I’d like to start this post with an apology. The point of this blog is to educate business owners on how they can take advantage of internet strategies to help grow their businesses. Today’s post will have a hint of frustration and self promotion in it, but I don’t know how to make my point any other way. So . . . I’m sorry in advance.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve presented several businesses with proposals for helping them grow their businesses online. These are proposals that I believe will work to help the businesses accomplish their goals. It’s true that what I do doesn’t always work, but the numbers make sense most of the time. And what I do isn’t exactly rocket science: “I get interested prospects who are searching for your products and services to find your business. You sell them. Simple enough.”
But I’ve had so many business owners tell me that, because of the economy, no one is searching for their products and services. They assume that because no one is calling their yellow pages ad, there aren’t any interested customers out there.
They aren’t exactly telling me “no”, but they aren’t saying “yes” either. Well I’ve come to discover that the real problem is that we all believe this to be true. The business owners believe it. I believe it. And no one succeeds.
(There’s the frustration I promised. Now for the self-promotion.)
Yesterday, I got the privilege of speaking with business owners in Florida, where the economy is arguably the worst in the country. At the end of my seminar, a LocalEdge customer came up and wanted to share a testimonial. Here’s what he had to say. (Forgive me if the quote isn’t exact, as I wasn’t taking notes at the time.)
“People ask me ‘How’s business?’ I tell them, ‘I sell putting greens and artificial turf in a depressed economy. How do you think business is?’ (pause for effect) ‘It’s great! I get nearly all of my business online and because of the campaign that I’m running with LocalEdge, my phone is ringing. In the short time I’ve worked with them, I’ve gotten SEVERAL very good jobs for thousands of dollars. I know they record the clicks and the phone calls, but I don’t even have time to look at that because I’m so busy out selling fake grass.'”
When I heard this, I have to admit that I acted like it was no big deal. Of course it was working. I had just spent the last hour and a half telling the seminar attendees how people are spending up to fourteen hours a week on the internet, and how it is THE PLACE that people go when they need a solution, how it is THE PLACE for looking up businesses.
But on the inside, I was rejoicing. The self doubt about my services and my concerns about the economy were push aside. I was proud of what I was doing, and I wasn’t going to be so nice the next time someone told me they couldn’t advertise with me because of the economy. By being nice, and accepting “no” for an answer, I was actually HURTING their chances for success.
I also recently got a call from one of my long time happy customers. He’s a commercial roofer in Lee’s Summit who has always done well with our services, and who had referred me to his brother who is also a commercial roofer in rural Missouri about a month ago. He called to tell me that his brother owed me a steak dinner because he had just closed a $60,000 job thanks to his LocalEdge advertising. If a third of that is profit, his advertising campaign is now paid for for the next two and a half years! Then he proceeded to tell me that he had just closed a $40,000 job, so I said that he owed me a steak dinner too. We ended up agreeing that since his brother got the bigger job, he could just pay up with a hamburger. 🙂
Look. The point of this blog isn’t to rant about customers who aren’t telling me “yes” or to promote LocalEdge. The point of this blog is to translate internet gobbledygook into something that business owners can understand. So in the spirit of my blog, here’s my translation: “Customers are looking for your products and services on the internet – despite what’s going on with the economy. You want them? Get in front of them – even if it isn’t with my help. Just do something to take advantage of all that the internet has to offer.”
I started with an apology, and I’ll end with one. This was a much less objective post, and I’ve clearly gotten a little more emotional than when talking about how to geo-target your ads. For that I’m sorry. But if even one business owner reading this takes action and it helps their business to move forward during this economic garbage we are all facing then it will have been worth any feathers I may have ruffled. To those with the feathers, I am sorry.
Thanks!
David McBee
