need to gather the items listed in the previous step. You want to copy and paste the info in a TEXT FILE. DO NOT USE WORD OR A WORD PROCESSOR.
IT MUST BE A TEXT FILE!
The reason for this is that it will make your life sooo much easier. Word and other programs have funky fonts, and who knows what kind of weird font is on the clients website. These programs also add other stuff that you can’t see and some directory sites if you cut and paste will add some extra characters and wing dings that can screw with your listing.
You may have heard of some automated listing services. I get asked about this and I have one thing to say. Stay away from them!
While they blast out a bunch of citations and directories I’ve seen stuff get screwed up. If you cancel your subscription some of your listings will ‘magically’ disappear. I’ve seen in some cases 70% of the client listings disappear.
Step 3:
Now it’s time to ‘craft’ your description. Like I mentioned earlier, you can get most of the information from your website.
You don’t need to stuff the description with keywords like the location, but use modifiers where possible. An example of this would be Gonstead Chiropractor Fargo, ND
It still has the main KW Chiropractor Fargo ND (which gets about 1,000 search per month) and the modifier Gonstead which is his specialty and give a long tail keyword with less competition to really take over page one
While you are crafting your descriptions it is VITAL that you have the business listed EXACTLY the way it is on their Google+. If you don’t then Google get confused and it can kill your rankings.
An example of this would be the business name on the website is Friendly Smiles Dentistry VS. Friendly Smiles Dental Clinic. They are the same business but two different names.
You also need to make sure that EVERYTHING matches. Now there is some controversy and no definitive studies on if a business is listed at 4th St. compared to 4th Street has any effect the same for Suite VS. STE.
Just to be on the safe side I listed everything EXACTLY the way it was on the website and your Google Plus listing.
A lot of marketers are using tracking numbers. Tracking numbers are AWESOME… for the phone book. (If they still are listed there LOL)
DO NOT PUT A TRACKING NUMBER in a directory. It will confuse the search engines.
The biggest mistakes I’ve seen is when a business has a few listings they hear from their buddies or get some free online marketing advice and they make up their own descriptions or believe it or not-mis type their phone number.
This really screws things UP!
Since this is primarily for LOCAL use the local number avoid using the Toll Free number.
The other thing is to make sure that the URL is listed correctly.
I always include the http://www.<business name> throughout the listings.
Once you have the basic description filled out now it’s time to go and add the listing to the directories.
Some sites don’t have a spot for the business URL in cases like that I always put the site URL in the description.
If you have not claimed their Google Plus listing you need to do that too.
Step 4:
Now it’s time to claim or create the business listing.
The first thing you want to do is do a search for the business using the broad category.
Some sites will actually use a business search by phone number. It all depends on the site. If you can’t find a link that says ‘Claim or Edit Your Listing’, usually towards the bottom in the footer, there will be a link that says ‘Advertise With Us’ or ‘Add Your Business.’
One of the crazy things is that not all business directories operate the same way. Some of them will have you search for a business by the business name. This is where Dentistry VS. Dental Clinic can screw things up.
Some directories will have you search for the business by a phone number lookup.
If the business owner has the toll free number listed and you are searching for the local number that will bring back bad data.
Every website will want you to register and to create a log in. What I do just to make things easier is use the same user name (if possible) for EVERY directory and for ease I also use the same password. Now since nothing terribly vital is being passed on unlike the password for the clients website or financial info I really don’t lose sleep much over it. You still want it to be somewhat secure but make it easy so you are not constantly referring to your spreadsheet on your cloud drive.
After you register for the site you will use the dummy Gmail address you setup for this. You will then need to go back to the Gmail account and ‘verify’ the listing. Some listings will take 24-48 hours before you can do anything with them, so I always make notes if the account was created, verified or complete. When you have located a listing that may have been automatically created with crawled information, and public databases (which are not 100% accurate) you want to claim or edit the business listing.
Other times the directory description goes to a manual review to protect the site from auto postings.
In a later section- I’ll include some tweaks you can do to get the most out of your directory submissions.
Basically, one of the things that you are also doing which helps with the rankings is building backlinks.
