Top Six Mistakes Entrepreneurs & Biz Owners Make Marketing On The Internet- REPORT

Transcription

1 Top Six Mistakes Entrepreneurs & Biz Owners Make Marketing On The Internet- REPORT By Katerina Gasset-! Coach Katerina LLC Copyrighted by Katerina Gasset. Coach Katerina LLC - All rights reserved- no reproducing allowed. 1

2 Thank you for downloading this very important report- Top Six Mistakes Entrepreneurs and Business Owners make marketing on the internet. I hope this report will help you from getting ripped off by webmasters, Facebook gurus and SEO companies that just take your money and then do nothing or the ones that you can not get them to return your calls or answer your questions. Whether you have just started on your journey to internet marketing- bringing your business online or you are have a website or many websites and yet you find yourself not even ranked on Google for any pages that are actually going to get you prospects or phone calls - this free report will help you get on the right path. You see, I know about getting ripped off. I know about buying all the products out there. I was one of the first agents on the internet. Of course, back in 1997 it was totally different than it is today. There was no easy way to build a website. There was no YouTube. There was no Facebook. There was no Realtor.com. There was no SEO and there was no Google. But as the products began to be developed on the internet outside of AOL we jumped on the bandwagon. Nestor ( my husband and a real estate broker) and I bought all the shiny objects that were for sale at the NAR conventions and our Florida state Realtor conventions. 2

3 Do you remember HomeGain? Do you remember Know Your Neighborhood? I remember how back in the day, 1999 was the year, we bought this new camcorder. Remember those huge bulky and heavy camcorders? We went to video tape our listings. We wanted to be the first agents to get video online. Remember there was no YouTube. YouTube was not invented until We had to buy this converter box that you plugged into your PC - which were also so difficult- ( we did not know about Macs back then). We connected the camcorder to this converter box, then the converter box to the computer- and then download software that we could not understand. It was a mess. I still remember working on trying to get video on our computer for hours and hours, finally ending up walking out of the office in tears. We never did get that to work! We calculated that by 2000 we were spending well over $3000 a month for different products on the internet that were supposed to bring us buyers and sellers. That of course, included Realtor.com which was very expensive. From 1997 to 2002 I think we could count two listings and one buyer from ALL our online efforts. Needless to say, in 2002 we decided to throw it all out! I mean like just stop! We canceled all the websites, all the services including Top Producer and Realtor.com. Funny thing was, back in those days, it did not effect our business one bit. When the real estate market crashed here in Florida in 2007 we sat down to figure out our game plan for our real estate brokerage. 3

4 I was determined never to waste my money again on internet marketing! We knew that short sales were coming down the pipeline really soon. The good part was Nestor and I both had short sale experience through two other recessions. This was going to be our online angle. We now had a niche, something of course we never even heard of before- what is a niche??? Even when we chose that niche we did not know what a niche was, lol! Since there was no way we were going to get ripped off again I decided to study internet marketing from gurus that made millions of dollars on the internet selling products and services. I remember listening to Earl Nightingale who said that to become an expert at anything you needed to study just one hour a day for five years you will know more than most experts in that field. So I counted back from that. That meant that two hours a day = four years, three hours a day = three years, four hours a day = two years, five hours a day = one year. That would mean that if I studied the subject of SEO and Internet Marketing for at least 6 hours a day I would know more than most experts in SEO and Internet marketing in six months. Since the market was dead, no one was selling and no one was buying, 2007 was the worst year on record since we can remember for real estate sales in our market in South Florida I had plenty of time to study and learn. After I settled everyone down each night about 9 p.m. I would hit the books and the internet to take courses and study. I would then apply what I learned. 4

