Three Ways to Use Local Newspapers to Market Decorative Concrete

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Judy

It’s important to work with the newspapers and publications in your service area as part of a cost effective marketing plan. Their 3rd party voice keeps you from being dismissed as ‘just another infomercial’. The newspaper staff has the expertise for placing your story where their readers will get the most benefit — the front page, social page, sports page.

Your plan should include

1. Sending a press release whenever you have something to announce.

New equipment or new employees make a good start. Make your announcement concise in a ‘friendly factual’ voice and keep it short. — 250 to 300 words. The editor will recognize potential for more information and assign a writer/reporter to call you if they need more. Email it to the paper as an attachment, but put it into the body of the email too. (Busy editors will bless you for saving the extra step of opening the attachment). Don’t let a press release intimidate you; you can find information about how to write and format a PR by searching on Google.

2. The Human Side of your business.

Did you overcome obstacles along the way?
What has your business done for the community?
Do you have a clean-up team?
Do you partner with another business to sponsor a summer team for needy kids that could be news for the sports page. Or a team for handicapped adults?
Did you volunteer engraving for a community project?

3. How national trends are affecting your community.

Is remodeling a growing interest in your community as well as others?
Will your community enjoy outdoor kitchens with decorative concrete as much as many others in the community.

These actions helps to establish you as an expert in your field. The next time the reporter learns of a trend in decorative concrete, you should be the logical choice from whom to seek an opinion. Make sure the paper knows you are receptive to their questions and research.

Outdoor Hidden Treasures, owned by Chuck and Nicole Landry in Breaux Bridge, LA connected with a local paper, The Teche News, about a donated engraving they did for the local Chamber of Commerce. All of three benefited from a post in Groov-E-News

Claim Your Internet Territory | Online Reputation Management

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Judy

Your community, your company and your name could be at risk for the accidental critic that gets ahead of you in searches for information.

People are using the social media sites for TMI, (too much information), we know that already. Recently, I did a Twitter search for a small town in central Missouri. I wanted to see who was using Twitter and naming the community (claiming it) in their updates.

I found some scary surprises. “Smalltown” Missouri was only mentioned twice. One was a profanity laced update from a dissatisfied customer at a Walmart Pharmacy. The comment was picked up in a RSS feed and repeated twice by a competitive pharmacy resource. Her profane criticism was the only representation of that community that would show up in a Twitter search. “Small potatoes.” you’re thinking. Well, the pharmacy resource that repeated this ‘tweet’ is deliberately pulling negative information from the internet into their Twitter account. They don’t care what the comment is, they just want to put up ‘scandalous and sensational’ information to get readers to click on their link and find them. They are doing dirt because bad news sells. You can possibly predict the percentage who will see the original criticism and react. You cannot risk the possibilities for damage from the ‘scandal mongers’; you have to build your own reputation and set the pace.

Your best insurance against negative results in searches for you, your business and your community is ACTIVITY. When you blog or update on Facebook or Twitter about your business you are giving the search engines ‘fodder’ for their response to searches. Claiming your business on sites such as YELP.com and your local media sites which offer business listings is like having a billboard up that you can check, but do not have to keep rebuilding. Your customers can leave reviews for you on the local sites as well as at the local search sites we talked about last week – Google Business, Bing Local and Yahoo Local. Suddenly, you have evangelists marketing your business for you.

Your involvement in the online community steadies the online reputation of your decorative concrete engraving business.

Consistent participation gives you the leadership and ownership for your business, name, and town.

Because you are active, you will be able to learn almost instantly if someone is taking a problem online. Then, you can respond with the excellent customer service you learned about at Engrave-A-Crete University.

Your activity will build search results that compete with the criticism and eventually come ahead of it.

Your activity will speak about YOU; as the rest of the online community gets to know you, like you and trust you, they will be less likely to be swayed by negative criticism.

Hey, that’s YOUR territory; take some time this week and stake your claim.

10 Twitter Mistakes Made by Businesses

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Chip Cheagle

This is an article from Socialmediatoday.com.

They make some very good points, but I didn’t agree with all of them, and I explain why below each point.

Businesses jumping into social media often see Twitter as a “simple” part of the plan: set up an account and start tweeting. Sadly some even get stuck right after the set up part. Here are 10 mistakes business newbies on Twitter should avoid:
1. Doing Little or Nothing
With an estimated 25 to 30 percent of Twitter accounts either empty or “one tweet and done” is it surprising that these accounts generate little interest from others on Twitter? Your inactive or virtually inactive account sends a clear message that you’ve given up on Twitter.

Twitter is a very powerful tool with some of its strongest qualities being its ability to deliver your message far beyond just the application, or website of Twitter. But, if you don’t ever say anything, then there isn’t any message to spread, now is there?

2. Desperately Following
If you’re following hundreds of people and only a few dozen are following back doesn’t that send a message that you desperately want followers but aren’t getting them? Why not be patient and never let your Following count get more than 10 percent higher than your Followers count?

If you are looking for followers by following, you’re going to end up just having a bunch of “junk” followers and neither of you will be helping out the online community too much. Most of what exchanges between you will be ignored, and the Twitterverse just ends up getting cluttered. Auto-following those who’ve followed you on the other hand is fine, especially if you want to give people the opportunity to send you a direct message (DM).

3. Tweeting Too Much
If you’re guilty of this you will annoy your followers and water down your message… which likely means you’ll lose followers faster than you get them. How much is too much? Start slowly and only tweet useful stuff two or three times a day. As you slowly increase this over several months pay attention to what, if anything, gets a response (it’s retweeted or commented on) … and when this happens. Let this be your guide.

