Do a search on Google for the word “newsletter” and the first thing that pops on the search results is a definition by Wikipedia that goes “A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers.”
Newsletters are indeed a very effective means of promoting a product or service. It is non obtrusive nor intrusive, and is a great way to establish and sustain a rapport with the recipients of your newsletter.
There are however some key points to remember when running a newsletter especially if these are circulated online through email.
1. Always Only Send Out Relevant Content
Your newsletter should be relevant to the audience you serve. You should provide useful, helpful information that is of interest to your readers. Do not simply send out news about offers and advertising but send them stories that catch their attention, sustain their interest and then create the desire for what you have to offer. The highest conversions are a result of the right offer tied in to the right story.
2. Make Sure You Have Permission
A lot of times companies make the mistake of sending out advertising messages to a bunch of email addresses without even knowing how these email addresses were sourced, without knowing if these were business contacts, personal contacts, leads, or past customers.
Email Spam is a big issue today, and sending out information or advertising that is unrequested for is spam. Before adding people to your mailing list, you should have their permission.
Bestselling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin is recognized as lead advocate and even father of what he coined “Permission Marketing”. It is used more commonly in the online marketing space and its undesirable opposite is interruption marketing. The concept of is simple, marketers obtain permission before advancing to the next step in the purchasing process.
In the case of a newsletter, you would need to get permission to send the newsletter to a recipient. This is common among online marketers, especially email marketers and search marketers.
When a person voluntarily signs up to receive your newsletter through a sign up form on a website and provides you with their name and email address in the process, they are signifying their intent to receive messages from you. As an anti-spam measure, some marketers even send out a confirmation email with a link in it that needs to be clicked to ensure that the requester voluntarily grants permission and explicitly expresses his desire to receive information via email.
“This form of marketing requires that the prospective customer has either obtained explicit permission to send their promotional message (e.g. an email or catalog request) or implicit permission (e.g. querying a search engine). This can be either via an online email opt-in form or by using search engines, which implies a request for information which can include that of a commercial nature.” - Wikipedia
If you have their permission, that means they are interested in what you have to send or offer them regardless if it be a want or need. If they are interested in what you have to offer them, the higher the likelihood they will buy what you are offering.
People never buy anything that they don’t either want or need.
3. Do Not Abuse This Permission
By not abusing the permission you have been granted I mean, do not make them regret opting in to receive you mailing list.
- Try not to send them an email everyday. An email once a week will do, and while two mailings in a week might be pushing it, you would likely get away with it as long as it is content that they would very much appreciate receiving.
- Make sure to also have a section in your email that clearly tells them how they can opt out of your newsletter if they no longer want to receive any more emails from you. That way you can minimize Spam complaints against you, if they know that they can easily opt out of your list if they no longer believe your content to be important to them or simply do not want to receive any more messages from you.
- Always protect the privacy of your subscribers. Do not share or sell their information to other parties.
4. Get Them to Interact
Social marketing has become a key strategy for a lot of Fortune 500 companies in getting their message across to their customers. We have the Web 2.0 phenomenon to thank for that. The internet has changed the way people find information, products and services… and has also opened up more mediums for marketers to channel their messages. We have always known that people have an opinion on just about everything, and the internet of today makes it very easy to voice that opinion.
Always try to get your recipients to do something in your newsletter; this can be as simple as asking them direct questions and being receptive to their responses or as highly engaging as getting them to join your network or community and participate in discussions, unknowingly promoting your product or service for you on these social sites and creating a buzz for you that can go viral.
A highly interactive person on your mailing list has a higher chance of buying compared to someone with whom you have had no interaction with. Marketing is relationship building.
Those are very simple points to keep in mind when implementing a newsletter. These will keep people on your mailing list longer, and the longer a person stays on your mailing list, the more useful content they receive from you, the more you gain their trust, and the higher the chance they buy something from you.
