What Does Hummingbird Really Mean To You?

Google is always making changes.  So are Yahoo, Bing and every other search engine out there.  These days the growth of the internet has spawned social and local search engines as well.

The big three don't want to lose market share so they have jumped on the local bandwagon too.

So what does that mean for your business.  Essentially the world of B2C has been divided into three main categories.  Local, National and Virtual.

So which are you? And what do you do to reach more potential new clients and keep connected with your existing clients?

Keeping connected with your existing clients means connecting with them in the way they want to be connected with.  As hard as I have tried to automate my business, our clients still want phone calls and personal visits.  E-mail newsletters do ok, but don't get referrals or upgrades done.

Getting new clients however is an open game with no rules.  You can go after clients in any number of ways, the big question is which methods to use?

Trying more than two or three methods at once will spread any small to medium business way to thin.   If you are in marketing at GM or Coke, this is the wrong blog, sorry.

If your business is local, the one method I am taking to all of my clients right now is referral management.  This is a two part method.  First you need to contact ALL of your existing clients and find out if they would be willing to sign a positive referral for you.  Some businesses even let customers sign in to Yelp! or Foursquare using an iPad at the door.

The idea here is to get as many referrals and reviews online as possible.  The reason is simple.  The big three want to know your business exists and that it is good.  Google doesn't want to send customers to a lousy Pizza place with flat beer and no parking when a great place is just two blocks over and has a great parking lot.  Yes, even online you must earn business.

For local businesses, part of the changes at Google reflect favorably on businesses with a real location and great reviews.  For a real estate agent that shares an office with 200 other agents, this can be a challenge.  For a "virtual" or home based business, even more of a challenge.  For a Pizza place at a great location serving great pies and cold beer, it could be the launchpad for a second location.

How are your reviews?

If your business has hit a wall and you are interested in getting it growing again, call The Bourquin Group for a free consultation.

Who Are You Marketing Too?

Marketing to the right customer is critical to your success.  If you own a cupcake store, and don't have sugar free or gluten free, marketing to diabetics and people with celiac disease is a waste of time and money isn't it?

So who are you marketing too?

Jeff Walker taught me a great little exercise.  It is a two part exercise that I do every time I create an ad or copy for a client.  First I define the business and then I define the customers.  I only write to the things that overlap the two.

Within that overlapping area is the image of the perfect customer.  I grab a photo from the internet of someone who I might or might not know, and imagine they fit this profile.  I then start writing. I write as if we are talking to each other at my desk.

For each customer I have two phrases or keywords.  For GetTheBugOut.com I have Termite Tenting and Termite Repair.  As I write for them I look at the article or ad and ask, "Does this help the you (the person in the picture) decide on a Termite Tenting or Termite Repair company?

If not, I keep writing, until it does.

The picture is the perfect customer, the who of your ad and your marketing.  The keywords are your why.  If there isn't a who and a why there isn't anything to market.

Figure out your who and why before you write or buy any advertising, and you'll find your returns are a lot better.

Are You Marketing On Facebook For Free?

Facebook is clearly the king of Social Media.  Just having a solid Social Media Foundation on Facebook can bring your real customers.  I don't mean the kids that spend eight or ten hours a day on Facebook, I mean real paying customers.  Recently I have learned that several of my high level power friends only will respond to me on Facebook.  Like me, they have someone else that reads their email because there is just too much spam.  Facebook and LinkedIn have become to the high level communications platforms for the power players and high rollers.

As a small business or a local business, it is entirely possible to have your entire online marketing platform on Facebook for FREE and keep busy.  My dog groomer is just such a business.  I would like to sell her some marketing, but she is booked solid, and has no current desire to grow.  Her only marketing avenue?  An incorrectly placed Facebook Profile for her business.  Currently using a profile for a business is against the rules, so she will have to change it.  Her customers have already started the process for her, building a place page and a fan base.  Now all she has to do is claim it, and keep the customers happy.

The funny thing is her competitor just three blocks over doesn't get it and won't hire my team to do the same thing for her business.  The competitor "has a guy" that built them a website which does nothing for them.  

Clearly Facebook is the king of Social Media, and these days, it is really a better starting point than a website.  The best part about Facebook for a small business owner is the price, FREE.

