Blog – Page 64

Addressing a Few Common Campaign Concerns

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

No matter how many success stories we create, virtually no campaign ever runs as smoothly as we’d like. That’s just the nature of online advertising. Working in conjunction with independent entities like search engines, phone companies, and business directories means there’s a lot that’s out of our control. All anyone can do is keep an eye out for sudden changes and adapt accordingly.
In this newsletter, we’ll address a few of the pain-points and campaign concerns that Prospect Genius clients have encountered lately and explain what we’re doing to mitigate them.

Faulty Yahoo! PINs

Many clients have had trouble recently with their Yahoo! PINs. When your PIN gets sent to you, you turn it in to us, but when we try to input it on Yahoo! it just doesn’t work. While we’re not sure of what’s causing this problem, we are aware that it exists and we have been staying on top of it. We’ve spoken to Yahoo! but we haven’t had any luck resolving the problem.
While this may sound like a huge setback, it’s actually not. Frankly, Yahoo! is not a major search engine; very few Internet users actually rely on it as their search engine of choice. In fact, according to comScore, Yahoo’s market share has dropped to just 10.1%, a record low, as of March 2014.
Moreover, we do hundreds of other off-page tasks to support all of our search engine work. With everything else that we do for your campaign, a missing Yahoo! PIN is not the end of the world.
As always, we’re staying on top of this issue and will update you as additional information becomes available.

Call-Time Upgrades

Contrary to popular belief, phone minutes are not free. Even Verizon and AT&T have to pay line charges for minutes used on the networks that blanket the country. So when clients voice concern over having their call-time packages upgraded, it’s because they don’t understand the reason behind it.
Many clients complain about having their call-time packages upgraded, but they don’t understand what it actually is.
Prospect Genius institutes a call-time upgrade when clients get so many calls that they exceed the allotted number of minutes in their original phone packages. We often refer to it as a “homerun tax” because it’s caused by the fact that their campaigns are generating such a massive volume of leads.
We begin every one of our campaigns with the smallest phone package because it doesn’t make sense to charge our clients for a larger package if they aren’t going to use all of those minutes. Upgrading your phone package is necessary because you’re spending more time on the phone with customers than the original package allows.
The upgrade is a pass-through cost; it’s not designed to profit Prospect Genius in any way. We pass this minimal cost ($9/month) on to you because, if we didn’t, we would not have any incentive to make your campaign successful. Think about it: If we had to pay out of pocket for extra phone minutes that resulted from too many leads, then why would we want to keep sending you more leads? By passing the cost on to you, we are protecting both of our best interests.

Yelp Reviews Not Sticking

We also hear concerns from clients about their Yelp reviews. With Yelp’s strict filters, which are powered by confounding algorithms, many businesses are realizing that random customer reviews aren’t appearing on their pages. It’s a very valid concern, given how many businesses use Yelp as part of their overall online advertising campaign.
From what we’ve learned of Yelp’s review filtering policies, we can tell you that it primarily filters out reviews posted by brand-new accounts. In other words, if a user created a brand-new account to leave you a review or just didn’t leave many other reviews before leaving one on your page, Yelp will likely filter it out of your list of reviews. The filter system is intended to prevent potential spamming, but the result is that it also affects new, honest users.
While Prospect Genius doesn’t have the power to change Yelp’s policies, we do have recommendations for getting around them. For starters, only ask customers to leave you a review on Yelp if they have a well established account. Additionally, we’re fortunate to have several other prominent online platforms that also show ratings and reviews. Facebook and Google+ pages are both great alternatives to Yelp, so take advantage of them.
As always, if you have any campaign concerns that you’d like to address, call your campaign coordinator or account manager. We’ll listen carefully and accommodate whatever needs you have.

Know Your Google

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

How familiar with Google are you, actually? Not just the search engine—we’re talking specifically about Google’s policies as they pertain to your business. As a business owner, if you’re not careful, ignorance or misinformation could wreak havoc on your online advertising efforts.
Recently, Prospect Genius discovered two troublesome examples of what can happen when business owners aren’t informed. First, some of our clients have been tricked by fraudulent phone calls from scammers pretending to be Google. Second, some of our clients can’t help us set up their campaigns because they don’t even have access to their own Google account information. Both of these scenarios are extremely problematic for different reasons.