5 By September of 2007 we started to get listings because of the blog posts I was writing about short sales was a bad year for most agents in our market. Over half of the agents did not renew their NAR fees in our market. Our MLS lost 50% of the membership by year s end. But we were listed in the top 2% of closed transactions. We had seventy to eighty active listings at one point due to our online marketing and of course, referrals from those who we did short sales for. So we made a lot of mistakes. We learned a lot. Soon other brokers, agents, chiropractors, small business owners and entrepreneurs were asking me to help them achieve the same results. I created a course for those who could not pay for private coaching and consulting and had a full schedule of agents who wanted the private coaching. That is how all of this started. Now I can just look at what anyone in any field is doing on the internet and analyze their online strategies. There are a few other important skills I bring to the table when it comes to knowing and applying SEO, blogging, branding, advertising, marketing and writing on the internet. 5

6 I can take geeklish and turn it into English in a way that people can understand. I can take apart complicated and often misunderstood strategies and then breaking it down into steps and definitions that real estate brokers, doctors, attorneys, entrepreneurs and other small business owners can understand and grasp. You also benefit from my ability to understand market trends and a gift to connect with others. This helps us create websites, online marketing plans and advertising pieces that connect with your audience. Now that I shared a bit about my story on how I got to this part of my online marketing journey we will now go over the top 6 mistakes that real estate agents, real estate brokers, mortgage brokers, doctors, attorneys, chiropractors, entrepreneurs and other small business owners make so that you can take the steps now to avoid them. *********************************************************************************** 6

7 Mistake # 1 Failing to Plan Failing to Plan is Planning To Fail So You Will Be Wasting Your Money 7

8 The first and biggest mistake that all entrepreneurs and business owners make is jumping online; buying websites, getting a Facebook fan page, getting on all the social media platforms, starting a blog and so on without having a plan. What good is being online if you don t even know what direction you are going in? If you don t know where you are going, any road will get you there. Yes, you have heard that you need to have a blog and a website. So you start shopping around for what looks good to you. You may shop prices and look and feel of website designs or you may just shop price. But no matter how you are shopping if you don t know what your online marketing plan and strategy is you are not going to be successful. Even if you are a DIYer- building your own blog and website, your own fan pages, Google pages, etc you still need to have a plan and then focus on that plan. Lack of focus is another reason business people fail online. 8

9 You jump here, you jump there... You do what that person told you to do and then you take another workshop of webinar and jump on what that other person tells you to do. But you have no idea why. You know you have to be on the internet or else get left behind. Over 87% of all buyers start their home search online. Sellers are looking on line, checking out the agents and brokerages online. Yes, it is important for you to have a website and a blog but you must have a plan first. There are a lot of different online marketing strategies and each one requires a different application. Each website you have must have a specific purpose. Each blog you have must also have a specific purpose. Your online social media strategy has to be deliberate and purposeful. Are you going to have a squeeze page site, a sales letter style site, a general website, an office website, a seller website or a buyer website? The answer depends on what your online marketing strategy is. What is your plan? What do you want to accomplish by being online? Once you know the answer to that question you can begin to execute your plan. ************************************************************************************** 9

10 Mistake # 2 Failing to Niche Specialists Make More Profits Than Generalists If you don t niche- You are wasting your money. 10

11 The second biggest mistake that entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, real estate brokers, mortgage brokers and small business owners make is that they do not know who their audience is. They fail to niche. What is a niche? A niche is a segment of the market that has something in common one with another. A niche is a group of people or a specific subject matter. If you were to open a new restaurant in your town and I were to ask you what is the most important thing you need in order to be successful? Many people, when asked this question say they need the best hamburgers, or the best food in town or they will say they need a good location. Some people say they need a nice atmosphere. Others will say they need a good advertising campaign. But they are all wrong. The one thing that your new restaurant needs is a HUNGRY CROWD! Think about that for your online marketing. You need a hungry crowd. 11

12 You don t create a niche, but rather you discover a niche. What segment of your market is not being served well? What are they hungry for? You need to know who your audience is before you use your online voice. You need to know who your audience is way before you build a website because the website you build should be for your audience. What does your audience do? Who are they? What are their characteristics? What is the best way to reach your audience? What are they looking for? What is their need? What is it that they are searching for online? Let s say you want to attract buyers to your website. Well, that is a different website than the one you would build for sellers. Sellers and buyers of homes want different things. They don t even search the same way. You want your site to be all about the audience you are speaking to. Let s say you are working with buyers. What kind of buyers? What niche are they in? Are they investors? Vacation home buyers? Lovers of golf? 12

