Last week I was pleasantly suprised to encounter some great marketing/sales ideas in the Lake District from 2 small businesses who were obviously very web-aware.
The first was a small interiors/furniture shop in Keswick. After casually browsing for several minutes it was time to leave. As we were passing the checkout the owner/manager thanked us for coming in and asked us if we’d like details of their web site. She pulled 2 business cards from a big bowl on the counter and wished us a good day.
Really nice touch there. So very obvious and effective yet I’ve actually never encountered this before. And yes I did visit her web site and it does have eCommerce facilities and now her ’shop’ is open to me 24/7 as opposed to just walking out and possibly never being in that shop again. I’d love to see more retail outfits doing this.
The other business was a camping/outdoors shop. More about that later.
And a nice 360 degree photograph by Derek Knight while we’re showing family work!
http://www.the360co.com/virtual_tours_gallery/virtual_tour_learjet_airlink.php
Nice work from Martin Knight. Arcobaleno means ‘Rainbow’ in Italian.
Some Search Engine Marketing firm has been spamming us with ‘compelling’ offers such as
First place guaranteed in Google
Get listed in under a week on page one of all the major search engines
etc etc
If this caught your attention and seems like an attractive, quick and easy way to remedy low search engine positions, then you need to be aware of something very simple. Nobody can guarantee you a no. 1 ranking in Google, Yahoo or any of the other Search Engines for anything. Read the spam again and you’ll find the offer is vague and scant on the specifics on what they will get you to no.1 for..
What they probably can get you high (even 1st place) listings for is your company name.
Thats fair enough. I know quite a few companies that would love to be more visible on search engines for their company name and it wouldn’t be a huge challenge to get them there either. You see, chances are your company name is quite unique and there are not a huge amount of other firms competing to be at no. 1 position for that name. However, Keywords that people use to find your business are another matter entirely and it’s here that you really want to be visible.
Example: Imagine your family business makes hand-made Greenhouses and your company name is Adamsons. Yes, you want to be found for people searching for ‘Adamsons’ but you definitely want to be found for the relevant real-world keywords and phrases that people are using to find your services.
- Hand made greenhouses
- Greenhouse europe
- Red cedar greenhouse
etc etc
Getting to number 1 in any search engine for those particualr phrases could be extremley difficult depending on the amount of competitors you have who are jostling for the same space. Without knowing specifics and doing a genuine levels of detailed research on your industry, customers and competitors there is no way any Marketing company could presume to guarantee you a 1st place listing anywhere except probably your mail’s spam-folder!