Fake Google Phone Calls

There has been a rash of incidents of unknown individuals or companies calling our clients posing as Google. (And we’re sure this has been happening outside of our client base, as well.) In these phone calls, the unknown party attempts to solicit private information from a business owner under the guise of a Google employee who wants to verify their information. You can see how this could become very dangerous: Giving account information (including usernames and passwords) to the wrong people is a surefire way to sabotage your online advertising campaign and compromise your privacy.
So, the key is not to fall for these phony calls. To do that, here are some things you need to know:

Phone calls from Google will always come from the (650) area code for Mountain View, California, which is where Google is headquartered.
There are two reasons why Google might call you:
- To verify your Places listing
- To sell AdWords
Calls from Google Places may be outsourced internationally (commonly to India), so you may hear a non-American accent—but the area code will still be (650).
Calls from AdWords sales reps will be domestic and will also have a (650) area code.

Remember these crucial facts the next time you’re faced with a phone call from someone purporting to be Google.
Here is a prime example of a solicitation call posing as a Google call.

Right off the bat, this phone call comes from an (818) area code, so you know it’s not from Google. (The caller ID displays the company name as “WEB SERVICE CO.”) Next, note that the caller claims to manage local listings for “Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.” That role simply does not exist. He proceeds to ask general questions about the business’s services, which means he is not verifying address or contact information on behalf of Google Places. As the conversation goes on, you can clearly tell that the caller is angling himself to pitch a new advertising service to the business’s office manager. Luckily, she ends the call before it goes too far.

Missing Log-In Information

The second problem that business owners face is not knowing their own log-in information for their Google My Business accounts. Most often, this happens when business owners work with a less-than-professional advertising team. The advertisers set up accounts for them but neglect to hand over their account information when their partnership ends. Then, when the business owner hires another advertising team, they aren’t able to grant their new advertisers access.
Obviously, this is problematic because your new advertising team needs access to your account in order to do the job that you hired them to do. Without it, they won’t be able to track your Analytics, update your listing, or manage your AdWords. Even if you don’t hire another advertiser and are attempting DIY advertising, you should still have total access to and control of your own Google account at all times. After all, it’s your business and no one else’s.
If this has happened to you, you must rectify it right away. An old company should never retain access to your Google My Business account for any reason. First and foremost, you must inform your new advertisers of the situation. Then—and this is the hard part—you’ll have to call your previous advertiser and ask them for your log-in information. It may be an uncomfortable phone call, but you have to do it. Once you’ve obtained your information, you can make yourself manager of the account, and two weeks later, Google will allow you to become owner of the account. At this point, you can give your information to your new advertiser or make them your account manager.
However, there’s one exception to this approach. Sometimes, preexisting Google listings might not have lots of good content or reviews to begin with. In these cases, instead of going through the trouble of transferring ownership of the account, we recommend deleting the listing and starting over. Not only will this provide you with a clean slate for content, photos, and reviews, but it will also prevent your new advertiser from having to retrace your previous advertiser’s footprints and redo all of their work.

Ignorance Is Not an Excuse

Whether it’s a deceptive company tricking you into giving out your information or an old advertiser hanging on to your account ownership, or something else entirely, it’s up to you to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Arm yourself and your business with knowledge about Google, as well as all other advertising-related services, in order to ward off scams and build the strongest campaign possible.

Put Your Trust in Online Reviews

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

They say you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet—but try telling that to online consumers. A recent study shows that nearly 80% of consumers in the U.S. and Canada trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
That’s why our blog covers the topic of customer reviews so heavily. With the vast majority of consumers making decisions based on the reviews that they read, it’s clear that reviews are an extremely valuable asset to any business, no matter what industry you’re part of.

Why Should You Care?

If the above statistic doesn’t impress you, consider this: We’ve seen firsthand what collecting customer reviews has done for our own clients. The below examples illustrate an increase in leads over time as each client’s online advertising campaign continued. These particular clients are prime examples of what can happen when you persist in populating your business listings with customer reviews.
Client A:

This graph shows the slow and steady trajectory of one client’s leads per month. Their leads dipped in March 2014, due to a glitch that caused their listing to all but vanish from Google, but you’ll notice that their number of monthly leads has already climbed back up and exceeded the previous peak. How did they manage that? Simply by cultivating a significant number of reviews on Google+, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, and other platforms.
Client B:

This client shows a similar upward trajectory. Again, the success of their campaign is significantly generated by their high volume of customer reviews on various listings.
Take a look at the numbers in both of the above examples. Client A received close to 400 calls in June 2014, while Client B received roughly 280. Wouldn’t you like to see those kinds of results? The best way to do that is to get your customers to leave you reviews online.

