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| Who knows? You learn these advertising tricks and one fine day you may own this building |
I know that a lot of us small businesses, are going through a tough economy. We may hear otherwise, but when business is scarce and one must lower bids to impossible levels just to get the job, one wonders "where is this recovery the media is telling us about!?" Maybe we need to plug in to the "off stream media" to get the straight scoop.
One gets the feeling that someone or someones are lying to us possibly in an effort to stave off harder economic times. But the bottom line is that consumer confidence is at all time low in the building and Real Estate Industries, as well as others. Both seem to be intricately connected. After all, very few home owners these days feel any real urgency to do home remodeling, much less put up shutters unless forced to do so.
So what do we do? We may just sit there and hope that things will get better, keep on giving out low bids and use up the rest of our reserves "just to ride this wave". I realized that this a a defeatist's attitude. it doesn't contribute to what is actually needed at this time: "confidence".
But how can we get confidence going again? How can we again hold our heads high? "It's not in my control. I can't change things", One might think. But we can re-gain control, We can change things and this is done by doing actions in the direction of increasing consumer confidence. I will give you a lot more here than suggestions on free advertising.
These are my suggestions:
1. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer
Realize that he who is buying from you is probably suffering from similar financial woes. After all, most of my clients actually own or work for a small business. In Miami about 80% of the population is actually in this category. They want to buy from you, but simply have a tough time of doing it. Their operating costs have soared, just like yours and promoting their business through conventional means like The Yellow Pages, Google Adwords and others has become prohibitive.
I get, God knows how many calls a day from Big name advertisers who want me to sign up with them for advertising. I simply refuse. I've trained myself to do as much of my advertising for free. Sure it has a cost: my time. But the returns are great. here's some proof. My company ranks page one in Google under the following keywords: Shutters Miami, Roll up shutters Miami, Insulated aluminum roofs Miami, You will see Exacta Tech Inc. appear over and over ( In my updates below I'll go into more detail than I'm giving you now).
How did I do it? I first learned about a free Google tool called "Search based key word tool". This free tool is simply incredible and this is what it does per Google:
"The search -based keyword Tool provides keyword ideas:
•Based on actual Google search queries
•Matched to specific pages of your website with your ad and search share
•New to your Adwords account (typically excluding keywords matching those already in your account)"
No. I'm not doing this as an Affiliate marketer and getting kickbacks from Google. I'm simply sharing with you some of the technology I've learned for free, as I was simply forced to cut my advertising budget from $3,000 a month to about $500. For a company my size this is peanuts.
Another free way to advertise is with Merchant Circle.com. If you are reading this, then you may have reached my blog which I posted there or in Google Blogger. You can, if you wish, pay a measly $29 a month and have them do all kinds of neat things with your free listing and submit it to Google, Yahoo and all the other major search engines so that you can rank high. I chose to pay $29 a month and I'm ranked on first page of Google. But you don't have to at first.
You can get your business listed for free in many directories such as Super Pages.com Free Directory. If you want to make money with your site from Super pages.com (See? Not only am I giving you tons of valuable freebies, but I'm also showing you how to make money!): Super pages.com Affiliate program.
Here's a couple more links I'll let you know about for free (Don't think...Pleasee...that just because these links I'm giving you are free that they have no value. It has cost me thousands of dollars to find this out on my own!): Hot Frog. It will rank you high for free. Here's a great way to get E-Commerce for free! that's right...and you thought that you had to pay a web designer thousands of dollars to set this up for you: eCrater. Not only will you set up an internet store here and sell your goodies, but you'll also get ranked high in Google. Here's proof: Google has this as the first listing in the organic side of the page (the non paid side). Just look for the accordion shutter image: Hurricane shutters. No it's not mine. I recently found out about eCrater. The "catch" is you agree to pay them a nominal fee for every sale you make.
2. Stay focused as you promote.
As you navigate through a lot of The links that I've given you above, you may feel rather overwhelmed and confused at the amount of information that is out there. But if you are the true entrepreneur that you say you are, you will get very excited and start to get a lot of your own ideas. I know you will. So at this point focus on your goal and such is: Promote the hell out of your business and work out of this economic mess. Who knows, after you do this a while, you may ask yourself: "What economic mess?" and simply continue with lots of prosperity. But the key to your new found properity will first start with promoting your butt off! So focus on lots and lots of free promotion at first. Once you start getting into better finances for your business, I suggest you pay for some promotion. Remember that promotion is an investment in your business, not a useless expense if you do it right.
And what exactly is promotion?: It's getting out there. Letting yourself and your business be known. It's spreading the word. It's royally getting out of your cocoon or comfort level. Just get out there.
3. Change your operating basis
If you've had free time, such as drinking beer with the boys on Friday night. Consider burning the midnight oil on this night instead. Work out better campaigns for your promotion. Deliver what you have promised, instead of making excuses to your clients. Clean out that old warehouse and organize things so that you're not wasting hours looking for things and wasting time and money. Get to work on time and work a little later. Call some clients. Do that service call that you always dreaded.
4. economize
Now that you've made some sales and some money, don't get tempted to trade in that old car. If the old car runs well, keep it. If the old machinery runs well, service it, don't lease new stuff.
5. Prepare to deliver
You should see lots of orders come in right now. Fill them as fast as possible without goofing around.
