Increasing Local Reviews: Integrating Offline Marketing Tactics

When we discuss local SEO, most conversations revolve around online marketing strategies and recommendations – fix title tags, include keywords, claim g+ locations, citations, link signals, and reviews. This obviously makes sense since these are the ranking factors that drive local SEO visibility. However, in most cases we fail to incorporate the offline marketing component to the overall strategy.

82 percent of local searchers follow up offline via an in-store visit (comscore/TMP), which means we also need to incorporate the offline visit as part of our integrated marketing strategy.

Reviews are ranked as one of the top five most important ranking factors for local SEO coupled with the fact that 88 percent of users are influenced by a customer review when making a buying decision. However, reviews are also one of the toughest to acquire according to BrightLocal with only 12 percent users recommending a local business on G+ and 8 percent on an online directory. So it’s definitely a tough nut to crack and that’s where the offline piece kicks in.

Integrated Marketing Local Review Examples

In this post I’m going to use FedEx as example of how one can integrate cross-functional marketing initiatives. I recently visited FedEx in Mountain View, California. At the end of my visit I was handed a customer feedback flyer with a QR code:

Image Credit: AdLift Internal Research

Scanning the QR code will take you to their internal feedback system where you rate your experience. At the end of the review you’ll receive 10-25 percent off your next order. This was awesome except for one little detail – nobody gets to see the review!

Adding a link to Google+ Local page or a QR code to other local review sites (Yelp, Yahoo, YP) would help catapult the reviews and content that each business center would generate.  It’s important to incorporate this strategy promptly and swiftly since reviews solicited at the time of service can see completion rates of 80-90 percent, according to Ted Paff, CEO of CustomerLobby.

It’s also worth noting that Google+ only shows the reviews and stars that are generated on G+ business pages. The reviews on other local sites do not count towards the stars and number of reviews.

Screenshot taken 02/04/2014 of https://plus.google.com/local‎ & Google.com

As of the moment, you can’t write a G+ review on a business page using your mobile device but this is bound to change soon. So if you are including a link to your G+ local business page, make sure have the QR code pointing to other review sites (Yelp, Yahoo, etc).

You could use this opportunity to drive social signals – G+ authority, Tweets, and likes.  Again, using the FedEx customer feedback initiative as an example. After filling out the feedback form, the customer might have wanted to tweet the fact that apart from the great service they got an additional 15 percent off.

Photo Credit: AdLift Internal Research

Lastly, businesses need to make it extremely easy for their customer to review them! Here are a couple of tips to help make it easier for customer to review your business:

1. Link directly to your business review page.  Whether you link from your website or you add a link on your offline marketing material (QR code), I’d recommend linking to write a review page – https://www.yelp.com/writeareview/biz/P1XZeSdImfB6Pqqt4JHhcQ vs. the main business page – http://www.yelp.com/biz/los-compadres-taco-truck-san-francisco-2

Screenshot taken 02/04/2014 of Yelp.com

2. Include easy instructions – this is something you could include at the back of your comment card or in store marketing material.

Screenshot taken 02/04/2014 of Yelp.com

3. Customers directed towards a positive review have a higher probability of leaving a positive review.
Customize receipts – Be creative. Your transaction receipts can be customized to drive review. Adding a link or a QR code to every receipt can help drive the number of reviews.

Photo Credit: AdLift Internal Research

Overall, there’s huge opportunity in working towards boosting your local presence by integrating your online efforts with offline initiatives. This is something that can be scaled across multiple verticals – restaurants, local services, or home services. With tax season around the corner I’d love to see tax service companies like H&R Block and  Liberty use this opportunity to drive reviews and visibility specially for clients that they’ve helped get a refund!

The Primary Thing PPC Consultants Should Be Doing To Retain Clients

As the head of a 78-member strong paid search agency, I tend to think a lot about how to retain clients. In fact, every single consultant must and should be thinking about the magical number that is your churn rate. It is much cheaper to keep your existing clients than to chase new clients. Keeping your existing clients should be your number one responsibility, and it is for us in White Shark Media.

As a PPC consultant, it can be difficult to retain clients. Especially if you work with smaller clients where the need for ongoing optimizations is smaller. Keeping your clients for more than 6-8 months can be tough nut if you don’t have a set strategy in place.

Luckily, the solution is rather simple.

Learn to Provide Value Every Single Month

When a client stops using your services it’s because they don’t see any further value with the fee you’re charging them each month. You worked relentlessly the first couple of months bringing their account to where it is now, so you might think that it’s well deserved to lay back for a bit. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The good-will from the initial months of good results will only take you so far. And that’s not very far.

Adding value is an old trick that not only pertains to consultancy, but also stretches into offers, discounts, selling, communication, and many other areas. For PPC consultants, value can be perceived in many ways and is therefore a rather vague term.

Think Of The Report You Have To Send

My best tip to ensure you add value every month is to think about the monthly report that I hope you’re sending your clients.

Whenever you optimize a client’s account you should always consider the question:

Is this enough for my client to be happy paying my fee this month? Will this report present enough value?