How to Get Reviews

The next logical question is, “How do you get customers to leave reviews?” The honest answer is that it’s not easy. It takes a lot of persistence. But if you keep your nose down, work hard, and satisfy your customers, then you’ll get better responses when you do ask them for reviews.
You might think, I’m not getting any reviews because people only write reviews when they have something to complain about. That’s what conventional wisdom tells us, but the facts actually show the opposite: 75% of reviews posted on review sites are positive.
We suggest a tactical approach when soliciting customer reviews so you can be sure that you have reviews on only the most valuable platforms. Get a minimum of 10 reviews on the following platforms, in the following order, for the best results:

Google+ — Obviously, Google+ has the most value in the eyes of Google. Reviews from your company’s Google+ page could appear right on Google’s search results pages, so prospects can see right away what previous customers think.
Yelp — Yelp is a popular tool among local consumers who are actively looking for a specific service. Although it better serves brick-and-mortar businesses, it holds a lot of weight in both Google and Bing’s algorithms. Bing even pulls Yelp pages directly when compiling search results.
Facebook — The vast majority of U.S. adults have a Facebook profile, so it should be the default choice for customers who aren’t as tech savvy as others. And while it doesn’t hold as much SEO value as Google+ or Yelp, it does influence Bing’s search results, and that counts for something.

ASK DIRECTLY
As soon as you complete a job, e-mail that customer and ask for a review. In the e-mail, include a link to your Google+, Yelp, or Facebook page (or all three and let the customer choose) so the process is as convenient as possible for them.
You can even add short URLs or reminders on business cards, invoices, and newsletters—anything that you distribute to your customers. It’s also a good idea to send along instructions so less savvy individuals don’t get lost.
ASK THE SKEPTICS
Steve Young, author of “5 Clever Ways to Get Customer Reviews That Convert,” offers an important tip: “Rather than asking for testimonials from your customers who immediately fall in love with your offering, try to look for those that were first skeptical.” Doing this will address and soothe prospective customers’ concerns and lead to higher conversion rates.
WRITE YOUR OWN
Young also recommends drafting a detailed review (full of specifics about the solutions you provided) on behalf of your customers and sending it to them. If they approve, they can just copy and post it, making their lives a heck of a lot easier. Plus, reviews that contain measurable results pack a lot more punch when prospects read them.
BE STRAIGHTFORWARD
Even casual Internet users these days will recognize that reviewing and sharing experiences is what drives most online activity. And, as we’re all consumers, we know that we like to read reviews and do our research before purchasing a product or committing to a contractor. So just be frank with your customers: You need reviews for your business. They’ll understand.
Nellie Akalp, a contributing writer at Mashable.com, gives the following recommendation:

You can say something as simple as, “Your opinion matters to us and to other customers, so we’d be really appreciative if you take a few moments to review your experience,” or “Do you read online reviews? We do, and so do other customers. That’s why we’d love it if you take a few moments to review your experience.”

Don’t Get Discouraged

Most importantly, don’t get discouraged if customers don’t immediately flood your pages with reviews. It takes time to get an impressive number, but you’ll be all the better for it when they finally do come in. We at Prospect Genius, in our own efforts to collect customer reviews, have to regularly remind ourselves that a page full of reviews doesn’t happen overnight. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Be patient, be persistent, and keep going the extra mile for your customers. Eventually, your business will have the reviews it deserves.

