SEO Services & Small Business SEO Services

When SEO is applied to the small business environment, certain challenges and opportunities present themselves. One of the main challenges is that small businesses often don’t have a marketing budget allotted to expanding their business online. In the past, small business marketing was somewhat simple: Send out a few fliers and circulars here and there and maybe place an ad in the Yellow Pages; sit back and wait for the phone to ring. (Maybe not that simple, but you get the point). To state the obvious, times have changed.   Most customers now use the internet to find products and services. According to a BIA/Kelsey Group study 97% of customers use online media to find businesses. Customers are now using the internet to find you! Another challenge is that many small businesses don’t have the time to learn how to use internet marketing, social media, or search engine optimization to get customers online. They are just too busy running their businesses! (day to day operations). However, these challenges present unique opportunities. Read on.

One opportunity that presents itself for small businesses to overcome the challenges of money when moving into the internet marketing space is to rethink how they allocate their marketing budget/resources. As we mentioned previously, customers are no longer using the Yellow Pages as the primary means to find businesses. Small Business owners need to re-structure their ad spend. Move away from what is not working and move toward advertising channels where there is positive Return On Investment (ROI). We recently had a client that came to us AFTER he had paid around $2,000 for a year’s contract with the Yellow Pages. Needless to say, that client had NOT received one phone call from the Yellow Page listing in the 6 months since the listing began (talk about negative ROI!). That client is now obligated by contract to pay for that listing whether or not he receives any business. Bad deal. Within four weeks of service with us, he not only received his first lead, he was also able to achieve a positive ROI (he made more money from customer fees that he paid to us for marketing his services) – It is not hard to find affordable small business SEO services here at StoryMashup.Org. Consequently, many small businesses should closely examine where they spend their advertising dollars ( this will help solve the money problem). If you spend your money on circulars, Yellow Page ads, and telemarketing services, chances are great that you missing a lot of customers who use the internet to find businesses. (Email us at support@storymashup.org and we will send you a free report to let you know how many people are searching in your area for your businesses, product or service. We use a combination of Google’s Keyword Tool along with other internet marketing databases to compile your report)

Another challenge as mentioned above is the time and effort it takes a small business owner to learn social media (or even SEO) techniques that will actually pay off in the end . Let's be blunt. Social media is changing more rapidly than you could possibly have the time to keep up with. Don’t you have a business to run? Before you know it, your job will actually become “Social Media Manager”. Who has time for that? (We do – this is our job after all)

Many small business owners watch Sunday morning business programs with “talking heads/consultants” on television that answers all small business marketing questions the same: “Use social media and the internet to get more business…” And more fast talking “blah…blah… Social Media…blah blah… Twitter, Facebook. They make it seem so simple and obvious: “If you are a small business owner, use Twitter and Facebook and watch the flood of new customers that you’ll receive” (nonsense!) These “small business consultants” never show or guide small businesses as to how this is done. Why? It is time consuming. Then when a small business owner grows tired and frustrated they’ll say, “You weren’t doing it right”. You did not build “engagement”. The truth of the matter is that it takes specific social media strategies (read plan) like lead nurturing, engagement, trust and an integrated sales funnel (there are more components, but for brevity’s sake) to be successful with social media. The only way to overcome this is to get someone else to do all this Wholesale SEO, Local SEO, SEO, SEM, SMO, PPC “stuff” so that you can concentrate on growing your businesses. Unfortunately many small business owners spend hours upon hours on social media only to find all they have managed to achieve is gain “friends” instead of paying customers. (Email us at support@storymashup.org and we will send you a simple (how simple? We drew it with MS Paint, the Crayon of desktop publishing) social media blue-print)

Many small businesses owners maybe apprehensive or reluctant to try this “new” method of marketing because they do not understand or trust this whole internet marketing apparatus. Many have been comfortable with the “old” way of doing marketing.

An SEO professional must take the time to answer client questions and show prospective clients how the SEO process works. An SEO that does not take the time to patiently answer questions is not worth your money. Why? Simply because there must be a mutual understanding and respect between an SEO and client. The “perfect” relationship is one of collaboration and consultation. We perceive our clients as business partners in the context of a consultative relationship. We enter a market together and we advise the client on what the strategic approach should be to win in that market. Yes, there are clients that don’t care about that – “just get me phone calls and customers”. We find that a consultative model works best because often times when we speak with clients, we gain a better understanding of their businesses and find unique marketing opportunities that we never would have discovered through the normal course of our research. After all, some business owners have had over 20+ years of business experience in their businesses niche. We have a vested interest in the success of our client’s online marketing efforts. Clients that are making money using our services (positive ROI) will refer their friend, families, and other business owners to us. In fact, most of our business has come from word of mouth referrals thus far.

Small business owners should also be aware of services that attempt to lock them into long-term service contracts (think Yellow Pages) without the hope of trying out a particular service to determine its effectiveness. At StoryMashup.Org, we make it simple: You pay month-to-month, no contract (sounds, crazy, why StoryMashup.Org would do this when most service providers use long-term signed contracts?). The answer is simple: If we do an awesome job that you are happy about, we won’t have to worry about signing long-term contract, right?

“Ok, sounds great and thanks for the great in depth information; I’m ready get online customers!”