By asking yourself this simple question, you will look more closely at your process and avoid the checklist mentality. Many PPC consultants just check off tasks from a checklist:

• Paused under-performing ads – CHECK
• Added new negative keywords – CHECK
• Changed bidding – CHECK

However, this strategy tends to get stale and your client will begin to doubt whether you’re truly worth the fee every month.

Therefore, remember  to provide one or two things that will show value when you send your monthly report.

Think Of The Money You’re Being Paid

Another good strategy is to look at the monetary value you’re bringing in. If you’re solely maintaining an AdWords account month-after-month with no progress to show, it will be hard to defend your fee.

If you know exactly how much revenue (either through e-commerce tracking or call tracking) you’re creating every month, you will be able to better make a case for why your fee is an investment instead of an expense.

7 Tips For Providing More Value to PPC clients

1. Do More Than What Is Expected

I always like to deliver more than what my clients expect. If they’re paying me to set up a regular search campaign, I regularly either pitch in with some of the other campaigns, or at the very least provide extra feedback on what they are doing.

If you are getting stuck in the same old optimizations every month, consider starting brand new initiatives. Set up a remarketing campaign, do research for good websites that could go into a display placement campaign or expand on your client’s PLA efforts.

Just make sure that you have your client’s consent if you start touching areas that are outside of your contract.

2. Go Deeper Than The Basics

I often see consultants get stuck in the monthly optimizations without any direction on where to go next. Once a search campaign is running well, it’s time to look at some of the deeper optimization techniques.

Anything from Ad Scheduling to Bid Adjustments, Mobile Ads, More Extensive Sitelink Descriptions, etc. can be helpful at this stage.

3. Try New Keywords or Locations in Limited Test Environments

You should consistently try out new keywords. Eventually, it gets hard to find more keywords to test, but make an effort to look for them every month. There might be seasonal keywords coming up or other events you can take advantage of.

4. Provide a Landing Page Assessment With Tips to Improve Conversions

Your end goal is to improve conversions for your client. For example, I often provide clients with landing page assessments. I’m not a conversion rate expert, but since I work in online marketing I tend to know what works and what doesn’t. Even basic improvements to client websites can produce greater returns – a win-win!

Once you start to see better conversion rates, you will have a completely new task ahead of you in your PPC campaigns as well. Keywords that formerly didn’t convert profitably can now be eligible for new experiments, or current keywords can receive higher bids.

This goes for other areas as well. Remember that even though you’re not an expert, you most likely know the basics about:

• SEO
• Social Media
• Landing Page Optimization
• Retargeting
• Web Analytics

Offering “accidental” advice on these topics is great for your retention. If you accidentally stop by your client’s Google+ page and notice they haven’t updated their cover photo format to the new format (happens to all of us I’m sure), shoot them a quick email letting them know and include a link to the new size and Best Practices.

Small efforts like this can go a long way in showing that you truly care about growing their business.

5. Bid Higher, Get More Budget, & Provide a Bigger Return

This is my biggest piece of advice. I often see PPC consultant get complacent with their campaigns. For me, I’m not satisfied until my client is in the top 1-3 spots for every profitable keyword. To be fair, attaining this is not always possible with the initial budget you’ve been granted. One of your main tasks, therefore, is to continue showing a high ROI and turn this into a bigger budget.

My end goal is always to attain such a high budget that I’m essentially without limits and can truly start maximizing the ROI.

Another bonus of getting a bigger budget is that your fee seems smaller. If you’re paid $1,000 to manage a $3,000 campaign, you’re essentially being paid 33%. However, if you are all of a sudden paid $1,000 for managing a $10,000 campaign, you’re only paid 10%. This means the downside for letting you go far outweighs the small percentage you get paid. Also, remember that with the bigger budget you’re also providing a higher ROI, which means your client depends upon you more.

6. Always Let Your Client Know What Is Coming Next

I must admit – sometimes I fail at this. I have this amazing outline in my head, or scribbled in Evernote, detailing how I will grow my client’s campaigns. However, I don’t share it because it is just that – scribbles – and I don’t want to show something that doesn’t look professional. Before I know it, I’m receiving notice that they are pulling out of the contract and are trying in-house instead.

Every time this happens, I beat myself in the head for not following my own advice. I’m often able to retain the client by presenting the long-term plan. Upon seeing the plan, the client is often surprised about how much more can be done with their campaigns.

A failure to communicate your plan of action and not sharing your thoughts with your client negatively affects your client’s perception of the value you provide.

This helps when your competitors are calling your client preaching the latest features, or asking them why you’re not doing “x”. It is a lot better if your client already knows you’re not running remarketing yet because you just installed the tag and don’t have enough visitors, but you will be launching in 45 days.

To sum it up – Be Proactive

7. Present Your Work Favorably

You can do all the amazing work in the world, but if you don’t know how to present it favorably to your client, all your efforts will be for naught. By presenting favorably, I don’t necessarily mean you need an extensive report with fancy graphics (although graphics help a lot).

