Tips and Tricks

One Major Reason Your Paid Ads Aren’t Getting You Results

Last Updated: April 26, 2019

Are you DIY-ing your company’s paid ads and getting frustrated by your lack of results? You probably started a campaign on Facebook or Google expecting to drive tons of visitors to your website—or, better yet, to generate a slew of new customers.

However, for some reason, you’re just not getting the results you were hoping for. Worst of all, the cost of your ads keeps going up! You feel like you’re dumping your business’s hard-earned cash down the drain.

Why is this happening?

To answer that, let’s first take a step back and examine why you’re using paid ads in the first place…

Paid Ads: Not as Easy as They Look

Honestly, starting your online marketing from scratch can feel like such a grind. If you take the organic SEO approach, it takes several months to get off the ground, and there are countless moving parts involved. As a result, a huge number of business owners throw up their hands and take the path of least resistance: paid ads.

Why paid ads? Because they promise a high ROI and instant, measurable results that make your upfront investment seem worthwhile. Moreover, you don’t have to know much about SEO to create an attractive, attention-grabbing ad. All you have to do is upload a high-quality image, come up with a snappy caption, and publish it to the audience of your choosing.

Doesn’t that sound MUCH easier than studying SEO best practices, executing a multipronged promotional strategy from the ground up, and waiting 3+ months for results?

In other words, it’s easy to see how the idea of using ads on Facebook, Google, Yelp, and other platforms to drive people to your website is immensely more appealing to most business owners.

But… People Don’t Know Who You Are Yet

Unfortunately, the allure of fast results and ease of use leads a lot of business owners to jump headfirst into paid ads before they’re ready. As a result, they pour a lot of money into ads that just aren’t generating the website traffic or leads they were hoping for.

This brings us to one major reason your ads aren’t performing:

The people who see your ads don’t know who you are!

Your ad’s audience has no prior experience or knowledge of your business. Therefore, they aren’t motivated to click, like, or share your posts and ads.

Most often, we see this happen when you approach online marketing by starting with paid ads first. As we explained above, this is an understandable move: Jumping into paid ads from the get-go is far more appealing than plugging away at organic SEO for months and months.

However, if you attempt a paid ad campaign without any prior exposure or visibility to your target audience, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Because people aren’t aware of your company, your products, or your services, they’re likely to ignore your ad and keep scrolling.

Now that we’ve shed some light on what causes your ads to get a low number of interactions, let’s look at why this leads to higher costs…

Less Engagement = Higher Costs

The relationship between a campaign’s engagement levels and costs can turn into a vicious cycle.

If this is your first time running a campaign on whatever platform you’re using, then you’ll already start out with a high cost-per-click (CPC). This is because the platform (Facebook, Google, Instagram, etc.) has no prior data on your company. Without confidence that your company will receive lots of engagement, they’re going to give you a higher CPC at first. Eventually, as your campaign goes on and your engagement rate improves, the platform will decrease your costs.

However, if you don’t get good engagement (primarily measured by click-through rates and conversion rates), then your costs will remain high. In some cases, if your engagement is low enough, your costs may even increase. As you can guess, this is how you can get yourself into trouble.

Make Yourself Known First

What does all of this tell you? It tells you that you need to establish familiarity with your audience before you attempt a paid advertising campaign. We know this isn’t what you want to hear—after all, you skipped ahead to paid ads for a reason! However, if you want to actually get a good ROI from your ads, then you need to get your business name out there first.

Here are some ways you can do that:

Invest in SEO so your business is more visible online in general.
- This way, when someone who’s unfamiliar with your company sees your ad, they can do a quick search for your company name and immediately find you on multiple, high-quality listings. This builds your credibility and gives you an air of legitimacy (as opposed to if they googled your company name and found nothing).
Build your company’s brand. Read this blog post on branding to see how!
Participate in real-life promotions like local fairs, trade shows, partnerships, and sponsorships.
Put your business name and logo on your vehicles to increase visibility while you’re driving around town.
Ask your existing customers to spread the word.

Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the other factors that can affect your ad campaign’s engagement, as well. For example, things like ad formatting, call-to-action strength, and image quality are certainly important to consider when creating an ad campaign. However, these considerations are secondary. Unless you’re placing your ad in front of people who recognize your brand in the first place, these extra factors won’t make a difference.

So, bottom line? Make sure your company has some brand recognition before you waste your money on paid ads!

