Why you should not be using an 800 number on your website – if you are selling mainly to people in your local area

Do you use an 800 number or a local number for your local business website? If you’re using an 800 number you need to change it to a local number as fast as possible, and here’s why.

Google Places – Now if you haven’t heard about Google Places listen up because this is extremely important.

Google has either made or will give you a free website for your local business.

Image shows Google Places listings and the Free websites Google has generated for local businesses.

Google in a very generous attempt to help out local businesses market their services made a free website for every business they could find listed. Notice I said local businesses.

Google knows that if someone in Atlanta Georgia types “find a plumber” they probably could care less about plumbers outside their immediate area. And once that realization was made Google Places was born.

If you haven’t claimed your free website from Google yet, you certainly should. It’s there for the taking, all you have to do is tell Google you’re the business owner. Yes, you’ll have to prove it’s your business or at the very least that you’re an authorized representative.

Google will either confirm you as authorized by phone or mail. Sometimes you have the choice.

Anyway, make sure all your information is correct and be sure when updating your information that you do not change your number to an 800 number. If you do they will take you out of the local listings.

The local listings are the ones tied to the map when you do a Google search for your product or service.

Not every product or service has a Google places set of listings. To see if you do just do a quick search and see if the places section shows up.

Now there are a number of things you can add to your free Google website including pictures, videos, hours of operation, payment options and much more, you’ll see when you claim your listing.

And if you’ve already claimed your listing but used an 800 number change immediately. It very well may be the difference in your business being found by the people that are searching for you or not.

If you’d like help with any of the details talked about here give us a call. We have experts ready to help you. 423-364-6261

Are you trying to figure out how best to market your business locally?

The internet is one of the most effective methods, both in terms of cost and ROI. You will probably agree the internet has all but replaced the Yellow Pages as the preferred method of finding the products and services we all look for on a daily basis.

The greatest thing the internet has going for it is that (for now) regardless of the size of your company you can compete for the leads that are available.

There are a few very important steps you should keep in mind.

1- Is your website being found by your prospects? If your website can’t be found by the people searching for you online it’s obvious your competitors are taking the business that could be yours.

2- Is your business listed in the Google Places results? There is no better place online to highlight your business than in the Google Places results. Google designed this specifically to help market local businesses that offer great products and services to their clients. If you don’t know what these are just do a quick search in Google for “Google Places” you’ll find it.

3- When someone does find your website is it easy to get in touch with you? Many local businesses do not list how to get in touch with them or it’s difficult to find. At the very least your phone number should be listed on every page of your website and preferably your entire address with the phone number. Check above and below on this website. If you were to decide you want me to work with you on marketing your business better, you can easily find my phone number and how to contact via email as well and the address is also on every page.

If your business isn’t getting found by your the people searching for your business and you’d like more sales leads we can help. Check our portfolio page for a few of the local businesses we’ve helped increase their sales leads. www.marketing-velocity.com/portfolio

I’d like to hear your thoughts about these three steps to better marketing locally. Please leave a comment below.

Thank you,

David Hawke

I really like the new milestones feature. This feature works for business or personal pages. If you hover over the upper right corner of a post the highlight button will appear.

Clicking it allows you to highlight that post by making it the full width of your facebook page.

When you bring up the highlight button you’ll also see a edit or remove button. This can be really important. If you have something on your page that you’d rather not display, you can click the edit or remove button and remove it from your timeline. Very handy, especially for businesses.

Of course you get to add a really big picture at the top of your page too. If you don’t add it your page is going to look kind of silly so go ahead and find something you like and add it.

If you’ve been having problems getting your picture to look right it may be your sizing. The recommended size of your cover picture is 851 x 351 pixels.

Pinned posts! This is something every business needs to know about. You can click on the edit or remove button and you’ll see “Pin to Top” clicking this will pin that post to the top of your page for 7 days.

It’s a great way to make sure your followers know about an event or see a really important post.

