Out of Area Phone Numbers No Longer a Call Screen Tool

by Mark Waldin, Inside Edge, 11/08/11 Ever since the advent of caller id service companies have used out of area area codes to screen incoming calls. They’ve known that anyone calling from a remote area code was a sales person wanting nothing more than to waste their time. For this reason many/most service companies do not answer calls coming from out of area. They are making a big mistake.

With the advent of number portability and cell phones, the use of random area code numbers has been growing exponentially. Most people moving from one geography to another DO NOT BOTHER TO CHANGE THEIR PHONE NUMBER. I have been monitoring the growth of this phenomena for some time and have considered it a small nuisance. My customers that reject these calls have only lost opportunities marginally.

Since early summer this has radically changed. In order to stay close to the service market and direct response marketing I run my own direct to consumer service company. The business is seasonal with traffic building in August and becoming extremely robust by October. This season I have out-of-area area codes associated with legitimate prospects explode. As many as 20% of the inbound (legitimate) calls are now out-of-area.

The conclusion is simple, service companies that ignore out-of-area inbound calls do so at their own peril.

The Value of Video on Landing Pages and Web Sites for Service Companies

If you think video on your web site is there to inform visitors about your business, think again. I am not suggesting that the focus of your video should not be to inform or sell your visitor, I am just suggesting that is not necessarily the main reason the video needs to be there. Here is why.

The search engines are constantly attempting to show visitors the most relevant web sites. One way to score a web site is to see how long a person stays on the site. If a visitor clicks “tree service”, clicks onto your web site, and immediately clicks back to the search page, Google will devalue your web site accordingly for the search term “tree service”. Ouch.

In other words, you want the visitor to hang around your web site for awhile. One of the best ways to do this is through a short video. One minute is sufficient but longer is always better, as long as the video is captivating and interesting. And that is the trick. Web sites that spin up video automatically are particularly annoying, especially if they have audio. Some visitors will leave immediately just because of this. My suggestion is to default the video with the sound OFF but provide a button for the user to easily invoke sound. With sound off the video itself will have to carry the ball for being engaging to start. Make sure the video has a lead in that is either funny or provocative. You need to capture the visitors attention, not send them away. Don’t start the video with “Hi my name is and I am the owner of”.

With cellphones now having video capability you may think making a video is cheap. Don’t be fooled. Yes the hardware is inexpensive and visitors are used to low video quality. What they are NOT used to is low content quality. Don’t think you can throw something together in one hour. You need to script both the dialogue and the shot sequences. You need to rehearse. You need to set up the shots. You need to video edit and tighten up the final product. Plan on spending a good 20 to 40 hours to put together a decent end product. You can skip the professional videographer, sound person, and lighting crew but consider hiring a professional advertising person for writing and production. Plan to spend between $2500 and $10,000.

You could do it on the cheap yourself, only spending an hour of your own time. Just remember your objectives and seriously assess whether your final product meets the goals you want to achieve. Is it worth even one hour if the result misses the goal, or even worse, creates a negative impression?

Is Google Putting a Stranglehold on Local Business Advertising?

Yellow Page Book advertising is a BIG business and declining.  It peaked in 2006 at $14.4 Billion.  As a comparison, Google’s revenue in 2010 was $29 Billion.  Picking up the revenue from the fall of the Yellow Pages is a huge opportunity for Google, especially when you consider that Google’s net income is 29% of revenue and local business advertising is virtually costless to Google.

It is not surprising that Google is putting a stranglehold on local service companies driving them into a dependency on Google as their sole source of reaching customers cost effectively.  All of this sounds amazingly familiar.  This is the same tactic the the Yellow Page companies took from the mid 1950′s to the early 2000′s.  The result was a near monopoly position with extortionist level pricing.  No said better it was just monopoly level pricing.

The cloaking device Google is using is called Google Places.  It displays on the first page of search results (crowding out organic results) and highly favors businesses that are physically located near the searcher.  While many small service companies work out of their home and are not physically near their markets, this is a big problem.  Moreover, service  service companies almost always serve a large multi-city territory.  Google Places results exclude businesses from reaching cities outside of their physical location.

All of this in spite of the fact that there is rarely a reason that a customer’s solution to a purchase decision is related to distance to the supplier. Shame on you Google.

