Episode 7: A simple marketing plan
February 27, 2008 | 4 Comments
Epsiode 7 (8:58) In this session we tackle (gasp) PLANNING. Not only that, we try to make it fun. Really! When it comes to a marketing plan, it’s best to think like Steven Covey of 7-habits fame - “begin with the end in mind.” Having a solid plan will greatly increase your chances of success and our simple plan takes just three easy steps: research, act and measure. This is part II in our Real Life series featuring my friend’s new local business FloridaFireFitness.com.
Watch the video below or download a copy for your iPod Video.
Any business can use our plan to hit the ground running while not wasting time you don’t have or making your marketing plan unnecessarily complicated. Enjoy the show and please let us know what you think!
You can download our free spreadsheet file template (.xls) featured in our video Podcast to use for your own business marketing plan by following this link.
Background
We started the series with part I on SuperBowl Sunday with the video Podcast Applying our three-phase local online marketing program where we outlined how we’ll follow the progress of FloridaFireFitness.com as we implement Local Na8ion’s three-phase online marketing method (create, publish, connect). Following our three phase method we will create relevant local content, publish it on the Internet using state-of-the-art online publishing methods, and finish by connecting with local buyers using the most effective online marketing techniques - everything from local search marketing to blog marketing.
My friend Ed and his partner are Fire Fighters by day in Palm Beach County Florida and on their time off they help people stay fit, strength train, run a faster mile, or you know… how to muscle a 280 pound man on to a stretcher for emergency transit to the Hospital. They have a practical and unique personal fitness approach that can work for young and old and the beginner to the advanced.
Internet influences over three dollars of in-store sales for every dollar spent online
February 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Is your web site pulling online buyers in to your local store?
If you’re a local business that can sell products in your store and online it’s much more likely that you have a well designed and optimized web site. Why is that and why should you care even if you don’t have a store?
Every business can apply the rules that make eCommerce sites more effective to make more local sales of products or services. There’s a lesser known secret about how your web site can drive offline sales that eCommerce practices make more clear: the secret is that good web sites influence almost $3.5 dollars of in store sales for every dollar spent online in a purchase. Three to one results should get your attention.
eCommerce has a way of driving sophistication in your web site design, offer, and ease of use (usability) honed from watching online shopping carts be abadoned or one sales offer beating the pants off a similar offer that was your worst performer. There’s a constant feedback look in the form of sales made and lost that keeps you honest. Since you’re focused on the transaction of a sale, your web site represents your business more like a star sales person, rather than the static brochure (read dull) that most local web sites are modeled after.
Here’s the latest proof of this concept.
An eMarketer study published today titled “Online Research Drives Offline Sales” reviews what eMarketer refers to as the “Precision Shopper.” That is, a person who researches a product online and then buys it from a store that is local to their current locale (hey, like we say in our Local Na8ion tagline, where you are is where it’s at). These shoppers are armed to the teeth with useful purchase information and if you’re doing your job that knowledge came from you. And why not, you’re an expert in your field.
”Today, online consumers think nothing of shopping across a retailer’s stores, Web site and catalog,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Multi-Channel Retailing, “As a consequence, online product research is driving more in-store sales than online sales.” - source eMarketer
How much more in sales?
“Looked at another way, for every $1 in online sales, the Internet influenced $3.45 of store sales. ”Online consumers are becoming precision shoppers,” says Mr. Grau. “They are availing themselves of the wealth of information resources online to discover and evaluate products, compare them and find where they can be purchased.” - source eMarketer
What should you do about it?
You know from this information and loads of similar research that people want to use your web site as a buying resource to check your brands, inventory, location, directions, pricing, and read reviews. What are you doing about it? You probably need to start by taking a step back and looking at your web site with fresh eyes. Maybe you paid a web site designer to set your web site up four years ago and it hasn’t changed since? That’s often because most businesses have an Internet web site relic that you need a designer or web coder to update. There’s a remedy for that, watch our video series on a free and easy to update web site publishing system called Wordpress.