You Might Be Paying Your Advertiser for Nothing

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Getting customers to call your business for a job isn’t easy. That’s why many business owners decide to team up with an online advertising agency to help them generate leads. However, generating leads is only half the battle. Once the leads come in, it’s the business’s responsibility to close the deal. If you miss a lot of calls, you’re missing out on jobs—and essentially paying your advertiser for nothing.
At Prospect Genius, our extensive data show that a large percentage of local businesses aren’t picking up their phones. Because lead generation is what we do, we track our clients’ leads and phone calls as a measure of campaign performance. In reviewing this data, we observed that virtually every one of our clients has missed a prospective customer call at least once.
This is a troublesome trend, but it’s also understandable. We believe that a constant barrage of solicitor phone calls is to blame for business owners’ reluctance to answer their phones. As business owners ourselves, we’ve noticed firsthand that the current volume of solicitor phone calls has become overwhelming. As a result, business owners aren’t jumping up to answer their phones every time they ring.
But here’s the hard truth: While avoiding the phone may solve your solicitor problem, it creates an even bigger problem for your company’s finances. If you want to book jobs and make money, you simply must answer your phone.

Missed Calls = Lost Revenue

Why are missed calls such a big problem? When you don’t answer your phone, you’re essentially sending that customer to a competitor. Prospective customers call around when they need a job performed, and they’ll keep calling local businesses until they finally book one. If their call goes to voice mail, they’ll likely move on to the next company on their list, unless they promptly receive a call back.
When this happens, you not only miss out on that one job—you also miss out on any future business from that customer and potential word-of-mouth referrals they could share. For businesses that see a lot of repeat customers (appliance repairmen, HVAC contractors, and cleaning services, for example), this is a tremendous loss. Plus, unanswered calls make prospects feel undervalued, causing them to have a negative experience with your brand. What do you think the chances are that they will ever call you back in the future?
If your average job nets you $100, you’re effectively writing a $100 check to your competitor every time you fail to answer a prospect’s call!

Think You’re an Exception to the Rule?

Think again.
Across the board, across all industries, our clients are missing valuable calls. No one is exempt. To show how severe this issue really is, we sampled some of our most prominent client industries and noted their percentage of missed calls. Take a look:

Automotive repair: 60% of all calls were missed
Construction: 87% of all calls were missed
Electrical: 39% of all calls were missed
Handyman services: 58% of all calls were missed
Landscaping: 58% of all calls were missed
Plumbing: 35% of all calls were missed

Just about every business commits this faux pas at some time or another.

Avoid Solicitors Without Avoiding Customers

Yes, solicitor calls are a major problem for small businesses, but ducking your calls isn’t the way to handle it. Here are some alternatives.

Answer Your Phone

A human-to-human connection is what’s most important to prospective customers when they’re looking for a service provider, so do whatever it takes to ensure that someone answers your phone when it rings. You can do this by having your advertising calls sent to multiple phone numbers at the same time, or by routing your calls to your cell or office when it makes sense. Many phone systems even allow you to ring multiple phones at once or in a sequence. For Prospect Genius clients, this is a free option that can be enabled at any time just by calling us.
If none of these options seems viable, you can always opt for a low-cost answering service that takes your calls and messages on your behalf. Many are available in the range of $1 per call, making this a surprisingly affordable option. Plus, it can weed out 100% of the solicitor calls that you’re trying to avoid.
You can also combine these two options and route calls to yourself and the answering service at the same time. That way, if you can pick up, then you save the $1; if not, you don’t necessarily lose the customer.

Set Up Your Voice Mail

Since it’s difficult to guarantee that you’ll answer your phone every single time, it’s crucial to establish a backup system. First and foremost, set up your voice mail. That means activating it and creating a professional greeting that will give your prospects a strong first impression. Here’s a script we highly recommend:

“Hi, you’ve reached [company name]. At the moment, we’re giving our full attention to another customer. If you leave us a message, we’ll return your call as soon as possible and give you our full attention, as well. Thank you and have a nice day!”

If a prospect does leave a message, you must call them back as soon as possible, preferably within 15–20 minutes. You should also clean out your voice mailbox occasionally. If it gets full, it won’t allow new callers to leave a message!
Prospect Genius clients have the option to use a separate voice mail for all calls sent from us. The recording is then e-mailed to them for them to check, thus keeping their personal and business calls separate.

Don’t Neglect Your E-Mail

These days, e-mail is just as important as the phone, if not more so. Growing numbers of people are simply more comfortable communicating via e-mail, so that’s how they opt to contact local businesses. If you don’t check your e-mail regularly, then you’re bound to miss out on a substantial number of leads.
If checking your e-mail is too much of a headache because you’re often out on a job, there are several tools available to make it easier. For instance, Prospect Genius clients have the option to have all e-mail leads read to them over the phone, eliminating the need to check their e-mail.
You can also create an auto-reply that will send an immediate response to prospects when they e-mail you. If you prefer the phone to e-mail, then you can even use your auto-reply to instruct prospects to call you at a specified number. For example, your auto-reply email could say:

“Thanks for contacting us. Due to the nature of our work, we are better able to respond to phone calls. Please contact us at 555-123-1234 so we can best serve your needs.”