At the very least, you need to ensure your client understands the work you’re doing and how it is helping him grow his business. Mastering writing and sales techniques go a long way when it comes to getting your point across effectively.

Chase The Value You Want To Present

I like to think of each new month as a new hourglass that needs to be filled. With every action, report, and optimization I report to my clients I fill up my hourglass with positivity towards me and my company. Each month I need the hourglass to be at a certain level in order to allow me to achieve my goal:

For my client and I to be equally happy about paying my invoice at the end of the month.

Therefore, I start every month from scratch knowing I need to fill up that hourglass. One of the great icons of business Warren Buffet once said: “It takes 15 years to build a good reputation, but only 15 seconds to tear it apart” (paraphrased). I believe the same is true when it comes to consultants. You earn trust every month you’re both happy when the invoice is paid, but you still need to start every month from scratch.

What Do You Want from Your PPC Consultant? 

I would like to hear feedback from in-house consultants. Above are my experiences from five years in the industry, but they don’t paint the full picture.

I would also love to hear what you believe PPC consultants do wrong or well. I’m confident many of you have experiences with PPC consultants you can’t wait to share!  🙂

4 Ways to Capture B2B Leads from Facebook

Companies which operate under the business-to-business structure haven’t been quite so quick to embrace social media marketing as B2C companies have.  However, there are an increasing number of indicators that B2B companies can properly employ social media to their advantage in a very real way.  As an illustration of this point, let’s explore five different ways in which a B2B company can capture leads from Facebook:

Social Ad Targeting

Paid social ads are another great way to directly reach decision makers as a B2B company.  Facebook allows an advertiser to be extremely specific about the nature of the audience they want to connect with. For example you can target them by interests, demographics, location, or any combination of filters you choose.

Paid advertising campaigns are often easy to compute ROI on, as evidenced by this simple guide to Facebook Ad ROI by Hubspot; making them an excellent choice for nearly any business to experiment with.  They are also usually quite scalable, based on current trends, making it easy to adjust based on the circumstances your business is currently experiencing.

Targeted Niche Prizes

The giveaway prize is another tried and true feature of promotion and marketing, and one that B2B companies are uniquely positioned to take advantage of.  Since you presumably know your niche target quite well, why not invest in a prize that will really appeal to them?  Instead of a generic prize like a gift card, consider a Chromecast if you are targeting IT managers, or a set of golf clubs when targeting CEOs.  Get creative, get personal, and watch them get interested.

This level of detail and attention is also ensure that people remember your company even after the giveaway or promotion is over, which can make all the difference next time you interact with them. One of the best, most memorable gifts I received from an online contest was a free T-Shirt. Just for entering the contest with my address and phone number, I was shipped a free, random, T-Shirt from Mailchimp. Although Mailchimp is a tool most used by small businesses and marketers in general, they targeted me the decision maker in their ad campaign.

Which leads to my next point:

Appeal Directly to Decision Makers

“Perhaps the most powerful benefit that Facebook offers B2B organizations is the ability to bypass corporate gatekeepers, and open a dialogue between your organization and the decision makers you are trying to connect with,” according to Zach Mangum, co-founder of GroSocial. “It lets you cut directly to the chase and present your pitch without needing to deal with layers of corporate red tape”. Once a personal relationship has been established between your company and a decision maker elsewhere, you essentially have free access to that person’s attention in the future.

Leverage Industry Connections

Almost every business person who employs social media uses it to help maintain a network of Facebook friends, acquaintances, and peers in their own fields as well as others.  Being able to tap into this peer-to-peer sharing has incredible potential for most B2B organizations.

Consider adapting your customer relationship management software to also account for important notes on industry movers and shakers as well as customers themselves. Salesforce, for instance, has a free module on the app exchange that tracks those connections on Facebook as well as Twitter.

So while there are definitely some differences in the way B2B businesses should approach and employ social media compared to the way B2C companies handle things, they can still definitely reap significant benefits. Remember, 20 well-targeted entrants into your sales funnel will provide better sales results than 2000 generic entrants. Business-to-business companies simply need to focus their message and attention on their specific niche and demographic rather than trying to broadcast their message far and wide.

Don’t feel limited to these practices, either.  In fact, they barely begin to scratch the tip of the iceberg in terms of creative marketing tactics.  Viral video is obviously one driver of major traffic on all social media platforms.  Click bait pieces such as clever infographics, great art, or even eBooks can also be huge sources of success for the firm savvy enough to be able to consistently create successful pieces on an ongoing basis.  The possibilities are limited only by the number of your creative ideas.

What can we take away from all this?  In large part, the important thing is for B2B companies to realize that they have real opportunities to leverage their participation on social media into actual revenue.  The idea that only B2C companies can benefit from social media is an outdated one, that doesn’t reflect the reality of their position or embrace any of the unique advantages B2B companies are able to derive from the medium.

Image credits: All images in this post are screenshots taken from this infographic by GroSocial. Used with permission, no affiliation.