Getting back to basics, in an Internet driven age….Search Marketing
If you have a business today, and you’re not utilizing the Internet to market your business, you’re missing out on a major sector the Internet savvy, and even the not so savvy population, that has gone “Green” and tossed their Yellow Pages directory in the recycle bin, in favor of a paperless search and access to far more information.
Young people are on Mom and Dad’s computer as soon as their little fingers can press the keys. They are web savvy as early as 2 or 3 years old. The young people today, probably never even used the Yellow Pages to find a source for whatever they might want Mom or Dad to buy for them. They realized they could find everything they wanted Mom and Dad to buy them online.
Even here in SW Florida, where until 2007, according to the Bureau of Economic and Business Research, of the University of Florida, Charlotte County boasted the largest population of seniors in Florida, and for that matter, in the entire US, the overwhelming majority of the population has access to the Internet, either on a home computer, a common computer in the community clubhouse or assisted living facility, or the local library.
Seniors have had to become web savvy to keep in touch with grandchildren and extended family located in all corners of the world, who are web savvy, and find it easier to send grandma and grandpa emails and photos of Tara’s new bike and a scanned picture of what Jacob drew at school last Thursday, cause it’s something they can do without picking up the phone and getting tied up in an extended conversation. And if those seniors have figured out how to open their email, no doubt they’ve also figured out that all you need to do to get information on a person, place, or something you want or need, is to go to Google.com or Yahoo.com, and type in a few generic words to describe it.
In my observation, it seems, for the most part, that the overwhelming majority of the people who are holdouts on using a computer and accessing the Internet, are either the high level executives in their late 60’s or early 70’s or older, still running companies, with or without children, who have always had “someone else”, they typically refer to as “the girl”, (actually their secretary or executive assistant), print out their emails for them and send dictated responses, on their behalf, to their correspondents, as well as find them what they needed. They don’t really care how the product or service is sourced and in most cases have no clue that “the girl” found it online.
The other holdouts, I’ve noted, surprisingly are women, those born in the mid to late 1940’s, or earlier, who have never worked outside the home or if they have worked outside their home, they worked in positions that didn’t provide them access to a computer. They raised kids who were grown and out of the house, on their own, long before computers were even something you had at home. Chances are they’re the ones who still have that set of World Book Encyclopedias and all the annual updates sitting on the bookshelf in the room they call the “tv room”.
In this day and age, I find it fascinating that I can still amaze some people when I tell them about all of the things I have sourced online, since the mid 1990’s, including a husband, real freshly bagged Kona coffee beans, direct from a coffee plantation in Hawaii, fine imported teas from Mariage Freres, ordered directly from their shop in Paris, the home I’m living in, as well as the 3 homes we lived in before it, step by step directions on how to fix a clogged valve in my guest room shower, that was preventing hot water from flowing, directions on how to get rid of this buildup of residue on the rubber seal inside my Kenmore High Efficiency washing machine, a replacement for my blender jar that cracked last time we moved, a replacement bar for my desk drawer that I needed to hang pendaflex folders from, the hair salon I use now as well as the one I went to when I first arrived in Florida, the place where I get my nails done, the pest control place that comes every couple of months, the company that put in the irrigation system on our property, restaurant menus for new restaurants we’re thinking of trying, and just about anything I can dream up to search for, online. And I still have fun memories of one of the first times I logged onto AOL, which was very young, back in the early 90's, at 10PM one evening, dressed in my nightgown and robe, to participate in an online wine tasting with about 20-30 other wine oenophiles from around the world, who like me, had purchased the requisite bottles of wine (all Viogners), that we were all going to taste together and discuss, on live chat. I’m stunned and amazed when I tell people all of this and they say that they don’t know how to get to the Internet---their husband “goes on there” when they need something, and “he looks it up”. Fortunately, there aren’t many of those women left.
Lately I’ve read a lot of articles posted on blogs and networking sites, boasting of the growing overwhelming popularity of social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, touting them as the best places to market your business. Setting Twitter aside, which does have great merit for quick in your face short bursts of news or information, and focusing mainly on sites like Facebook and MySpace, the truth is, that most people I know go to these social networking sites to connect with people, on a social basis, primarily.
It is estimated, that since January 2009, Facebook had a 500% increase in members aged 55 and older. Conversely, they lost 20% of the younger generation, currently in high school and college, who felt alienated from Facebook when their parents joined, thinking their parents joined to “spy on them”. Perhaps, like aging rock bands or pop stars, the “cool” factor for Facebook has subsided, rendering it a more of a convenience for retired people who just want to connect with their friends and family online.
