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What Would You Want a List For?

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Part of selling to your clients involves staying in contact with them. In today’s busy world though, that can be a problem. More businesses are working on shoe string budgets and no one seems to be able to make time to call each client every few days, there’s just not enough time or manpower. Sure if you are marketing your local business you can use ads in the paper, billboards or even potentially flyers, but you don’t know who sees it and who you might be missing.

What if there was a better way? A way you could target clients specifically looking for your products or services? Unbeknownst to many, there are several better ways to accomplish this and they can be designed to operate automatically, in the background. you could even call it your own 24/7 super salesman!

If you read the subject line, I am referring to an email list and using the service of an autoresponder system to stay in touch with your customers. If you are not familiar with an auto responder, it is simply a service that provides a series of emails you prepare in advance to send out to your clients.

So how would this work? Well, every business seems to have a set of common questions that their customers always seem to ask. As a business owner you will be all to aware how often they get asked and you most likely already have a patented canned response. It’s these responses that are the best candidates to turn into a series of expanded emails to your clients.

Now depending on your business it could just be a few questions, or each answer could lend itself to another series of questions. These questions turn into great “touch points” for you to stay in contact with your clients. Also since you aren’t constricted by time, you can go into extensive detail when necessary in your automated series.

If you would like more information on how creating a list and using an auto responder to market to your clients would benefit your business call or email us and let’s see if we can help you make your business grow faster than you thought possible!

Watch for an upcoming article on how to start building your list quickly and if you want to take a Free Test drive of AWeber’s auto-responder system just fill in the info below.


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Internet Marketing in Calgary – Marketing Without a Net Part 9

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So here we are 45 days since I started and it’s time for a recap. My original goal was to capture at least one spot on page one of the Google search for one of the various keywords, granite countertop companies Calgary, granite countertop installers Calgary, granite countertops calgary, granite installers calgary and granite countertop Calgary.

I have no experience in the granite industry, yet I put together a report on “How to Choose a Granite Countertop Installer in Calgary” by spending a day researching and writing. I also created an additional report on how to clean granite countertops as a bonus.

From there I created a set of four videos covering “the Myths About Granite” and a couple other quick versions for my lead capture page and one to push out to various video sites. I also put together one article talking about Granite versus Marble Countertops. Then finally about a week ago, I put together a blog site to help expand the info.

So what are the results after 45 days? Overall I am pretty disappointed, but I did learn quite a bit. With some of Google’s new updates to their search algorithms I realized that a Lead Capture Page isn’t enough. Future campaigns will have more complete launches as part of the package.

Next, five videos simply isn’t enough. It’s getting tougher to get the backlinks to the pages recognized and longer for them to appear. For real traction it appears I need at least ten videos out there if not more.

So back to the results. The best I did was two keywords on page 1 for just under a week, Granite Countertop companies Calgary made it to 7 and Granite Countertop Installers Calgary made it to 9. Granite countertops Calgary and Granite Installers Calgary both made it into the low teens, but didn’t crack page one.

Now I do have a lot of spots on page two and three for various videos and the article and there is potential over time for them to slip forward, but it will require more dedicated time for it. Overall I had roughly 60 visits to the site and zero leads captured. Was it the reports? Was it the titles? Still a bit early to tell.

It’s most interesting when I compare it to another campaign I am running for someone where we have 11 videos out already and more coming. This client is currently operating with 10% of his visitors clicking through for his report. So good news is the Granite test which is an experiment and unpaid isn’t performing, but the  work I am getting paid for is doing gangbusters.

Just to provide an idea of how gangbusters, here’s a couple screenshots of two searches, the yellow highlighted areas are the videos we put together;

5 spots on page 1 of Google out of 428,000 results makes me pretty happy, but…

8 spots on page 1 of Google out of 274,000 results isn’t too shabby either. Plus we have other keywords also working for us.

In the end, I understand I need more content to push out. Ideally when I contact some of the Granite companies next week, I find one or two who understand the opportunity that this presents. If I can work with them and can get into their shops and/or a couple of their job sites to create some branded videos for them, I can bring them some new business, which this is really all about.

If you have a small business and would like to inquire about us creating a web video campaign for you simply email us directly or leave us a comment below.

Is Your Website Too Pretty?

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If it is, lucky you, unless of course the pretty factor is wiping out your ability to be found by potential clients on the Internet. You’ve all seen the sites that have the incredibly cool graphics on their home page, the pictures that change, the flash movie or intro you have to watch before you enter the actual site. Well the ironic part is these cool features may be actually impeding your ability to get found by potential clients.

Yep, Google doesn’t see the flash movie that plays, it cannot tell what the cool pictures are and pretty has absolutely zero ranking factor with Google. Yet this is exactly what many business owners get sold on when getting a site designed. Sure, it’s nice to have a cool site, but who cares if no one ever sees it?

