2012 To Do List for Small Business SEO, SEM, and Traditional Marketing

If you are a small business, marketing has become more critical than ever.  As more and more brick and mortar sales go to the internet, Search Engine Optimization based on local business approaches, Search Engine Marketing for small business, and traditional small business marketing techniques must all be employed to reach your customers.

It is a normal human condition to wait until the last minute to do things.  I certainly fall into the normal range in that regard.  But, at least for 2011 I am turning over a new leaf in that department.  Here is a list of goals for 2012 that I will apply to my business, and that very likely apply to every one of your businesses.  Over the next 30 days, these will be detailed out at on this blog.  Be sure to subscribe or set up a feed so you don't forget to see the rest of the story.

While our marketing company, Randy Kirk and Associates does not generally take on project based work we are going to make an exception for two types of products over the next 90 days.  It is so critical for most of you that you have Mobile Websites and Mobile Apps, that we are going to take those projects.  The balance of the items on the list are all things that we do, but are only offered as part of an ongoing retainer.

As always we are offering free DIY advice for all these elements on this blog.  Please help yourself. 

For almost all of us, excellent execution on even a portion of this list would result in a 20% increase in sales or more. 

1.  Mobile website   appx   $700
2.  Mobile Ap            appx   $750 plus $70 a month
3.  Add Google Plus Page and Google+ to all online resources
4.  50 online videos
5.  Double email list - Send out 12 - 48 emails
6.  10 blog post per month.  Videos will create most of those
7.  Mobile blog
8.  Reputation management
9.  Maintain or improve rank of primary website and Google Places
10.  Use push notification on text list and Apps
11.  Improve Customer Service
12.  Add a profit center
13.  Improve margins
14.  Improve closing ratio
15.  Continue to increase activity on all Social Media
16.  Continuous effort on back links to websites and videos

Internet Marketing Using YouTube to Get Page One Listings on Google Search

Nothing is working like YouTube to get consumers and businesses to take action.  Google Local Business Center listings are very important, as are listings on other local search engines like Yelp, Yahoo.local, and Yellowpages.  A great website is important, too, as  (see a Youtube video on  how to create a website from a marketing perspective).  But nothing offers the versatility for such a low cost as YouTube videos.  Here's 10 ways to use YouTube videos to get clients to take action.  Randy Kirk is president of Page1Listings.com. He is the author of "Running a 21st Century Small Business," published by Warner Business Books.  For more like this about marketing your small business, see Randy's business blog.

1. Yelp.com and CitySearch both maintain that having a YouTube video on their listing for your company doubles the likelihood that the visitor to your listing will take some kind of action. What their claim leaves out is that a poorly created video will not produce those kinds of results and might have a negative effect. On the other hand, there are dozens of other good reasons to create one of more YouTube videos for your local small business other than its effect on Yelp.com.

2. Not every business, but most, will generate more customer calls and decisions to shop if the client has a reason to trust you. The written word is good at this, because folks tend to trust what has been made permanent on paper or screen. But you can really increase trust by allowing your customers to hear and see your personal passion about your products and services through a video. Here is an example of a video that creates trust.  The client works for a mortgage broker, and therefore trust is critical.  In this video Bill Rayman, mortgage expert, explains the benefits of an FHA mortgage.

3. The internet is hungry for information. If your YouTube video has information that your client base is seeking, they will find the video to get that information. Here is a great example from another client who helps writers with the details of self publishing.  This video on publishing a children's book creates trust and gives great information.

4. YouTube has a search function. If you create a great title for your video, add a good description, and provide relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags, your potential customers will find you through the search mechanism on YouTube. They may also find you because you are related to other searches they undertake and videos they watch. This client also needed to create trust and provide information, but getting the title right was everything.  Check out the video title on this upscale bike shop in Palos Verdes, California who is now almost sold out on doing bicycle fittings.

5. YouTube videos show up on Google Searches and other similar search engines. It is not uncommon for a thoughtfully keyworded YouTube Video to show up higher than your $5000 website.  In fact, Google is making a concerted effort to "mix media" on page 1 search results.  That's why you now see news, images, videos, local search engine results right on the top page.  It is now estimated that a YouTube video is 27 times more likely to show up on page 1 of a google search for your important keywords than your website.  Here is an example of an IRS tax resolution company with their YouTube video on page 1

6. By adding YouTube videos to your Google Maps Local Business Center listing, MerchantCircle listing, Yelp.com and others that offer this servie, you improve your ranking on those local search engines, and that helps to improve the ranking of your website.  Now you can also list videos on Fan pages of Facebook.