Once you get your web site on an easy-to-update web platform and optimize it with your local relevant shopping content, you can start tweaking your messages and offers to pull people into your store. Offer them a specific in-store special or discount. Have your customer print out a coupon to bring to the store or make it clear they need to mention your special web-to-store special to receive their discount. This will help you track your online to offline buyers. Lastly, take a monent in the closing seconds of your sale to ask your precision shopper what got them to come in to your store. You’ll learn a lot that you can use to tweak your web site and make it even more effective. For example, you may think that it’s a specific brand or service that brought them in, when in actuality it was something completely different that you had burried on the last line of web site copy. That’s just the kind of real world feedback that will allow you to feature and promote one selling point over another, just like you might make a small change in a window display to improve sales of a particular item.
Do you have any ideas that you’ve found effective for pulling online buyers in to your store? I’d love to hear your feedback.
Your web site should be your star sales person
February 25, 2008 | 11 Comments
Your web site should be your star sales person
Most small to medium sized businesses have already declared by action, NOT INTENT, that their web site is a brochure and not a sales person.
Yes, even as an online marketing professional I have done no better at times. Want a real life example? Just look at my parent company web site at exceler8 and compare that to the focus and variety on my local online marketing site Local Na8ion. 
It’s like the difference between managing a sales force as a group of clock-punching employees and managing sales, guess which improves the bottom line more?
I recommend that you take a look at your web site as if it were your sales person and not a brochure because it will not so subtly change your attitudes and actions about your site and your online sales strategy.
Think about it, successful businesses have well trained, well paid and properly incented sales people. Without our sales people we wouldn’t have a business. You’re constantly managing, coaching, incenting, and helping your sales people to help you. We measure their success with daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports along with performance evaluations and customer feedback metrics. We recognize the importance of their physical dress and appearance, their ability to communicate verbally and in writing, and how cleanly they submit their orders and follow company practices. We do all this because our sales people are the face of our company and that means that our sales people are an asset we can’t afford to mismanage or we’ll face serious consequences.
Here are some questions for you and your online sales person:
First, be honest with yourself. Is your web site a star sales person or getting ready to pack their bags for greener pastures?
- does your web site know everything about your business that it should?
- do you measure your web site’s success (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually)?
- do you offer your web site ‘training’ on your business fundamentals, new trends, or economic changes in your local market or in the national business climate for your industry?
- does your web site have all your current products, services and pricing?
- do customers know how to contact your web site, your address, phone, and email address for your business?
- is your web site ready to take orders and provide a smooth experience doing so?
- does your web site make points succinctly and answer questions clearly?
- does your web site talk circles and marketing nonsense that customers neither care about or have time to read (ouch, talk about my weakness!)?
- is your web site, knowledgeable, professional and suited to your business image?
- how are your web site’s communication skills, do you offer email newsletters or RSS feed?
- how well does your web site sell against your competition?
- does your web site handle typical customer objections smoothly and confidently or fumble nervously with the keys in its pocket?
- does your web site know of current job openings at your company and always have en eye out for new talent?
- when someone goes looking for a product or service like yours is your sales person in front of them or out on the golf course?
- speaking of golf, can your web site play golf? Ha, just kidding.
If you answered yes to all those questions congratulations - you’re a star and so is your web site. For the rest of us (and I do mean US) it’s great to get a wake up call once in a while to remember what’s important.
Realistically, a typical small to medium sized business makes their web site when they open their business and then just leaves it. Maybe your site is one of those cut and paste beauties from 1999 that your kid cousin made for you. Or you have one of those cookie cutter web sites a media sales rep put together for free so you’d buy an ad from them in the Yellow Pages or Newspaper. Let’s face it, this isn’t how you’d treat your star sales person.
I know that comparing a live sales person to a web site is a little extreme. But it’s a much better way to think of your site than a static brochure. Wasn’t the old point from ten years ago that your web site was a sales person that never slept, got sick, or took a day off? Wasn’t that a relief. Yes, your web site DOES offer these advantages but you’ll never make a star sales person of your web site without investing in the same kind of process, management focus and attention to detail that you use with your sales team.
Should you really bother with all this work? Is it a worth while investment in your time? To sum it up, there are more people online today shopping and buying (both locally and nationally) than the people who DON’T refer to the web in buying situations. The days of ignoring your online sales person and not suffering any consequences are over.
