Last night my wife and I went to the Three Doors Down concert at the local outdoor amphitheater. The venue has some under-roof seating, but the vast majority of the seating is on the lawn, a huge grass-covered hill where you can just pick out a place, flip out a blanket, and sit.

You can also rent lawn chairs. After about 15 minutes of sitting on a blanket, my back was hurting and I was ready for a chair. So we walked all the way back down the hill (about 10 mins) and scoped out the rental place.

I noticed the sign right away - Lawn Chair Rental $5. Excellent. Five bucks. I can handle that.

So we go up there and hand over the $5 bucks. I get a chair and a ticket. The lady explains to me that if I bring the chair back, along with the ticket, I’ll get a dollar back.

Wow, really? I can walk all this way back for a dollar?

If you’ve read the book Freakonomics, you’ll remember a story about daycares in Israel that were having problems with parents picking up their children late. So the daycare decided to issue a ‘late penalty fee’ of $3.00. And what happened? The amount of late arrivals increased dramatically. The parents realized that for only $3/day, they could extend the time they had without the kids to get things done. The daycare’s plan backfired.

Same for the lawn chair. I had walked up there fully expecting to pay $5 for a rental. Once there, they informed me of the deposit return, but instead I heard “For no extra money, you can leave your chair on the hill after the show”. They just saved me from walking all the way back over there, thanks.

So in my little marketing mind, I started thinking about things they could do that could actually work. We know the chair rental really costs them nothing, other than the initial purchase price of the chair, which I’m sure they recouped in the first two shows of the season. That means the other 100 or so shows are pure profit, minus having to pay the girls that man the rental booth. So let’s just say the profit per chair per concert is $4.50.

There are many businesses who would love to get the exposure of thousands of people nearly every night of the summer. These businesses would be wise to contact the lawn chair rental place and work out a deal. For example’s sake, lets say I own a sandwich shop near the ampitheater. I could print up some buy-one-get-one sandwich coupons, and give them to the lawn chair rental booth (up to $5 value). Now the booth can promote something of more value for each returned chair, a free $5 sandwich, making the rental “free”.

They’d do even better if they got a few vendors to offer deals. A local nightclub/bar would do well after most concerts. A free bucket with purchase of a bucket would pull people in. A skate shop (for the teen visitors) could offer a $5 discount off shoes. Dave & Busters (which is very near the amphitheater) could offer $5 in free tokens.

Even if the lawn chair company paid $1 for each coupon, they’d still come out was ahead.

Be careful how you portray ‘value’ to your customers. I was fully willing to pay $5 to rent a chair, and when I found out that I could just leave it, and didn’t have to bring it back, it was even better. I was in no way notified of the $1 ‘refund’ until I had already paid for the rental.

A ten minute walk with an already-hurting back vs. a $1 refund was an easy decision. Someone come get this chair. I’m going home.

If you run a local community or small business website and are needing ideas on how to get some free press, why not piggyback off the local items of interest?

There are two top news stories this week in Saint Louis.

• Flooding

I’ve already started a photo contest related to the flooding.  Take a picture of flooded areas, or perhaps a teenager filling a sandbag, or perhaps an elderly gentleman donating water to workers.  I’ll post the pictures, send out a press release about my contest, and get more traffic and brand recognition.  The winner will get a $25 gas card, which appeals to pretty much everyone nowadays.

• Anheuser Busch Takeover

Several ‘web-people’ have already taken advantage of this, launching sites such as SaveBudweiser and SaveAB. Smart because they’re getting free mentions on all the news broadcasts, radio stations and links galore from beer lovers and proud Saint Louis bloggers.  They’ve started petitions (even if useless, these encourage people to spread the word about the website) and forums to discuss the takeover.

Check out the news. Even if its depressing, there is still plenty of goodness to be found if you’ve got a somewhat creative mind.  People are happy to jump on a bandwagon, all you have to do is hook up the tractor and get in front of them.

This summer, on Wednesdays and Thursdays at the Wehrenberg theater in Arnold Missouri, you can bring your kid and watch a kid-themed movie for free.  First come, first served, no rainchecks.

What a brilliant idea.  Their marketing team hit this nail on the head.

• Moms (and Dads) can give their kids something to do during summer break
• Moms (and Dads) will spend money on snacks
• The theater makes money that otherwise would have never been made by opening the theater at ‘off times’ that they are normally not open
• Families are exposed to the theater’s branding and a positive experience (free for the parents, fun for the kids)

This is the kind of thinking that most marketing people don’t get.  Or worse yet, upper management freaks out at the word “free”.  Thing is, they’ll be way ahead on this deal by offering these free movies.  Good move, Wehrenberg!

