This video is specifically directed at those of you wanting to get more Chiropractic Clients:
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Personally, I work with a lot of small business owners and I also read a lot about search engine optimization (SEO). Unfortunately, only a very small percentage of what’s written about SEO is written with small business owners in mind.
Most writing on SEO is intended to either persuade small business owners to purchase SEO services or else the writing is directed at other SEO experts. Very little is written simply to help a small business owner understand and make use of SEO. I’d like to change that. There are plenty of small business owners who can and should engage in SEO for their businesses without the assistance of a consultant. Search Engine Optimization is a changing and complex field, but it’s not so complex that most small business owners can’t understand the most basic of SEO tactics.
This post covers a few basics about SEO, and I’ll cover this in more depth in other posts.
SEO is Achievable but Not Certain
Continue reading “A Small Business Owner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization (Part I)” »
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I’ve been on a kick lately with many of my clients about focusing on building relationships. This really applies to any business anywhere, but particularly for attorneys and law firms, building relationships is absolutely essential to your long-term success.
There was a time, in the US and elsewhere, that almost all business came either because you had a captive audience (you were the only lawyer in town) or else because someone knew somebody else who recommended you. In other words, if you had any competition, then you relied almost exclusively on recommendations and referrals.
Without overstating the obvious, times have changed. For well over a hundred years now, lawyers have been able to advertise in newspapers and periodicals. Radio and TV offered new forms of marketing, and the Internet is another story altogether. Personally, I highly recommend making use of every opportunity you have to market yourself and your firm. However…
You CANNOT rely solely on the Internet, TV, or any other form of advertising.
You MUST build strong and lasting relationships in your field…
Continue reading “Building Relationships as a basis for Attorney Marketing” »
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Starting a law firm is tough, even if you’ve been practicing law for a long time. Unless you’ve been actively involved in all aspects of the management of a firm or similar business, you’re definitely going to run into some unexpected difficulties. Someone has to be responsible for EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of the business, and much of that responsibility will likely fall to you, whether it’s dealing with outside contractors, record-keeping, or, of course, marketing.
I’m a little bit biased given my focus on marketing, but let me make a quick case for why marketing should be your primary focus when starting a law firm:
Until you have enough clients, nothing else really matters, and here is why:
Continue reading “Starting a Law Firm–Beginning your Marketing Career” »
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I had a recent sub-par personal experience with a company selling a couch through Amazon. The experience wasn’t horrible, and I harbor no resentment toward the company that I won’t name, but it reminded me of a fundamental point for all business, in their marketing or otherwise.
You must have systems in place for almost everything.
Here’s what happened to me: We bought a couch through Amazon (but sold by a third party). The company gave a range of dates when the couch might ship. The last date in the range came and went, and I had heard nothing from the company, so we called them. The first 2 times we called, they put us on hold and never came back to the phone. The third time, they told us that the person who handled Amazon orders was not yet in, but that he would be shortly. We called back about 1/2 and hour later, and they told us that, in fact, he was on vacation that week, but that they would have someone else call us. No one ever did. We filed a claim through Amazon and finally received an email from the company saying that they did not have the couch in inventory, that hte manufacturer was out of stock, and that it would be 2 weeks before the manufacturer would even ship.
Many companies, even good ones, occasionally sell something that they don’t have in stock, typically by accident because of an error in the inventory count. However, well-run companies always have a system in place to immediately notify their customers if there is going to be a delay in shipping a product, whether due to inventory or otherwise. It took us 4 calls and an Amazon complaint to get the company to tell us that the couch was out-of-stock 3 weeks after we ordered it.
What this means for my business, your business, and every other business that aspires to be successful
Things don’t happen unless you have a system in place to make them happen. If you’re business consists of just you, then you may well make sure everything happens just by force of will. However, if you have even one employee, one independent contractor, or anyone or anything else not 100% in your control at all times, then the only way to make sure that your business is run consistently well is to put systems in place. If you run a medium or larger business, then you likely already have systems in place for certain aspects of your business (automation of sales and shipping, hiring of employees, information technology, etc.).