The other reason why this works has to do with social signals.
Below is an excerpt from the book-
Chiropractor Marketing Secrets: Proven Tips, Tricks and Strategies to Get More Patients.
Reprinted with permission by Courtney Kostelecky and Presto Marketing Group.
CHAPTER 4
The importance of Social Signals
In today’s online world, social signals are becoming more and more important. They even work in the ‘regular’ offline world. Let’s say you and your family are going out to eat. You drive to a restaurant that you have never eaten at before. When you arrive you notice that the parking lot only has a few cars. What thoughts are running through your head? Wow- are we lucky! There shouldn’t be a long wait for a table….OR I wonder why the parking lot is empty?
Is the food bad? If this place was any good, surely there would be more people here.
That is an example of a social signal.
Online Social Signals
In the previous example, the signal you were getting was that you are questioning the quality of the restaurant you wanted to go to. The same is true with businesses that have a listing online.
An online social signal might be a bunch of Google Plus 1’s on a listing, a bunch of your friends ‘Liking’ a page on Facebook, Tweeting about a great deal they got somewhere, or a recommendation from a colleague on LinkedIn.
One of the biggest and most important social signals are ‘reviews.’ Especially those that are tied to your Google Plus Local page.
When a potential patient searches for a chiropractor, as discussed earlier, they will rarely, if ever go past the first page. With only 10 spots available on the first page, you can see why that is so important. Like they say in the real estate business- location, location, location.
The Dr. in the ‘A’ position, although he is technically #1, the practices in the B, C, and even F position are taking calls away from Dr. A. Why? It’s because of social signals. Dr. B has 10 reviews compared to 2 or most of the other doctors.
The two practices on the bottom haven’t even claimed their page yet. If they had, they have a better chance of getting more patients from Google!
Other Social Sites
Besides Google, other sites play a role in social signals.
These sites are typically called ‘review’ sites. A review site is a website where customers go to rate and review different businesses in their area, or if they are travelling, in that city. One of the most popular sites is Yelp. Yelp is primarily known for restaurant reviews, but it also has just about every business category, including chiropractic. Customers can leave their review or feedback on how they were treated, and their overall opinion on a particular business.
Another popular review site is ‘Angie’s List’. Angie’s list is primarily for the service industry like plumbers, roofing contractors, etc. They do have listings for chiropractors, massage therapists, and other categories. People are going online to check on ‘reviews’ of doctors, and are going to social media sites like Facebook for recommendations from friends and family.
Here are some of the sites that patients can post their reviews on.
· Yelp
· Manta
· Citysearch
· Insiderpages
· Mojo
· FourSquare
· Bing Local
· Yahoo! Local
· Google Plus Local
These are just a few of the sites that you can have your business listing on.
These stats were taken from a clients Google Analytics Account Dashboard. FYI this particular client is in a relatively small area. Your patients ARE using social sites before they make the decision to visit your website, or pick up the phone to make an appointment. 14 potential new patients from Yelp, Angieslist, LinkedIn and Manta!
CHAPTER 5 RE-PRINTED WITH PERMISSION
Chapter 5
How A Chiropractor WENT FROM Google Page 12 to Page 1 in 45 Days
One of my chiropractic clients was nowhere to be found on Google. I searched down a total of 12 pages before I finally found his business listed. He definitely was not being found.
After scoping out some of the other local competitors, I decided to focus my resources on social signals and creating high quality backlinks with citations.
Now I don’t want to confuse you too much, but in a nutshell, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) requires back links in order for a website to move up the ranks. Each link from another site back to your website is kind of like a ‘vote’. Whichever site has the ‘most votes’ has a higher ranking. Now- that is the simplest way to explain it, but it is much more complicated than that. There are many more factors to take into consideration with Search Engine Optimization and getting a site ranked on the first page. Unless you know what you are doing, you can actually do more damage than good.
Drumroll please…. Here it is. The thing that I did to get one of my clients from Page 12 to Google Page 1 in 45 Days.
Citations. Reviews.
What are citations?
