My Weekend With Armand Morin, The Marketing Master!
Posted in Business on 31. May, 2010
How Did You Spend Your Weekend?
How are you? Did you have a wonderful weekend? I certainly did. I got to spend 3 information filled days with the creme de la creme of the Sydney internet marketing industry. About 400 plus of us all sitting on the edge of our seats at the Sydney Masonic Centre as the great marketing master Armand Morin spilled out hours and hours of internet marketing expertise that he’s learned from his years online. He says modestly that these days his business turns over about $80 million dollars a year, but I suspect it is much more than that from some of the projects he is working on.
He identified the ‘billion dollar opportunity’ to be helping all the many thousands of offline businesses to develop sound online marketing and promotional support systems. My peers and I have been noticing for some time that the gap between the amount of people who need to take their business online and the number of online marketers to help them do that efficiently and correctly, is widening every year. The technology is moving so quickly, mainly as a result of the impact of the almighty Google, that many of the website providers are simply out of touch. This is compounded by the fact that most of them aren’t marketers or business /customer oriented thinkers to begin with.
Death of The Yellow Pages
I think we’d all agree that the days when a local business could build a clientele from a decent Yellow Pages ad is simply over. The Yellow Pages sold out to the highest bidder and became virtually useless to the end user – the person searching for a local business. Through their own poor choices they forced us to Google for our services, and now most of us would go there first, or to another Search Engine, that might be more to our preference.
If you have a local business, how are your customers finding you? This has become a serious concern for almost every SME business owner I know.
I’d like to start giving you some ideas for how you can better position your business online in order to be up to date with some of the new technology as it arises and I hear about it. Feel free to add in your advice too.
Today’s Marketing Tip -
Who’s Already Looking For You?
If you are in business, do you know what your customers type into a search engine to find your business? Start making a list of what that might be, and start asking your customers and adding what they say to your list. This will not only give you an insight into how your customers perceive the service you offer, it will also give you some search terms to research to find how you can best be advertising and promoting the business.
For instance, one of my clients recently asked me to help him design his website, and I showed him how to look for where the search traffic might already be of prospects looking for his service. He had a unique value proposition – 800 acres of unspoiled private land 2 hours North West of Sydney where 4wd clubs and enthusiasts could camp and socialize. We found that there were several search terms that were in high demand and where he had little competition. Using this information I showed him how we could design his website to address these topics that were already in demand, rather than having a lovely website that too few of his target clients would ever get to see.
Once you have identified some probable search terms for your business, you can type them into https://adwords.google.com.au/select/KeywordToolExternal?forceLegacy=true and see for yourself how many people locally and globally search for your service every month!
Hey Cydney, great advice and insight into Search Engine Traffic.
Cheers, Jen