What to do?
Business people aren’t ignoring their online sales person out of malice or indifference. We’re strapped for time and online marketing and publishing can be just as confounding as local business ordinances or an old fashioned media slickster in sansibelt pants and a clip-on tie. Use your search engine to locate sites that educate and inform you - there are multitudes of FREE resources that businesses have available to them on the web. In fact, there are more free and low cost methods to setup, design, and market your business online than ever before and it’s getting easier all the time.
Don’t let a fear of technical know-how or lack of marketing experience get in the way of your great company idea and vision. Remember, search engines, blogs, and business web sites are all available to your business. Do your research and then support, build, and train your online sales channel and web site like you would your own sales team: day by day, follow a process, measure your results, and keep tweaking your message and offers until your web site is the star it should be. Good luck!
Eight successful traits for entrepreneurs and life
February 24, 2008 | 5 Comments
I’ve always been fascinated by success and as an entrepreneur I bet you are as well. No matter our position or our accomplishments we are captivated by the feats of great people and know that we can learn from their experience and by imitating their habits and behavior.
I started my own quasi-research project on success in earnest when I was nineteen. On my sales calls I would inevitably run into successful people and I began to ask them about their journey. From person to person, despite wildly different circumstances, their answers were very similar. The inspiration for my research was rooted in my own quest to succeed. Today, my post started with a video from Richard St. John, who identified 8 traits of successful people, built from both his own experience with success and his research of some of the most successful people alive today. Not surprisingly they sound a lot like those business people that I spoke with years ago.
I was working my first ‘big job’ as an outside sales rep for GTE Yellow Pages in San Jose California. To my knowledge, I was the youngest outside sales rep at that time working in GTE’s nationwide sales force. People were jealous, and while I didn’t fully understand that, I did feel that I had arrived. Ego. It was 1988, I had a company car with a mobile phone and a salary that had just tripled from my previous job. I received my job offer a mere three days after arriving in San Jose with all my worldly possessions (er, CD’s) in the 1985 Saab that I had driven across the country. I had dreams of continuing my technology journey in Silicon Valley that I had started in New Hampshire working at a Tech startup which had grown from around six people when I joined them to over 150 when I left. It turned out that it would be a long time before I got to use my skills with computers and technology as I’d intended before getting sidetracked in the advertising world.
The next two years at GTE really kicked my ass, culminating in GTE firing me at 21 with my wife of the time about to give birth to my first son. My mortgage on my first house was due and my wife was in the last few weeks of her job before maternity leave and the last pittance of family revenue coming in. I was alternately job prospecting and watching the first Gulf War on CNN. It was the end of a two year roller coaster ride where I experienced feast and famine as I struggled to be the bread earner while selling ‘Neighborhood’ phone books (hint, they’re the kind people don’t use in favor for their ‘real’ phone book)
I had arrived in San Jose from New Hampshire where I had taken my first steps towards adult freedom when I moved away from my father in Australia to take care of his childhood home in New Hampshire. I was resolute to move away from all that I knew at sixteen to live on my own so I could begin my quest for world domination,. My version of world domination started out by selling clothes in a main street small business - an old fashioned clothier that had been around for over forty years. Ah, the virtue of youth - blissful ignorance.
I learned a lot from the small businesses I worked at before beginning my corporate career at GTE. Among many things, GTE taught me to overcome adversity in a hard knocks way - and not just from getting fired. Last night over dinner my father was just recalling a related scene from one of our favorite movies, The Natural starring Robert Redford. “Welcome to the Majors Mr. Hobbs” the radio announcer comments sardonically after Redford’s character Roy Hobbs gets his first taste of how hard and fast the ‘bigs’ are.
In my case my firing came after I was a whopping 5.6% off my annual sales goal (94.4% to budget). I had been dealt an account that was six months past due that was literally seven times the size of a normal Yellow Pages account at GTE. With GTE’s system at the time I was responsible for collecting the past due amount and renewing their sizable ad program or it would count against my sales goals. Oh, did I mention that the advertiser had to pay for any renewed advertising all in advance for the entire year, not month to month. The advertiser felt that the ads in the phone book hadn’t done a lick to help their business and knew they could get away without paying the bill without any repercussion since they had no intent of renewing their ads. After all, they had their ads in the core phone book - the Pacific Bell SMART Yellow Pages. To GTE’s credit, both my sales manager and my regional general manager tried to save the account. It was a lot of money, even out of their much deeper pockets. The only real option was to outsell the loss by bringing in a lot of new business. And I did close a lot of new business. But not quite enough.
