newsletter – Page 12

11 Simple Ways to Customize Your Online Advertising Campaign

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Our lead generation program allows you to be as involved as you want, an aspect that appeals to many of our clients. If you prefer to be hands off and let us take care of all the details, that’s great. However, there are many clients who like to be more interactive with their campaigns. By making their own contributions and adding touches of their unique personalities to their sites, they feel more invested in their campaigns and forge a stronger connection with their own customers.

Thankfully, it’s not only easy to add custom flourishes to your online advertising campaign—it’s also inexpensive.

DIY Freebies

These do-it-yourself options are free through the Client Portal.

Add a photo gallery. Through the Client Portal, you can manage a photo gallery by uploading your own original photos. All you have to do is ask us to enable the photo gallery tab on your LeadTrax™ site, and then you can go to town! The gallery can focus on anything you want: recently completed work, before-and-after shots, items for sale, or even your team members. People love pictures, and having a photo gallery that showcases your talent or brand is a great way to take advantage of that.
Add a “For Sale” tab. Operating the same way as the photo gallery, this tab allows you to upload your own pictures and captions for items that you’re selling (once we’ve enabled it on your site). This has been very popular with appliance repair companies that sell refurbished appliances. Take a look at the “For Sale” tab at A B Appliance Services, for example.
Keep your own blog. Every new LeadTrax site comes with a fully functional blog just waiting to be filled with content. We write a couple of initial posts for you following your site launch, but after that, you can feel free to update your blog as much as you want. As long as you have a topic that your audience wants to read about, you can write your heart out. An up-to-date, informative blog proves to your prospects that you’re engaged and knowledgeable.

Complimentary Add-Ons

Our professionals will take care of these for you free of charge. Simply call or e-mail us with your specific requests, and we’ll do all the work!

Add unique tabs for extra content. This is a great option for business owners who want to include a separate “About Us” page, but it can work for almost any extra content you wish to include. You can either submit your own, original content for us to add, or our professional writers can do the job for you. Take a look at the “About Us” page for Mary Ellen Flaherty & Brendan Flaherty Realtors as an example. You may also be inspired by Yocum Shutters and Blinds, who used this tab to showcase their “Best of West Chester” award.
Add custom e-mail/service request forms. Many business owners find that their customers like to submit e-mails and service requests right from their websites, which is why we include an “E-mail Us” link as a standard feature on all of our LeadTrax sites. However, some businesses find it handy to have custom content in their e-mail forms so they can ensure they get all of the necessary information from their prospects right up front. Just tell us about the specific fields or questions you’d like to include, and we’ll create a custom form for you. For instance, we created a custom e-mail form for Acello Tax Resolution Group that asks prospective customers to provide details about their tax problems. This gives the tax consultants a baseline understanding of the case, making life easier for both the business owner and the customer.
Add a “Leave Us a Review!” button. As we’ve covered extensively, customer reviews are a crucial part of your online presence. When you have us add this button to your site, it will be more convenient for past customers to click on it and submit a quick review of your business. Then, the feature will automatically upload the positive reviews straight to your Google+ listing.

Low-Cost Additions

These options require the hands of our professionals, but they’re well worth the minor investment.

Upgrade your template. If you’ve been with us for a few years, then you might be sick of looking at the same ol’ layout all the time. Or you might want a more updated look to keep up with the times. Whatever the reason, if you’re interested in upgrading your LeadTrax site template, just let us know! Right now, we have several brand-new templates hot off the presses.
Request brand pages. If you work in an industry like appliance repair, you might find that customers are often seeking a repairman who specializes in specific brands. You can easily address this by having us write a brief, targeted page for any brand you wish to highlight. Morris County Appliance Repair, for example, chose to add pages for quite a few of its most popular appliance brands.
Request a press release. Has something newsworthy recently happened with your company? Why not announce it? We can write a press release on your behalf and distribute it to boost your SEO. At the same time, you’ll have a tangible news item that you can share with all of your friends and fans on social media.
Use MapTrax™. MapTrax is a tool that monitors your Google listing for you. It will alert you if the content or status of your listing changes so you can be aware of any red flags. MapTrax saves you from having to manually check your listing daily, which means you can focus your time and energy elsewhere.
Use AdTrax™. AdTrax allows you to laser-focus the way you track your campaign. Instead of giving you a broad picture of how many leads your campaign is generating per month, AdTrax lets you see how your site is ranking on Google for specific keywords of your choosing. This way, you can make sure you’re attracting your ideal audience and make adjustments as you see fit.

