I have know Rob from the Tree and Stump Company for a long time.  He runs a good business and takes care of his customers.  When he finally came around to marketing online I was excited. It was with one of our first MarketSmart Core Builds.  I knew he needed something easy to use that would get him found.  What I didn’t know was that he cancelled $20,000 worth of advertising for the year and was hoping his site would make up the difference.   

Before we look at how they ended up doing, let’s look at the set up we provided them starting at the sale and working back.  The overall goal of this website is to generate estimate requests.  Customers can call or submit a form online. We streamlined Rob’s lead process after meeting with his call center.  We provided them a special page on the site to submit calls. These call leads, as well as those from the site, go right to Rob and his team for follow up.   Now we are able to track all lead submissions.  

Jump start your online marketing program today.  Start by downloading our Web Starter Kit

With the conversion point in place, we looked at how to draw site visitors into it.    The home page is a good visual of some of the ways we accomplished this including: large phone number in the top right, menu item, and the primary call to action in the center of the page.   Using information collected during our planning process we helped them craft messages aimed directly to their target market.  We want to make sure anyone in their area who needs their services knows right away that they:  1. Work with trees 2. Serve their area and 3.  Provide free estimates.  

We also created pages focused on each of their service areas, and created a content stream allowing him to post completed jobs and classify them by service (i.e.: tree trimming or stump removal) and the city in which they did the work.  As traffic started coming into these posts, we immediately thought of an additional call to action which we placed at the bottom of all his posts.

Our core build includes SEO.  Our philosophy is to optimize static content just once.  It is better to optimize a process for adding new content into the site and provide the toolset and training so each new piece of content helps your overall search engine goals.  It provides for internal cross linking, HTML optimized code, auto updates to search engines, and more.     Rob is able to send photos from his phone to his website from each job.  We provided a process for building his online portfolio which included indexing each job by the city in which his crew worked as well as the service provided.  This enables the website to create additional page groupings. The tactic is working for Rob, with 78% of his traffic coming from the search engines from thousands of different keyword terms such as: tree trimming in Lakeville, Shakopee tree removal, or stump removal in MN.

In marketing we often talk about reaching those customers ready to buy today.  Well so far this simple search engine optimization program is using the best channel to reach those people: Google.  Business is good for Rob.   He is still using his site and starting to dabble in social media to stay connected with his customers.   After a year without that 20k of advertising, and primarily using his site to generate sales, he has decided to pocket that extra advertising expense again for 2012.  

• Now when the yellow pages call me trying to sell me top position in the search engines for local searches, I tell them, look it up, I am beating you.

  

  Rob Hutcheson

  www.treeandstumpco.com

Are you ready to bring your business online with a fresh new site / content marketing plan?   Let us help you!  612-798-7244 or download our Web Planning Kit.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a fast-growing social media site that allows users to create an online image collage, called a “board“, that users share with their friends and other Pinterest users. While browsing the site’s addicting content, you can “pin” anything you see to any of your boards and add comments, Facebook ‘likes’ and share your activity with other social sites.

• Pinterest is currently invite-only. You can request an invite from us or you can be invited by someone who is already a part of Pinterest
• It was founded in 2008 but didn’t open up its beta mode to the public until 2010
• Sync with your Facebook, blog and Twitter for easy sharing
• Currently there are about 5 million users, and growing fast
• It’s simple to use, beautiful and known for being highly addicting
• There is marketing potential for your products to get pinned to hundreds of other boards

Who is Pinterest for?

• 80% of Pinterest users are women, but men are finding plenty to be interested in with DIY, car, geek, sports and technology categories
• It’s free but requires an investment of time. A good pinboard will have content steadily added to maximize exposure
• Caters to people looking for recipes, room décor, style ideas, and do-it-yourself crafts, quotes, inspiration, and more
• Caters to those who like to “curate” or weed out the good from the bad in a marketplace of ideas-style environment
• Websites and brands that use a lot of images to promote their activity

Tips to Succeeding with Pinterest

• Pinterest is all about personal expression, so be yourself and let the humanity of your brand show through
• Build relationships with the movers and shakers of the site who are in your industry
• Use other social media channels to point people to your Pinterest content
• Companies should have around 10 boards; If you find you’re never pinning to one, merge it into other boards or delete it
• Promote other brands and people you like; Pinterest followers are notorious for identifying boards that are too self-serving and that only post their own products

How can your brand use Pinterest?