I learned a lot about myself. I didn’t give up until it was obvious my sales manager wasn’t going to keep the faith. He knew then what I would not accept, that I wasn’t cut out for that job. I had come to not believe in that product - my experience taught me that neighborhood phone books worked too infrequently for my customers and after a time I couldn’t look people in the eye and tell them to spend the little money they had on a false promise. My manager Steve could tell that I didn’t believe and that’s why he fired me. I would have as well - it was the right call for both me and the company.
Back then I felt like such a miserable failure I didn’t know how I could pick up the pieces. Even years later I would drive close to the office in San Jose and my stomach would drop and my mind would flash back to those last moments.
Much later I realized my firing was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I came to see that I learned more from those two years and that experience about business and life than I had in my previous 21 years and in many that followed. I had been well trained, I learned to follow a process and system, I learned discipline, and how to sell with real skill, overcoming a persistent shyness and introversion unfit for the sales game.
Good thing for having a back up plan. Six weeks earlier I had passed a sales assessment and interview process with the ‘real’ Yellow Pages (Pacific Bell) and a couple of weeks after getting fired at GTE I had a new job working for them in their Oakland sales branch. I’ve had good fortune as well. So began a really solid career at Bell that lasted for ten years where I worked in sales, sales training, strategic planning and business development for our Internet effort - I even worked directly for the President of the company and was one of two representatives sent to iron out our merger with SBC (now AT&T again). Eventually my career there led me to the high tech work that I was meant for (helping re-launch Pacific Bell’s Internet Yellow Pages and roll it out to PacBell and then SBC’s Yellow Pages sales force). What a ride.
Today I have over 20 years of big company stripes to my credit, I won awards and consistently beat objectives, I learned how to be a big earner working at big companies and also discovered that I had lost myself almost completely in the process. I learned that money wasn’t happiness but that it does help fund dreams where you can find a happiness in the pursuit. What brought me back was my older brother’s untimely death and a similarly tragic experience when a former boss and good friend took his own life. These experiences made it clear to me that life is too short to do things that you are not meant to do simply for a paycheck.
Today, I’m much the beginner that I was back at GTE. I’m an aspiring entrepreneur and stay-at-home dad. I’ve spent much more of the last 2 1/2 years being a stay-at-home dad trying to make sure my kids are OK and marriage number two doesn’t get lost in the details. I have my fair share of scars from the small scrapes and major battles I’ve waged in my personal and professional life. I have spent time feeling sorry for myself and licking my wounds. I’ve been inspired and brilliant. I’ve reached my limits in areas and found ways to ignore them to my benefit.
I have not succeeded as a small business yet. I’ve really just begun my journey. I believe I will succeed. I really believe.
Why is that? Is it belief without evidence? No, it’s that I’ve done enough in life to know that when you do the right things, long enough, consistently, then good things start to happen. I’ve got a lot of challenges ahead of me in both my personal and professional life. I’ve got four kids, and I’ve got to overcome that I’ve let them down at times. Not just them either. That’s more important than any job or entrepreneurial aspirations. I’ve got a beautiful wonderful wife that struggles with a rabid corporate career in order to support me and our kids as I once did. Our circumstances find both of us fighting to remember that we’re a couple, and not just a mommy and daddy, a boss, a resource, or a pay check. We’re not just cannon fodder. None of us are.
As I’ve professed, I can’t claim to be a successful entrepreneur yet. I have proven myself as a successful marketing and advertising man. I know more about marketing and advertising than a lot of people in the world, and more still about online marketing and publishing and cutting edge methods of connecting people, ideas, aspirations, money and dreams. If that’s something that you need or that interests you I can probably help.