Think of it this way; imagine having the best kitchen in your home that you could possibly have, quite possibly the best kitchen in North America. Imagine the granite counter tops, the beautiful cabinetry, an incredible island with a stainless steel gas stove built right in, all the luxuries, all the amenities, simply a beautiful, pretty kitchen. So beautiful that Architectural Digest would die to come see it, to take photos of it to show others, but ironically only people you specifically invite into your home ever get to view it. It makes you happy when you are in it, but 99.9999999999% of the population will never ever know about it. Does this sound like your site?

Now depending on your business, pretty may be a factor, ultimately a website is a tool to attract more clients, inform potential and current clients, and to provide information about what your company does. While we still run into many websites that are simply tired old online promotional material converted from old paper style brochures, the companies that get found by new clients are doing so by providing information, focusing on key words that clients search for, and using their websites as a sales tool to help grow business.

If you are simply using your site as a place card to store your address online you are missing out. With today’s technologies, it is possible to create email campaigns that promote targeted items to interested clients, to build lists of potential clients that you might possibly convert into active clients, and to track how people are finding your site so you can focus on converting those people into extra business/revenue for your company. Perhaps most importantly, most of this can be automated for you, creating a sales person for your company that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and helping you to increase profitability. In today’s economy employees like this are invaluable!

If you would like to learn more or to have us do a free evaluation of your site, email us at bill@billbiko.com or call us directly at 403-870-4663. Wouldn’t it be worth it to find that a few simple changes could mean extra business for you?

Internet Marketing in Calgary – Internet Marketing Without a Net Part 8

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OK, I admit it, I have been slacking! I haven’t really done anything in almost two weeks on this project as I was too busy launching another site for a client. It went live last week and I already have more videos and articles out than my granite countertop promotion.

Guess the difference is one I am getting paid for, while the other I may or may not eventually get paid for. My intent was to start a blog as well, but just hasn’t been in the schedule yet. Still the results aren’t bad!

Right now I am sitting as follows;

Granite countertop installers Calgary …..8th spot in Google

Granite countertop companies Calgary …8th spot in Google

Granite installers Calgary …………………9th spot in Google

Granite countertops Calgary………………..12th spot in Google

Granite countertop Calgary…………………..34th spot in Google

The links from other sites are slowly starting to build and it’s really a matter of me adding more videos and/or articles and some time. My deadline to get back to all the granite companies I emailed is coming up fast, so by the end of this week I will email them again to see if there are any takers.

From my perspective, the real value for these companies is the groundwork is already done. At this point I could come into their offices or shops, easily create another ten videos and brand everything with their company information. It could even include pictures or video of some of their best installs.

Over time it would help push them up the rankings even more, provide them with potentially two first page rankings (if it was someone from page one who went with me that is!) and create another steady stream of potential clients. Of course we have to wait and see what happens now won’t we!

Internet Marketing in Calgary – Marketing Without a Net Part 7

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Our little experiment with local internet marketing is still slowly moving forward, but it looks like I am going to have to throw some more tools into the fray. Currently for a local search of granite countertops in Calgary I am stuck at spot number 13. I’m also still holding ninth with “granite countertops companies Calgary”

I’ve managed to get some nice quality backlinks lined up, but obviously not enough to help me move up a few notches. Interestingly, if I use some special search tools to get results as if I was searching from some other city or country for granite countertops Calgary, I show up in the 7th position. This just goes to show how much more relevance Google is placing on local search results as I drop five spots.

One of the sticking points I currently have is the lack of what is called deep links. Deep links are links to pages other than the front page of a site and they can go a long way to helping establish relevance on a site. This relates back to why content is king for a site, the more pages of content, the more potential links back to you from other sources.

Since I only have the lead capture page in place currently, there really isn’t anywhere else to link, so my next step will be to put a quick and dirty WordPress blog in place. In a traditional campaign for a local small business in Calgary, this would include information about hours, locations, contact information along with several informative articles about the business’s services or products. It would also be a source to see more of the small business’s videos.

This is the tact I will take here as well. I have a couple other blog sites I need to finalize first and get some more updates and videos on and then I will be able to donate some time back to this venture. So in the meantime watch for more updates, or if you are interested in talking to me about helping you market your small business online locally in Calgary please contact us for a free consultation.

Internet Marketing in Calgary – Marketing Without a Net Part 6

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At this point we’ve kind of reached a wall. It’s still fairly early in the process and as of this evening I now have four different videos pushed out there and I submitted one article. In a perfect world we would be sitting around 250 different sources having our little bit of info, but as of earlier this evening we only had two backlinks showing up.

So it will take some time for these articles to start appearing and the videos, which used to rank within hours, have definitely slowed down in the speed of them appearing. Yet they are showing up, so now it’s just a matter of patience and seeing what next week brings.