6. Stiffen discipline
Keep working harder. Sack the loafers or the sappers of the team spirit. Clean up the house by straightening up the moochers, the leeches or the slackers. If they won't straighten out, get rid of them--who needs them?
O.K. So what is my motive in telling you all this? Well, maybe I'm a bit selfish. You see. I don't like the way things are. If your business does better you'll survive better and I will survive better as well. Eventually, you'll buy my products or better yet become my friend. We can all use more friends, can't we? And together we can help to improve conditions. We don't have to "take it", you know. We can do something about it.
I do ask of you one simple thing of you for all the freebies I just gave you, please make a comment on my blog and share with your friends. it's as simple as clicking a button on the top part of the blog.. Doing so helps my Merchant Circle rating and rankings in Google, Yahoo and other search engines.
I hope that this blog helps to do just that.
To your success
Carlos Manrique
First update for the new year 2010, January the 8th
Two big mistakes that I made:
Welcome back to this blog my friends.
Here's some more useful information that you will need. I posted the blog above in Merchant Circle and I made a couple of major mistakes. These are as follows:
1. I also posted this blog in blogger by copying and pasting. This is a major "No no" in Search engine optimization and getting indexed in the First page of Google (pretty much every internet marketer's dream), or anywhere near it. If you clicked on the link above, you will notice that this listing is in the second page of Google now for Shutters Miami (sorry I just couldn't resist giving myself another back link to my main site).
It used to be in the first page! So a hard lesson learned. Duplicating content is not something you do to rank well in the major search engines. You will get penalized faster than you can say "Don't do it again".. This is the subject of another posting which I will bring to you.
2. The Merchant Circle editors deleted my blog from the forum. I was very happy that this blog "Free advertising for your business" was getting rave reviews and was a topic on fire. What a shame! But I learned another lesson. The reason I was given for the deletion was: "Your blog violates the terms and conditions of your agreement and is direct competition with us" I strongly disagreed mainly because I gave Merchant Circle a major endorsement and reason to potential clients to buy their products. Yes I gave away some "secrets" on how to advertise for free and in many other publications. But merchant Circle got the biggest accolades. Go figure.
So in hindsight 20/20, here's my advice "No matter how great your advice is to others, don't post it where it can be deleted because it competes with the host of your post." Simple, right? But below are the good news:
Here's a great way to get free advertising for your business
Getting free traffic to your sites, blogs or articles.
I'm sure that this is not a new subject for you, but maybe one that gets confusing, especially when every guru out there clamors for your attention and hard earned bucks. Relax, put your wallet away. You don't have to buy anything here. I make small amounts of money from Google Adsense when you do click on their ads. I have many blogs pretty much all over the internet and Adsense adds up little by little. But this is not a blog about Adsense, it's about getting free traffic.
1. Unique content: Remember my boo boo above? Don't do it: duplicate content, even if it's yours. If you just hate writing, I will later give you a way that you can tweak content and "fool" the bots into thinking it's unique. I don't endorse it, but it can be done. many gurus out there do this. They put up thousands of "duplicate sites", insert Adsense and litter the internet. I call these "litter sites". These sites are "written" by a software program--not cheap-- and are very difficult to enjoy. So people who land there click the Adsense ads and money is made, even if the person didn't buy.
2. Put your main keyword into your URL for your site or blog. If you sell "stuffed bears" make you URL "www.stuffedbears.com". Yeah I know. That's taken. So what do you do? "www.Cindy'sStuffed Bears.com" or if your name is not Cindy "www.Cheap and Unique Stuffed Bears.com", or any such combination, until you get it. The URL of this blog is: http://freeadvertising-for-your-business.blogspot.com/.
I couldn't get "Free advertising for your business" as it was taken.
3. Use blogs and articles as your web pages hosting. I was spending quite a bit of money with different web hosts such as 1 on 1, Go Daddy and others to host my sites and articles. This gets expensive after a while. If you have 3-4 sites X $25 a month, that's about $75-$100. This is not to say that you should never pay for web hosting and be cheap as hell. But concentrate on one or two main sites for what you do, the rest of your information can be posted in the form of blogs and articles.
4. Use only related keywords. When I started out building my own websites, blogs and articles I violated this big time. With my shutters site, I wrote all about Search Engine Optimization, Marketing tips, etc. My site didn't budge even though I worked hard on it. So hard work does not equal higher returns necessarily. Hard work will equal higher returns when done right. So "work smarter, not harder"-- that's the old proverb we hear often. Again, if your site is about "stuffed bears", don't write about "candy" or "parts for cars".
One thing about keywords: Some search engine bots (crawlers) don't "appreciate" the same keyword repeated over and over again in the text, pictures, etc. So they will penalize you if you do. This is called "Keyword density". Other bots don't really care much. I've found this more so with Yahoo. So I suggest you experiment somewhat with this until you're comfortable.
5. Create back links to your websites, blogs and articles. Per many internet experts, this is probably the most important of all the tips. A back link is a link that links back to your site, blog or article. The higher the page ranking of the site that back links to you, the higher your ranking will be. Although all back links have some value, even if they rank nowhere. Don't fall for some bogus software that's being sold out there that "creates" back links for you. Google bots are already "wise" to them and consider such practice spam. There is, however a way to go around the bots in an ethical way, which I will bring to you later.
I'll be bringing you more ways on How to get Free advertising for your business
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