Soon I’ll be rolling out some new products designed to help not so average small and medium sized business realize their not so average goals. Hopefully we’ll all realize some dreams along the way. These products will be designed to bolster my free articles and lessons that will continue to be the staple of Local Na8ion’s offering (our three phase online marketing method that I’m building). As far as my new products go, this article is as much a call to action for me, as it is a notice to you of things to come. I know to find the right product formula I’ll need to follow the traits featured in the video below. I’m going to have to work harder and work smarter, all while not losing sight of the point of all this - my wife, my kids and my family. It’s not going to be easy but it never is.
Three years ago I lost thirty five pounds of white collar fat by running and I eventually ran my first marathon last year. A few months ago a pain in my neck finally drove me to an orthopedic surgeon’s office. The MRI revealed a ruptured disc in my neck. He said, ’stop running Julian.’ But I love to run and it’s been a powerful metaphor and practical way to get my self back. What to do? The doc said swimming would work and he gave me the go ahead to strength train to my hearts content. All he warned me off of was dead lifts. That sane advice was more about proper technique than anything else. The Doc’s advice comes from a good place because most people don’t bother to learn the correct technique for dead lifts, just like we don’t learn the right way to market or manage our business.
Strength. That’s the genesis of my post today. It’s one of the things we need in order to succeed in life and I’m talking about the physical, spiritual and mental side of strength - they ALL matter. Morning coffee in hand I headed over to see what was happening on , a new favorite site of mine authored by a successful young man and blogger named Mehdi. If you want inspiration on what you can do by using free online tools and methods to build your business and make money look no further than Mehdi. His story is really impressive and inspiring.
Among the tips on Mehdi’s site on proper lifting form and 5X5 workouts (CAREFUL this link is known to make your body strong and give you more energy for achieving your goals). I found the video from Richard St. John on Mehdi’s site showcasing the 8 habits and behaviors of successful people. The video is from the acclaimed annual meeting of minds called TED that takes place once a year in Monterey California just south of my old home of fourteen years in the Bay Area.
Maybe something I said in my post reflected some of your own experience and touched on some of what you have done to enjoy success. If you can, I’d love for you to share your feelings and experiences on the topic in a comment here. But, I also respect that many of us hold these important moments close to the vest and that’s just fine by me. It’s taken me twenty years to put this story out there. Enjoy, and good luck to you in your contined success!
Online reviews and what to do about them
February 21, 2008 | 2 Comments
Just how important are online reviews in the minds of buyers?
A Forrester Research report from Q3 2007 answered that question succintly - web reviews are more important in the minds of consumers than any other web site function:
Here’s a chart of how the functions broke down by feature (source: - eMarketer report Online Buyers Seek Out User Reviews published February 15, 2008)
Let’s talk about some of the drivers for these findings and then I’ll dive into some actionable ways you can get more positive online reviews for your business.
Why are online reviews so popular? In three words or less? Word of mouth. People relate to other people like themselves with similar interests and needs. People want real life third-party opinions that balance out marketing hype and professional reviews that we might rely on from trusted editorial publications (e.g. Consumer Reports).
Here’s an example of how that breaks down:
Source Razorfish, Digital Consumer Behavior Study, October 2007 and chart by eMarketer February 2008.
Word of mouth has always been a top choice to aid our buying decisions and today on the web ‘social’ features like online reviews or comments on a blog about a product or service are perfect examples of how today one person’s voice (in this case a review) is only limited by the number of people who can view it online. That’s a major shift from five years ago when our opinion wouldn’t travel farther than a small percentage of our personal network of friends and business associates.
What’s that you say, there aren’t any reviews of your business online?
You may not think you have a review about your business on the web but don’t be too sure - there are a lot of web sites that feature a free listing of your business where reviews are prominent. All the major search engines have reviews and businesses with more reviews (or more positive reviews) are at a distinct advantage over businesses with no reviews or poor reviews.
Here’s an example of a search using Google with the keyword/geo search term “Tires San Jose California.”
The bad news is when you find out that one or two reviews of your company online are unfavorable. If that’s the case, don’t be too concerned, it’s common for dissatisfied customers to seek out ways to tell us off. Even with great customer service you’re not going to please all the people, all the time. If you haven’t been reviewed online yet there are legitimate ways to solicit reviews from your customers (please, no payoffs!).