I put together this short list of Facebook Marketing tips mainly because I was getting a lot of private messages from people whose friend requests I had approved. These private messages were not even, “hello thank you for accepting my friend request”, nor adequate introductions but messages that went like “hello would you like to invest in …..”, “hi, the real estate business is one of the best places to put your money in…”.
Have you ever received any of those messages on Facebook? It can get really annoying. So here are those tips and a few links to good places to read up on Facebook Marketing.
Tip 1 – Do Not Hard Sell
Facebook Marketing is not the process of adding people to your network, then sending them messages about investing or buying something as soon as your friend request gets accepted. Moreover, if they declines, please do not ask them for referrals or names of other people that you can pester. You are annoying people instead of getting them interested in what you are promoting.
Read the line above carefully, and note that the key word there is “interested.”
If people are not interested in what you have, they will not buy. If people do not feel a need for what you have, they will not buy. If people are not interested nor have a need for what you have, neither will they ever want to refer other people to you.
Tip 2 – Content Relevant to Your Audience is Key to Getting Attention
If you are selling a product or service through Facebook, you do not get people’s attention by messaging each and every one of them asking if they want to try your product or service. Instead, create and upload useful and helpful information such as articles, video or links on your profile page that your prospects will find important to them.
The best articles are always informative articles that zero-in on a specific need, problem or situation that they encounter or are in, that needs a solution. By providing valuable content to people on your network, you not only build and sustain a relationship with them but build TRUST.
People buy brands they trust. People buy from people they trust.
Tip 3 – Be Passionate About What You Post
Many times I see Facebook profile pages that look like they were half heartedly done. It gives me the impression that the person who created them did so not because he liked it, but did because his boss told him to do it as a way of getting more leads or potential business for the company. People see through that.
Be genuine, be real. Put your passions on your Facebook profile. I think it goes without saying that, it would be an advantage if you truly love your job and love what you do, because it will show in what you are posting on your profile page. When you write about something you are passionate about you will never run out of things to write, because you will always find something interesting to say… something that other people will also find interesting.
Tip 4 – Treat Your Friends as Friends and Not Leads or Prospects
I have heard many people talk about bumping into their Facebook friends on the street or somewhere but they never say hello. Facebook friends who initiated an a friend request even! What is the point of having someone on your FB friend list if you cannot even say hi or see eye to eye in the real world. People forget that, marketing is about relationships. This often happens when some person trying to sell something simply adds people to his friends list in order to try and pitch a product or service.
Everyone hates a salesman, but everyone likes to have a friend.
Tip 5 – Grow Your Network
For any social marketing effort to work, there is one thing you would need to do consistently… and that is to grow your network continuously. Apart from that, make sure to post useful content that people on your network would enjoy and find useful.. be helpful and make time to interact with people on your network. Again, marketing is about relationships… look at a person as a person and not as a lead.
So here are a few links to pages on Facebook Marketing which I like.
Facebook Marketing by Ron Jones talks about promoting your Facebook profile and fan pages. I especially liked the part about engagement and conversation. After all, social marketing IS about engagement and conversation.
Dosh Dosh Facebook Marketing: Articles and Resources talks about using FaceBook for Brand Exposure, Traffic and Sales and presents a good number of resources as well.
Are you thinking of starting a blog? Here are some easy to follow steps that show you how to start a blog.
Step 1 – What is Your Blog For?
From the very beginning you should know what your purpose is for starting a blog. Different people have different reasons; some may just start a blog for plain fun as a way to pass the time and put their thoughts into writing, others use it to vent, others want to make money from blogging, some may want to talk about a hobby they are passionate about.
Whatever your reasons are, you need to know up front why you are thinking of blogging.
Business bloggers for instance, or people who want to use blogging as a marketing platform have very specific topics that they want to write about. This is because they have also specific target audiences they want to cater to.
Step 2 – Deciding on a Name for Your Blog
If you have hurdled Step 1 and have a clear purpose for your blog, then choosing a name will be a lot easier.