With every TV newscast, radio program and newspaper screaming about the recession, this is the perfect time to be spending.

No, I’m not nuts.

Think about it.  Everyone is saying it’s time to cut back.  And nearly everyone is.  Your competition probably is.  They’ve cut their advertising.  They’ve even cut employees.  The marketing budgets are being sliced - but why?  If everyone is cutting their spending, that means there are a lot of open markets that you can get in to.  This is the time to start building the foundation for your future.

Mom & Pop, listen up.

When you start building now, you’ll be way ahead of the big dogs when the economy recovers.  And it will recover.  That’s not a question, it’s a fact.  A year from now when companies are finally starting to put a little money back into their marketing budget, you’ll have a stronghold that’s going to be hard for them to break through.

Build now while the gettin’ is good.

As more and more people go online to look for local deals, check out products online before buying locally, etc, it is becoming more and more imperative that your website gives more than just information about your products.  Getting them to your website is a great first step.  More traffic means more face-time with potential customers.  More face-time means better branding. It’s all good, but it isn’t all paying the bills.

In order to pay the bills, you need conversions. 1000 people to your website doesn’t guarantee 100 or even 10 sales.  Once they see your products, are they engaged to find out more?  No?  Why not?

Every single product page on your website should have some sort of ‘find out more’ button.

• Click here to find out more about our blue widget
• Want more info? We’re glad to help
• Need a blue widget for your home? Let us find you the right one

Something needs to encourage them to click.  And once they click, they provide their email, phone or other way of contacting them.  Now you’ve turned that casual visitor into a warm lead - and you’ve got a way to communicate with the customer, thus fortifying your position as the subject matter expert of blue widgets (assuming you really know what you’re talking about).

Engage the visitor with a button on each product page.  Try to make the subsequent form that they fill out as short as possible, and with a little fancy coding you can even put the name of the item in the form for them.  Make it easy, thank them once they submit the form, and make sure you get back with them in a decent amount of time.

Personally I dump all of these inquiries to a database where I can keep track of them, and I also note down their referrer if its available.  I email myself (web designer) and the store owner a copy of the inquiry so they can follow up quickly.  Lastly, I send a thank you email, customized with the product name, to the potential customer.  Another opportunity to get my clients brand in front of them.

What are you doing with the visitors to your site?  Don’t just sit back and expect them to call.  Engage them, get some info from them, and provide outstanding customer service.  Even if they don’t end up buying from you, you still had the opportunity to make more of an impression on them, and that’s worth a lot.

Next Wednesday is the last time you’ll be able to attend my presentation at the local library on SEO.  After that, I’m hoping to hit the main stage at at least two events this year.

I love public speaking.  There’s a rush getting up in front of tens or hundreds or thousands of people and explaining something that you are passionate about.  I hope to be able to do that this year for SEO.  In particular, local SEO.  Its a hugely untapped market, and the potential for businesses to explode is there - if only they SMBs knew about it!

An open letter to all small and medium business (SMB) owners

Dear Mr. Business Owner,

I heard a rumor from a buddy of mine that you were currently thinking about getting a website going for your company. Congratulations - I think that is a wonderful thing! The future of your business very well may lie in the decisions that you make when building your website.

My buddy told me that you haven’t decided yet on an individual or company to do your website. He was asking me if I had any tips, which I do. I hope you don’t find my questions and tips too intrusive on your business, but if you want a truly functional and revenue-producing presence online, it’s going to be necessary.