I have pinned this post to the top of Marketing Velocity’s Facebook page. If you’d like to see it in action click here http://www.facebook.com/marketingvelocity and how about going ahead and liking the page while you’re there… If you haven’t already

You’ll also want to make sure the icons that show on your page are worthy of the position.

You can change the position of your icons that show likes, photos a youtube page or whatever. It’s totally up to you.

Remember, Facebook is going to change your page for you at the end of March. So, if you haven’t set up your page already you better get started.

Need help? Give me a call, I’ll be glad to help you through the transition.

When you look for advertising agencies in Chattanooga TN,

what is it that you’re really looking for? Is it more leads for your business? Is it branding for your business? Do you have a large budget or a small budget?

If you’re looking for more leads and excellent branding and have a budget less than what most yellow page ads would cost. You need to check out Google local and what a targeted Internet marketing campaign can do for you.

It’s been proven that customers are now looking for you online, Google and other search engine’s are the new Yellow Pages and are a necessary and viable means to contact new prospects now into the future.

Just like the Yellow Pages worked 5 or 10 years ago, people now go to the Internet and do a search for what they’re looking for whether you’re offering a product or a service, there are people searching for you and your business online, right now.

Why are Google local and Internet marketing campaigns so powerful for your local business?

Because the people who find you and your business online through your website, articles you’ve posted online, Google local, and even your social media outlets are highly qualified leads, if you aren’t getting your business in front of them while they’re searching… YOU ARE losing money!

It stands to reason if a person is searching for your product or service online, they have an immediate need or interest in that product or service right now while they’re doing the search. Shouldn’t your business be the one that they find when they’re doing the search and looking for you right now?

If you’d like those targeted customers coming through to your business, contact marketing velocity today.

We can show you proven examples of local businesses we’ve worked with to increase their sales significantly. We will also show you who’s looking for you on line right now and where they are looking.

Just having a website isn’t enough. Your website has to be found when people are searching for you, it has to offer the information they’re looking for right now as well as be set up in a way that persuades them to call or contact you when they find you.

If you’re ready to start getting highly targeted customers calling your business, call us right now at 423–521–5413.

The majority of advertising agencies in Chattanooga TN cannot offer the laser focused advertising campaigns that marketing velocity offers you.

We are proud to help and work with local businesses to increase your business with the local community. Creating a true win-win situation where your business sees a return on investment almost immediately, unlike the 6, 8, 12 and 24 month requirements some other advertising agencies in Chattanooga TN have.

We look forward to talking to you and sharing the proven methods that we’ll use to get highly targeted leads calling your business.

Call now: 423–521–5413.

Advertising Agencies In Chattanooga TN

If you’re looking for website in Chattanooga Tennessee I have a question for you.

Chattanooga Lead Generating Web Designs

What do you want your website to do for your business?

Do you want to use it just as a business card type tool? Where you can send customers that you meet with to find out more information about you?

Or, do you want your website to operate as a lead generation tool for your business?

If you answered yes to having a business card type tool website, then most any Chattanooga web design company will work fine for you.

But if you answered you want your website to act as a lead generation tool for your business, then you need a company like Marketing Velocity who is well-versed in not only web design, but also knows exactly how to get your website seen by potential customers that are searching for you online right now.

Marketing Velocity is a local expert in web design, search engine optimization (SEO) and how to turn potential clients that are visiting your website into new phone calls to your business as highly qualified leads.

It’s proven that local businesses have people searching for them every day online. Most local businesses miss out on my highly targeted leads because of websites that are poorly set up not able to be found in the search engines and are not doing the job that they should be doing.

Contact marketing velocity today, to find out how many people are searching for you online right now and to see exactly how this new and exciting marketing tool called Internet marketing can work for your business.

Call us right now at 423–364-6261.

Check out our Portfolio of Lead Generating Chattanooga Web Designs Here

Earlier today I met with a potential client to talk about their existing marketing and how I may be able to help them increase their sales leads. We do have a non disclosure agreement in effect so I cannot reveal the businesses name.