And if you’re like me, in that 55 and older crowd, we’re on Facebook reconnecting with long forgotten friends from high school and college and relatives we haven’t seen since we were 10. I’m not on social networking sites looking for a business that provides products or services I need now, from local businesses, nor are most people, because we’re not going to find it on Facebook or MySpace. If you doubt what I’m saying, go to Facebook and type in “nail salon and the name of your town” or “pest control and the name of your town” or “car wash and the name or your town” or try to find the best place to have brunch on Sunday, nearby. Generally, you won’t find these businesses advertising on Facebook.
And as members of Facebook or MySpace, we might search out a group on their sites, where we can exchange views on a common interest that might revolve around our business or career. However, when it comes to having those we’ve “friended” post messages to “market” their mortgage loan business or financial planning business or they post messages to tell us they can do our will for $800, but only till next Tuesday, on our Facebook wall, everytime we log on, it becomes annoying.
And, I don't know about you, but I tend to want to dump these “friends” in the same “pile” as the ones I've friended, who have literally given up any social life off Facebook, in exchange for an empty life of playing with Facebook applications, caught up in games of MafiaWars, constantly trying to lure us in with taunting messages that they "gave you an energy pack", whatever that is, and that you need to log into MafiaWars to claim your bonus.
Most of us didn’t join Facebook or MySpace to read a barrage of daily business advertisements from people we thought friended us cause they sincerely wanted to be our "friends". Most of us would rather log on to our social networking accounts to find messages from old friends, happy announcements about something wonderful that happened to them, postings about a great movie or play someone saw or comments on the President’s speech, or a message telling us that they just vacationed in Peru or some other far off exotic place I'll never get to visit, and they've just posted the photos. Unfortunately, when we're continually forced to read these business announcements, short advertisements, posted as their "status", on our wall, eventually we reach a point where we just don't want any more ads in our face, and we have been forced to wander Facebook or MySpace's site, to figure out how to quietly “unfriend” them, without their knowing it, and we've learned that there’s also an option called “show me less” about this person, on our wall, and we've used it.
Frankly, I would not go to Facebook looking for a financial planner or an accountant or a hairdresser or a place to get the oil changed in my car. I might go to Facebook looking for advice on which movie to see on the weekend or to chat about planning our next family reunion or to make or get a recommendation for a home exchange in Italy or information on Porsche's newest model, or to chat with others who have interests like mine.
If you offer a product or service and your primary customer base or target market, is the local community or those with a need you can assist with, in your general geographical location or you're trying to attract people visiting the area where you conduct business to check out your business, frankly, I don’t believe Facebook is the place to market your business. You’re just not going to be reaching all the people you want to become your “new customers”. Even when you buy the pay per click sponsored ads Facebook offers, that appear on the side of the page, which are a good thing to do, by the way, if you have plenty of money to spend on advertising and want to spread it around, you still need to face the fact that you’re only advertising or posting to members of Facebook and the groups you join on the sites, and/or to those you “friend” on those sites. And most of them already know your name. They already know what you do and how to find you, right?
There’s a huge local market out there waiting to connect with businesses. That market is composed of the average person, who doesn’t necessarily have time to hang out on Facebook or MySpace, hoping someone like you, in your business, will just happen to post their company details, right when they need a plumber or a pet sitter or a hair salon or great place to have brunch on Sunday.
That’s why your most important strategy for advertising on the Internet, where you’ll net the biggest “bang for your advertising buck”, in terms of getting the word out about your business, is getting back to basics--“search marketing”--that is marketing your website and your business, to attract search engines to your website. Search marketing involves search engine optimization, often referred to, in the industry, as SEO. It’s the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic that is directed to a website, from the major search engines, like Google or Yahoo, via "natural" search results, those that appear organically in the center of the page of search results. Typically, the earlier or closer to the first page of search results a website link appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may be set up to target various types of search, geographical (attracting people looking for a product or service in a specific location), industry specific searches or image searches.
As a marketing strategy, the field of search engine optimization considers how search engines work and what people are searching for. To search engine optimize a website, it involves editing its content and associated coding in the backend of the site, that is not visible to the people who visit the website, with the primary goal being to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers that might prevent the sight from being indexed by the search engines.
Consider this. Today, many, if not most, of your “new customers”, the ones you haven’t met yet, are people who use search engines to find things. If they don’t know you can provide it, because they either don’t know your name or business name or that you do what you do or sell what you sell, and you haven’t invested in a website and some strategic search marketing of that website, they won’t find you or your business.
In this economy, can you really afford to miss out on selling your product or servie to those potential new customers? Do you really mind if they do business with your competition because they happened to find “their” website in the first search results---- instead of yours?