Take the First Step

Your online advertising campaign won’t customize itself! Why not browse the Client Portal and try out some of those free tools yourself? If you’re having trouble with the technology or you need some guidance, don’t hesitate to call your campaign coordinator for help. That’s what we’re here for! Similarly, if a few of the paid options appeal to you but you can’t decide which one is best, feel free to discuss them with us. We’ll help you figure out how to get the best value for your campaign.
The bottom line is, we’re here as a resource for you. However you decide to proceed, let us in on the conversation so we can help you make the wisest decision possible. Good luck!

Is Your Google My Business Listing Being Sabotaged by… Google?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

If you have a Google My Business account, the greatest force working against you may be Google itself. Here’s what you need to watch out for.

Google Makes Updates Without Your Knowledge

Many local business owners and advertising providers alike have noticed that, every so often, little details on their Google listings are suddenly changed without their consent. For users who have been affected, it’s incredibly frustrating. You spent a lot of time and energy setting up your listing and making sure all the information was filled out accurately, but now it looks like someone else updated your account with a totally different street address or phone number. As it turns out, that “someone else” was probably Google.
Around 10 years ago, your local competitors were your biggest threat online. It didn’t require much technical savvy to sabotage each other’s listings. They could go into Google, claim your listing as their own, and alter all of the information in it without much difficulty. As Google’s interface and security features became more sophisticated, the frequency of these sabotage incidents dropped significantly. Now, however, Google is the one you have to watch out for.
While Google’s intentions aren’t bad, the outcome is the same: your listings are being altered without your consent. Why is this happening? Ironically, as Google pushes for accuracy above all else, it’s chasing its own tail. It automatically scans the web for citations of your company—i.e. mentions of your company name, address, phone number, or URL—to make sure everything matches. If there’s a citation out there that doesn’t match what’s on your listing, Google might decide to update your listing for you so it does match. Unfortunately, this conflicting information is usually from an outdated listing on an old directory site, so the update is incorrect.
Google might also update your listing in response to a user who reported that the information in your listing was incorrect. Little does Google know, its effort to maintain accuracy on all of its listings often backfires.

Google Un-Verifies Listings at Will

While the automatic updating is certainly frustrating, it’s nothing compared to Google’s automatic un-verifying of your listing. It may do this for multiple reasons, but it most often happens when Google deems an account “inactive.” In the Google and Your Business Help Forum, Google’s Jade Wang explains:

In some cases, we may contact Google My Business users via email to confirm that they are still actively managing a business page. If a user is unresponsive to our attempts to contact him or her and has not logged into Google My Business for a significant length of time, then we may unverify pages in the account. We’re doing this in order to continue to provide users with the best experience when they’re looking for local businesses like yours.

Matt McGee of Search Engine Land confirms that this “significant length of time” of inactivity is at least six months. Although Wang claims that Google will notify a business owner before un-verifying, this doesn’t always happen, as we’ve seen firsthand with many of our own clients.
While inactivity is the most prominent reason for Google to un-verify a listing, other reasons include multiple listings and multiple advertisers. Sometimes, if a business has a listing for each of its multiple locations, Google sees the various addresses and phone numbers as “conflicting” with one another and randomly chooses one listing to un-verify.
Other times, Google will un-verify a business’s listing if it is being accessed and updated by more than one advertiser. That’s because it thinks something fishy is going on if account managers are logging in from disparate locations. (This is just one of the many reasons we advise against working with more than one advertiser at a time.)