As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to our specialists if you have any questions. Good luck!

How to Solve Your Problem With Spam Calls Right Now

Last Updated: February 15, 2018

Are you being dogged by spam calls all day long? Telemarketers and robocalls are running rampant these days, and small business owners are getting the brunt of it. Average Americans are certainly getting their fair share of spam calls, too, but it’s nothing compared to what business owners are experiencing on a daily basis.

Spam Calls Are Unavoidable

Since your company phone number is plastered all over the web, it’s super-easy for spammers and robots to add you to their databases. Now, that’s no reason to throw up your hands and remove your number from your listings. This temptation is understandable. However, you need your contact details out there consistently for SEO purposes and, of course, so real customers can call you.
When you’re getting spam calls every hour, it may also be tempting to stop answering your phone altogether. After all, who has the patience to endure that many solicitors day in and day out? Never mind how busy you already are with that little thing called “running a business.”
As frustrating as this constant barrage of calls may be, it’s important not to completely ignore your phone—because some motivated customers are mixed in there, as well. As we’ve discussed previously, missed calls are missed opportunities. And missed opportunities mean lost revenue.
So, if you can’t remove your number from the internet and you can’t afford to take your phone off the hook, what are your options? What’s the solution to your spam call problem?

How Can You Get Around Spam Calls?

First, it’s important to understand why it’s so challenging to eliminate spam calls completely. Due to the nature of our ever-advancing technology, it’s all too easy for spammers and scammers to robo-dial countless numbers simultaneously. They’re also getting smarter about gaming the system, obtaining new phone numbers regularly, and targeting local area codes to make the calls seem more legit.
Can you imagine having an email account without any spam/junk filter? What a nightmare! And yet, this is exactly what we’re all dealing with right now on our phones.
That’s why we developed Kulinda, a smartphone app designed to completely eliminate your spam call problem. We modeled it after email spam filters, so it blocks unknown or unverified callers BEFORE they even reach you, unless our algorithm deems them safe. This means spammers can try to game the system and change their phone numbers all they want—they won’t be able to get past our filter. With Kulinda, you’ll only receive the calls you want, and you won’t be bothered by anything else.
Kulinda is a simple, easy-to-use app that won’t hog up space on your phone. As soon as you install it, it will start blocking those spam calls. With this one easy step, you’ve solved your spam call problem for good!
Right now, Kulinda is available on the Google Play Store for Android devices. Very soon, it will be available for iPhones, too. Download it today for a FREE, 7-day trial!

How to Find Blog Ideas Your Customers Will Actually Care About

Last Updated: February 8, 2018

You’re trying to get your website off the ground, and you’ve heard your traffic will improve if you fill your pages with lots of valuable content. But there’s the problem—you want to create interesting blog posts and page content for your audience, but you’re totally stumped on what to write about!
This is an all-too-familiar problem for many small business owners. Thankfully, in our years of practice, we’ve discovered some shortcuts that can make it easier to come up with webpage and blog ideas. Keep reading for our suggestions on how to come up with topic ideas for your website content!

Take Inspiration From Online Forums

Track down online communities related to your trade or niche. Social media groups and blog forums are a hotbed for passionate discussion about new trends, DIY tips, personal anecdotes, and more.
If you’re stuck for blog ideas, take a few minutes to read the online discussions on these forums. Mine the conversations for hot topics that attract a lot of engagement and discussion. You might also discover the same handful of questions popping up again and again. You can use these insights to provide people with the advice and answers they’re clearly searching for. These are the topics that are most likely to interest your target customers.

Discover New Keywords

In studying these online discussion boards, you may also start to notice some new phrases or keywords gaining popularity. This is invaluable information, because it will show you the kind of language regular folks use when they talk about things related to your industry.
With this knowledge, you’ll be able to mold your content so it captures search traffic for layman’s terms that you might not have been aware of, given your technical expertise in the field.

Use Tangential Topics, Too

When coming up with ideas for content, don’t be afraid to blur the lines between your niche and a niche adjacent to yours. Chances are, your target customers are interested in both, and you can easily relate these tangential topics back to your own business.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you’re a hardwood flooring specialist. It’s safe to assume a large subset of your target customers are planning a home remodel. Therefore, you may want to include blog posts about topics related to remodeling, such as DIY decorating tips, popular paint colors, and how to remodel on a budget.
In other words, go beyond your specific industry and think about related topics your target customers might also be interested in.