If you’d like to learn more about search marketing, check out my website, www.justforclicks.net, or contact me at justforclicksweb@gmail.com, and I’ll be happy to provide you with information on what I can do for your business to help people find you--before they find your competitors.
Now that’s something to “tweet” about!
Young people are on Mom and Dad’s computer as soon as their little fingers can press the keys. They are web savvy as early as 2 or 3 years old. The young people today, probably never even used the Yellow Pages to find a source for whatever they might want Mom or Dad to buy for them. They realized they could find everything they wanted Mom and Dad to buy them online.
Even here in SW Florida, where until 2007, according to the Bureau of Economic and Business Research, of the University of Florida, Charlotte County boasted the largest population of seniors in Florida, and for that matter, in the entire US, the overwhelming majority of the population has access to the Internet, either on a home computer, a common computer in the community clubhouse or assisted living facility, or the local library.
Seniors have had to become web savvy to keep in touch with grandchildren and extended family located in all corners of the world, who are web savvy, and find it easier to send grandma and grandpa emails and photos of Tara’s new bike and a scanned picture of what Jacob drew at school last Thursday, cause it’s something they can do without picking up the phone and getting tied up in an extended conversation. And if those seniors have figured out how to open their email, no doubt they’ve also figured out that all you need to do to get information on a person, place, or something you want or need, is to go to Google.com or Yahoo.com, and type in a few generic words to describe it.
In my observation, it seems, for the most part, that the overwhelming majority of the people who are holdouts on using a computer and accessing the Internet, are either the high level executives in their late 60’s or early 70’s or older, still running companies, with or without children, who have always had “someone else”, they typically refer to as “the girl”, (actually their secretary or executive assistant), print out their emails for them and send dictated responses, on their behalf, to their correspondents, as well as find them what they needed. They don’t really care how the product or service is sourced and in most cases have no clue that “the girl” found it online.
The other holdouts, I’ve noted, surprisingly are women, those born in the mid to late 1940’s, or earlier, who have never worked outside the home or if they have worked outside their home, they worked in positions that didn’t provide them access to a computer. They raised kids who were grown and out of the house, on their own, long before computers were even something you had at home. Chances are they’re the ones who still have that set of World Book Encyclopedias and all the annual updates sitting on the bookshelf in the room they call the “tv room”.
In this day and age, I find it fascinating that I can still amaze some people when I tell them about all of the things I have sourced online, since the mid 1990’s, including a husband, real freshly bagged Kona coffee beans, direct from a coffee plantation in Hawaii, fine imported teas from Mariage Freres, ordered directly from their shop in Paris, the home I’m living in, as well as the 3 homes we lived in before it, step by step directions on how to fix a clogged valve in my guest room shower, that was preventing hot water from flowing, directions on how to get rid of this buildup of residue on the rubber seal inside my Kenmore High Efficiency washing machine, a replacement for my blender jar that cracked last time we moved, a replacement bar for my desk drawer that I needed to hang pendaflex folders from, the hair salon I use now as well as the one I went to when I first arrived in Florida, the place where I get my nails done, the pest control place that comes every couple of months, the company that put in the irrigation system on our property, restaurant menus for new restaurants we’re thinking of trying, and just about anything I can dream up to search for, online. And I still have fun memories of one of the first times I logged onto AOL, which was very young, back in the early 90's, at 10PM one evening, dressed in my nightgown and robe, to participate in an online wine tasting with about 20-30 other wine oenophiles from around the world, who like me, had purchased the requisite bottles of wine (all Viogners), that we were all going to taste together and discuss, on live chat. I’m stunned and amazed when I tell people all of this and they say that they don’t know how to get to the Internet---their husband “goes on there” when they need something, and “he looks it up”. Fortunately, there aren’t many of those women left.
Lately I’ve read a lot of articles posted on blogs and networking sites, boasting of the growing overwhelming popularity of social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, touting them as the best places to market your business. Setting Twitter aside, which does have great merit for quick in your face short bursts of news or information, and focusing mainly on sites like Facebook and MySpace, the truth is, that most people I know go to these social networking sites to connect with people, on a social basis, primarily.
It is estimated, that since January 2009, Facebook had a 500% increase in members aged 55 and older. Conversely, they lost 20% of the younger generation, currently in high school and college, who felt alienated from Facebook when their parents joined, thinking their parents joined to “spy on them”. Perhaps, like aging rock bands or pop stars, the “cool” factor for Facebook has subsided, rendering it a more of a convenience for retired people who just want to connect with their friends and family online.