You can probably think of any random catchy name, but if you are writing to attract a specific audience or market, it would help to use words, jargon or terms that give potential readers an idea what your blog is about, or who you are about if your goal is to brand yourself as a subject matter author or expert.
Step 3 – Free Sites or Self Hosted?
If you are just blogging for fun then it might be best that you just start blogging on free blog sites such as wordpress.com or blogger.com.
If you have any business or branding related goals, it would be ideal to host your blog on your own website, if you do have one. If not, you would need to register your own domain and sign up for web hosting in order to start your own blog under your own domain name. This is certainly more professional and gives you more credibility than just blogging on free sites.
Blogging on free sites of course is free, while getting your own domain and signing up for a web hosting account involves costs, but these are very minor expenses.
The problem with being on a free site is, the posts you publish essentially become the ownership of the site you are blogging on. If they decide to shut you down for whatever reason, they can and they will, and you cannot do anything about it, you will lose all your posts! This has happened so many times in the past.
A blog on your own domain is your own property. You are also able to do whatever you want with your settings in order to further improve your blog and get more visitors. Blogging on free sites have a lot of limitations.
There are several bloggers who first started out on free sites who later became very successful at blogging. They later realize that the limitations set by the site they were blogging on hold them back, and they see the potential for even more features and customization on their blog if they host it on their own domain. The problem here is, it is going to be very difficult for them to migrate content from the old blog on the free hosted site, to their own domain. It would also be difficult getting the traffic on your old blog to your new blog.
Starting a new blog on your own domain, it exactly what it is.. starting new, starting from scratch.
Step 4 – Choosing a Blog Theme or Template
Whether self hosted or on free sites, you can choose a theme to use on your blog which would be most appropriate for your topics or writing style. If you have a self hosted blog, you can even have your own custom theme designed and you can use this on your blog which helps brand you, your company or your blog’s identity. Make sure that the theme you select has a sidebar that automatically posts your recent blog posts as well as blog categories so readers easily find what they are most interested in reading. If it has a search box the better.
Step 5 – Writing Your First Post
The best topic to write about as your first blog post is to talk about your new blog, what it is about and what readers can expect.
You can also opt to create an About page which gives readers an idea who you are.
Step 6 – Create and Use Categories
If you are blogging about various topics, it would be best to organize your posts into categories. This way readers who land on your blog can easily navigate through your blog, and check out posts in the categories you have created. Organizing your posts this way will help visitors navigate your site easily and quickly find posts that they are interested in reading.
Studies show that one of the main reasons why websites or blog lose visitors is poor navigability or ease of use. If a visitor gets confused and does not know where to go next on a page, the easiest things for them to do is hit the BACK button, or leave your site by closing the browser or tab window, or typing in another domain. In order to ensure readers stay on your site and read your posts which you have spent the time and effort on, make sure they can easily find what they want by making it easy to navigate through your blog and jump from one post to the next or check out different categories.
Step 7 – Planning Your Posts
It is always easier to start anything but the challenge is in sustaining what you have started. It is so easy to start a blog, but sustaining that blog with new posts will be difficult.
That is why it would best to plan your posts ahead of time, to write down a list of topics that you plan to blog about and your estimated schedule for publishing these posts.
It is easy to run out of ideas so a few ways to get ideas for blog posts are:
1. Go to the Google Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) type in a word or phrase that best describes your topic and then hit the “Get Keyword Ideas” button below. Google will then come back with a list of related keywords which are actual phrases that people on Google use to find information. You will also find how many average searches there have been for each of those phrases, in your country and globally. Higher search volumes mean potentially more visitors that can find your posts that are about that topic, or contain those specific keyword phrase in your blog post title and blog content.
That keyword tool actually tells you a lot more, but for your blogging purposes, that is all you will need of it for now.
Another way to get ideas for topics is to go Google’s Blog Search Engine (http://blogsearch.google.com/), type in words or phrases that best describe the topic you want to write about, hit search and then you will receive a list of other blogs that talk about that topic.