Prospect Genius Has Solutions

Prospect Genius offers convenient, easy-to-use tools that deliver many of the above solutions. Anyone enrolled in our lead generation program has access to them through our Client Portal. These tools include:

Extra metered phone lines
Call routing
E-mail-to-phone notifications
Missed call notifications via text or e-mail
Call logs and recordings

Many of the solutions are well within your own power—like creating a professional voice mail greeting and responding to e-mails and missed calls—but we have professionally designed tools that will make those tasks much simpler.
No advertiser can succeed for you on their own. You’ve got to look at any campaign as a partnership and uphold your end of the bargain—which largely means answering the calls they send you. Invest in your business by answering calls and e-mails to capture the maximum number of leads for your company.

Google's New Policy Lets You Separate Business and Personal Accounts

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Do you remember having to pass along your Google log-in information when you first signed up with us? That’s because, due to one of Google’s flawed policies, we needed it in order to access your business’s listings and data. It was a flawed policy because it forced you to consolidate all of your Google applications under one username, regardless of whether they were for personal or professional use. This policy created a lot of headaches and confusion, which is why we’re so relieved that it has been fixed.
Now, with the new dashboard launched as part of the new Google My Business, business owners can name a third party “manager” of their listings, which doesn’t require them to give out their log-in information. We believe it’s a huge improvement. Here’s why.

Better Privacy and Security

Google’s old policy meant that a third party (like us) could only access your Google+ Local, Google Places for Business, and Google Analytics data by using the same password that you used to log-in to personal applications like Gmail, Picasa, and Google Voice. An online marketer, no matter how trustworthy, should simply not have this kind of access to your personal accounts—but alas, that’s exactly what Google forced on us all.
Now, you can keep your private matters private while Prospect Genius works within the bounds of your business-related needs. We’ll be able to update your listings as needed, track your visibility and performance, and keep your campaign running smoothly without ever needing your personal password again.

Greater Control and Ownership

The previous policy also posed problems in regard to ownership. If you didn’t want to give out your personal log-in information, the only way around it was to eject your listings from your personal account, thus completely relinquishing control and ownership over them. Then, the third party would claim that listing as the “owner” in order to manage it as needed. Understandably, this made lots of folks feel uncomfortable. What if the marketer was unprofessional or ineffective? The business owner would have zero control over what happened to their listing.
Thankfully, the new policy allows business owners to maintain ownership of their listings while third parties simply become the managers of Google My Business. This way, if there’s a conflict, the business owner has the final say—as it should be.

Heightened Efficacy and Power

When Google created its old policy, it assumed that every individual performed his or her own Internet marketing, SEO, and PPC. That’s simply not the case. Frankly, small business owners who specialize in a specific trade should not be attempting their own online advertising in the first place (a topic we’ve covered extensively). The simple reality is that DIY management of Google Places listings, Google AdWords, and Google Analytics by inexperienced individuals is not effective. Unfortunately, this policy led a lot of small business owners to attempt it themselves, for fear of giving a stranger total access to their e-mail and other personal applications.
Now, small business owners can hire a professional like us to manage their Google My Business accounts without worrying about compromising their privacy. The experienced and AdWords-certified professionals at Prospect Genius can work their magic on your company’s listings while you have some peace of mind. The result? A powerful online advertising campaign that packs a lot more punch.

Set Up Your Manager Today

No business owner should have to choose between their personal privacy and their company’s web presence. Thankfully, Google’s new policy provides you with security while also enabling you to maximize your online advertising by turning over managerial control to the pros at Prospect Genius.
All you have to do is add our e-mail address to the account as your Google My Business manager. It’s that easy! Just contact your Account Manager now for specific details.
As always, call or e-mail us with any questions you may have.

Prospect Genius

Contact Us

Business Hours

Let’s Connect!

What Drives Us?

Client Portal App

Helpful Links

Sign up for our newsletter!