Having hobbled businesses from reaching their prospect base, they provide a convenient solution called Google Adwords.  Google Adwords, if you are not familiar, allows businesses to put paid advertisements on the front page of Google results.  Way to go Google.  This move puts Google in position to pick up the major portion of the $14 B small businesses used to spend in Yellow Page advertising.

Even better, Google has managed to replicate the monopoly pricing tactics pioneered by the Yellow Page companies.  But Google has done them one better.  Where Yellow Page companies had to manually adjust price points to optimize revenues.  Google forces the advertiser to create monopoly price points themselves by having them bid in real time for advertising rates.

Google is a very smart company and is exploiting every aspect of extracting revenue from advertisers.  I applaud them for their ingenuity and abilities.  This is the reality of the market and it is democracy in action (except maybe for monopoly position).  I just think it is important that small businesses understand the market dynamics and go into Google Adwords advertising with their eyes open.  The best way to utilize Google is work smart and think through the your Google Adwords tactics as thoroughly as Google has done in picking your pocket.

Is Groupon a steal, literally?

Last weekend I had breakfast at the Brown Bag in Seattle. I started talking with the owner and he told me he was running Groupon that very day. He had sold 150 coupons already for what amounted to 56% off a meal.

If you are not sure what Groupon is, it’s a daily email for an outrageous discount for a single business per day. Companies have sold hundreds to thousands of coupons for everything from massages to meals to dog grooming.

Companies wanting to participate in Groupon, typically provide discounts of 50% or more. This can be costly because Groupon takes 50% of what is left over. Now, your net is 25% of your normal price and your Groupon advertising expense is 75% of your revenue.

If this sounds like a great idea, consider these questions: a) will the coupon attract your target audience or a different one? b) will you be creating an adequate repeat business or an adequate opportunity to up sell the customer? c) what is the expected lifetime value of the customer, in other words, will they return or are they here for the discount? c) what other marketing vehicles work equally or almost as well for less than 75% of revenue? and d) how will existing customers react to other people getting an outrageous deal they didn’t get?

Groupon works well for companies with very low variable costs and high fixed costs when the business is well below capacity. If this is your situation, Groupon may be a component of your marketing. Evaluate it carefully before you act, because sometimes a steal, really is a steal.

For more information about Groupon go to Groupon’s website.

Improve Your Trade Show Results by 5X or More

After recently attending the Seattle Home Show, it was surprising to see how few floor vendors were actually selling their services. I managed to walk through the ENTIRE show floor while only being stopped by four vendors. This was even after I approached the booths as though I were a potential customer who was interested in their services.

The Seattle Home Show is an expensive proposition. Costs can add up when you include the time involved to design and set up a booth, pay for show services, pay for show space, and pay for the staffing and drive time. Why spend all that money when your sales staff fails at making sales?

Guy reading a book.

Empty booth.

Here are some recommendations for optimizing your return on trade show exhibits:

• Manage your booth staff, train them, and select them carefully.
• Keep the booth staffed at all times. Have two sales people on duty at all times so one person can take a break without leaving the booth empty. If it’s busy, they can double up on selling.
• Refrain from doing anything in the booth except selling. This is not a time for falling asleep, working on your computer, talking on the cell phone, or sending text messages. A few people were even reading books.
• Keep your booth inviting, open, and airy. Try not to turn it into a fortress. While making a fortress may seem fun, too many booths had tables blocking the front of the booth impeding people from entering.
• Pro-actively engage people that walk by your booth. Refrain from engaging in small talk with other staff members at your booth or your next door booth neighbor.
• Stand up and show respect to prospects when they enter your booth or walk past it.
• Sales people need step out into the aisle and draw people into your booth. This is a time for approaching people passing by, not ignoring them. Liberty Tax is a perfect example of how to do this (they are the guys with people dressed up the Statue of Liberty standing on the street corners). You need to draw interest to your product.

Guy on computer.

Guy sending text messages.

Most of the businesses exhibiting at the Seattle Home Show could have increased their yield 5x if they applied these recommendations. The sales people should have gotten email addresses from these early stage prospects which could be farmed for future business. It would create a buzz and awareness among hundreds of additional Satellites who have friends that may be in the market now or in the future. Word of mouth can help increase your business.

