7 Steps for Setting Your Marketing Strategy

Trying to decide what to spend on advertising and where to spend it can be very confusing, frustrating, and painful or exhilarating, interesting and fun :). Let's try to sort this out and make it a bit less of the first three and a lot more of the last 3. There are 7 basic steps to setting your marketing strategy :

1. Identify the strengths, weaknesses, and goals. What sets your business apart? What do you do better than your competition? In what areas does your business need some work? Where do you want to be with your business in a year, 5 years and 10 years from now?  Once you have your lists written then go through and prioritize them. 
2. Know your competition. Take note of where they are advertising and what they feel their strengths and weaknesses are.
3. Analyze the advertising you have done in the past. What works and what doesn't? Shift funds accordingly to get a bigger bang for your $$.  ie; if your yellowpage advertising isn't working like it used to then it may be time to move these funds to a more productive form of advertising. When trying something new set your goals accordingly. 
4. Develop your strategy. Know your target market! ie; if your business is a high end boutique you will probably rule out advertising to bargain hunters and children. Narrow your focus to reaching your target market, getting your best possible ROI and branding your business appropriately. Take advantage of as much free advertising as possible but preserve the reputation of your company.
5. Track and measure your marketing plan. Your plan should include reviews at set intervals no less frequent than once a month. You may want to review internet advertising more often. Monitor leads, links, page views, presentations, blog posts, proposals, conversions, click throughs and phone calls as well as sales forecasts and budgets.
6. Alert your current clients of your new presence on the web. Prepare to ask for e-mail addresses and social media business links, as well as ratings and reviews
7. Review, Revise and Re-position. Allow room for change and growth in your marketing strategy. As your business changes adapt your advertising to fit your needs. Whether you need to change your strategy due to internal or external reasons make your you have allowed ample time, space and resources for this.

Ready to start advertising? Call Yay-N-Wow Social Media Marketing today. Internet marketing at a rate you can afford. 772-579-8399

Why CItations Are Important to Your Local Business Listings

Citations are defined as “mentions” of your business name and address on other webpages, even if there is no link to your website. An example of a citation might be an online yellow pages directory where your business is listed, but not linked to. It can also be a local chamber of commerce, or a local business association where your business information can be found, even if they are not linking at all to your website . You may also see the term “web references” used on other websites—a synonym for “citations”.

Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms of the major search engines. Other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will probably rank higher than businesses with fewer citations.

Citations from well-established and well-indexed portals (like Superpages.com for example) help increase the degree of certainty the search engines have about your business’s contact information and categorization.Citations help to prove the relevance of your small business to the search engines. They want to know that you are who they thought you were.

Citations are particularly important in less-competitive niches (like plumbing or electrical) where many service providers don’t have websites themselves. Without much other information, the search engines rely heavily on whatever information they can find!

Citations also validate that a business is part of a community. It’s hard for someone to fake membership in a chamber of commerce or a city or county business index, or to be written about in a local online newspaper or popular blog. Citations (and links) from these kinds of websites can dramatically improve your Local search engine rankings.

Currently, the ‘More About This Business’ section of your Google Place Page is the most complete list of your citations, though Google probably doesn’t show every single one it knows about.
Citations include:

1. Local Search Engines
2. Locally Focused or Industry Focused Directories or Blogs
3. Manta, Yelp, Superpages, Insideerpages, Localeze, Yellowbook.com,

*This information was taken from the Google Small Business portal.

As always call the professionals at Yay-N-Wow Social Media Marketing and Internet Findability to help you with all your internet marketing and findability needs 772-579-8399

Claim Your Business

Claiming your business listings gives you control over how the search engines index you and prevents spammers from hijacking them. It may also improve your search engine rankings and bring you more traffic. 






Call Yay-N-Wow Social Media Marketing today.. All packages include claiming your listings on all the major search engines

SEO VS SEM

It is less expensive to go the SEM route first. The search engines have become so good at finding businesses that as long as you have on-page optimization they will find you! Search Engine Marketing can include pay-per click advertising on google and facebook,  and yahoo and bing search engine marketing, When a client begins their marketing we work together to establish the best plan of action that gives the biggest bang for their $$.  Important questions that need to be answered are:

1.    What physical area are you wanting to reach?

• Miles from current location
• County
• Cities etc.

2.   What is the demographic of your targeted audience?

• age
• sex
• income
• children
• likes/ dislikes (especially for facebook advertising)
• military status
• marital status 
• Any other relevant choice that sets them apart and makes sense for your business

When setting up pay-per-click advertising it is important to do AB ad testing, and to stay on top of your marketing. It will take up to 4 months for a professional to get the right ads running at the right time. If you are going to do this yourself it may take longer just be prepared to go the distance.



It is important to keep in touch with your PPC professional. Sometimes things that we have no control over have to guide our advertising. Depending on your type of business these things could include, but are not limited to:

• The Weather
• The Market
• The Season

For instance I had a Landscape Maintenance client in Wichita Falls, TX. In nearby Lawton, Oklahoma, there was a terrible freeze and we switched all of our Google PPC advertising to that area and did ads for tree trimming and yard clean-up. This gave my client extra business during a really slow time. As long as you stay on top of your advertising, pay-per-click is the way to go.

As always, if this sounds overwhelming call the professionals at Yay-N-Wow Social Media Marketing and Internet Findability. We help small businesses get found on the internet at a price they can afford.