13 Let s say you are working to get referrals from real estate agents. What do real estate agents want when you find them online? Can you provide that to them? If you want to get listings what do your sellers look for online? Are they looking to see who is the agent or broker that knows the most about their neighborhood? Are they absentee owners who need your help and need to know you will take care of things for them since they are not in the property? Most people in business are afraid to niche. They fear shutting out good paying customers that don t fit their niche if everything revolves around their niche. Well, I can tell you first hand from our experience that this is not the case. Not only that, most people who do niche successfully will tell you that they make way more money and profits by niching. But online you can t afford to NOT niche. You do not have the same marketing budget that. They are your competition. If you try to go after the general market that these big boys have control of you are going to be disappointed. Does that mean you can t ever gain on the major players on the search engines? No, you can dominate over them by creating a niche because there is no way they have the time or resources to go after every niche in the country. That is were you and I and other small business owners have the upper hand. We can leverage this to our advantage. 13

14 ************************************************************************************** Mistake # 3 Wrong Keywords The Wrong Keywords Will Get You Nowhere So You Will Be Wasting Your Money. 14

15 The third biggest mistake that entrepreneurs, brokers, lawyers, doctors, stagers, small business owners throughout all lines of business make is using the wrong keywords. If you don t know what a keyword is, you most definitely are on the wrong road with your online marketing unless of course you have not started yet. I can not tell you how many phone calls and s I get asking me why someone is not getting any business from the internet. They will tell me they have a website and that they blog but they are not blogging with the right keywords to meet the searcher. When a person in your niche types certain words into the google search box: 15

16 Those are called keywords. Those keywords must match the keywords that are on your article that you wrote on your blog. Those keywords must match the keywords that are on your website in order for Google to show that person your site as being one of the ten they can choose from on page one on Google. That if of course, if your page is optimized enough in order for Google to choose to pull you up for that search in the first place. The goal is to be on page one of Google SERPS ( Search Engine Results Pages) and to have the #1 spot on that page. The first spot on page one of the results page gets the most clicks from the searchers. ( This is not the ad spaces). This is the organic search results. How do you find out what keywords to use? There are several different ways in which you can do your keyword research. This is a report on the mistakes. I teach keyword research and also do one on one online branding sessions where we do keyword discovery. I am also creating an entire online marketing course just for you that will also include a website and blog as part of that website. Keyword research is misunderstood especially in the real estate space by most SEO consultants and many SEO companies because they don t have the experience of working with buyers and sellers of real estate. We do. We know the buyer and seller personas. This is what we do. I am a full time Realtor and a business consultant for online business branding and strategies. The reason my consulting clients are successful is because I do what they do. I understand this market. 16

17 Most SEO companies will try to sell you on keywords that they think will work or simply just ask you what keywords you want to use! Well, if they don t know, how can they help you? They will choose keywords like, Florida Real Estate. That is a terrible keyword. Do you know why this is a bad keyword phrase? There are 2 reasons: 1. Going after that keyword is WAY too time consuming and expensive. 2. The people typing in that keyword do not even know where in Florida they want to live!! Florida is a huge state! I am not going to sell them a house outside of my market area. Sure, I can refer them out, but that is a lot of chasing leads down just for a referral. Not worth the time, not worth the money or effort. Florida Real Estate is a short tail keyword. People searching for short tail keywords typically are at least 18 months out in the buying process no matter what product they are searching for. However, Wellington Homes For Sale is a much better term to go after. It is still very competitive and is going to take a while. In fact, it took me one year of working on this keyword to get to page one for this term. Now, Wellington Short Sale Agents - we are #1, in fact we dominate the first page of Google. Our competition holds 3 spots on that page but we have the rest for the different websites and platforms I participate in with that keyword. We get listings and now we get buyers from this keyword phrase. 17