1. Can you navigate the web easily?
   Sometimes I meet SMB owners who are a bit proactive online - just enough to get them through the things they need to do. They can do email and stumble through Yahoo! to find what they need. They aren’t the typical Internet user, in fact most SMB owners, in my opinion, are less computer savvy than the average Joe.
   You may want to consider taking some free classes at the local library or civic center on computers. Most of them offer keyboarding basics, Understanding the Internet, and even basic Word and Excel classes. Sign up for them all. It’ll help you and your web designer, I promise.
2. Speaking of designers, have you picked one out yet?
   You may have already started probing your business friends and family members about potential designers. Your cousin said that his neighbor’s boy is good with the Internet, so you’ve got one possible lead there. There’s also a guy in town that runs a local town-hall type website, maybe he could help you out too.
   Let me go ahead and say it now - hire a professional. Yeah, I know, they expect you to pay real money. Duh! If you bought a billboard down on the highway, would you ask your cousin’s neighbor to go paint something on it? I hope not!
   This is by far one of the most important decisions of the entire process. Choosing a web designer who can make a pretty website isn’t enough. You’re going to have to find one that understands the marketing end of web design, too. If you don’t you’re going to end up paying more in the long run. I’ll assume you don’t want to do that!
   Here are some things you should ask a potential designer:
   • Do you do keyword research prior to starting the site?
   • Do you use templates or design the site from scratch? (Using a template isn’t a deal-breaker, but it’s nice to know if your site will end up looking like other industry-related websites. You don’t want that.)
   • Do you build the framework prior to starting the design? If so, is it keyword specific?
   • Do you provide hosting, or can you refer me to a reliable hosting company? (yeah I did it)
   • After you build the site, are you done, or will there be monthly fees/maintenance? (If he says no, you may actually be in trouble!)
3. Are you committed?
   I recently had an appointment to meet with a guy who started a new taxi service in town, and he wanted a website. I talked to him a few times and we set a time to meet. Well, when I showed up, the guy was busy with another client. He told me to ‘wait here’ and he’d be back. Fifteen minutes later, I left.
   If you aren’t committed to getting a website, or you don’t have your $h!t in order, don’t waste your designer’s time. Shoving off your designer like that is like telling him/her you don’t value their time. Bad idea.
4. Speaking of commitment, are you committed for the long haul?
   Getting a cute little website up isn’t enough to run a business. Sure, you’ll have your own .com and you’ll think you’re great, but really - why are you building this site? To get accolades or to make money?
   If you aren’t willing to stick it out with monthly marketing fees/costs for at least a year, you may be simply helping out your competition. They’ll know in an instant that you aren’t serious, and they’ll steal all those hot leads that could have been yours.
5. Lastly, do you have someone that can provide content (or ‘copy’) to the designer?
   Nothing is worse than hiring someone to do a website and not providing them with one ounce of text to put on it. Do you think a web designer knows the first thing about your industry? Probably not. And it’s not their job to make stuff up. Its yours. So make sure you or someone on your staff can promptly provide information to your potential designer. Don’t make them wait.

Mr Business Owner, I really wish you the best with your endeavour. Don’t get discouraged by the overwhelming amount of pre-work that goes into getting a website.

Like your Dad probably told you, It’s better that you do it right, than do it twice.

Sincerely,

Will Hanke
WillHanke.com

My wife and I are in the process of purchasing a new home. This will be our first ever, and we are very excited. We’ve settled on a beautiful two-story - one we would not be able to buy had it not been for Internet marketing (but that’s another post for another day).

For several years now I’ve been teaching free Internet Marketing classes at our local library. Up until this past year, there were two other guys teaching there as well. One was a local PC-fix-it guy, teaching classes on memory upgrades, anti-virus software, etc. The other guy was a local realtor. Oddly enough, he was teaching Excel classes. Nonetheless, we all became friends with a common thread, helping out the community.

So when it came time for my wife and I to get a house, we already had someone that we wanted to use. But had we not, most likely we would have gone online to find someone. I’d probably type in something like ‘real estate agents in arnold mo’

Besides Google’s ‘Local 10′ listings, this page really only shows me one ‘actual’ real estate agent - Gwen Reynolds (result #5). Looking through Gwen’s website, its obvious that the page is not at all search-optimized, but rather she was just lucky enough to have a title tag that worked for her. This is very typical.

As local search continues to grow, realtors that haven’t optimized their websites are missing one of the biggest opportunities to get new clients. At an average 3% commission per house sold, they are passing by a huge amount of money every day that their website goes on unoptimized.

I think it’s fair to say that 90% or more of local real estate agents use some sort of proprietary website that their company gives them. Every page on their site is just like every page on their co-worker’s website, minus the very few personal things they’ve changed. These pages are usually cheap (or free from their company) and the real estate agents use them as just another way to show their houses. There is little or no personalization, no mention of local events or pictures of local landmarks.

Interestingly, a search for ‘arnold mo realtor’ produces similar results. There’s Gwen at the top (once again, I’m betting this is because of her title tag and not because the page is optimized). Why aren’t any realtors optimizing their websites for local terms?

LocalOnliner recently mentioned the real estate agent v search conundrum as well. The most interesting thing to me there is that the process of selling a house with use of online tools isn’t all that great either. My wife and I used our real estate agent’s MLS program, but ironically enough the house that we found wasn’t even listed in his system.

A while back my real estate buddy mentioned to me that he was considering purchasing domain names for each of his listings - ie 456MainStreet.com. I thought this was a phenomenal idea. Some agents are doing this, because I remember seeing signs with URLs at the bottom of them in some yards. This isn’t a very widespread idea yet, but could be a great way for agents to rank for tons of local terms including small towns, community nicknames and even street names. Load up a nice virtual tour and some unique content and your chances of selling (and ranking) go up dramatically. Take some pointers from sites like Trulia and you’ve got a home run.