But what about marketing? What systems do you have in place there? Sadly, even many established businesses have few or no systems in place for marketing. Often, marketing for a company takes on the flavor of the day, matching whatever technology is in vogue or whatever individual currently controls marketing. Again, things often just don’t get done that way.
As much as anything else, marketing is about consistency. It’s about consistently interacting with your existing clients, consistently putting yourself and your business in front of potential clients, and establishing a consistent message and theme for your business. All too often, marketing efforts will be put on the back-burner for 3-4 months at a time while other matters take precedence. Unfortunately, this often cripples much of the effort that has already been put into a marketing campaign.
Here at Marketing Lift-Off, we have our own systems in place for our business, and we have marketing systems that we put in place for our clients. We produce consistent marketing results and consistently report to our clients, but we also urge our clients to put their own internal systems in place to review our efforts, make sure that what we’re achieving aligns with their goals, and let us know if it’s not for some reason so that we can change what we do. We constantly strive to improve our systems, as we feel it’s critical to the long-term success of any business.
How about you? Any systems that you find more critical than others?
(Photo courtesy of Leo Reynolds)
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If you’re involved in marketing your business online, or if you happen to be discussing the topic with other business owners, then you’ll inevitably hear chatter about one or another Google updates, often referred to by a code name such as "Panda." It’s almost as if Google must be running a military campaign against businesses trying to establish their online presence.
You should be very afraid…
Clearly, if everyone is talking about what happened to their rankings as a result of the latest Google update, you should also be very concerned if your website took a hit in search engine rankings and traffic, right?
Not so fast. Marketing your business is not a war with Google. If you have a product or service that people want to find and website designed to properly market that product or service, then Google actually wants its searchers to find your site. Really. Google wants to provide the best possible experience to searchers, just like you, as a business owner, want to provide the best possible experience to your clients, in both cases to make sure that they keep coming back.
Unfortunately, there may be instances when a Google update disrupts your site’s rankings and/or traffic, either because Google’s updates are never perfect, or because Google values something that it feels your website is lacking. Fortunately, there are ways to make sure that this happens as infrequently as possible and that your site typically benefits from Google updates (as do most of our client’s sites – hence why we often look forward to Google updates).
Hate the Player, not the Game
Actually, this isn’t a game (it’s your business), and there’s not really any reason to hate anyone here, particularly Google. Here’s what you can do:
- Provide valuable, unique, and timely content to your customers and potential customers, largely through your website. It all depends on your business, but this doesn’t mean you have to write to your readers every day (some businesses might want to, however), or that every communication has to be pure gold. Google, though, does obviously value good, unique content that is constantly updated, because they know that searchers will value that content. What’s even better is that every potential customer that does reach your site will be that much more likely to become an actual customer because they can already see the type of value you are able to provide.
- Work with Google to promote your online presence. Now, ideally Google would like for every business owner to be happy waiting for their website to be found "naturally" by other people. We all know that leaving it up to chance could potentially take forever, since there is effectively much luck involved in that case. However, what you can do for your business is find ways to both optimize your site so that it’s more appealing to visit, stay on, and link to, and also find ways to secure more high-quality, relevant links back to your site (e.g., contact any relevant trade unions or industry groups that you belong to). It’s the route I take with all of my clients, and it’s both the safest and most effective long-term strategy.
- Play it Safe. I love getting ahead and helping other businesses get ahead, but not at the potential expense of my future or the future of any client. You should treat your business the same way when it comes to playing nice with Google. There are tactics that are clearly frowned upon by Google in terms of securing higher rankings, and while they may pay off in the short term, Google will eventually find a way to ensure that those tactics come back to haunt the businesses using them. I’ve seen other online marketers use these tactics, and they and their clients have been hit hard by some of the "Panda" updates, costing them both a lot of wasted money and time.
The moral of this story is that it pays to invest in tested and long-term marketing techniques, rather than speculating in short-term, questionable tactics. The end payoff is always much greater than any short-term gains.
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