Consult an Automatic Generator

If you’ve exhausted all of the above strategies—or you’re simply short on time—try checking out an automatic topic generator like Answer the Public.
This tool works if you have a keyword in mind but you can’t quite figure out how to write about it. You simply type the word or phrase into the search box, and you’ll be presented with a large assortment of questions that people are asking related to that keyword. These questions are taken directly from search engine data.
For example, if you type “hardwood floor” into the Answer the Public’s search field, you’ll get a list of 111 frequently asked questions, including:

“Why wax a hardwood floor?”
“How to clean hardwood floor?”
“Which hardwood floor is best?”
“Can hardwood floor cleaner be used on laminate?”

As you can see, the questions come from all different angles, so there’s no shortage of topics you can cover for any given keyword. Just pick a question you find most intriguing, or one you know the most about, and write your answer. This should be a great starting point for your blog post or webpage.

When All Else Fails, PG Can Help!

Whether you feel like writing isn’t one of your strengths or you just don’t have enough time to create your own website content, we can help. Our talented writers and production specialists can produce compelling content for your website, blog, and social media accounts on your behalf. Then, we can even promote it online to increase your traffic and visibility.
If you’re interested in our writing services, don’t hesitate to reach out!

SEO: Start From the Bottom, Climb Your Way to the Top

Last Updated: January 18, 2018

Does SEO really take as long as all the marketing specialists say? A good number of people are out there promising much faster results, so there must be a loophole the marketers aren’t telling you, right?
We wish we had better news for you. However, the reality is that achieving a strong presence on Google and the rest of the web requires time, effort, and patience. Anyone who promises you instant results is just trying to sell you snake oil. Keep reading to find out why SEO takes time, contrary to what certain salespeople say.

Think of SEO Like Getting in Shape

When you do it right, SEO takes time. It’s a long, ongoing process. You’ll see gradual results bit by bit as your web presence grows stronger until finally, one day, you realize you’re getting tons of website traffic, Facebook likes, and customer calls and emails.
In this way, SEO is just like anything else in life that requires an investment of time and effort. For example, when you want to lose weight and get in shape long-term, you know you have to eat right and exercise over a period of several months. “Magic” diet pills and cleanses may promise overnight results, but they very rarely deliver. And if they do, the results certainly don’t last, and they don’t make you any healthier.
The same is true when optimizing your web presence: If you want vital, long-lasting results, you have to put in the time and effort for a minimum of 90 days. Any shady service promising you a silver bullet or page-1 rankings overnight isn’t going to help your business grow in a meaningful way.
After all, SEO is a means to an end—in other words, getting the top position for one of your services isn’t actually the end goal. Rather, as a small business, you’re embarking on an SEO campaign because you ultimately want to attract new customers and build your brand. So, in the same way that number on the scale doesn’t reflect your overall health, neither does your Google ranking for one search term reflect how well you’re appealing to local customers.
For increased visibility and an effective web presence, you need to think long-term.

Building a Web Presence Is a Slow Climb

…But the views from the top are worth it!

The graphic above illustrates the multiple steps involved in launching an SEO campaign and building your web presence from the ground up.

The Essentials

First, you should start small with local directories. You must represent your business’s information accurately on a variety of quality, credible directories. Doing so lends your business some authenticity in Google’s eyes.
Next, you create a Google My Business account and create a Google Maps listing. This is a requirement in order to appear in local searches on Google.
Then, you supplement your online listings with an attractive website and valuable, high-quality on-page content. This is how search engines learn the different types of services and/or products you offer. Essentially, it helps Google put your business into context so it can better represent you in search results. Plus, having plenty of well-written website content makes your business easier to find by voice search.
Once you’ve established your online credibility and have a website that draws visitors in, you can put your business on all of the major social media platforms (namely Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+). Doing so will further cement your authenticity for Google. Moreover, social media is yet another vehicle with which you can reach your local customers.
At this point, you could end your efforts and wait for your online visibility to ramp up. We typically advise our clients to give their campaigns at least 90 days to reach full strength. However, this waiting period can vary depending on how crowded your local market is. For example, if you’re located in a densely populated metro area like New York, Dallas, or Miami, you’ll have a lot of competition, and your campaign may take longer to rise to the top. Conversely, if you’re located in a sparsely populated area with few competitors, your campaign may take off sooner.