Negative Is The New Positive!

Many small companies try Google Adwords advertising for a month. They are amazed at how much money they spent in the trial month (without knowing it!), and realize the number of leads they got was way out of line with the money they paid. Soon, the companies shut down Adwords and declare, “it doesn’t work”. With guidance, Adwords can and will work.

Campaigns need to be set up to include all relevant keywords BUT only keywords that bring qualified prospects. For example, let’s say you are a carpet installer. Bidding on the keyword “carpet” will bring in lots of impressions. However, it comes with a large percentage of people looking a) to compare types of carpet, b) to find out how to clean their carpet, c) looking for carpet style ideas, or d) looking for mold in carpet articles. Every time a searcher clicks on your Adwords Ad, you lose money. Compare this to the keyword “carpet installer”. No problem there. This keyword suggests the searcher is only interested in carpet installation.

Negative Keywords can turn a bad ad campaign into a good ad campaign. Negative keywords tell Google to NOT display your ad when the selected negative keyword is included in a search. In the above example campaign, add the following negative keywords: “do it yourself”, “how to”, “jobs”, “pictures”, “careers”, and “images”. This will eliminate searchers that are a) looking to do their own installation, b) an installer looking for a job, and c) people looking for pictures of people doing carpet installation. The selected negative keywords improve your click-through-rates and save you money. This is because the negative keywords filter out searchers not looking for your service as well as unnecessary clicks on your site.

Making Google Adwords work is all about target marketing. Refining the campaign and narrowing the focus will reduce the cost per lead over time and get you the results you are looking for. It may look like Adwords marketing has no overhead but don’t be fooled. Like any service, you get what you pay for. This is why Inside Edge helps companies by managing their Adwords campaign for them.

Call Inside Edge
today to set up Google Adwords on your campaign!

Missing Calls Means Missing Leads

I make a lot of sales calls to companies like yours. I have noticed that many times the phone goes unanswered and then to voice mail. The other detail I’ve noticed is that Internet users have very little patience. This can be detrimental when you consider that they have a long list of potential service suppliers staring them in the face. It’s very easy for them to call the next company on the search results as it is to leave you a voice message. Even if they do leave a message it is even easier for them to complete a transaction before you get a chance to call back.

I decided Inside Edge needed to do something about this. Inside Edge has to help our customers land more business. But we needed to make it easy and cost effective. The result is our Backstop℠ call service.

Backstop intercepts unanswered sales calls coming from your web ads and routes them to an Inside Edge staff member for a live answer. Each staff member is trained on the client and his or her business.

We provide:

• Live phone answering when you can’t get to the phone. You set the number of rings before rollover.
• An FAQ for your business and train our staff on it so they know what they are talking about.
• A dynamic FAQ for your business; call handling improves continuously with time.
• A text message sent to alert you to the presence of a new call taken.
• Recording of all calls that are emailed as an attachment, instantly.
• The actual conversations so you monitor performance and provide feedback for improvement.
• The ability to set the hours that you want Backstop to back you up.
• Paying only for calls taken by Inside Edge; by the minute.
• Screening out solicitor calls before you OR we get them; saving you money and time.

Call Inside Edge to set up your Backstop Call Service and stop missing calls.

Local Search Listings Gain Increased Importance

Google Local Listings are important to your Internet campaign more than ever. On November 1st 2010, Google began a revamp of how local listings are handled. Google created a new service called Google Places. The result is that local listings now find prominent placement in THREE places on the Google website: Google (Everything), Google Maps, and Google Places.

The Google Local section of the search results has disappeared in many search results. What was the Local Map has been moved to the right side of the search page above the right hand column PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads. The individual Places results have been blended in to the standard search results. The only difference between the two is that the Places listing also includes a pointer icon to show map placement. Additionally, a new separate service called Google Places has been created. Instead of showing 10 total listings per page, where the Local section made an 11th entry, the results now show up to seven Places listings and a reduced the number of standard listings (in the range of three to eight).

Google Places moves the map to the right column.
Local listings appear among the standard listings

Because Google (Everything) has reduced the number of standard listings on the first page, the Places listings are now more important. Google(Everything) and Google Places are tools that searchers look to first when beginning their local search. Most searches are usually identified by Google as a local search.