Constant Vigilance Is Crucial

To avoid trouble, Jade Wang advises, “It’s a good idea to keep an eye on the inbox associated with your Google My Business (Locations) account. It’s also a good idea to regularly log into Google My Business (Locations) to confirm that your business information is current and accurate.”
We’ve always said that business owners have to be more proactive about their advertising, and this is just another reason why. You must track your listing(s) frequently to make sure it’s always accurate and in good standing.
However, we also understand that most business owners don’t have the resources to constantly track their listings. Frankly, after you been out on the job all day, it’s hard to find the time or energy to scan your Google My Business account for any red flags—and that’s if you can even remember to do it at all.

MapTrax™ to the Rescue

Thankfully, there are services out there like MapTrax that will do all the tracking for you. MapTrax monitors your listing daily and automatically alerts you of any changes to your company’s address, phone number, or URL, and if the listing has been suspended or un-verified. This way, you can immediately address any problems that may arise.
For only a few dollars per month, MapTrax provides insurance and peace of mind without requiring you to lift a finger. Our system does all the work for you! It will protect you from spammers and other wild cards, as well as Google itself, that could do harm to your company’s listing.
If you sign up in July, you can get MapTrax for just $5/mo. That’s 50% off! It’s very reasonably priced insurance that will save you time, money, and future business.

How to Slow Down in the Summer Without Losing Fall Business

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Summer is a time for family vacations, relaxing afternoons at the beach, and fun adventures with the kids. And when you own a business and make your own schedule, it’s easy to take as much time off as you want and enjoy every last ray of sunshine. However, if you plan to slow down during the summer months, you won’t be bringing in much revenue. That means you won’t want to be paying for things you don’t need, including certain online advertising services. At the same time, you don’t want to do anything that will jeopardize your business come fall.
Here are our recommendations for when you want to slow down in the summer and pick right back up once fall rolls around.

Do NOT Stop Your SEO

Even if you’re planning to take an entire month’s vacation, don’t stop your SEO. It’s not something you can just pause and resume. If you stop your SEO, all of your progress will be deconstructed and, when you want to restart your program, you’ll have to rebuild from the ground up. It may seem like you’re saving money by skipping a month’s payment, but you’ll actually cost yourself more money in the long run when your campaign loses momentum and you have to wait for it to ramp up again. If you want your fall season to start strong, you simply cannot afford to stop your campaign.
Look at it this way: If you were to go away for a month, would you sell your house and then re-purchase it when you returned? We’re betting no.

DO Pause Your PPC

While you can’t pause your SEO, you can feel free to have us pause your PPC campaign. Since you’re not going to be taking calls or booking jobs while you’re on vacation, there’s no need to pay for people to click on your ads. Once you’re back in the swing of things and ready to work, you can have our specialists resume your PPC campaign. The leads will start rolling in again in no time.
This doesn’t just apply to when you take an extended vacation, either. You can do this if you’re taking a weekend off or even if you’re just booked up for the next few days. We have a particularly astute client, Marvel Appliances Service in Miami, FL, who has this down to a science. He runs his PPC campaign during the week and then pauses it on the weekends when he’s all booked up and can’t handle any more calls. He saves money without sacrificing leads.
It’s kind of like turning off your air conditioning when you leave for the weekend.

DO Reroute Your Phone Number

Rerouting your phone number is super easy to do right from the Client Portal. If you’re spending quality time with your family at the beach one day, you can quickly set your calls to forward to e-mail or to a different phone number so that your cell phone isn’t ringing off the hook. Once you’re ready to take calls again, you can return to the Client Portal and set your phone number back the way it was. But don’t forget to follow up with all those calls you missed!
If you’ll be unavailable for an extended period of time, you can take this a step further by “renting” out your LeadTrax™ site to a local friend in the same industry as you. You would forward your incoming calls to their phone number, and they would pay you a small fee for those calls. It could be a great way to earn a little money while you’re away and help out a friend at the same time.

