Local Business Listing Problems

Good news local business owners - Google, Yahoo, and Bing are recently giving preferential treatment to local businesses. And local business listings with all 3 major search engines are free, including maps. But there's bad news for some of you. Many local businesses have inaccurate listings, often multiple inaccurate listings. These can hurt your business by providing potential customers and clients with WRONG information such as: wrong addresses, bad reviews, old phone numbers, and more. The advantages of local business listings can turn against you when they are wrong or outdated.

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Answering Service for Small Businesses Now Available

A good telephone answering service is essential to your online marketing program. Customers and clients are browsing your website and ads when you can’t answer the phone. This is something I preach often as the person hired to drive new business. Many small businesses and attorneys get very few calls after hours and on weekends. But those calls are valuable business that’s getting away. If you’re a personal injury attorney then I don’t need to tell you how important this is, but many of you still don’t use one.

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How to Get a Customer Database off the Ground

One of the cornerstones of a good online marketing strategy is a customer or client database. This is also one of the biggest challenges for me, and for small business clients who have never used one. The steps to set up a new database and start using it are simple enough. What’s tough is getting everyone on board in the real world where each day can be a series of fires to put out and everyone is accustomed to running fast and loose.

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Increase Website Conversions by Stating the Obvious

I look at a lot of small business websites that are struggling to generate leads and sales. Sometimes the reasons are clear even to the owner. Other times a website can look good to the eye but perform very poorly. And by that I mean convert a very low percentage of visitors into clients and customers. There is one reason for a low conversion rate that makes the top 10 list I want to share. It’s called failure to state the obvious.

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How Contact Forms Help or Hurt Your Online Business

If your business depends on sales leads, or in the case of attorneys potential new clients, then having a contact form is essential. Yes, you need a phone number, a street address establishes you as a “real business”, and an email address is good too, but the contact form holds a special significance and potential. And so many business owners, or the people they employ to build the website, get it wrong.

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