There’s no such thing as tweeting too much. If people don’t want to read everything you say, they will either ignore you or un-follow you. Big deal, it’s their loss. Say what you want to say and remember the web outside of Twitter that is served by Twitter is more powerful than just Twitter by itself.

4. Mostly Self-Promotional
Too much “me, me, me” talk will mark you as boring … or worse. Add value for others on Twitter and more followers will come. Mention your business or services only when you’ve been asked or in direct response to a stated need. If you consistently give, you’re followers will do the same and your good behavior will be well rewarded.

Twitter is whatever you want it to be, and if it is primarily a marketing platform for you, then who cares what other people think. They can either ignore or un-follow you, again, their loss.

5. Failure to Connect
It can be tempting for businesses to give a Twitter monologue instead of engaging in a dialogue. If you get to know your followers by asking and answering questions, for example, you’ll show that you’re interested in them. They in turn will learn about you. This also means responding to any “@” messages promptly (within a day at most).

This is difficult to do, but I do think it’s very valuable advice, and if you use Twitter this way, then you will see a much stronger community around you (in the Twitterverse that is).

6. Not Helping Others
Acting as a connector or problem-solver will earn you loyal followers. Sometimes the simple act of retweeting a piece of great content will be seen as being helpful. Twitter truly is a place of getting more than you give, but you have to give first.

See number 5.

7. Mixing Business and Pleasure
Sending a mix of business and personal tweets can work when you’re well-established, but a better practice for a business new to Twitter is to keep it all professional. Otherwise you’re sending the message: We don’t know enough to keep our personal lives out of our business.

See number 4, however I will say, many people get too personal on Twitter.

8. Impersonal avatars
Yes your business name or logo is important, but Twitter (and all social media) is about people. Use an avatar image that reflects your people not your brand name.

This is good advice and if nothing else, Twitter is the perfect vehicle for demonstrating a personality associated with your company… remember what Dave did for Wendy’s?

9. Wasting background space
Twitter gives you a lot of real estate around your Twitter-stream … don’t waste it. Use it to let people know what you do and why you do it. Put your people and the business personality on display. It’s also OK here to list a few other contact points such as email address, phone numbers and other social media URLs.

Good advice.

10. Not Checking In Regularly
Maintaining a Twitter account needs to become part of your routine. Once a day or twice a day or more, but it does need to become a regular thing to have any chance of helping your business.

Good advice, but difficult to do. Best to create a schedule and treat your Twitter time as part of your marketing.

Twitter is a tool, and a powerful one at that.

Don’t let people tell you what’s right and wrong about how you as a business use Twitter.

Beginners Guide To Facebook Advertising for Contractors

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Chip Cheagle

If you haven’t tried to advertise your business using pay per click advertising yet, maybe now is the time to try it out.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is the form of advertising made most popular by Google’s Adwords program, and are the type of ads that you notice on the right hand side of the page of any results page on Google whenever you search for something.

The way it works on Google is you choose keywords – words that your prospective customers might use to search for things on Google – then create a short, classified style ad to be presented when someone does a search for what you do – decorative concrete for instance.

There are entire courses written on perfecting Google Adwords campaigns, and there is no way the topic could be served justice in a short article like this one.

But what can be done in a few short articles, is a few ideas that maybe you hadn’t considered about advertising online could be presented.

You must never forget that the economy has moved online, meaning: at the very least, people are starting their research about solving their problem by going online.

Your best bet at being seen as a solution to their problem is to enter the conversation they are having in their head, and the quickest way to make this happen is to advertise online in the places where they are.

And where is everyone online right now, excluding Google?

Facebook.

And, lucky for you, Facebook has an advertising service that rivals Google’s, and is better in a few ways. You can see them on the right hand side of your Facebook page.

Facebook is a great place for beginning online advertisers because you can choose between actual pay per click, which means you pay a few cents every time someone clicks on your ad, and pay per impression, which means you pay a few cents for every 1000 times your ad is displayed.

Pay per impression is good if you have a small group of people your ad will be presented to, and might be the choice for the local decorative concrete contractor.

The other nice thing about Facebook is the ability to narrow down exactly who your ad gets presented to.

With Google and Facebook you can narrow down by location, but where Google shines with keywords, Facebook shines with demographics, such as what people are interested in, what their favorite books are, etc.

Do you see the power you have with that information?

Here is a way to possibly create a Facebook ad campaign for your decorative concrete business.

First, you need to have a Facebook account, which is free. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the “advertising.”

Click on the green “create an ad” button in the top right.

Now you can drill down your target – be smart about this, and it could really pay off. For example, let’s say you’ve researched your existing customers, and you’ve found that your average customer lives in your area (obviously), is 40 years old, female, is in the PTA, is a homemaker, and her favorite show is Grey’s Anatomy.

Chances are, if your average customer has these qualities, then other people with these qualities could also become your customer.

So target your Facebook ad to only show to women in these categories, then depending on the estimated number of people on Facebook these ads would reach decide whether you want to pay per click or pay per 1000 impressions.

Design your ad to be clicked by the right person – include a picture of your work and write a good headline that promises a benefit, or solution to a problem.

Set your daily limit (how much you’re willing to spend per day) and hit “Place Order.”

You’re done, you could just set it and forget it, but it’s not the best idea – link to either your website, or your Facebook page, or a specific page just for your Facebook ad clickers.

Look at that! You’re advertising online, congratulations.