Different web sites that feature user reviews have different policies on acceptable review policies so read these rules before you go looking for customers to write you reviews. The gist of such policies is to discourage the inevitable - that some people will cheat and craft favorable reviews of their own business. I think we recognize this and rely on both the content of the review, the number of reviews and the balance of reviews shown to judge legitimacy.
Here at Local Na8ion we have some straight forward guidelines and above-board methods of soliciting reviews from your customers.
The simplest way to get positive reviews is to ask for them. Think of this just like you might about how you asked a former boss or associate to write a letter of recommendation for you. Most people in this situation appreciate that you value their opinion and will happily reciprocate.
Example: “It seems that you’re really satisifed with your purchase of our [insert product/service here], it would really help us if you’d share your opinion with others online at [insert name of your target web site here]” (hand them a printed review card you’ve printed out for just such an occasion as a reminder).
We can request this review in our verbal post-sales process as our example above shows or with a follow up email, phone call, or direct mail piece. Remember, you don’t need 50 reviews so calling or asking people for reviews in person in a concentrated effort over a week might be a good way to get this done without making it into an overwhelming chore. Use the public radio model and go on a review campaign every quarter for a few days.
What sites to get your reviews on
We recommend this order or prioritization:
- Major search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo!, etc.)
- Major local directories and guides (e.g. YellowPages.com, CitySearch, Yelp.com)
- Specialty Directories and guides (e.g. Fodor’s)
- Regional / Local Directories unique to your market (e.g. local newspapers)
Of course, if you’re a retailer then don’t overlook the best place to put your reviews - on your own web site! For third party web sites we recommend you start with Google because it has the most search traffic. But keep in mind that Google isn’t quite as dominant in location based searches (like our example tire search in San Jose) 
as they are with general web searches so don’t overlook Yahoo! Local and other sites. Don’t overwhelm your clients with lots of choices - give them one. Don’t forget to ask for reviews on your web site.
Build up your reviews on the target site until you’ve reached a competitive number and then move on to another major web site or online service. When selecting other target sites to solicit reviews for pay attention to the usage of web sites and both local/regional differences AND areas of business speciality. For example, a restaurant in a tourist area might be better served by reviews on Zagat’s online guide than a general site like YellowPages.com. If CitySearch is more popular in your area than YellowPages.com for your type of business go after CitySearch. How can you guage popularity of sites? Two simple ways: ask the site publisher for third party usage reports on their number of unique users and cross check that with reality by looking at the amount of free and paid ads on the publisher’s site (more listings and more ads generally mean equal greater consumer usage).
To incent or not to incent?
Let’s finish by discussing the area that’s most uncertain with soliciting online reviews. Should you incent or even pay customers for reviews?
Tread carefully — experts, pundits, and consumer opinion on this topic vary wildly. Some people make the case that paying customers for their time for writing an online review is respectful of their customer’s time. I don’t agree with outright payment (such as the practice of paying bloggers to review products) but like a lot of people I do accept a lesser alternative which is to offer a small incentive or chance to win a small raffle for an item. Keyword = small. In general, if you keep the incentive small you can avoid ill will with customers or the aura of being shady or manipulative. Err on the safe side.
Be aware that there are purists in the mix for both your customers and the web sites that may feature your reviews. Popular local review site Yelp.com takes a hard line against all forms of incenting reviews, even small ones such as I’ve outlined. Read Yelp.com’s policy here and abide by whatever the site you are reviewing states as their terms. Do what you are comfortable with, for at some point you may have to defend your position with a customer and there’s no point doing something that you’re at odds with. Don’t overlook the safe route - just ask ‘em!
About those ratings
Some averages are more important than others. Just like we’re lulled into thinking gas costs a penny less than we’re actually paying, those popular ratings often escape rational judgement or scrutiny. You could have three total reviews and two of them are negative. It makes you look like a dog! All it takes to turn that around are 4-5 new positive reviews. All I can say is GET ON IT - don’t let a small number of negative comments ruin your online chances for new business.
I want to sum up by saying that if you’re looking to prioritize your online marketing improvements make sure garnering positive reviews for your business is at the top. It’s one of the most worthwhile investments of your time since every positive review will get viewed over and over again.