Facebook is probably the best starting point to build a foundation for Social Media Marketing.  It depends on the kind of business you have where you’ll go next, but just like building a good house, the longevity aspect starts with a good foundation.

Start by learning how to build your Facebook foundation correctly the first time. Once you have a foundation, you can market on Facebook for free with just a few hours each week.  Free marketing on Facebook is pretty straightforward but there are some big mistakes you can make early that can cost you.  While your kid might be on Facebook for eight hours a day, Facebook marketing isn’t a place to let anything go.

Once you have a foundation on Facebook properly built, then you can use your marketing strategy to build your plan for Social Media Marketing beginning with Facebook.  In order to make sure you get it right, I wrote a book with a step by step guide to get your foundation built correctly.  Included in How To Market On Facebook For Free is several strategies that you can tailor to your business, along with a few things not to do on Facebook or anywhere online.

Currently you can get How To Market On Facebook For Free at Amazon only on the kindle.  The paperback should follow shortly.  If you get it before the five days are up you can check it out for free too.  After that, it will be under $5 for the kindle version and under $15 for the paperback.  It will be money well spent.

Build Good Rules for a Good Business.

He has an Aim Point, Do You?

An updated version of this is now at

Http://blog.scottbourquin.com

Aren’t successful businesses built with good rules?  I mean pilots use rules to fly, the big burger chains use rules to make burgers and the government is loaded with rules.  Last I heard Pilots were doing a pretty good job getting people where they wanted to go, the burger chains were making good money and the government, ok I’ll skip that one.

As a commercial rated pilot for over a quarter of a century, it is pretty rare that I go flying without a purpose, reason or direction.  Even as a student I had a plan and followed the rules.  All the while I considered my flying career a success.  When I fly, there is always someplace to go, something to see, or something to do in the airplane.  Isn’t that a lot like business? When a pilot starts out, he has a destination or an aim point, a plan to get there and a few thoughts in case the plan doesn’t work out.

What Are You Saying Online?

In a world where there are over a million new websites every month vying for your customer’s attention, how can anyone sell anything online? There are 100,000 pages a week created just to phish people’s information online.  How can your business rise above all of this?

The questions came to me from a business owner who paid well over ten thousand dollars for a website that looked great.  The problem he wanted to show me was the Google analytics pages and the chart for the visitors to his website.  The chart was a flat zero.  He wanted to know how he could have such a great website and zero traffic.  After all, isn’t there a big software company touting how easy it is to be found on the web when you get a website with them?

The Business Lessons of Super Bowl XLV

Welcome to Super Bowl XLV and Super Bowl Sunday! This is a great day to take a break and get re-acquainted with friends. Super Bowl Sunday has become a national past time through the excellent marketing efforts of the NFL. Even if you don’t like football, the NFL has built a show that everyone can enjoy. Even the commercials are more entertainment in themselves. A separate competition for the best Super Bowl ad has been spawned from this phenomenon we call the Super Bowl.

I hope you are watching the Super Bowl with the mindset of a manager looking for a better way or business owner looking to expand and grow. If you do this and spend just a little thought on the lessons the NFL has to offer, you might find some nuggets you can use like these three:

1. Specialize – Look at each and every player in the NFL. They all have a unique position. Something they are continuously improving. Look at each team. They are known for some specific part of the game. Joe Montana and the 49’rs of his era were known for a spectacular passing game that didn’t even start until the fourth quarter.

A New Years Resolution For You And It Is Free

Welcome to 2011. I don't know if you finish all of your New Year's resolutions yet but I've got one I'd like to add to your list that won't be that hard. In fact if you come back and visit this blog all year all help keep you on track with just a couple hours each month. This resolution has the potential to double your business in the next 12 months. Don't you think that's worth a couple hours a month?

All through 2010, there were two common threads missing from just about every business I talked with. Even those few businesses that we found which were focused on their primary core strength we still found these two threads missing. So I want you to make a resolution for 2011 to fix this for your business. Of the nearly 43,000,000 registered brick-and-mortar businesses in the United States, nearly half don't even have a website. And believe it or not this is not one of those threads. For most of the businesses that don't have a website, they can probably continue to live for years without a regular website if they don't want to.

Is Your Business On Mobile Yet?