DO Change Your Voice Mail Greeting

Before you go on vacation for weeks at a time, be sure to change your voice mail greeting so your customers are aware of your availability. You can simply tell them the range of dates that you’ll be away and the date that you’ll be back in business. Giving them this information will ensure that they don’t feel ignored when their calls aren’t returned right away. If they’re existing, loyal customers, they’ll most likely wait for you to return. Prospects might even be willing to wait if they know you’re a reputable company and that you’re just on vacation for a short time.
This puts you in a great position for the fall because you won’t leave any former customers feeling spurned.

Remember to Follow Up

No matter what you decide to do while you’re away, following up with any missed calls is a must. Don’t make your prospects or current customers feel unimportant. The best way to ensure recurring business in the fall is to remind customers how much you value them. As soon as you get back from vacation, return their calls or reply to their e-mails and do your best to fit them into your schedule as soon as possible. While some of those leads might have moved on this time, they’ll remember your attentiveness and may very well call you again in the future.

Have You Outgrown Your Current Advertising Package?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

There’s a common misconception floating around that the only way to change the direction of your advertising is to change advertisers.
Many clients don’t realize that it’s simple and easy to transition to a different advertising package within the Prospect Genius program. Instead, they uproot their entire campaign and start over from scratch, costing themselves a lot of time, money, and aggravation in the process. Completely changing providers when you want to move your advertising in a new direction is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why abandon your investment and start over the hard way when it’s much easier, faster, and more economical to use the services that are already available to you?
A lot of hardship can be avoided if you just talk to us about your new direction. Our experts can craft a whole new solution for you by adding or subtracting elements of your current program, thus helping you leverage the investment you’ve already made. Even if it turns out that you do have to take your business to a new provider, we can at least help make your transition smoother and less damaging. But either way, if you don’t let us guide you, you risk doing irreparable damage to your web presence and campaign.

Reasons for Switching Packages

There are countless reasons for wanting to make a change to your advertising package. Hopefully, your reasons have to do with the growth of your company and the new direction in which you’re headed.
For example, let’s say you first signed up with us in 2011. Back then, all we offered was SEO-based lead generation, which we now call our Core program. After four years of seeing steady SEO results, you now feel like your advertising has become static. You want to give your campaign a little shot in the arm by promoting seasonal specials. Why not add on our PPC package for a couple of months? Our content specialists could handle your paid advertising for a short time while maintaining your SEO, and then we could help you decide whether you should stick with it or change to something else.
Or, instead, let’s say you had your own website when you first enrolled in our PPC program and have enjoyed a significant amount of growth since then. Now you want to focus on growing your brand. In this case, adding our Remarketing service would be a great solution because it would enable us to use your existing PPC campaign to create broader brand awareness for your company.
Or maybe you were a fledgling business owner without the slightest hint of a web presence when you first signed up for our Core program. Now, you want to move past the modest LeadTrax™ site we built you and hire an expensive, professional designer to create a flashy site that reflects how far you’ve come. You could absolutely do that without having to sever ties with us. When you switch to our B.Y.O.S. (Bring Your Own Site) package, we would simply start performing SEO for your new-and-improved site, instead.
There are dozens more examples, but you get the idea: Switching programs is great for virtually any client, as long as it’s in the interest of growing or expanding your campaign.

How to Switch Packages

It may not seem like it, but this is the easy part. As we mentioned above, all you have to do is talk to us. If you’re feeling like your campaign is in need of a shakeup, let us know. At the end of the day, we want you to have the campaign that satisfies you the most. When you talk to us about your vision for your advertising’s future, we’ll apply our expertise and come up with a solution that will make your vision a reality.
If you want to stick with a holistic marketing package, you can choose between Starter, Core, and Premium. Moving from one to another is easy. Otherwise, if you just want to build on your existing advertising package, these are your add-on options:
Mountaineering Route. Goal Achievement Concept. Vector

Social Media Services
Local Search Services
Paid Search Services
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Remarketing

Alternative Options

What happens if you speak with us about your goals and we both realize that our partnership is no longer a good fit? Well, by letting us in on the discussion, you’ve at least made it possible for us to advise you and make sure you move in the right direction. We can make your transition to a new company as painless as possible, using products like CleanSlate to minimize the damage to your SEO.
Transitioning will be much smoother when you keep us in the loop. It’s in our best interest, as well as yours, to make sure everyone leaves the partnership on a pleasant note.