Paid Ads

However, if you really want to take your web presence as high as it can go, you can add a paid advertising campaign, too. Generally, you should try paid advertising, particularly pay-per-click (PPC), after you’ve completed all of the previous steps. This is for two reasons: 1) You’ll be able to keep costs down once your credibility has been established with SEO; 2) You will have a better chance at turning clicks into leads if the webpage your ad links to is attractive, informative, and persuasive.
At the same time, there are a few, highly specific situations in which PPC will be more effective than SEO for your immediate, short-term goals. These are situations in which demand is super high for a short period of time. For example, if you offer roof repair services and a major storm recently left a lot of people with damaged roofs, you’ll want to capitalize on this urgent demand and run PPC ads ASAP. Considering your customers will be highly motivated at the jump, your lack of depth on the web won’t be as much of a factor. Please keep in mind, though, that this kind of scenario is a rare exception to the rule. Generally speaking, you really ought to develop your web presence before running a PPC campaign.

Be Patient and Persistent

With enough time—and occasional tweaking, if necessary—your web presence will grow and expand. It’s inevitable. We speak for all SEO practitioners when we ask you to remain patient and trust the process. We know it’s difficult to wait, especially when you’ve made a financial investment in your campaign, but time is truly the most important factor when it comes to building a web presence. So, whatever you do, don’t fall for any snake oil that claims otherwise. SEO takes time, period.
Good luck!

4 Ways to Carve Out Time for Your Industry, Even When You're Busy

Last Updated: December 14, 2017

When you’re a small business owner, everything’s on you. Between booking jobs, making a schedule, and managing a team, there’s hardly time for anything else. And if there’s any time left at the end of the day, you probably want to spend it with your family, right? However, you know deep down you should be devoting at least some time to honing your trade. After all, industries are constantly evolving and growing, as new products come out and equipment improves. So, the big question is, how do you make time for personal and/or professional development? How do you manage to stay on top of industry trends and competitors when your life is chaotic enough? It’s certainly not easy, but we have some time management strategies to help.
Thankfully, if you love what you do, then you’re already at an advantage. You’ll naturally feel motivated to brush up on your trade, find ways to optimize workflow, and see what your competitors are up to. Why? Because you’re passionate about your business.
So, without further ado—because we know you’re busy—let’s take a look at some ways you can carve out time to develop your business and industry knowledge. Keep reading for our time management strategies!

1. Keep a running to-do list.

This may sound a little lame—but, honestly, aren’t you more productive when you write out all the things you have to do for the day? A list enables you to keep track of everything you want to do. Simultaneously, it’s also a huge morale booster because crossing items off a list makes you feel accomplished. Therefore, keep a running list of new ideas, articles, books, products, and techniques you want to study. This way, it’ll be easy for you to knock one off the list whenever you have a spare moment.

2. Make a schedule.

If your day-to-day is usually pretty booked, then make your self-improvement part of your schedule! For many of us business owners, the only way to make certain something gets done is to put it on our calendar. Schedule an hour or two per week for personal and/or professional development and actually commit to it.

3. Plan for lulls.

Every business has its peaks and valleys at different points in the year. For example, retailers are typically busy during the summer and holidays, and much slower early in the year. On the other hand, for some service providers, the holidays are always a slow period. It all depends on who your customers are and how they behave. Regardless of when, exactly, your slow season takes place, you probably know when it’s coming. And if you can predict it, you can plan for it. So, remember that to-do list we talked about earlier? Use it to keep track of ideas when you’re in the throes of your busy season. Save the more time-consuming projects for when work is quieter and you have more free time to tackle them.

4. Wake up earlier.

No one wants to hear this, but it’s true: Most of the successful men and women you read about have all been early risers. When you get up before anyone else is awake, you have quiet time to yourself. You can use these tranquil moments to sit with a trade magazine, read an inspiring biography, check your company Facebook page and Google Maps listing, and so on. All those things you wish you had time to do at the end of the day? Do them first thing in the morning, instead. This way, it’s impossible for you to skip them once your day gets too busy.
Of course, business owners have discovered countless other ways to make more time in their day, too. Don’t be afraid to test out different time management strategies and see what works best for you. Remember, what works for one person may not work for someone else—it all comes down to the individual.
Do you have any time management strategies that have worked for you in the past? Let us know!

Prospect Genius