In today’s economy you are probably wondering what is really happing?  Your business is still not as good as it was and everything is starting to cost more.  The government says there might be 1% or 2% inflation next year and the paper says gas is already up 10%, silver 74%, cotton is up 56% and that means clothes are going up too.  What is a business owner to do to survive in this economy?

Rustic Creek Logo QR Code

Most of us are probably wondering what is the real truth.  The important question is really; “why do you care?”  Worrying about the entire economy is like banging your head against the wall isn’t it?  Your head hurts and the wall hasn’t moved one inch.  I propose that we stop worrying and get back to work. 

The turmoil in the economy and the move to mobile technology presents some killer opportunities to make your business a runaway success.  The entire mission of our marketing business is to help connect your business to your customers.  You might wonder exactly what that means.  It means we want to help focus customers in a way that guides them to want your products and services.  Most importantly, we need to make it easy for those customers to find you and to buy your products and services when they are looking.  Don’t make your customers work to buy from you. 

Why SEO Is Important To Business Owners

SEO, or as is known by its full name search engine optimization, is the professional practice of making your website easy to understand for search engines. One of the primary methods of doing this is keyword and headline optimization. The key benefit of a good SEO program is that somebody looking for your business is more likely to find your business if you have made it easy for the search engine to understand what your website is about. When someone types in a keyword, the search engine looks at that keyword and analyzes your website trying to find the best match. The search engine select the best optimized websites and put them at the top of the list.

Unfortunately there are people who abuse the system and overload websites with keywords in order to attract customers to a website that really has nothing to do with what they were looking for. This is why Google, Yahoo and Bing also check what are called back links. They look at other websites which might point to your website therefore giving you credibility in your field. The domaineers have figured out how to beat this system also.  So how do you get ahead?  Well I'll tell you.....

Quick Start Keyword Checklist

If you read the quick keyword action plan, and a couple of the entries before that you should've come up with a pretty simple checklist. Just in case you didn't I'll include it here.

Focus On The Perfect Customer

One of my favorite aspects of Internet marketing is the fact you have to focus. Any company that tries to market to everyone on the Internet is going to go bankrupt unless they sell something that everyone on the Internet wants to buy and will buy. Most people that will buy anything shop at Walmart.  On the Internet they're looking for something in particular. The trick is to figure out how they would look for you.

One of the things that separates every business is the owner and their personality as it evolves into the business. That uniqueness is what your customer is looking for and vice versa. When you understand exactly who your customer is and I'm not talking about every customer, but your best customer, you can do a lot better with Internet marketing and all of your marketing for that matter.

Focus On The Objective

The other night I had the pleasure of going to the new matchsticks movie premiere party. I haven't been to a premiere since I was a little kid and my dad's friend Dwight Brooks premiered his movie. One of the things that impressed me about the matchsticks movie THE WAY I SEE IT was the producer’s connection to his audience. Every single person in there was a skier or snowboarder. No one showed up just because it was a premier. The night that I attended, the premiere had three showings and I would estimate 350 people per showing.  Not a bad gig when we don’t even have snow yet.

At first it appeared a little strange that this premiere was being held in a hotel ballroom.  I would expect an established production company premiering a new movie to be in a traditional movie theater. After a while I realized this was by design. Scott Gallagher and his team understood that their customer would sit on the floor or stand in the back if that's what it meant to see the movie.  Sit and stand they did.  As a bonus, skiers featured in the movie like Ingrid Backstrom and JT Holmes were in the back of the ballroom signing posters and magazines.

Use the Internet to Net Fish or Fly Fish for Customers

As I sit here perplexed by a prospects website, I realize the website isn't necessarily the problem.  It is the prospect.  In the Search Engine Optimization or SEO business, the primary goal is to get the right keywords to get customers to the customers website.  If you have a big enough budget, any SEO can bring  you thousands of website visitors and even hundreds of calls.  This is no different than buying every billboard in town.

What is all this for anyway.  The reality is we all want people to buy something from us, either a product, service or both, or we want them to donate to our cause.  In the case of an e-zine or blog, we want them to read the thoughts that have been added to the site and hope they click on an ad so we get paid.  Making a living as a blogger that isn't selling some system or high dollar product, can be a tough gig.