But I can tell you they have sales revenue in the $25 million dollar a year range and their main customer base is more local than national.

The thing I found in the business is that they really have a pretty good marketing program but it is only focusing on about 10% of their potential clientele.

I made a simple comment on believing they could attract many more sales by just rewording their marketing message to include the other 90% of the companies that would be perfect customers for them.

The really funny thing is that once I mentioned this idea to them, they said it made perfect sense but they hadn’t thought about it before.

My point here is that sometimes an outside unbiased view can make a big difference and see things that an entrenched team just can’t. This marketing team is made up of highly successful very intelligent people. But still somehow they missed a large part of their market.

Now at the very least even if the company does not proceed with us, I believe if they only employ this one new idea they’ll increase their sales leads by at least 5 times with a potential of increasing them by 9 times. That is a potential 200 million increase in sales. Not to shabby for a one hour conversation.

So my question to you is: Could you increase your sales by making a simple change in the way you word your marketing message?

What would just a 2x increase in sales do for your company? What could you implement with the extra influx of cash?

Hire extra personnel to provide better customer service? Outsource that one activity that you know your company isn’t handling the best way possible?

There are many aspects to look at in business but increasing your sales should be the number one priority. If you have the money you can pay for everything in your business to get done in the very best most efficient way.

And maybe, (if you choose) get more time that you can spend with family and friends.

If you’d like to find out how you can increase your sales by 2-3 times, email me today @ david@marketing-velocity.com

Need to learn process map symbols or how to create a process map?

In the video below you’ll learn what process map symbols are, their meanings and how to use them to easily build your own process maps for your specific business processes.

Enjoy!

Are you tired of getting so many emails from the various groups you’re a part of on Facebook? This video is for you!

You’ll see exactly how to change your Facebook group privacy settings so you only get the emails you really want to see. As a bonus, at the end of the video you’ll see how to set the general privacy settings in Facebook. Do you know what everyone on Facebook (Around 700 million people) can see about you?

When you’re done watching please leave a comment below and click the Facebook like button.

Click play…

Recently people have been asking me about graphics and where to get them made, how to convert one graphic format to another and how to get a great looking logo.

There are times when you’ll need a graphic artist or designer, especially with designing a logo, I don’t think that’s a place to skimp.

But the truth of the matter is many times, (if you have the time and the desire) you can do it completely by yourself.

Ever had a printer ask you for an eps file? If you’ve tried having graphics of logos printed you have…

Ever looked at buying photoshop so that you could create your own files and graphics?

In just a minute I’m going to tell you where you can get a 100% free program so that you can create your own graphics and documents and do it like a pro.

But first, I want to tell you about the pros and the cons of this.

Pros:

Free program usage.
Design your own graphics, banners and anything else you can think of as far as web graphics and print graphics go.
No having to wait on a designer for weeks to create something for you.
It works on PC’s and Mac’s.
You are in complete control.

Cons:

There is very little support for this program (But I’ll tell you where to get tutorials if you want them)
There is a learning curve, it took me a few days of playing around with it to be able to fully build (so that it looked good) my own 3’ x 5’ banner. However, it did turn out great.

OK, with that, are you ready to learn about the program? The name is GIMP, I know that sounds really silly but that’s what it is. It stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, it’s much easier to just say Gimp, Right?

Anyway, it’s a free download and you can get it right here.

If you have any questions please let me know, I’ll be glad to help if I can.

And, If you want to outsource your graphics, send me an email at david@marketing-velocity.com I’ll be glad to get my expert team right on your project.
By the way, my team uses Adobe Illustrator when we design graphics because it creates very, very high resolution pictures. But for the do it yourselfer that doesn’t want to spend thousands of dollars on software, Gimp is a great solution.

I can already hear people asking now, Why did you do this yourself when you have a team that does it for you? The answer is simple, if I hadn’t done it myself I wouldn’t be able to tell you about it or help you when you need me to.

And besides that, I’m a do it yourselfer at heart and love figuring this stuff out.

To your success,

David