Got to Save Money? What Can You Chop?

If your business is pulling back where can you realistically chop in your marketing plan and not get hurt?

Chop Away

Social Media – if you are paying to update Facebook,

Bright Idea Tips to Help Marketing Budgets When Times Are Tough
Bright Idea Tips to Help Marketing Budgets When Times Are Tough

Twitter and Google+ you could easily take a break to save money.

Blogging – try not to kill all your writing as the SEO juice you get from well-written blog posts helps you in the long run, but maybe consider moving from three days a week to two or from two days a week to one. Try to still keep the momentum up but maybe lower the word count or frequency.

Chop Not!

Google AdWords – don’t touch it unless you absolutely have to. AdWords is hands down the best way to generate new leads and start cash pumping back into your business.

e-newsletters – they build loyalty and repeat business. Newsletters are especially important to businesses that have annual renewals for service plans like pest control firms and HVAC firms. If you chop this, your name is not kept infront of your customers and come time to renew, they may not see the value of renewing; which will hurt your sales even further.

Need some practical sense to make the most of the budget you do have or to get AdWords to work harder for you? We’re the firm to call and chat with first especially if you are looking for honest advice you can trust with no sales pressure.

My Move and MyCorporation

I will not be posting to my blog this week as I am doing my final move to Virginia. Who knew that moving could be so laborious and complicated.

Not only am I moving my residence, my office, but I am reorganizing my business into a Virginia entity all at the same time.

I have to say that I think I would be having a stroke if it were not for the kind and competent people at MyCorporation.com who are doing my Maryland dissolution and Virginia reorganization. They are handling all the details and paperwork as well as setting up my new federal EIN.

I used them before when I set up my Maryland corporation in 2008. If you are not a lawyer and do not know where to turn for help in setting up or even deciding what to do, www.MyCorporation.com is a great place to start.

I will not be set up in my new office until Friday August 28th, so there will be no additional blog posts this week. See you next week!

Online Reviews Can Damage Your Sales

Recover your reputation online by embracing the online system.
Recover your reputation online by embracing the online system.

Here’s a comment I found on Yelp about one of the businesses I cross paths with that when I saw it I cringed for them:

“…Terrible. My 8 year old was like, “OMG MOM what happened?” Called her to adjust, try to fix, whatever, she was rude and condescending beyond words… AND WAY over priced. She had theĀ *** to tell me how much it would cost to fix them! She said it was a touch up… Ā Losing her eyesight and hand is NOT steady, her mind is gone too! NUTS! ”

Consumers love Yelp and business owners hate Yelp, but as a business owner, you’d better learn how to work the Yelp system to your advantage. Reviews about your business happen on Yelp whether you have an account or not. Deciding not to claim your page there does not mean that your poor reviews will not show up, rather you simply have no way to rebut them . This is the same for Google Local. Google will build a page for your business where a review about you will be housed whether you claim the page or not.

As this business I mentioned with the poor review, has tons of really great reviews, it is a shame that this one review on Yelp is getting serious exposure on Google that is sure to damage their sales.

Better by far is to embrace the system, claim these page (Yelp and Google Local) and drive happy customers there by pointing emails to these pages and askingĀ customers to review you online. One terrible review will not hurt you when you have 10, 20, or 50 fabulous reviews. There will always be “trolls” out there and consumers know it, but when you have only one review and it is a really poor one and Google is choosing to show it by your website listing, it can damage your business terribly.

Need more help with your image online? Ask us about our Brand Booster program or savvy solutions to help build your online and website reviews.