Top Plumber PPC Marketing Experts Welcome

The world is changing. The way in which we receive information is far greater now than ever before. Apart from television, printed media, radio and other visual media, probably the most important form of media in our lives is the internet. It truly has revolutionized the way we think, the way we use technology and the way we gain information. Big business has seen this for years, but only in the past few years have small business started taking control of the way they are presented on the internet. Small business internet marketing is becoming the number one way of being recognized and found.

Consider twenty years ago, how was a plumber found by a customer? Perhaps by word of mouth, but generally, the first place people searched was in the Yellow Pages. Yellow Pages was the Google of the pre internet revolution. Now Yellow Pages is probably only used by 30% of searchers. The other 70% belongs to internet search engines and two thirds of those by Google.

Google is effectively the new Yellow Pages.

Thus, it is vital that small businesses need to have some form of web presence. And not only that, it is essential that they are easily found by searchers.

This is where internet marketers come into their own. For years, most marketers have tried their hands at affiliate marketing, but that industry is fast becoming even more competitive and harder to achieve good results. Rather than waste their talents and their knowledge, many affiliate marketers are coming across and marketing for small local businesses. A need is being met by experienced hardened marketers who have competed across the globe.

Now, they simply have to compete locally and this is far, far easier. In fact a local business should easily be able to be ranked on the first page of Google for its industry name along with the town it is situated in. And this is generally what customers are going to be typing in to find them.

So a search in Google for a plumber in say Atlantic City is simply going to be "Atlantic City plumber". It shouldn't therefore be hard to rank high for that keyword. Type in "plumber" without the location, and the competition is sky high.

However, a small business doesn't even necessarily need to have a website. With Google places, an account and listing can be grabbed free of charge and that business can advertise there. No cost, no website to maintain, and effectively that listing can be its web page as there are things that can be added and included on the profile.

Depending on the business type, it is more advantageous to have a web site in order to better describe services and products and to have a virtual presence that people can view and gain an idea of how professional the business is. It also allows a greater chance of a clickthrough as often the business will be shown in both the Google Places section of the result page and also the organic search as well. The more presence, the greater chance of click through and therefore the greater chance of business.

To conclude, with the way technology is improving and the way people are using technology, it is essential for any small business to have some form of internet marketing.

Contractors display quite a bit of irony in the way they run their business. They would like for more customers to call when a problem arises that the contractor can fix. Yet contractors think they should do EVERYTHING in their business on their own. They handle the marketing, payroll, taxes and of course the actual work. This is simply not necessary.

Consider for a moment a self employed plumber. Most plumbers know that any able-bodied person can likely handle a number of plumbing tasks. But it takes knowledge and experience to recognize the true source of a leak or flow problem and determine the best solution. This specialized knowledge and experience comes from a reputable plumber.

The various tasks that a contractor handles on a day-to-day basis should also be handled by knowledgeable and experienced individuals rather than having the contractor do everything on their own. When looked at from a mathematical standpoint, it makes perfect sense.

For instance, let's say that the plumber mentioned above spends 7 hours weekly handling marketing chores. Let's also surmise that the plumber charges $50 per hour for most work. That means that the marketing efforts have to produce at least $350 in new business, every single week, in order just to break even. Anything less is a loss.

Now suppose the plumber hires a contractor marketing services company. The marketing agent looks at the plumber's business and puts together a plan that will cost $2,500 to start and a few hundred dollars per month to maintain. The plumber faints. After he regains his composure, he agrees to the marketing plan. 90 days later, thanks to the new marketing plan, the plumber has gained $10,000 in new business. Using the phrase that most contractors use "Doesn't it make sense to hire a specialist, rather than do all of it on your own?"

Here are some of the steps I go through to improve my customer's online presence

When I'm meeting a prospective customer, I like to find out what advertising mechanisms they are currently using. Its fairly common that they are using newspaper advertising, yellow pages and other traditional print media. I always ask what kind of tracking mechanism they have in place to measure the effectiveness of their advertising. Unfortunately, there is usually very little tracking done unless they included a coupon or incentive of some kind in their advertising.

