How Small Business Owners Can Be Looking For Love In All The RIGHT Places

No matter who you are, it always feels great to hear praise from those around you. Family. Friends. Strangers on the street. Now imagine that you run a restaurant, a small boutique or a salon. For small business owners, getting praise from your customers feels that much better.

There are many ways that customers can share their love with you. The challenge, though, is to stay on top of it all. The key is to make sure that you’re looking for love in all the right places.
Praise, you see, can come in many shapes and forms. 

A Quick Guide For Small Business Owners: How To Look For Love In All The RIGHT Places

1) Reviews Sites
People are leaving feedback about you that the world can see, so it’s important to make sure that you’re monitoring feedback on review specific sites. Think Yelp, Trip Advisor, Rate MDs and other similar sites. Thank people for high praise and try your best to turn negative reviews into praise by being responsive, caring and helpful. Opinions can change if you make an effort to show love to those who didn’t.

2) Online Local Listings
Reviews can pop up in places that may not be on your radar. Keep monitoring your online listing and apply all the same approaches we outlined in the point above. Visit Google, Bing, Facebook, and other search engines or social networks to ensure that the reviews on your local listings are seen. And when you get love from a client, give it back with a big thank you.

3) Social Networks
Yes, we did mention social networks above, but that was in relation to your business listing. People are also discussing their experiences at your establishment on Twitter and Facebook, posting pictures to Instagram or sharing videos across social networks as well. Using social media listening tools such as Brandwatch, Sysomos, or Synthesio can help you track mentions of your brand across social media and watch the sentiment associated to your locations. To keep your listening program low cost, use the native search tools on each network or set up Google Alerts to help you capture mentions of your business.

But wait! There are other forms of online love that you should be aware of as well.

4) Content Shares
When you post content to your own social networks, the people sharing what you post are showing you great respect. Why? Because they’re helping extend your message and introduce you to new people. Their share helps create a viral extension of your brand that brings new exposure to your content.

5) Likes
Though not as effective as a share, even a like for your post should be considered as positive praise. When someone likes your content, it’s possible that others in their network are made aware of their appreciation for your post in their own timelines. So, yes, sometimes a like is more than a like. It’s love!

6) Comments on Social Media Posts
This one is trickier because a comment can be positive or negative. Just like reviews, keep an eye on the comments to your posts and get in there to represent your business. Move the discussion along, answer questions, show appreciation for praise and help fix problems that are presented.

So there you have it, six places to look for online love. What are you experiences looking for brand love online? Share yours in the comments!

A Real-Life Lesson On How To Avoid Customer Frustration, Confusion And Anger

We just heard a great story from one of our sales agents. He recently hosted a dinner for his family and ordered sushi for everyone. To ensure that his guests had what they wanted to eat, he sent them a link to the restaurant’s menu from their website. His brother sent him his order and our agent called everything in. When the food arrived, they were surprised to see that his brother’s selections were all wrong.

What happened? Our agent’s brother had used a menu from Yelp that turned out to be outdated. The restaurant had made changes to their menu, but wasn’t savvy enough to make sure it was consistently published across review sites and search engines.

This example shows just how important it is to be consistent beyond your website. While one customer went to the website for the menu, the other looked right past it and found the menu elsewhere. And it was unfortunately wrong, which creates deep customer frustration, confusion and anger.

As a business owner, you may understand this from a theoretical point of view, but when it counts, you may just update your business information, including your menu, at the one place online that matters most to you, your website. Why? Because that’s what you’ve invested in.

We suggest, however, that you invest more in thinking like your customers. Where are they online? What are their habits? Why make them click over to your website when search engines, review sites, or a social network can give them the information they need faster and more efficiently? If you’re not thinking like your customers do, that’s where the opportunities for frustration, confusion and anger arise.

If you’re looking to invest budget into solving these problems, because you only have so much time to go around, ensuring that your business is found where people are searching is a great place to start. Make changes to your menu? No problem. Through automated processes like ours, we’re able to get those changes applied at the push of a button and published online just as quickly.

In the case of this sushi restaurant, having the right menu in the right place at the right time will save the owner from having an unhappy client to deal with, a busy team scrambling to make things right and the very real possibility of a bad online review, which can create lasting damage.

There’s nothing worse than surprising your customers with the wrong things. Consider our solution as your insurance against that. Look into our services for restaurants to learn more.

Spas & Salons: Clients need to find you before you can help them find their style

If you own a spa or salon, you know that your clients have options. It’s up to them to decide on which looks, styles, and treatments – and any combination of the three – they want when they visit your business. Catering to their desires and helping them find their look is the best way for you to keep them coming back again and again.