Google Places is a new section that allows shoppers to start their search with a mentality of “I’m looking for a place” rather than “I’m searching a topic”. Google Places works just like Google Everything but shifts the search weighting to be extremely heavily weighted toward local Places listings, similar to Google Maps. Standard listings are still shown among the results, but it is not unusual for there to be as many as 10 Places results on the first page with zero to a few standard listings.

The new change by Google can be extremely beneficial to your local business. As Places search results become more prominent, more searchers will rely on Google for local results. This phenomena will only increase in the future, especially with the new GPS service on smart phones; it can pin point your location and give you the best local listings right in the palms of your hands (please see our past article about our Mobile Ad service Going-mobile-can-help-your-business). Google Places is the place you want your business to be.

Maximize The Return From Your Web Site

A well balanced marketing strategy combines a mix of advertising media and these methods vary in cost. By keeping a media balance you constantly know the costs of each, how the costs are changing, and how to maximize the return from each of them. Internet marketing is no different and a well balanced Internet marketing program utilizes all three forms of search engine marketing: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Local Search optimization (LSO), and Pay Per Click (PPC).

LSO or Local Search optimization is the executing of certain strategies to get your company’s web site listing higher on local search results. LSO shines at marketing a company’s core service or product. It is often the least expensive marketing media you can use. LSO is the only low cost vehicle for reaching local customers doing national level searches (for example, searching for ‘plumber’ rather than ‘plumber Bothell’). Think of LSO as the new Yellow Pages because it is only useful for searches classified as ‘local’ by the search engines. Categories not classified as local do not display local results (for example, ‘grass fed beef’). While the vocabulary of LSO is limited, it can be used to target a small set of related keyword phrases representing the primary business of the company.

Each advertising media has unique benefits.

Use LSO as the foundation of your search engine marketing if your service or product is inherently local.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization refers to strategies that get your company’s web site higher on search engine organic* results. SEO’s strength is its ability to target any geo-specific keyword phrase at a relatively low cost. SEO is not capable of targeting national level searches. A local company targeting a small geographic area (for example ‘moving companies’ in the Puget Sound) can not compete with companies that target most or all of the United States (for example, ‘moving companies’ on a national basis).

Use SEO to extend your search marketing to a wide range of geo-specific keywords.

PPC or Pay Per Click is the marketing approach that uses the official advertising tools offered by the search engine companies. PPC shines at getting presence for any (relevant) keyword phrase. The cost of PPC is usually significantly higher than LSO or SEO. PPC is not very good at reaching customers using geo-specific keywords. This is because the number of people doing geo-specific searches is small and the percent of people clicking on advertisements is very low (typically .5 to 3%). One of the key advantages of PPC is that it can be turned on and off quickly, making it ideal for advertising during slow periods.

Use PPC to extend your search marketing to a wide range of national level keywords, especially during slow periods.

Each search engine advertising media provides unique benefits to any marketing strategy. By keeping some level of activity going in each of the three key areas, the alert marketer is able to adjust the marketing mix quickly and efficiently. Such a strategy greatly improves a business’ ability to react to changing market conditions.

* Organic results refer to the list down the left side of the search results and what the search engine believes are the most relevant results.

Going Mobile Can Help Your Business

Recently I purchased a Droid “X” cell phone. As I explored my new phone, I noticed that the phone can do a wide variety of things. For instance, it can get real time information such as freeway traffic conditions, maps, automatic voice navigation to a destination like GPS, email, camera, video camera, web browsing, instant searching, and a lot more.

Normal web pages are difficult to read.

Using the phone more, I realized that it was becoming a go-to device of choice for information retrieval, whether I was mobile or not. The only time I did not use it was when I was sitting in front of a computer. Now, I do not wait to be in front of a computer to access the internet.

Easy to read mobile view.

Keeping up with this trend, Inside Edge has added mobile web ads to the tool box for marketing our client’s businesses. With this option, any customer accessing your ad from a mobile device will see the mobile version of the web site. The mobile version is simple and easy to read; a major advantage for shoppers who are searching on the go.

Inside Edge is making mobile web ads available to its clients. Call
Inside Edge to get more insights.