Simply put, a citation is a mention of your website from another website. Now, there were some strategies involved in this. You can’t just randomly pick a website and have them link to you and Abracadabra- your website is on Page 1!
Why did this work? It has to do with an SEO principal called ‘back linking.' Not only just a backlink or link back to your website, but from a high quality site that has a high ‘Page Rank’.
The websites listed in the previous section, like Yelp, Manta, etc. those are also considered citations. For this client I did 5 citations per month.
Here is a listing of the citations that produced the results.
· Mojopages
· Brownbook
· Superpages
· A2zcity
· Chirohub
· Yelp
· Bing
· HotFrog
· Manta
· Bizhwy
· Citysquares
· Discoverourtown
· Judysbook
· Aboutus
· Yellowbot
The other thing that bumped him up in the rankings was reviews from his patients.
It was a combination of well written citations using keywords, citations in directories with a high page rank, consistency in the citations, verification of NAP, and patient reviews.
When writing your citations, you can usually get most of the information from the About Us page from your website.
One thing that you must do is have consistency throughout all of the citations and directory sites you have your information on.If you need a refresher course, re-visit the section on Google plus local and follow everything in that section. NAP is very important.
The other piece of the puzzle was patient reviews.
How do you get reviews from your patients? ASK!
How do you get reviews from your patients? ASK!
These ideas run from posting an ad on Craigslist offering people money in exchange for a testimonial, offering free products or services to a patient in exchange for a testimonial, a Facebook contest, a chance to win something in exchange for a review or testimonial etc. THIS IS ILLEGAL! The FTC is cracking down on ‘Fake Reviews and Testimonials’. This also includes paid reviews as well. A Dr. in New York was fined $250,000 for doing this! Don’t do it.
In an upcoming chapter I will share with you an awesome marketing tool that you can use to easily get more testimonials and patient reviews.
I hope you enjoyed and learned something from the excerpt from my book!
As I mentioned earlier- if you are interested in learning more you can pick up a copy at Amazon.com
On the next page is an excerpt from my book which contains the chapter that shows you EXACTLY how to do it. It’s pretty easy!
Reprinted with Permission from Presto Marketing Group: Chiropractor Marketing Secrets: Proven Tips, Tricks and Strategies to Get More Patients.
CHAPTER 9
The Google ‘hack’. How to reverse engineer your competitions online strategy.
It’s amazing what you can find- and do online with the proper tips and tricks. Google has a whole lot of ways to search for information besides just the typical search most people do. I am going to show you one of the easiest ways to do this. This is also important; because if you have already hired an SEO guy or your website guy is doing some SEO- you can have an idea if he is really doing anything.
One of the commands that make this happen is the link: command. In the Google search box you type
link: www.<yourdomainname.com>
What this does is show you the domains or websites that are linked to your website. The search engines operate as kind of a popularity contest. Whichever website has the most links that are relevant and not considered ‘junk’ or ‘spammy’ links have a higher chance of being rewarded with an increase in your search engine rankings. In the example on the next page,
I have picked a random practice to show you how it works. For this example I searched for chiropractors in St. Cloud MN.
Let’s say you want to ‘spy’ on the practice in the ‘A’ position.
You would type in Link: www.<domainname.com>
You can then look at the results, and put your clinics information in some of the same places that they have theirs.
Interestingly enough if you look at the results, they are getting a lot of their links from Press Releases. Press Releases are covered in the next chapter.
that are going to be some places that you cannot duplicate. Look for different directories and other sites that you can use to place your information in the same place.
So- there you have it. In a nutshell in the google search bar type
Link: www<businessname>
Link: www<businessname>
Tips and Tricks:
Tip #1: Try to find relevant links. If you are a plumber try to find specialty plumbing directories. Find places where consumers go to rate or find different businesses. Get your business listed there.
Don’t stop there. You need to sometimes get a bit creative. Let’s say you own and operates a B&B (Bed and Breakfast) Not only the typical places, like Yelp but in this case you would look for hospitality type of directories and sites. Even travel related sites can help drive traffic and boost rankings and help with your page takeover.