7. You can add your YouTube video to your website or blog as a URL link, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV-0VIHJCRk, or as an embed like on this insurance company website, or this mortgage agent's blog, or our own small business marketing blog.
and this and this. By putting the video on your website, you generate far more chances of it being seen. This is where you can really build trust and increase reasons for your customer to shop with you.

8. You can add your YouTube video to your blog, your facebook, you can Tweet about it, and you can socially bookmark the original video, the article on your blog, and the facebook entry. All of these increase the chances of the video being seen, and also benefit your activities on these other web tools.

9. Daily Motion and other video depositories similar to YouTube may pick up your video and add it to their listings. But if you don't want to wait and see if they do so, you can upload the same video to each one.  Or you can use an aggregator like tubemogul.com to put the video up on numerous of these sites all at once.

10. A single YouTube video that we did for a client for less than $300 resulted in the sale of at least one $6000 bicycle. This is just one of many such examples. The best part is that the YouTube video is listed on page one of a Google search for Specialized Transition and is going to still be selling bicycles for this client a year from now.

While most of the videos shown above are live action, you can do a great job with still pictures and good superscripting.  We have a client who sells neon signs and LED signs who had a great scrolling LED sign he wanted to do a video about.  Having a speaker would have been fine, but totally unneeded.  Here is a fantastic use of video to sell a scrolling neon sign.

You can create your own YouTube video. But I caution you that it needs to be thoughtfully created, edited, superscripted, titled, keyworded, described, and uploaded. Please take a look of one recently created for an apartment management company in San Pedro California. A video like this might cost $300.

Page1listing.com has now created a new product that provides the creation of YouTube videos from concept through upload to YouTube and provides a complete package of internet marketing approaches like the 10 above.

Ten Reasons for Using YouTube for Local Small Business Internet Marketing

Yelp.com and CitySearch both maintain that having a YouTube video on their listing for your company doubles the likelihood that the visitor to your listing will take some kind of action. What their claim leaves out is that a poorly created video will not produce those kinds of results and might have a negative effect. On the other hand, there are dozens of other good reasons to create one of more YouTube videos for your local small business other than its effect on Yelp.com.

2. Not every business, but most, will generate more customer calls and decisions to shop if the client has a reason to trust you. The written word is good at this, because folks tend to trust what has been made permanent on paper or screen. But you can really increase trust by allowing your customers to hear and see your personal passion about your products and services through a video.

3. The internet is hungry for information. If your YouTube video has information that your client base is seeking, they will find the video to get that information.

4. YouTube has a search function. If you do a good job of Titling your video, creating a good description, and providing relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags, your potential customers will find you through the search mechanism on YouTube. They may also find you because you are related to other searches they do and videos they watch.

5. YouTube videos show up on Google Searches and other similar search engines. It is not uncommon for a thoughtfully keyworded YouTube Video to show up higher than your $5000 website.

6. By adding YouTube videos to your Google Maps Local Business Center listing, MerchantCircle listing, Yelp.com and others, you improve your ranking on those local search engines, and that helps to improve the ranking of your website.

7. You can add your YouTube video to your website as a URL link, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV-0VIHJCRk, or as an embed (see below). By putting the video on your website, you generate far more chances of it being seen. This is where you can really build trust and increase reasons for your customer to shop with you.

8. You can add your YouTube video to your blog, your facebook, you can Tweet about it, and you can socially bookmark the original video, the article on your blog, and the facebook entry. All of these increase the chances of the video being seen, and also benefit your activities on these other web tools.

9. Daily Motion and other video depositories similar to YouTube may pick up your video and add it to their listings. But if you don't want to wait and see if they do so, you can upload the same video to each one, or you can use an aggregator to put the video up on numerous of these sites all at once.

10. A single YouTube video that we did for a client for less than $300 resulted in the sale of a $6000 bicycle. This is just one of many such examples. The best part is that the YouTube video is listed on page one of a Google search for Specialized Transition and is going to still be selling bicycles for this client a year from now.

You can create your own YouTube video. But I caution you that it needs to be thoughtfully created, edited, superscripted, titled, keyworded, described, and uploaded. Please take a look of one we did recently for an apartment management company on this page. We can do a video like this for you for $300. If you are not located within driving distance of our headquarters, you may need to send us some raw footage or we can work from pictures and create a slide show with voice over.

Give us a call. We can dramatically impact your business with a single YouTube Video