Online search for homes is only going to grow. Newspaper ads, untargeted direct mailing and real estate magazines are going to dwindle as Gen-X house buyers grow. Throw in mobile search and real estate agents have a very untapped market at their hands.

Note: Interestingly enough, shortly after posting this, I found a great conference for real estate agents: Kelsey’s Drilling Down on Local ‘08. Looks to be a great conference, particularly for REA’s.

Many small businesses intend on staying small.  They are run by one or two individuals whom are more than happy to simply increase their customer base and revenue to a particular point, but no more.  They aren’t interested in growing beyond their means.

It’s not that they aren’t interested in growing - quite the contrary.  But many Mom & Pop businesses want to simply earn a nice living off their business and go home at the end of the day.  They are interested in growth, but not to the point of them turning into full-time managers.  They prefer to get their hands dirty.  They don’t want to manage people.

I have several clients like this.  Some have services that requires them to physically visit a property to perform, and others have a local business that requires the customer to actually visit their location in order to complete the transaction.

So when these types of clients hire an SEO, they will naturally start to see nationwide traffic, whether they like it or not.

I recently started doing SEO for a company that provides bounce-houses and other inflatable items for birthday rentals, etc.  This client is already ranking nicely for her related terms in the Saint Louis area.  But over time she is also getting more and more traffic (and requests) from other parts of the country.  She’s starting to rank nationally when, in reality, she doesn’t want to.

So, is this a problem?  Perhaps.  It depends on how/if the small business owner is interested in expanding.  Does she want to start another office in Chicago? Grand Rapids?  Does she have the financing to buy another entire set of equipment for another location?

Most likely not.

So then the question becomes simply: Do you ignore these requests, or is there a way to profit from them?

Ignoring them would be a bad idea, even if you’ll never make a dime off the contact.  Heck, they’ve already been exposed to your brand name once, you should at least reply with some sort of ’sorry we can’t help you’ message.  Get your brand in front of them one last time.

And if you start getting more and more of these requests, what can you do?  Do you start an anti-SEO campaign?  No way!

You could start a website similar to Service Magic and get people in your industry to sign up and pay you commissions whenever you send them an out-of-town lead, but do you want to be burdened with yet another part of something that isn’t part of your main business plan? Again, probably not.

Now, if your company provides products, and you start ranking nationally, all you have to do is start contacting your vendors about drop shipping, etc.  You’re in a good position.

Ranking nationally, especially at this time, when SEO is really still not very well-known, can be a good thing.  It (hopefully) opens your eyes to the global potential that the Internet can provide for your small business.  It may even change the way you look at your small little shop - going from local to national - but is that what you want?

Seems that the Yellow Pages, contrary to popular belief, are continuing to take the same path as newspapers had to take a few years back.  Dwindling usage and interest is forcing them to either stay innovative or eventually go out of business.

It’s a wonder that my small-town newspaper is still in existence.  Most likely its only because there are plenty of old-timers still in this town.  But not forever.

Enter the new Yellow Pages opt-out proposal? A genius idea, considering more and more people are going green as well as using them less and less.

While many people are saying this is a new idea, it’s actually not.  Years ago, Southwestern Bell started sending me a CD called LitePages.  It was the entire Saint Louis yellow and white pages on a CD.  I could load the CD onto my server and place an icon on everyone’s PC desktop.  They’d click the icon, and up would pop a virtual yellow pages.  From there they could search and read listings and ads just as if they had an actual phone book in front of them.

And what did I have to do to get the CD?  Simply sign a statement that said we’d order X number fewer books than we had in years past.  It was a win-win.  The environment won, and Bell didn’t really lose any of their usage.  At least in theory.

But still I wonder if my kids, when sitting around the Christmas tree reminiscing twenty years from now, will mention some new techno way to find a local business.  I’ll respond by looking at my beautiful bride of forty years and say “Remember when we had to look up phone numbers in a book?  Those were the days…” as my mind drifts back to thoughts of Pong and amber-colored screens.

Those days are numbered, for sure.  Several of my clients are scaling back on their YP spending and instead putting that money into online efforts.  These efforts can pay long-term, something the current print Yellow Pages can’t promise.

Along these lines, I’ve also heard rumors that some of the smaller Yellow Page companies (print) are even changing their tactics to keep advertisers.  In the past, businesses could list just business name, phone number and URL.  Now, in order to do that,  they are being asked to ‘upgrade’ their current ad so that they can ‘keep’ the URL mention in the print version.  Sounds to me like instead of embracing the future, these YPs are isolating their customers (and losing plenty along the way).