Let’s say you have a wholesale dessert business. The goal is that when people go to Google and searches for ‘wholesale desserts‘ that your website comes up. Basically we want Google to refer visitors to your website who are looking for your services. But let’s say your business is brand new and nobody knows about it. This means that unless you’ve done some other kind of advertising, nobody is directly visiting your website (typing in your site address). Nobody is sending emails with links to your business, nobody is bookmarking your business, nobody is Googling your business name. Basically, nobody cares.
This presents a problem because Google knows nobody cares!!!
How does Google know?
By my humble estimation, Google sees a ridiculous 90% to 99% of what’s happening on the internet. They own the Google Chrome browser (79% market share), Google search (74% of all search) and Gmail (23% market share). With just those entities, what percentage of the activity on the internet do you think they are aware of? They also own something called Safe Browsing (which most people haven’t even heard of) that 42% of all devices on earth use!!
My point is, no matter how amazingly we optimize your website, how much content there is there, and how many great links we build… Google can tell if nobody cares and they are not gonna put the site on page one.
So, especially for new businesses, other forms of advertising have to come into play that ultimately generate traffic to your website, emails with links to your business, etc… all of which Google sees. When Google sees the links we are building combined with these other signals, you can expect good things 🙂
So how do you generate this real world activity around your website?
Here’s some ideas:
Print advertising and distribution.
If your business service applies to most homeowners print up flyers, postcards or door hangers and get them distributed. you can get them printed up at the best prices and best quality with our sister company Printing Peach. Shameless plug I know 🙂
Hint: On the flyer, encourage people to ‘Google’ you. This gets people using Google to search your business name which is a great thing for Google to see.
Google AdWords and other online advertising.
Run some Google AdWords to generate traffic to your website. There’s not a direct connection between running Google AdWords and Google giving you good organic rankings, but inevitably people who find your website Google your business name to check out your online reputation before hiring you. It also leads to emails with links to your website and other good activity which Google sees. Did I mention we also manage people’s Google AdWords?
Outbound sales.
In my opinion there’s nothing more effective than directly reaching out to your potential clientele. It’s hard work and not a lot of fun for most people, but it works! Pound that pavement! Make those phone calls, send those prospecting emails. Use a good lead management tool and get serious about it.
It will 100% generate new business and it will also positively affect your SEO generating all kinds of good signals to Google.
Business networking groups.
Join a small business networking group. Meetup is the place to find them. For the extrovert, these almost always generate a steady stream of business and they will get people searching your business name, visiting your website and so on.
Social media networking.
I almost didn’t include this one on the list. There is a myth out there that social media rules the world and this needs to be a marketing focus for small business owners. This is simply not true… Why? Because people don’t use Facebook or other social media platforms to hire their accountant, sell their house, or find other service providers. They just don’t… They’re there to look at friends pictures and look at pictures of cute kittens. Business owners trying to interrupt that and sell their services is a bit like the Amway salesman at the party… Annoying.
If you don’t find that convincing, just know that I’ve dealt with over 300 small business owners in the last 10 years and only on a couple occasions have people told me that social media was a primary means of generating new business. I’ve heard countless stories of people investing heavily and it not working though!
If you are Toyota, or Fido, go for it… Social media is much better for brand awareness where there doesn’t need to be a short-term correlation between expense and new sales.
Anyway… For the right business, it’s worth considering. If you sell products for women, it might be a better fit. Women differentiate less between socializing and purchasing then men. If your product is something that people enjoy purchasing (shoes, fashion, jewelry) that could work. On the other hand, people don’t find it fun to hire someone to do their taxes 🙂
If you think it might be a good fit, get serious about it. Join appropriate groups, be active. Make your primary focus just being social… Not selling your services. That will happen naturally when people need your services. You will be ‘top of mind’.
The last thing I’ll say is don’t try to leverage social media to generate business and activity to your website unless you just genuinely love social media. If you don’t love social media, you won’t be good at it and you won’t stick to it anyways 🙂