18 Wellington Short Sale Agents is a long tail keyword. Not very many people are searching for that keyword but the ones that are, we make the match, and we get the listing or the buyer. Transfer these keywords to the ones people would use to find your products and services. Some keywords do not get any traffic at all, which means no one at all is searching for that keyword. So going after your favorite keywords is not always going to work. It all depends on the search volume or the commercial intent. ************************************************************************************** 18

19 Mistake # 4 No Conversation 19

20 Being Social Is A Critical Component Without social signals - You are wasting your money. Google has made a lot of changes in their algorithms. Many of those changes surround social media and social signals. Social signals are necessary in order to prove that you are a human being with a website and not a software generated website that is run by a spammer. Google protects their customers- those that pay for ads on Google. They are constantly trying to find sites, through their algorithms ( Google is not a person, it is a machine) that are not run or made by humans. One of the main ways Google has figured out how to judge human behavior is through social signals. I am not talking about hanging out on your personal Facebook page chatting with your friends either:). If your website is #1 on page one of Google and you have NO social signals going on all that has to happen is one of your competitors starts a brand new website but adds into the mix; Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest, they will almost certainly take over your spot. 20

21 You don t need to be spending all your time on Facebook and not selling houses or listing houses. That is wrong thinking. There are many Facebook gurus out there telling you that you need to do everything on Facebook. Nothing could be further from the truth. You don t own Facebook. If you spend all your time on Facebook to create your leads for your business and tomorrow Facebook decides to shut down, what happens to all your work? If you own your own website and Google shuts down, your website will still be on Yahoo and Bing and whichever new search engine develops. But you do need to have a Facebook business page that links to your website. You need to spend ten minutes a day on Facebook. You can automate some of the necessary social signals tasks on Facebook and all the other social media platforms you need to be involved in. But Google has to see that your business is on Facebook and that it links to your website and blog. The same can be said about all the major social media platforms. You need to have a business presence on all the major social media platforms and these must link back to your websites. But that is not all. That is one signal. Google s algorithm is now smart enough to pick up the fact that software can generate social media profiles and some spammers set up hundreds of profiles that link back to junk websites. It is about your social conversation. It is about connecting with other people in these social media platforms who talk about you in a good way, Facebook like your articles, bookmark your articles, Google plus your articles, tweet and retweet your articles. 21

22 The most important social signal that is overlooked the most is commenting on articles, blog posts and websites. It is a very simple task and yet many website owners don t even make one comment anywhere that will link back to their site. *********************************************************************************** Mistake # 5 Wrong Branding Online Branding is The New Measuring Stick 22

23 Without Right Branding- You are wasting your money. The fifth mistake is incorrect branding or branding that does not match your niche audience. An example would be that you live in Ohio and work in Ohio but have a website design with a background of a beach on it. Another example of wrong branding is if you have a luxury website but only have inexpensive products on the site. That is not congruent with your message. So you either can t put those products on your luxury site or you must change your site to match your audience. Branding needs to be the message. Your online branding is somewhat similar to off line branding and marketing however it is different because of the conversation. Online branding consists of a few things that are very important to your message. If you want to get customers then your brand needs to be about those customers and have a conversation on their wave length. Today your competition is whoever is on top of the search results pages. There is only room for one in spot #1. How can you brand yourself first to 23

24 your consumers, your niche market in a away that differentiates you from all the other competitors in your marketplace online? How do you convey that message to your audience? The second part of branding is to tell Google that you are the brand for those keywords you are ranking for. Google is all about branding now. They even have a patent pending for being able to figure out what brand goes to which keywords. Gone are the days of making websites that are one size fits all. You can not compete against Pepsi or Nike online. Most entrepreneurs and business owners do not understand online branding. It is all about your avatar. Your buyer persona. It goes back to knowing who your audience is and then creating a brand that is congruent with that audience sprinkled in with the transparency of your story. Forget about flash websites where you have to click to get past the movie on the home page. Google can not read those sites. Webmasters who build those sites charge $12,000 and more for a site that Google won t find. Each month I will get a few phone calls from business owners who have spent thousands of dollars to get websites built that won t be found by their niche audience. In fact, I am Private Coaching a broker/owner right now who has 24