• Create a brand lifestyle board or visual resume of what your company does
• Show off your company’s vision or sense of humor
• Add your brand or personal name, a photo, about section, website URL and connect it with your social media accounts
• Be creative! Use humor and creativity to name your boards and in deciding what to pin
• Tag and share with other like-minded professionals or brands
• Create seasonal or holiday boards that tie-in with your brand
• Create a board that represents your company’s core values or tells the story of how you were created
• Have a board for each employee to highlight their unique qualities (great for designers)
• Create visually stunning coupons to feature on a coupon board

How do you get started?

• Contact us to get an invitation to Pinterest and try it for free!
• Receive one-to-one Pinterest training plus Pinboard creation and optimization with our online marketing team
• Add the Pinterest button to your content streams to allow users to pin your content
• Let us create fantastic pinboards and a company profile for you, and we’ll sync it to your social media channels

Contact us if you like to start integrating this new promotional channel to your current Core builds: 612-798-7244.

We love getting emails like this one. Thanks Dan – I am always here to help.

Carrie,   I wanted to let you know that I have already received an email from my website – Someone that has filled out the Remodel with Us form. I received it on Friday – one day after launch. With all of the websites that I have had in the past – I never ONCE have received a request form. This speaks volumes to the work that you and the entire team did on my site. When I received the email (on my phone ) – I thought the form was the typical junk mail from a lead referral company. (I seem to get a lot of emails from other companies that want to sell me leads.) It took me a minute to realize that the email was from my own site. The concept of receiving a lead from my OWN website was something that I was not prepared for. WOW! Would you please pass on to everyone involved with my project – that I am thrilled with the work that they did – and I am stoked for this site to bring new business to my company.  Thanks again to everyone for a great site!
Dan Drenckhahn President – http://www.countrycreekbuilders.com/

I just got the update from Cynde Bock who heads up our MarketSmart Strategy Lab classes that we are filling up for this Thursday’s free class on planning for social media, but there are still some seats available.  Running social media channels requires a solid content stream.  We walk business owners and marketing directors through the process of planning out their communication processes and content marketing strategy.   Learn more about this class online at: http://www.publicity.com/classes/creating-a-social-media-plan/ 

If you are in the Twin Cities contact Cynde today 612-798-7218 or sign up online.

There are those seasonal stories that all media outlets cover every summer: Memorial Day and 4th of July celebrations, summer grilling, ways to beat the heat, vacation travel, etc. These story lines can get stretched pretty thin, so now is the time to start thinking about how your company or product can offer a new or unique approach. The media will appreciate the effort, and will be more likely to want to use your fresh idea on a characteristically lackluster story.

Also think about how your company will fit in with topics that will be hot this summer. The London Olympics will be popular, as will the Presidential race. But what about the weather? Will our mild winter have an affect on summer events or activities in which you are involved? Or what about your company’s economic outlook? Unemployment has gone down the last two months; what can that mean for your business?

Here’s another bit to keep in mind. From my experience as a news producer, I can tell you that there is one big angle the media absolutely loves: human interest stories! Do some digging around the office. Does your CEO have a dynamic personal story about how the company was created, or how he/she overcame obstacles to achieve a company goal? Take a look at testimonials and see if one of your customers has a great story to share about how your product helped their life.

If you have a great story angle, but need help pitching it to the media, give us a call. We’ve got contacts at most every media outlet.

The Wellness Advisor® is a free magazine that provides delicious recipes, product news and healthy living tips from experts and contributors. To bring the magazine to the web, we built a PowerSite that highlights all the great articles from each new issue on the home page. A custom-built sidebar displays the featured contributors that wrote articles from each issue, all the article topics, past magazine issues, featured products and a recipe list.

Other unique site features include info boxes in every post that displays magazine issue information, author photos and biographies, Featured Products with links to purchase them, an upcoming events calendar, and recipes with photos, serving size, ingredients, directions and nutrition facts.

Visit The Wellness Advisor’s website here

Our publicist team is in possession of some great insider information that will significantly improve our ability to get our clients coverage in those popular, top-tier national magazines!

Last week the team participated in a webinar hosted by editors from four of the country’s top women’s magazines. The top dogs at More, Family Circle, Working Mother and Marie Claire gave us an inside look into what kinds of stories they’ll be covering in 2012, the best ways to build relationships with their writers, and the best and worst pitch tactics.

The tips and insights we learned will no doubt prove to be very helpful. The editors shared with us which topics they like to cover a lot and which topics they won’t touch with a ten foot pole. They talked about the importance of reading their magazines to know what articles they recently wrote, and even that it’s beneficial to mention those articles when conversing with them. Each editor also stressed the importance of knowing that pitches should be customized to each magazine, because each have different target audiences.