If you want to get ideas automatically, go to Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) and set up an alert for keywords or phrases. What happens is, if new blogs are posted or recent news are posted which have those keywords you created alerts on, you will receive an eamil from Google informing you of those new blogs or news stories with links to them, for you to easily check out and get ideas from.
Step 8 – Socialize and Promote
Visitors will not simply find your new posts, you need to go out and tell people about it, get the word out. Make it a habit to do the following whenever you have published a new post.
1. Tell friends about your new post by:
- emailing friends the URL to the new post and ask them to check it out
- include a link to the new post on your email signature
- post a link to your new post on your social networking accounts on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Multiply… best to write a quick excerpt of the new post as a way of teasing the reader to get the to click the link and read the full post on your blog
2. Visit other blogs that talk about the same things you are talking about and leave meaningful comments. Do not just leave brief messages, but contribute to the discussion and add something valuable. Leaving a comment on other people’s blogs allow you to create a link that readers on that blog can click in order to go to your own blog.
3. Register your blog on blog directories. There are several blog directories out there that allow you to register your blog on their sites under specific categories. Some of these directories have a special feature where newly published posts also get published on their site, giving more reach for your content, and getting more visitors to read your posts.
The key to successful blogging is consistency. You would really need to make time for it, that is it is always good to write about something you are interested in, familiar with or an expert about because you never run out of ideas and you never get tired of blogging because the topic is something you know a lot of or are passionate about.
Conversation Marketing might be a new sounding bit of marketing jargon to you but in practice this is one of the oldest methods of getting marketing messages across. It might be touted by many as some new fancy way of marketing but strip away the technology and mediums where it is common today, and you find that it is simply correspondence between two or more people that leads to a purchase decision. It is making waves in marketing circles today mainly because of the internet and Web 2.0.
Think about it… in the old days, if you could get into a conversation with someone who has a problem or needs an answer to a question, and provide them a solution to their predicament; you have just successfully used a conversation marketing technique if that person actually buys the product you were recommending to them. With the Internet and Web 2.0, you can get into as many conversations possible.
A fitting description of Conversation Marketing can be found on www.idiomstrategies.com which says “Conversation marketing utilizes Social Media networks and applications, Web2.0 sites and tools and many traditional marketing tactics to help companies engage in their market conversation, generate awareness and increase sales and customer retention.”
Dynamic Media Corporation CEO and Conversation Marketing advocate Michael Campbell seems to have perfected this system and put it into a course called Goobert Method of Traffic Generation, where you can get a significantly growing amount of traffic to your website by simply jumping into conversations on social sites with other people and providing meaningful and useful to the people involved in the conversation, getting them to click on to your website if links are present, or searching about you on Google. Apart from those actively involved there are the spectators who may not have participated in the discussion but are simply reading the thread and are also potential visitors to your site.
With the recent update in Google’s ranking algorithm (Google Caffeine it is called), there seems to be a better appreciation of traffic and links coming from social websites; not only are there many of them, but these are rich in traffic and authority.
Good webmasters today are no Gooberts. A Goobert is actually someone who does not know what is going on, and in the Social Media Marketing context Campbell refers to his Gooberts as webmasters who are the opposite of its true meaning. Goobert actually is short for Google Blog Alerts, a feature on Google that allows you to receive notices when new blogs on specific topics you indicate to receive alerts about. The moment you get these alerts, check out that new blog and see if the topic discussed is something you can contribute a meaningful discussion to. If you are the first or one of the first to leave a comment there is a higher chance for you to get clicks on your link from the readers of that new blog post. Another way of Googbert-ing around is checking out news stories, again you can set up alerts on Google to receive notices when news stories that have the keywords you request to get alerts on, are published. If there is a comment section or “post your opinion” section at the end of the story, this is an opportunity for you to go Goobert.