Postscript: Here’s a link to a great real life example of a local and online retailer that is using online reviews to drive new business. The company is called Rugs Direct and they have attained a 17% increase in conversion on products with reviews vs. products without reviews.
Applying our three-phase local online marketing program
February 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Episode 6: Time for us to get real. Time is short, money is tight, and we need ways to grow our company.
It’s time to start applying Local Na8ion’s three-phase local online marketing program in real life - the place where we’re overloaded with information and work and challenges.
We’ll do this by helping our friend Ed and his Firefighter partner get their new business Florida Fire Fitness off the ground (with hook and ladder if need be). You’ll get to come along as I chronicle each move we make.
In this video session that I recorded on SuperBowl Sunday 2008 while out for a bike ride with the kids I talk about our framework for getting you more local customers. It’s what we call our three-phase (create, publish, connect) local online marketing program.
We’ll cover the full range of topics here from the online publishing side where we’ll talk about selecting a web-host, installing Wordpress, getting the Wordpress options set up, and installing plugins to enchance Wordpress’s productivity. Did I mention web site design - yeah, we’ll do that too.
Then we’ll get into some ways to create relevant local content efficiently for Ed’s site that will draw people in from search engines and online communities and keep them coming back for more. We’ll also discuss aspects like how to optimize his site content for local search engines like Google Local and Yahoo! Local. We’ll finish by submitting Ed’s new site to local directories and guides and look at ways to utilize web 2.0 sites like Flickr and Facebook to connect with customers while increasing search engine rank.
Come on - let’s start a three-alarm fire at Florida Fire Fitness!
How to perform a Wordpress auto-install or 1-click install
February 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Episode 5: If you are a typical small to medium sized business you probably don’t have the time or expertise to install a state-of-the-art online publishing system that’s easy to update and has loads of built-in SEO (search engine optimization) goodness.
Great news - you don’t have to. Today’s budget web hosts charge around $10 a month to host, install, and upgrade Wordpress for you. That means that there’s no need to be a tech genius to get up and running TODAY on an easy-to-use content management system (Wordpress) that can replace your old craptastic web site AND give you an opportunity to have a blog at the same time.
In this 11 minute video lesson I walk you through a typical 1-click or auto-install using one of my own Wordpress web hosts - MediaTemple. Follow along and make sure to see my previous lesson about selecting a Wordpress web host if you don’t already have one.
Thanks for your attention and please post any comments or questions on our site Local Na8ion (that’s nation). And don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates or RSS subscription today. Thanks for your time.
Julian, editor Local Na8ion - where you are is where it’s at.
How to select a Wordpress host for your small business
February 1, 2008 | 1 Comment
Episode 4: There is a seemingly endless number of choices in the inexpensive web host arena to power your Wordpress web site and blog. Wondering why we recommend Wordpress for small to medium sized companies? Check out our video post on why we recommend Wordpress for your small business.
In this 15 minute lesson I show you what features matter most for busy small to medium sized companies that don’t have the time or technical skill to install and upgrade a Wordpress site on their own but who still want to take advantage of a fully customizable Wordpress install and enjoy the many state-of-the-art Wordpress features and SEO (search engine optimization) goodness that the Wordpress content management system has.
I discuss hosts that are between $6.95 a month to around $10 a month that offer:
- 1-click or auto installs
- 1-click or auto upgrades for new versions of Wordpress
- Reliable Wordpress web hosting
- inexpensive monthly and setup costs
- More than enough web site storage, bandwidth and web databases to serve even a large organization.
I also show you a great site that offers impartial reviews of Wordpress web hosts and tell you the kind of ‘review’ sites to avoid. Want to find some extra savings? Maybe a hosting affiliate that makes money by signing you up for new hosting can offer you additional savings on your monthly or setup costs? I discuss this as well.
Specific hosts I discuss include Dreamhost, AN Hosting, Midphase, and BlueHost. Just so you know, we don’t accept affilate commissions from these web hosts.
Enjoy, and let us know what questions you have by leaving us a comment on this post on Local Na8ion and don’t forget to subscribe to Local Na8ion via email or you can subscribe via RSS.
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