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Many business owners operate under the false assumption that marketing consultants are only affordable for larger companies For Seo. In truth, there are many benefits to hiring a small business marketing consultant, as outlined below.
What Marketing Consultants Do
First, here's a look at just what a consultant does for organizations:
Overall company evaluation. It's hard for new business owners to evaluate their young organizations. A consultant can pull from years of business experience to assess the weaknesses and strengths of a fledgling business.
Strategic planning. Consultants must have:
1. A strong educational record in business.
2. Extensive experience as a business leader.
3. Exceptional understanding of how business trends work.
These features allow marketing planners to provide suggestions on how a business can succeed. After learning about an organization and identifying major opportunities and obstacles, a small business marketing consultant should be able to create a strategic plan to lead the firm to success.
Marketing design. Chances are your small business marketing consultant can write excellent ad copy to draw in new customers. Beyond designing small business marketing strategies, consultants can construct complete marketing campaigns. From graphic design to copywriting and editing, a small business consultant can wear many different hats while helping your business succeed.
Project and process management. The consulting lifestyle appeals to many leaders in the corporate world. Indeed, most small business consultants are top business performers who have decided to shift to a different way of life. This means consultants usually have project management and process design skills, which they can employ to improve your business's performance.
How Small Companies Benefit
Let's explore the benefits of hiring such consultants:
A fresh perspective. Contracting with a consultant as one of your marketing strategies will bring you an unbiased, fresh perspective. Internal conflicts and ongoing office politics can limit one's vision. Outside consultants are free of preconceived ideas about your business, so they can provide a fresh perspective.
High-quality help. As mentioned earlier, most business consultants have transitioned to consultancy from a star-studded business career. In other words, you'll likely receive top-shelf advice from your consultant - and for less than the cost of a single employee.
Peace of mind. Partnering with a marketing contractor can help you feel calm and confident about the future of your business. With peace of mind, you can better focus on your organization's core offerings and drawing in new business.
Cost and time efficiency. You get great bang for your buck when you hire a marketing contactor. Since most marketing strategy planning consultants charge hourly rates, you avoid paying employee-related taxes by hiring them. Moreover, consultants are experienced, versatile professionals capable of handling everything from social media to long-term strategic planning. Rather than bringing in a new crew of writers, marketers, project managers and designers, you can pay a trusted advisor on an as-needed basis. Hiring a small business marketing consultant maximizes cost-efficiency.
Clearly, there are multiple benefits to partnering with a small business marketing consultant. From creating comprehensive small business marketing strategies to performing overall business check-ups, marketing consultants can help your company shine. Google Places, formerly Google Local, is easily the most powerful free marketing tool available to local businesses. Introduced in March 2004, Google Local displays local business information at the top of many of Google's organic search results accompanied by a map. As of June 2010, Google Places listings consist of 1, 3 or 7 businesses for most searches. Considering that most localized searches provide millions of organic search results, showing in the top 7 of Google Places can be invaluable to a business.
Breaking into the top 7 takes knowledge and time and staying there takes effort. It all starts with claiming and optimizing your Google Places local business listing.
Visit Google and search for Google Places. Register for an account. Follow the bouncing ball until you can click on the button that says "Add a Business".
As a quick aside, it is assumed that anyone who would read this knows that Google Places only allows one listing per phone number. While you can in fact create multiple listings with the same number and reap the benefit for a short time, eventually you'll find that all of your listings have disappeared into the void. Don't play games with Google Places. It isn't worth the time and effort it takes to undo the damage should you cross the dozens of arbitrary, invisible boundaries that Google has in place to try to make the entire process "fair" for every business.
The first page of the submission form is mostly fill in the blank, but there are 3 important opportunities to optimize the listing.
Company/Organization: Choose your business name wisely. No one audits the listings to verify that the company name matches your incorporation documents, but be careful. If you company's legal name is "Paul's Professional Services, Inc.", you need to carefully tweak it for the purposes of Google Places optimization. Two common methods are to add a keyword descriptor or your primary city. For example: "Paul's Professional Painting Services" or "Paul's Painting Services of Dallas". Monkey with your company name too much using obviously manipulative methods for cramming keywords into the field and you'll eventually find that your Google Places listing has been relegated to a black hole by Google. Typically, this is the direct result of your competition reporting your listing to Google. Simply conduct a Google search for "locksmith Google spammers" and you'll find some insight on why you do not want to get on the bad side of Google Places.
Description: Carefully craft a 200 character description of your business focusing almost exclusively on your key products and services. Do not waste space here for marketing speak such as "Proudly serving the DFW area since 1974". Do not waste space here by including geographic references. The geography is almost entirely controlled by the city you list for your address. Inclusion of additional cities does virtually nothing when it comes to optimizing your Google Places listing.
For our hypothetical painting company, Paul's Professional Services, an optimized description would go something like:
Residential and commercial painter specializing in interior and exterior painting. Services include wall painting, ceiling painting, textures, faux finishes and color matching. Free estimates.
Note that the example include not only the company's top services, but also includes multiple uses of the primary keyword in various forms - "painting" and "painter" are the top two keywords in searches according to Google's Keyword Tool. In addition, "free" is a top search word for virtually any search phrase.
It is important to remember that the description is designed to reach a broader search audience - not win awards on Madison Avenue. Keep it simple and include your top keywords. 200 characters is not a lot of room, so make sure not to waste space.
Category: Google Places requires the use of at least one standard category. Begin by typing your top keywords and choose the most relevant category. Google Places provides the ability to include 5 categories. Use them. If your top keywords are not standard categories, then use one or two closely related standard categories and use the remaining three slots for specific keywords.
For our hypothetical company, the categories might look something like: Painter (Standard) Painting Contractor (Top keyword search / Custom Category) House Painter (Top keyword search / Custom Category) Commercial Painter (Top keyword search / Custom Category) Handyman (Standard, but an extremely popular related search term)
NEXT. Page Two of submission form.
The Service Areas and Location Settings options are relatively new and are designed to allow a business to establish a service area if the company does not have a storefront of some sort. Initially, choosing a service area ("Yes, this business serves customers at their locations") appeared to hinder the optimization process. While the jury is still out, Google continues to tweak this feature. If in doubt, complete the option accurately for your business.
Business hours and payment options are purely optional and serve little if any value to the optimization process. Potential customers certainly will find the information useful.
Google Places provides the ability to add up to 10 photos and 5 videos (from YouTube.com). Make sure you always use keywords to name your photos and take advantage of the "tag" functions provided by YouTube.com. The impact on Google Places traffic is limited, but any impact is good.
Additional details: Google's examples are virtually useless and very misleading. To optimize your listing, create a table of your key products and services using as many keywords as possible. Each detail consists of two fields with a maximum space of 200 characters each. An example of an effective use of these fields for our hypothetical company would be:
Interior & Exterior Painting Contractor specializing in: Wall painting, Ceiling painting, Floor staining, Epoxy Floor coatings, Texture paint finishes, faux finishes, color matching, proper surface preparation
The colon is the separator between the two fields. Include as many additional details about your company, your products and your services as possible.
Feel free to include service areas as one of the Additional Details for informational purposes, but do not expect it to cause your Google Places listing to show in those cities. SUBMIT.
The new Google Places local business listing will not be active until verified. Usually, verification can be completed by triggering a phone call from Google's computers to the phone number of record for the listing. In some instances, Google requires verification via a postcard mailed to the address of record for the listing. Postcards can take up to 5 weeks to arrive. Once verified, the real work begins.