To get good traffic, go the Goobert way and go social; interact, be in the thick of as many relevant conversations, and be helpful.
A couple of things happened tonight which compelled me to write this post on the top three email marketing problems that businesses encounter. If you need to know it is 1:21 AM, Thursday. I often act impulsively when it comes to a new idea, like a new post or article. As a musician and song writer… back when I used to write songs, an idea may come any time of the day.. or night, and you got to be ready for it, maybe that’s the reason for that habit.. I need to act on it immediately for if I don’t, I would end up forgetting about it… the idea would slip my mind.
So what are those two things… I had recently completed a brief for a client which involved organizing and sorting out their huge mailing list of confirmed customers, which they have been unable to either maintain a relationship with nor leverage on it. The second thing was, I got an email from Megan Fox.
So we know for fact that a mailing list is an asset that any business or individual can leverage on, and that a business has a better chance of surviving with their own mailing list. If you have a mailing list, you can simply send out an email about a sale or promo, or about some product you are promoting; they get that email, the product appeals to them, they buy it, you make money… badda bing badda boom!
But what problems can you expect to encounter with email marketing?
Let us take a look at the processes that take place; first you got to send those emails out, then hope that people open and even read your email, and then click the link in that email that sends them to a web page with information on what it is you are promoting.
Email Delivery Issues
First problem here is something to do with your system or web infrastructure. I know some people who actually did this manually, mailing out to maybe a handful of people. Things start to get a little crazy when you actually have to mail out to hundreds or even thousands. But those who sent these en masse often found that the system they were using did not send out those emails to all recipients. Even if you try sending manually to multiple addresses, some email services will flag your activity as a spam attempt. So the remedy here is to actually use an email marketing system from a service provider, that is reliable, and by reliable I mean the highest delivery percentage possible.
Email Open Rate
Alright, so you are certain your automated email messages plugged into a reliable autoresponder service that you use to deliver your messages is indeed sending out your message, but “are your recipients even opening and reading your email”? They might be getting your messages but are they actually reading them? There are a couple of tricks a lot of marketers use to get people to notice their emails, but the bottom line is to catch attention. A catchy “subject” line can make it stand above all the other emails people get, or a catchy name.
Yes, I did get an email from Megan Fox… but well, not from actress that every man in America probably fantasizes over. Actually I got this email on my Entourage email client and the sender name was “Megan Fox”, of course I opened the email. It turned out it was a direct message notification from someone on my LinkedIn network. Do you see how that worked?
Click Through Rate
So your emails are getting received and getting opened and read, but are the readers clicking on the links that send them to a web page with the information you are trying to promote? If they aren’t then, your mail out, despite getting sent, received, opened and read.. is still a failure.
Remember that you mail out with the purpose of getting the reader to an offer, and readers not clicking on the links in your email can be attributed to either non-relevance of the email to the reader, or simply a poorly crafted email.
A poorly crafted email is self explanatory, so let me expound on non relevance. If you are a wedding cake creator with a mailing list of brides to be preparing for their wedding, if you send them an email with a story about bicycles and a link to an offer for bicycles, is that email going to appeal to them at all? However, if you send them an email about the top honeymoon vacations, that has a link to a travel agency that offers a big discount on honeymoon packages, this email would likely not only get a higher click through on your links to the offer, but even decent conversions/sales.
If you have questions or comments about Email Marketing, please post them in the comment section below. You can also send me questions through the Contact Form.
I thought I’d record a video and dish out 3 online branding tips that are both simple, easy to do and best of all can actually significantly improve your brand online, despite being really simple ideas. Also these are definitely cheaper alternatives to hiring an advertising agency that will cost you an arm and a leg.
There are three key points I try to deliver on the video below…
- constant personal interaction leads to brand retention
- brand buzz increases and sustains brand awareness
- brand awareness and retention PLUS consistent delivery of your offers via advertising = SALES
To know how to accomplish those three… watch the video below.