And if you’re like me, in that 55 and older crowd, we’re on Facebook reconnecting with long forgotten friends from high school and college and relatives we haven’t seen since we were 10. I’m not on social networking sites looking for a business that provides products or services I need now, from local businesses, nor are most people, because we’re not going to find it on Facebook or MySpace. If you doubt what I’m saying, go to Facebook and type in “nail salon and the name of your town” or “pest control and the name of your town” or “car wash and the name or your town” or try to find the best place to have brunch on Sunday, nearby. Generally, you won’t find these businesses advertising on Facebook.
And as members of Facebook or MySpace, we might search out a group on their sites, where we can exchange views on a common interest that might revolve around our business or career. However, when it comes to having those we’ve “friended” post messages to “market” their mortgage loan business or financial planning business or they post messages to tell us they can do our will for $800, but only till next Tuesday, on our Facebook wall, everytime we log on, it becomes annoying.
And, I don't know about you, but I tend to want to dump these “friends” in the same “pile” as the ones I've friended, who have literally given up any social life off Facebook, in exchange for an empty life of playing with Facebook applications, caught up in games of MafiaWars, constantly trying to lure us in with taunting messages that they "gave you an energy pack", whatever that is, and that you need to log into MafiaWars to claim your bonus.
Most of us didn’t join Facebook or MySpace to read a barrage of daily business advertisements from people we thought friended us cause they sincerely wanted to be our "friends". Most of us would rather log on to our social networking accounts to find messages from old friends, happy announcements about something wonderful that happened to them, postings about a great movie or play someone saw or comments on the President’s speech, or a message telling us that they just vacationed in Peru or some other far off exotic place I'll never get to visit, and they've just posted the photos. Unfortunately, when we're continually forced to read these business announcements, short advertisements, posted as their "status", on our wall, eventually we reach a point where we just don't want any more ads in our face, and we have been forced to wander Facebook or MySpace's site, to figure out how to quietly “unfriend” them, without their knowing it, and we've learned that there’s also an option called “show me less” about this person, on our wall, and we've used it.
Frankly, I would not go to Facebook looking for a financial planner or an accountant or a hairdresser or a place to get the oil changed in my car. I might go to Facebook looking for advice on which movie to see on the weekend or to chat about planning our next family reunion or to make or get a recommendation for a home exchange in Italy or information on Porsche's newest model, or to chat with others who have interests like mine.
If you offer a product or service and your primary customer base or target market, is the local community or those with a need you can assist with, in your general geographical location or you're trying to attract people visiting the area where you conduct business to check out your business, frankly, I don’t believe Facebook is the place to market your business. You’re just not going to be reaching all the people you want to become your “new customers”. Even when you buy the pay per click sponsored ads Facebook offers, that appear on the side of the page, which are a good thing to do, by the way, if you have plenty of money to spend on advertising and want to spread it around, you still need to face the fact that you’re only advertising or posting to members of Facebook and the groups you join on the sites, and/or to those you “friend” on those sites. And most of them already know your name. They already know what you do and how to find you, right?
There’s a huge local market out there waiting to connect with businesses. That market is composed of the average person, who doesn’t necessarily have time to hang out on Facebook or MySpace, hoping someone like you, in your business, will just happen to post their company details, right when they need a plumber or a pet sitter or a hair salon or great place to have brunch on Sunday.
That’s why your most important strategy for advertising on the Internet, where you’ll net the biggest “bang for your advertising buck”, in terms of getting the word out about your business, is getting back to basics--“search marketing”--that is marketing your website and your business, to attract search engines to your website. Search marketing involves search engine optimization, often referred to, in the industry, as SEO. It’s the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic that is directed to a website, from the major search engines, like Google or Yahoo, via "natural" search results, those that appear organically in the center of the page of search results. Typically, the earlier or closer to the first page of search results a website link appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may be set up to target various types of search, geographical (attracting people looking for a product or service in a specific location), industry specific searches or image searches.
As a marketing strategy, the field of search engine optimization considers how search engines work and what people are searching for. To search engine optimize a website, it involves editing its content and associated coding in the backend of the site, that is not visible to the people who visit the website, with the primary goal being to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers that might prevent the sight from being indexed by the search engines.
Consider this. Today, many, if not most, of your “new customers”, the ones you haven’t met yet, are people who use search engines to find things. If they don’t know you can provide it, because they either don’t know your name or business name or that you do what you do or sell what you sell, and you haven’t invested in a website and some strategic search marketing of that website, they won’t find you or your business.
In this economy, can you really afford to miss out on selling your product or servie to those potential new customers? Do you really mind if they do business with your competition because they happened to find “their” website in the first search results---- instead of yours?
If you’d like to learn more about search marketing, check out my website, www.justforclicks.net, or contact me at justforclicksweb@gmail.com, and I’ll be happy to provide you with information on what I can do for your business to help people find you--before they find your competitors.
Now that’s something to “tweet” about!
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