What are some easy ways to build a good relationship with a magazine? Many of the editors’ tips were simple enough: present yourself in a friendly, personal way; be a source of usable information and not just promotional materials, and make sure you are dependable and will follow through on what you say you can deliver. The editors made it clear that once you leave a bad impression with them, you’ve basically axed your chances of them ever wanting to work with you again.

This exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how these magazines operate is invaluable. Our team is really excited about our new knowledge, and is confident it will boost our ability to get some fantastic national coverage for our many clients.

We produce two expos targeting consumers in the baby boomer and senior markets. These are growth markets with tremendous sales potential for many product categories, and yet with social media being the hot trend, some marketing managers erroneously believe that face-to-face marketing is obsolete.

They couldn’t be more wrong! In truth, face-to-face marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools available.  Here are five truths about consumer expos.

1.      Expos can you save time and money. Print and broadcast ads can be costly, and Internet marketing requires time to reach a decent-sized audience. Expos give you the opportunity to deliver your sales message and interact with a large group of people gathered at the same time in one place.

2.      A good expo producer does a lot of the legwork for you. Companies experienced in producing highly targeted events know how to bring in specific audience types, such as baby boomers and seniors. When you choose the right targeted event, you’ll be assured that you’ll be getting in front of a high percentage of your prospects in that market segment.

3.      Expos build confidence and trust between you and your customers. Meeting people in person is crucial for building and maintaining strong relationships.

4.      Expos create instant visibility. This is a big difference between face-to-face marketing and other promotional channels. Your presence at a targeted expo is a show of support for that target market.In our attendee surveys,seniors have repeatedly told us that while they may not buy at an expo, when they are ready to purchase they are much more likely to do business with a company that has exhibited at one of our events.

5.      Expos break down barriers. The value of being face-to-face with your prospects and customers is that you have the benefit of verbal and non-verbal communications, allowing you to clarify the nuances of your sales message.

To learn more about face-to-face consumer marketing opportunities in Minnesota, visit http://www.101expos.com.

Last month Mike Danielson, director of Media Relations’ Health & Medical Division, was invited by one of our clients to spend a week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where he spoke before a prestigious gathering of natural nutritional ingredient researchers and manufacturers. For most of these highly placed experts, it was the first time in their careers that someone had explained how we use their work in the lab as a basis for marketing campaigns to help launch and properly position new brands.

Mike gave a nice presentation. I watched the live streaming video, and was proud of the way he described how our writers analyze published research and distill the key findings into newsworthy nuggets that we then deliver though promotional channels like the media and Internet.

One thing Mike always stresses is that our clients need other people saying good things about them. The sales message becomes much more powerful when it is delivered by third parties. And today there are so many opportunities to do this.

We help our clients build a strong marketing foundation, which may include everything from writing a brand book to creating a panel of influential spokespeople. Then we begin teaching people to buy our clients’ products through targeted media campaigns and face-to-face marketing opportunities, as well as the Internet and social media.

It’s an ambitious process, with a lot of details, but people enjoy working with us because we know what we’re doing. For 15 years before the Internet came on the scene, we got lots of practice turning sales messages into stories as we arranged tens of thousands of product PR articles.

We’ve developed incredible instincts for seeing the social story in products because we have been doing it for 25 years.

Our tag line is “the non-advertising, advertising agency.” Give us a call and we’ll tell you exactly what it costs and what we have done for other clients to push their sales messages out through promotional channels that are more in line with the ways people want to hear about products today.

When securing event PR, don’t merely limit your efforts to the pre-event coverage. Offering a wrap up story to the media is a great opportunity to boast about your success, and to begin drawing exhibitor/sponsor participation for next year.

Although our 50+ PrimeTime Living Expo was held earlier this month, we’re still busy following up with new story ideas for our media contacts. We want the media to report on the expo’s success story. We have developed pitches from the Expo’s 50+ Strut Your Stuff Talent Contest: who competed, what was performed and most important, the winners.

The most crucial thing to remember is that reporters and producers think visually. Offer photos or video of your event. When pitching our wrap-up story, we offered photos and video for the media to use with the story.

Localize. Localize. Localize. One hook that works well with reporters and producers is local stories. Reporters have to pitch ideas to their producer or managing editor before getting the green light, and you can help them demonstrate the relevance of your story by linking it to newsworthy events and people from their community.

Two great examples are the post-event stories that ran in Still Water Gazette and Owatonna People Press featuring local residents who competed in the talent show as well as the winners.

Remember, doing good press outreach is never a guarantee of coverage. Especially as mainstream media outlets struggle to keep in business, they have less time to cover all that’s happen­ing.  You need to engage the media rather than simply announce an event, so that your news is deemed worthy of reporting. Most important, don’t miss out on your post-coverage PR opportunities.