However, if you want to help them find their look, the first thing you need to do is help them find you. Because when it comes to search, they also have many options. There are different search engines and review sites for them to discover your business and your price list. And, if they don’t discover yours, they’ll find your competitor down the street.

So it’s important to put your business details – think address, phone number, business hours, a detailed description and your price list – on the top sites and apps that people turn to when deciding on which salon or spa to visit. This includes big players like Google, Yelp, Facebook and Foursquare, as well as more regional and beauty-specific sites and apps.

Consider these statistics:

  • Google “near me” searches have increased by two times over the past year.
  • 49% of local searches occur without a specific business in mind
  • 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a location within five miles.
  • 87% of smartphone owners make a search engine inquiry at least once a day
  • 97% of smartphone users use a search engine on their mobile device at least once per week

Working with 10|20 Marketing, we’ll help you place your price list on these key sites and apps and give you one place to update your price list, specials, photos and announcements. And by placing your price list online as text, you’ll benefit from every item on it becoming a viable keyword that will help people discover your business. The more ways people can find you, the better.

With our help, we can ensure that your location is consistently presented, error-free and that reviews are aggregated and monitored, so your spa or salon can enjoy improved findability and better overall search results across a number of engines. Moving, adding photos or making a change to your business description? Easy too. Just send along the changes and the process to apply them across the web with the same consistency as your original information is as simple and efficient. You’ll never have to worry about making these changes yourself.

Not everyone is looking for your website. But they are looking for the service you provide. Our solution is an easy and cost-favourable way to market your business and get found. And if you’re already marketing your business online in some way, it works beautifully in conjunctions with those digital and social media marketing as well.

Getting found is foundational, though. And having people walk through your door, though, is always the number one priority.

An SEO Specialist Walks Into A Restaurant…

It’s always smart to focus on SEO when it comes to promoting your restaurant online. However, this can be done in many ways, with on-site SEO only one of several options.

What’s truly important, though, is what searchers are finding when you come up in their results. What if you come up first but the searcher is able to find information related to your competitors that the search engines don’t offer about your business? For example, what if their menu is syndicated across search engines and review sites and yours isn’t? It would stand to reason that the consumer is going to click on the business that gives the most information first, even more so if the menu is present.

Did you know that 86% of people view a menu online before dining out and that 50% of local searches lead to a visit within a day? With this in mind, look at just how important it becomes to ensure that your listing is optimized with proper business information and your menu. Because it’s most important for people to see what you’re serving, where you’re located, if you’re open, and if they can easily make a reservation.

Working with 10|20 Marketing to claim your business listings, provide your business information and post your menus to key online networks actually improves your SEO. Search engines like Google and Yahoo have algorithms to determine which businesses show up in search results. One of the things the rankings are based on is “user interaction”. By adding your menus into all these listings more people will be clicking and viewing them and those businesses organically rise in the search rankings.

This makes for a powerful one-two punch. Your menu attracts diners and the business information that goes with it gets them to your restaurant. Allow us to help you ensure that your listings are updated with your menu and proper business details so you don’t lose this powerful opportunity to expose your restaurant to new diners in your local area.

Our Mission Is To Help Every Small Business Become Found Online Easily

10|20 Marketing wants to see every small business succeed online. With the importance of local search only growing, it’s essential that businesses are found where people are searching for them. That means on search engines, review sites and mapping technologies.

With 10|20 involved, the process to ensure that local businesses turn up on these critical search engines is easy, time saving and automated. We will ensure that your location is consistently presented and error-free, that menus are present and easily updated, and reviews aggregated and monitored, so your business can enjoy improved findability and better overall search engine optimization across the web.

Why? Because modern consumers start their shopping experience on search engines and listing sites. The results they get from those sites determine where they spend their money, with reviews on each location’s listing helping them determine if a business is the right fit for them. As a result, if a business doesn’t appear in local search results, the consumer will be happy to spend their money at a competitor.

Consider these statistics:

  • 49% of local searches occur without a specific business in mind.
  • 50% of local searches lead to a store visit within a day
  • 85% of consumers still prefer to shop in physical stores vs. online
  • 86% of people view a menu online before dining out.
  • 87% of smartphone owners make a search engine inquiry at least once a day
  • 97% of smartphone users use a search engine on their mobile device at least once per week

10|20 Marketing will help you turn up in searches for your business and related keywords by:

  • Claiming all your location listings on key search engines, review sites and mapping technologies
  • Managing how your business appears across the internet with consistency
  • Fixing errors or omissions that are costing you sales
  • Listing your location on new engines, review sites and maps
  • Keeping your menu or price list syndicated and updated
  • Monitoring your customer reviews and ratings
  • Driving more customers to your locations