25 wasted over $80,000 in the last three years with webmasters and online marketers that promised her the moon and delivered nothing that worked. The reason they can do this is because we are not usually armed with the education that we need to make decisions on our online marketing products, websites, SEO and so on. Remember if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is. Don t fall for these sales pitches. Also, don t ever buy a website where you have to depend on a webmaster to make small changes for you. Don t buy websites where you can t learn how to make small changes and add content. Learn about who you are. Like kind attracts like kind. So everything must be congruent. Your self, your site, your audience. Don t pretend. People can sniff out fake on line very quickly. ************************************************************************************* 25

26 Mistake # 6 Online Reputation Lack of Assertive Reputation Management 26

27 If you are NOT managing your reputation on line being proactive and assertive- You are wasting your money. Reputation management can not be ignored in today s online and often rumor filled internet. All it takes is one person who gets mad at you to ruin your business. Innocent small business owners have lost their entire businesses because of one person who went around the internet making false claims about the business owner. A lot of business owners tell me they have a great reputation in their community or their home town. But that is not what this is about. Online reputation management is a totally different animal and one that can bite you if you are not proactive and assertive before any thing happens that could possibly hurt your online reputation. Not paying attention to Google reviews, Yahoo reviews, Yelp and other review sites on line is a big mistake many brokers and agents make. You may be the lucky person who never has a bad thing said about you- but you can not count on that to survive the reality of what can happen in the online world. They say that when someone has something good to say about you they tell one or two people but if someone has something bad to say about you they 27

28 tell twenty people. In fact, they want as many people as possible to hear about what they feel about you. Most of the time this stems from hurt feelings or an innocent misunderstanding but can escalate to disaster for one s reputation. If you have twenty people writing a great review on Yelp for you and someone uses Yelp to find an agent in their town, they will read all the good reviews about you. As they read each review, they are conditioned to believe these good reviews because there is power in numbers. People like to vote with the majority. So they will gravitate to become your cheerleader along with the rest of the twenty positive reviewers even though they don t even know you. If they are reading all these great reviews and then suddenly they come across one reviewer who has something negative to say about you they will come to your defense. They are already conditioned to defend you. After all, twenty people can t be wrong. So this guy who has a negative comment must be smoking something. You rule him out as an odd ball. Think about the severity of what I just wrote. This is so important. You have to get your reviews in order, make sure your tweets are good about you, your facebook friends are saying great things about you and so on. It is much easier and inexpensive to set up a positive proactive reputation management campaign than it is to try to smother out a person who wants to ruin your life. When you have a bad review, even just one of them, now you are in the reactive mode. You have to react. That is a defensive posture and can be looked upon negatively by others. To pay to repair a reputation problem costs thousands of dollars each month until it is repaired. Don t find yourself in that position. 28

29 Get control of your online reputation. ************************************************************************************** Thank you for downloading this important Top 6 Mistakes Agents and Brokers Make Marketing On The Internet. For more information you can call my office at: You can me at CoachKaterina@Gmail.com for more information about services regarding any of the top 6 mistakes. If you are interested in having me speak at your event or train your web/social media manager contact me at the above address. For a complimentary marketing consultation call my office number. Pay attention to the SEO Tips news bulletins because I am creating a product that will help you NOT make these SIX mistakes! Make sure to watch your box for important announcements regarding the: Total Online Branding - SEO - Domination Course with your option of a DIY package or a Made For You package. 29

30 WARNING : There is nothing guaranteed on google. If someone tells you they can guarantee to make your site #1- Take your money and Run! Google can and does change. You can do all that is right and tomorrow night, Google could change everything. It is not likely that they will do so, very much improbable but nonetheless to guarantee things that are out of our control is naive or ignorant at best. No one knows the secrets of Google. Anyone claiming to know is not being honest. We use best practices with Google and other search engines. 30