Conclusion: Keep an Ongoing Discussion

Communicating with us about your changing needs is vital to your marketing success. Whether you end up staying with us or moving on, it’s essential that you keep us informed and allow us to guide you in the right direction. Don’t make the mistake of making a hasty decision without an expert opinion. The future of your business is too valuable.

Top 3 Behaviors That Will Hurt Your Web Presence

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

At Prospect Genius, we’ve spent years and years perfecting our online advertising services and adapting them to meet Google’s changing standards. We do this so we can provide the most effective advertising possible and produce satisfying results. However, our efforts can only take a client so far if that client is doing things that are inadvertently sabotaging their online advertising campaign and web presence.
Man With Computer
To keep your campaign successful, stay on Google’s good side by avoiding these three behaviors at all costs.

1. Duplicating Content

Having duplicate content on your website is a major crime in Google’s world. If your site contains content that’s been copyrighted to another company, you have duplicate content. This is in direct violation of Google’s guidelines. Google’s bots are constantly indexing and scanning through webpages, and sooner or later, they’ll detect that your content is identical to someone else’s. When they do, Google will decide which page is the original source; the other page, presumed plagiarized, will be removed from Google’s index, never to be shown to users.
So while it may seem like you’re taking a shortcut by “borrowing” someone else’s content—or content that was written by an advertiser like Prospect Genius—you’re actually creating a situation where the duplicated pages will never rank for any search. Obviously, this will do serious damage to your web presence in the long run.

2. Using Fake Addresses

Some business owners think they can get away with using a fake address on their Google My Business listing. In doing so, real businesses are trying to put themselves in prime locations for local SEO, while shady businesses without a physical location are making up addresses out of thin air to seem legitimate. Regardless of your motivation, if you use a fake address on your Google My Business listing, you will be caught.
That’s because Google has a variety of tools, including cars and satellites, used to verify that businesses are actually located where they claim to be. When Google discovers that your business is not at the location listed, you’ll be slapped with a hefty penalty. Your listing will plummet in ranking or it might be suspended completely.
It’s a much safer bet to just stick with your real address. In fact, in 95% of cases, business owners will get good rankings just by following the rules. That means using a fake address is not only risky, but it’s also unnecessary.

3. Hiding Information

Some business owners have a tendency to hold their cards close to their chests. They’ve learned from years of competition that they don’t want people having access to sensitive information about their businesses. Fair enough—but this behavior does not mesh well with Prospect Genius’s online advertising services.
When you hire us and don’t give us a full history of your web presence or you lock us out of key resources like your Google My Business listing, you’re stunting your own advertising efforts. We not only need to make sure your Google listing is working in harmony with the other work you’re paying us to do, but we also need to know where else your business is listed and what types of behaviors you’ve engaged in previously. For example, if you have a history of bending, breaking, or ignoring Google’s policies, or you worked with a different advertiser before hiring us, we need to know. If there’s something in your history that you don’t tell us, then we might end up making matters worse by spreading conflicting information about your business. (And as you know, Google despises conflicting information.)
When you hide this kind of crucial information from us, it’s like hiding the level from your kitchen renovation contractor. Sure, they’ll be able to get the job done without it, but all of your cabinets are going to be wonky and crooked, and your kitchen might end up being unusable. You’re essentially hiring someone to do a job for you and then taking away their ability to do that job effectively. Simply put, you’re wasting your own money.

Conclusion: Don’t Lie

That’s the general rule when you want to stay out of trouble online. Don’t lie to Google. Don’t lie to your advertiser. Don’t lie to your customers. Just don’t do it. It may seem like a simple white lie, but Google’s punishments don’t always fit the crime. You have no way of predicting or controlling the consequences. Google might delete all of your reviews, penalize your rankings, suspend your listing, or even mark your business as “closed.” The potential consequences simply aren’t worth the gamble. Help yourself and your web presence by remaining honest at all times.

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