Internet Marketing in Calgary – Marketing Without a Net Part 5

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Good News and Bad News

OK, perhaps it really isn’t bad news, but it sounded better than good news and OK news! So first the “bad news”, we climbed up a bit higher in the rankings, but only one spot! We have crawled up to lucky 13 spot.

We have two videos out presently and another should go out in the next few days. Since this is sort of  “test” project, I am only donating spare time to it and it is taking off slower than it should. In the perfect campaign world, we would launch four or five videos within the first week to get immediate traction. By submitting less and on a slower pace, we of course are getting results slower.

Now for the good news! For one of the other search terms “granite countertop companies calgary”, one of our videos is showing up on page one already and is sitting in ninth spot! We are also showing up in #32 with a video as well.

We’re still not high enough to get any steady traffic, just a couple hits here and there, but it’s moving forward. I will be making one small change to the main landing page, http://www.granitecountertopscalgary.com. I currently ask for name, email and phone. I’m going to take phone out and just leave it as name and email.

I’d been thinking about this for a few days now and people will tend to be a bit more reluctant about releasing their phone number to get access to the Free granite countertop installer report. So initially this will help draw leads, at least on paper!

Internet Marketing in Calgary – Marketing Without a Net Part 4

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July 19th, I sent my first batch of videos out. By mid afternoon I already climbed up to 14th. Frankly I am a bit disappointed, but when you are doing this live, sometimes it doesn’t work as fast as you hope. I had hoped the video would transport us to page 1, but alas, no.

If you want to take a try, go to www.google.ca and type in “granite countertops calgary” you should find me near the top of page 2! In the meantime, I am working on video # 2 and possibly 3 tonight!

Internet Marketing in Calgary – Marketing Without a Net Part 3

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Just to reset the time line, we are now officially nine days in from when I started on July 9th. Of course by starting, that really was starting the second stage. I had already prepared the reports I was giving away, I already had the domain I was directing people towards and it was just sitting there.

It was July 9th, I sent the email out to the various Calgary granite countertop installers I found on the first page of Google introducing myself and explaining what I was doing. To date, not one of them has contacted me, although it appears most if not all have looked at the site. Here is the report I have so far.

Everything prior to July 8th (and most likely a couple views on the 8th) were me or people I asked to take a look at the site. Now I posted my first article about this on the 10th, so I may have tainted my own results by doing this, but I posted near the end of the day and by late morning I already had four views that day. Not many people are reading this (come on it’s a new site right now!), so perhaps it was only a minor tainting.

Friday the 9th was a half day for many people in Calgary due to the Stampede Parade, but still four people viewed the page, then another four on the tenth which was the Saturday (one being me!) and then Monday morning another five appeared. So I sent it out to 12 email addresses in total and it appears at least 13 views occurred. I know the 14th was another person I sent directly there and the one today was me.

So starting and inclusive of the 9th, 19 total views. Now I am going out on a limb, but I have to assume the majority of these were directly from the email as there were no links to the site, and it shouldn’t have appeared anywhere until after I posted on the 10th. It was on the 10th I put the first backlink in place via these posts! I can account for five of the visits, but that still left 14 hopefully via the initial email.

You have to remember, Google didn’t get it’s first first hint the page was actually out there yet, until I put a post out on the 10th with a link to the site. After this, it wasn’t until around the 16th that I noticed I was already ranking 17th with just a single backlink.

Since then there have been a couple more subtle links throw out directing people to the page, but nothing major until this morning, when I finally did the first initial push and submitted a video and info out to around 40 sites.

Once again, we will sit back and see what happens over the next couple of days and I will then submit the next piece. Check back in to see where it goes!

Internet Marketing in Calgary – Marketing Without a Net Part 2

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OK, here we are five days later and I really haven’t had a chance to start marketing this project with some slide show videos yet. I have one already prepared, but the initial time to set up the necessary profiles has escaped me due to the sudden overload of work coming in.

So if somehow an excess of work can be seen as a bad thing, I wish it was bad more often! So now for the good part. Based on just a couple inbound links my granite countertops Calgary page had already jumped up into 17th position on Google earlier this week.

As I mentioned I’ve been a tad busy and hadn’t made time to post about it until now. So the relevance of this in case you are missing this is that the page is ranking due to a few factors right off the bat.

First a very strategically chosen keyword phrase that is matching the domain name. Just to recap, the full domain is http://www.granitecountertopscalgary.com and granite countertops Calgary is the main phrase I am targeting.

Second, the page itself is highly SEO optimized with some nice keyword density and proper tagging to help it rank effectively.

Third, I already have a few simple backlinks coming to it to help build relevance. As I find more time to move forward with more backlinks, start to release the videos out into the various video platforms and actually spend time working on it, we should start seeing it gain some real traction.

At this point I am pretty confident high rankings on page one shouldn’t be very hard to achieve.