I then continue our discussion by asking the business owner how he or she goes about finding a business when they have a need. The answer is pretty universal. Almost all of the business owners I have spoken with search for businesses on the internet. The obvious question is, "If this is where you look for businesses you intend to purchase from, can your potential customers find your business on the internet?" I can't describe to you the downfallen looks I have gotten from business owners when they hear this question. I always ask their permission to see how they can be found. I start by bringing up Google and asking them what a potential customer might enter into a search engine if they were looking for the business. We decide on a keyword and look at the search results. I have yet to sit down with a business owner who was pleased about where there business showed up, if they showed up at all.

While we are examining the search results, I let my prospect know that the website ranked #1 will get around 40% of the click volume, #2 will get around 20% and #3 will get around 10%. The other websites receive a very low percentage of the available traffic.

I know this might seem cruel, but it is an important educational point for the business owner. Potential customers do not look for the business name when they search online, they express their need, i.e. "I need a plumber". This requires us to change how we approach everything in establishing our marketing presence, even the selection of our domain name. If we include a good search phrase such as "I need a plumber" in the domain name we will get noticed more quickly and will draw more traffic. This exercise introduces the business owner to the concept of keywords. When it comes to the internet, keywords are what we live by.

What is a keyword?

A keyword is just the term used for a search phrase. It may be all or part of the the search phrase entered in by a search engine user. The search phrase "I need a plumber in Chicago" contains several possible keywords: plumber; I need a plumber; plumber in Chicago; I need a plumber in Chicago. When examined, each of these keywords will receive some amount of monthly search volumes.

What keywords should I focus on?

When we looked at the keyword suggested by the business owner, we saw a list of websites who have obviously done something right. That's how they got ranked so highly. The logical step is to take a look at the keywords used by those websites. With the right tools, one can enter in the URL and get a complete list of the keywords that a website is focusing on. However, we may not be able to compete initially with an existing website on all of the keywords. It will take time to build up enough content and reviews to become competitive. What I do for my customers is to use internet marketing tools to find the keywords which do not have a ton of competition but still have a decent search volume. We start with those and get ranked on the easy keywords while we are working to get noticed on the more competitive keywords. This does two things. It helps generate traffic for the business owner's website and gives them some confidence that they can use the internet to bring new customers into their business.

Ok, I have my keywords, now what?

The internet thrives on content, so the next step we need to take is to create some content. We need to create content which I call "personal branding" content, and content which will draw the interest of visitors to the business' website. We need personal branding content to help our visitors know who we are. Customers purchase from people they feel comfortable with and from those they view as authorities. The rest of our content should be seeded with keywords to help the search engines rate us and to provide valuable information to the websites visitors.

However, just putting content on a website won't do enough to draw visitors. We also need to get the content out and visible to the rest of the world. In order to do that, we create accounts on numerous article directories, video directories and business directories. Every piece of content published on a website should also be distributed as many places as possible with links back to the main website. These links are called "back-links" and are one of the primary criteria used by search engines to establish website rankings. Even getting articles published isn't enough. We must also arrange for "reviews" of these articles to be written so that the search engines know that the content being published is valuable and in demand.

Some of the best types of content we can produce are "how to" lists or "top 10" lists. These draw attention more than most types of content. Videos have become incredibly important in getting ranked and are now easy to produce as well.

We must also create listings for the business in business directories. These tools are repositories of businesses and invariably have high rankings on the internet. We must take the testimonials that the business has received and publish these on the business' website and all of the business directories.

Each search engine also maintains a directory of businesses in specific niches. These are frequently the easiest places to get noticed. In combination with the listings and testimonials, this may be the first place where a business can get ranked well in a search engine.

Summary

The basic steps we have discussed in this article are:
1) Find out what customers are searching for (keyword research)
2) Create content (branding and general keyword rich content in the form of articles and videos)
3) Publish content on the website and across the internet in various directories
4) Generate reviews of the published content
5) Create listings for the business in the noted business directories
6) Create "local" listings for the business
7) Publish testimonials for business on website and business directories

Repeat process for more keywords

None of these steps are especially difficult, they just require time, knowledge and the correct tools.