If you have questions or comments about Online Branding, please post them in the comment section below. You can also send me questions through the Contact Form.
Online Reputation Management has become an important part of any company’s marketing strategy today, simply because purchase decisions made by your customers are influenced by reviews, feedback and other forms of information about your product or company found on the internet.
What is Online Reputation Management?
The act of monitoring, addressing or mitigating undesirable search engine results or mentions in online media for a company or product. Techniques include generating new content and creating posts on existing content. – Defined by Anvil Media in their Search Engine Marketing Glossary.
Everybody has an opinion on just about anything. Thanks to Web 2.0 and Social Media, anyone can make that opinion public over the internet, and a majority of these are not journalistic or editorial in nature but posts by the ordinary Joe on user generated content websites. Some of those opinions might not be too flattering, which in turn can affect your sales.
For this reason, businesses need to manage their reputations online by being a little more proactive on social sites, and would need to make time for search engine reputation management. Of course that also means, you also need to make sure your customers are happy by providing them good service and observing good business practices.
But reputation management is not simply about managing damaging or negative commentary, but ensuring that you are able to get your marketing messages across and they are received accurately by your audience. This will help establish or reinforce your company or product brand, and be key to achieving your marketing and sales goals.
If you have questions or comments about Online Reputation Management, please post them in the comment section below. You can also send me questions through the Contact Form.
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You can republish this article on your own blogs and websites, as long as you retain all the links above.
I got my first electric guitar when I was 16 years old. Bought it at a merchant store in Cebu’s downtown area where you see a lot of mom and pop stores and old Chinese owned stores that look like they had been in business for decades; and from the dust and cobwebs that gather on a lot of their items on sale, you could not help but think that some of these items might be as old as the store. But I guess I exaggerate a bit, but with purpose. I bought it for P1,200 which was a fairly huge amount back in the 80s. It was a Gibson copy.
There is one thing I notice about some stores or retailers… they hardly ever do big sales with big price cuts in order to get rid of merchandise.
Let us fast forward to the present day. About a week or two ago, I had a chance to talk to a boutique owner in the Bay Area who wanted to move inventory fast.
Store owners may be able to relate to this, getting stuck with items that simply do not sell, and realize that they just got to get rid of their stocks fast to make room for newer stuff that would be higher in demand and easier to sell; and move the old stuff at cost or maybe even at a small loss, but make that up from the profits you make off the newer items that you sell… that you are able to buy in the first place when you recoup that money by selling off non moving inventory. That was a mouthful wasn’t it?
The question I was asked was would Ebay be a great way to quickly move inventory. My answer, no.. at least not if you want to just quickly dump merchandise that is not selling in your store.
Ebay is a great way to sell stuff, it is a high traffic site with people visiting it with one purpose, find and buy something specific. But here are some things to consider if you are in the situation I just described.
Fees. Yes Ebay has a few fees that you need to meet, placement fees, Payal fees and added fees that are optional if you wish to upgrade your placements on Ebay and give it better exposure. Plus if you opt to offer free shipping, that means you are paying for shipping out of your pocket. Shipping costs influence Ebay buyers.
System. Sellers have two selling options; sell by auction or by fixed rate/buy now.
When you sell by auction buyers compete amongst each other to get the item, and the problem arises when bidders do not reach the reserve price you set for the item being auctioned. Made worse if there are other sellers on Ebay who are also selling the same item you have in stock and sell at lower prices and might offer better value such as free shipping, longer money back or return policies, etc. Of course if your item is somehow unique and you have less competition on Ebay, this might be to your advantage.
Then there is the buy now option; again if you have competing sellers who have the same merchandise and are selling for less and offering additional value, they will likely get the sale and not you.
Yes Ebay is a good yet competitive platform to sell on.
One more thing about their system, it unfortunately favors sellers who have amassed a certain number of transactions and positive reviews, many of which have achieved PowerSeller status. These Powersellers are able to get more exposure of their items than the new Ebay seller, especially when Ebay’s internal search engine is used.
