Tag Archives: getting leads

Business Owner With A Blog? Use This Free Tool To Tap Into Your Customers’ Questions

If you are a small business owner, you have probably realized how important your blog is for sharing information, educating and connecting with your clients and customers. Without directly asking though, it can be difficult to know the questions that they have or what information they might find useful.

Until now.

Recently I stumbled across a great, free resource to help bloggers and video creators focus in on exactly what their clients and potential clients are asking about. It is called Answer The Public. When you type a keyword into answerthepublic.com, it returns the questions that people have been asking relating to that topic.

How To Use Answer The Public

For instance, if you are a pool cleaner, you can type in pool cleaning into the search bar and choose what country you are in. When I did that search for a person located in the US, this is what was returned.

how to get ideas for blogging for business owners

I love this visual, but if you would like something easier to read, you can also select the “data” tab and it will display these questions in row format.

By seeing what people are asking,  you can easily construct blog posts that will immediately resonate with them, while positioning yourself as the expert that you are.

Getting Even More Milage from Answer the Public

In addition to writing articles, you can also use this information to create videos or brand yourself even further by compiling the answers into a book that you can leave as a “book business card” for your clients and potential clients, or even sell to the public.

 

5 Ways to Skyrocket Sales With Video

Are you using video in your business yet? If not, there are some compelling reasons why you should start. If you are already using video, are they working as hard as they could be to increase sales?

Why video needs to be part of your marketing plan: In an Invodo report in 2013 it was reported that:

  • 52% of consumers say watching videos on products makes them more confident to buy
  • 174% higher likelihood of product purchase among shoppers who view this media
  • Using the word “video” in an email subject line increases open rates from 7% to 13%
  • Video on your website may also increase your search engine rankings

How Videos Skyrocket Sales

Branding – since videos are engaging, it is easy to create branding by using video. The more your customers see your brand, the more likely they are to visit your place of business when they need what you offer.

Engaging – most people would prefer to watch video to obtain information than to read. By having engaging video content about your business, you are more likely to get visitors and customers than if all of the information was presented in the written form.

Know/Like/Trust – people buy from those that they know, like and trust. Because they see you and your facial expressions and your body language, it is easier to get someone to feel like they know you (and then like and trust you) through video than through print media.

Call to Action – Video lends itself well to Call to Actions — telling visitors what to do next. You can direct them to download more information, you can share your contact information with them, send them to your Facebook page or Website. Or you can send them to an opt-in page so that you can continue to send them content and offers.

Page One Ranking – Videos ranked on page one of Google stand out among those listings that are simply text. They are more likely to get clicked on then any other listing on the page.

cpa

Business Videos That Work For You

There are several types of videos that businesses can use to increase their bottom line. The more types you use, the more impact they will have.

Introduction Videos – If you have a website, it is the perfect place to have a video that introduces your business, your products and/or services. It is a great way to begin the Know/Like/Trust process that I spoke of previously.

Testimonials — video testimonials are more effective than simple text. Video shows both verbal and non verbal communication so they are more believable. Emotion sells, so if the person is passionate about what they are saying, it will resonate positively with the person watching the video.

Product Demonstration – Video lends itself well to demonstrations. In the video, benefits and features can be shown, not just talked about. If you have a product that could be considered difficult to use, a video can put aside those fears.

Commercial – Small businesses can now afford to produce commercials on video. These can be played on YouTube, Facebook, or your website. They are a great way to advertise services or products. It can also be used to build brand awareness.

Need a Video Created and/or Ranked?

Contact us for a free consultation. My team can create the perfect video(s) for your business. We also specialize in ranking videos on Google. Whether it is a video that we create or one that you already have, contact us to get it working for you in the search engines.

Getting Leads From Social Media Even When You’re Not On It

Most companies are using social media to bring in leads. Posting on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest….creating videos for Youtube, Daily Motion and Vimeo, blogging, posting on Reddit, creating live streams of content, podcasting … the list goes on and on.

As a small business owner it can become overwhelming to keep up as new social media properties continue to come online daily.

One solution is to hire a social media manager to create content for you, post for you, respond for you.

In addition to being expensive, by going this route it is easy to lose touch with your customers. You are one step removed from interacting with them directly. This means that you begin to lose sight of what they want and how your products or services are impacting them.

In my own business I noticed a big shift when I started tapping into those people who were looking for me and what my business had to offer. This does not mean that I stopped putting my brand out there altogether, it means that I started searching for and locating what people were already asking for.

Instead of two ships passing in the night — I was putting out what I had to offer; a potential client was requesting my services — but the two were never connecting. I began to search out what was being requested and in rushed the leads.

How often do you see on Facebook or in a forum, “Does anyone know a good plumber?” or “I’m going to be moving to Dallas next month, can someone recommend a realtor?”

If you are a plumber in that city or a realtor in Dallas, how awesome would it be for you to get notified as soon as someone posted a comment like that? Then you could go in and respond to them!

There is a software that I own that will allow you to do just that. I have been using it for the past month to bring in leads for my own consulting business.

In addition to bringing in leads, I also use it to monitor what people are saying about my business. This gives me the opportunity to see both the positive and negative, so that I can respond and engage in conversation with my clients and potential clients. It is so powerful to be able to respond to someone’s concerns or praise in real time! It is often enough to turn a disgruntled client into a raving fan.

With this software, you  just enter in the keywords you want monitored. So that can be your name and business name if you want to keep on top of your online reputation. It can be phrases such as “looking for realtor in [your city],” or “best realtor in [your city],” etc. The sky’s the limit; you can create as many searches as you’d like.

Within minutes, the software begins to return all instances of those phrases found anywhere online. On forums and blogs and on social media accounts and then it will continue to search 24/7 bringing in all instances as they get posted.

You never have to be blindsided by a negative review again. And you literally have leads being dropped into your email box. It’s awesome.

reviews

To learn more about this great piece of software that can help you keep an eye on your online reputation AND bring leads into your business AND lets you spy on what your competition is doing, check it out here.

It’s always more fun to have leads coming to you, than you chasing leads.  🙂

Let me know what you think! What do you do to bring leads into your business?