Tip #2: Don’t forget about truly ‘local listings.’ A lot of cities have a city directory of some sort. Unless it’s a large city- they probably will not have a high page rank and contribute to your ‘take over.’ And if possible try to get a listing in the Chamber of Commerce directory if you can. You will probably have to be a Chamber Member- but some chambers will let you place a listing to help promote the community.
Tip #3: Monitor your rankings. This is especially helpful if this is the only thing you are doing to provide the value for the client. If I got you from ranking 98 and after two weeks you are now ranking on page 2 what you think you could accomplish with adding more things to your marketing?
The thing that makes this a powerful strategy especially if a client is not ranking anywhere close to the first page. *NOTE* Depending on the geographic location of your business, you might need an SEO campaign to really achieve great results and first page rankings, but you still need to get listed to help with your reputation and reviews.
Tip #4: Don’t discount a directory because it is in another city. This particular client is listed in a city directory in Honolulu Hawaii! Now, it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody in Hawaii is going to be looking for a chiropractor outside of the area- but that page had a good PR and authority- so it shows up on the first page for the KW! One less place for your competitor to show up!
Tip #5: There is a lot of talk about duplicate content. For the directory listing, I cut and paste the exact same thing over and over. I also craft the description using keywords and services..
As a premiere <niche> in <City, State> we offer the following services.
You would then list the services as bullet points, easy to read. Try to use services that are keywords you are trying to rank for.
Tip #6: This was mentioned in the detailed steps but it’s worth repeating. Set up a dummy Gmail account that you only use for directory submissions.
Tip #7: Re-size your logo or picture. You don’t want a huge logo- usually 400X300 is pretty good and will work for most sites. If you are horrible at graphic design you can use a free site like resizr.com to do this for you.
Tip #8: Most sites will make you register before you can add your business. Make sure you use your dummy Gmail account to do this- check it and verity- then go on and submit your info.
Tip #9: You can add a call to action in your description. Mention you saw this on <directory> and receive this free widget. You can also add your phone number to your description.
Tip #10: Some sites charge extra to add a coupon. If you have an image of a coupon, you can use this instead of your company logo. Some sites will let you upload more than one image. You can add the coupon or discount image there.
Tip #11: Some sites will have a field called ‘Clave’. That is where you put in your password that you want to create for the site.
*NOTE* If you have not heard the term, the ‘Google Dance’, that is a phrase used to refer when a keyword which was ranking well, has dropped considerably. Most of the time they bounce back and stick stronger than ever. If you look at analytics on a daily basis, this can drive you crazy. I run reports daily (automated from proranktracker) but only report monthly. Bing has some really crazy bounces!
Below are some screenshots of some of the crazy and amazing things that can happen in a relatively short amount of time.
Below are some screen shots from actual clients.
*NOTE* You may or may not receive the same results; I’m just reporting the stats.
This first picture is from ranking. 30 days ago, they were nowhere to be found. Now they are still way down, BUT on the way up!
Here is another one. Just started tracking
60 Days in
90 Days!
I’ve had a few clients that I’ve done this for that it always doesn’t work out for the rankings. For super competitive keywords in large cities you WILL need professional SEO services. While this is NOT SEO, it is still a VITAL part of your online presence.
Because of the tremendous competition for his main keywords, we were not really able to achieve the dramatic results, with this strategy. I did not have access to their analytics, so I could not really see how many people came from referral visits, compared to their overall traffic.
Have you been asking people when they come in how they found you? Have people told you or your receptionist that they found you online?
This strategy is designed for a 6 months to a year period. It’s an inexpensive way to get listed online, and help get more visitors and visibility to your business.
Done For You Options:
Here are a few options for outsourcing this. Since this task is time consuming it’s pretty easy to have someone just do this. If you would like me to do it, drop me an email at frazer@frazergoodman.com
Or give me a call at 0411596250 or 0732997194 for pricing.
Well, there you have it.
My secret sauce to take over a complete page in Google!
It’s not a ‘Magic Bullet’ but it is one vital part of your overall marketing strategy.
Good Luck and I’ll see you on Page 1!
Frazer Goodman
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