So what then is a better alternative to Ebay if you simply want to dispose of items quickly and without any additional costs? You have two options. First is through social networking on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Multiply and even YouTube, where you are able to push these items upon people on your network and are subscribed to your updates and get your messages. Second option is Craig’s List.
Both methods do not involve any fees and it is likely that people who are interested in the product might be local to your area and can simply drive over to where you are check out the product, pay in person and take it with them.
Again I am not saying Ebay does not work, it probably won’t work for someone who just wants to get rid of inventory quickly and recoup the money that went into it, so that you could buy newer inventory that sells better, even more critical if you are looking at very small margins or none at all.
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Ayala Center Cebu - Email Spammer
Yes Ayala Center Cebu is an email spammer! But wait, you are sitting there wondering, “what on earth is an email spammer?”
Email spam is in a nutshell email that you did not request to receive that contains advertising about products or services. I am sure everyone has one time or another, or maybe even very often received email about Viagra, penis enhancers, casinos and PORN! Email that you receive that have advertising that you did not voluntarily request to receive is SPAM!
So back to Ayala Center Cebu and their email spamming.
I have been getting email from them for so many months now, from this email address feedback@ayalamalls.com.ph; sending me all these ads about their sales, promotes etc.
I had already written back to that address asking them not to send me any updates primarily because they are not getting any money of out of me since I am in the US, plus… it really is kind of annoying to receive advertising that I did not ask to receive in the first place.
But, they of course did not reply to me. I sent a few more emails to them but still no reply, and today I still receive all their email updates.
So I am going to make this a lesson for business owners who think they know what they are doing when it comes to email marketing.
Email marketing is a great way to promote your business, product or service. Direct marketing that is also significantly cheaper than putting ads on the radio or newspaper. It is definitely an effective and cheap way to get your message across. But here is how most businesses get it wrong.
When you do email marketing, you send out updates or messages to prospects on your mailing list. These prospects or “leads”, should be properly opted in or qualified. Otherwise, they will not convert into a customer. They have to declare to you clearly, that they want to receive your updates, otherwise you are just sending follow up messages to deaf ears who are not going to buy your product. It is easier and more profitable to promote something to people who are interested than to people who are not.
If you just blast out advertising messages to anybody and any email address you can find, your conversion rates are going to be ultra low because the leads or people you send out your message to are not properly qualified and neither did they properly opt in to your mailing list to get your updates, and you will be annoying a lot of people like the email spamming that Ayala Center Cebu has been doing.
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The number one benefit of your business or company getting on a Google Local Business Listing is of course the ability to put your service or product right in front of your prospect when they need or want it.
A lot of people advertise their businesses in many different ways but somehow these often do not convert as highly as expected, simply because when you tell them about your product or service, they might not have a need for it at the time. But when your website is visible when people search on Google for products or services that they already need, you are able to put your brand right in front of a hot lead; someone who is already looking for what you have to offer. They know what they want, it is just now a matter of finding it and choosing the right person to buy from. Your business or website will get listed along with other similar businesses or websites within a specific radius or area where you are located, Google looks at your specific location, identifying your area code, and gives you list of suggestions based on proximity.
When you are properly listed on Google’s Local Business Listing, your product or service will show up on the first page of search results for product/service specific keywords and a location or area.
In the video below I used the example… dim sum san jose; because I was looking for a dim sum restaurant to eat at.
In the video I mention that, a Local Business Listing on Google is especially beneficial to a business that relies largely on customers who are within a certain area around the location of their business.
Watch the video to see specific examples.
Note that when I did a search for dim sum milpitas, the restaurant Mayflower Seafood Restaurant DID not pop up in the results, which means they are not listed on Google’s Local Business Center, and that means dim sum restaurants can grab this opportunity to get that exposure for themselves.
If you have questions or comments about the Google Local Business Listing, please post them in the comment section below. You can also send me questions through the Contact Form.
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