Christopher Smith from Travel Alberta joined the Strong Coffee Marketing Podcast to talk about compelling consumer experiences. In this episode, we focused on creating good offers and packages. What constitutes an offer or a package? We looked at the makings of good offers and packages, and what tourism operators can do to make their offerings more appealing to consumers.

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In the digital world, your business needs a killer keyword strategy to get the most out of your online advertising and PPC (pay-per-click) efforts. After all, potential customers are looking for your services daily, and the majority of them are using search engines in their effort. By being highly visible where your customers are searching, you can get that leg up on your competitors.

As a business how then do you work out what people are searching for online so that they can find you and you are visible to them? This should neither be time-consuming nor difficult. That is part of what we are looking at this week.

The main failure of many keyword strategies is a lack of research and planning. When you build a PPC campaign, you should make sure that the whole experience from the first click to final exit is a relevant and rewarding experience. This is often why PPC is handled by a third-party, as there are many intricacies and facets of planning that play a role. When preparing your plan, you should look at your analytics to determine what content is your most popular, who your customers are and how your website performs when they use it. This will tell you if your website is optimized for their experience, or if changes need to be made. You should look at what your competitors are doing – both for ideas and for things to avoid. You should also look at Google Trends and Keyword Planner to determine the best keywords to target and to get a sense of the potential costs involved. Finally, you should look at your landing pages and determine if they align with your business goals. For example, if you prefer leads via phone – is your website optimized for mobile? Solid preparation will set the groundwork for a solid campaign, and should not be omitted or underestimated.

The first trick is to stick to the very basics! Put yourself in the shoes of your customers, and ask yourself this question: What would I type into Google if I needed my product? The answer will usually be something simple like: “ ” and this should be your first keyword. From there, you can usually think of a few synonyms, and add-on words to further refine your list. Steer clear of very generic terms like just . The problem with these is that you have no context into what the person is really looking for. They could be looking to buy, they could be looking to sell, they could be looking to fix, they could be looking for reviews – you just don’t know. Since you don’t know, don’t waste your money.

The first trick is to stick to the basics! Put yourself in the shoes of the customer. What are the themes you would expect for people searching for your type of business online? Within those themes, you will find words that keep popping up and therein lies your first set of clues!

Stemming from our last point, there’s no need for 200+ keywords per campaign anymore. Use keyword match types to allow in terms that are synonyms to your product/service and use negative keywords to really hone in on the right traffic. If you go and target a large number of keywords that end up not being relevant, or not getting you any traffic, you’ll actually be hurting your overall campaign performance, and negatively affect your costs.

Don’t try to show up for everything online. That affects your quality ranking with Google for starters. As with any reputation, it is very easy to damage it and extremely hard to repair that damage.

5 Common Adwords Keyword Mistakes That Will Kill Your Results

Since we’ve already established there’s no point in guessing what your customers are looking for; you can get right down to it in your ads. Be specific with the service you are offering and make sure it aligns with the keywords you are targeting. This means a person looking for ‘lawyer in Edmonton” will see ads for “The Best Lawyer In Edmonton”. Finally, use the ad space to try and differentiate yourself from your competitors. Ask yourself: ‘What problems does it solve that others can’t?’ Doing this will also save you a tonne of time and money in the long run.

Negative keywords are your way of filtering your traffic. When you set up a keyword strategy, you do your best to capture relevant search traffic, but it’s hard to be perfect. We recommend setting up a solid strategy like above, then checking in on performance after a few days. Look at the actual search queries of your clickers, and refine with negative keywords as you see fit. Negative keywords can take many shapes and forms, so it’s tough to give examples, but they are easy to spot. If the search query is not relevant for one reason or another, the keyword that best indicates irrelevance should be a negative. For example – “Edmonton lawyer school” – in this scenario “school” would be the negative.

5 Tips to Take Advantage of Google’s Keyword Tool

Listen to this week’s Strong Coffee Marketing podcast to delve into the points above and get more tips on how to maximise your Keyword Strategy for your business.

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What’s that old saying, keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

Uttered famously by Michael Corleone in 1974 classic The Godfather Part II this little pop culture cliche imparts a great mantra for business owners: know what your competition is doing and how they’re doing it.

Keeping an eye on your competition has been a part of the business since business was business. And with most businesses having some online presence and strategy, it’s never been easier to keep tabs on your competition. Let’s get started with six tips on how to check out your competition online.

Keep an eye on your competitor’s social media accounts. They’re out there sharing content and engaging with customers and potential customers (if they’re not, they probably should be) so you might as well learn from their successes and failures. You’ll want to pay attention to:

Try searching Google for your competition and see what social media channels they’re on and scope them out. If they’re getting a lot of loyal engagement you know, there might be something to learn from them. Set yourself apart from the competition by understanding how they do and how you can improve. With that said, don’t rip off their social media strategy or their content, nobody likes a copycat.

Customer reviews play a pretty pivotal role in a buyer’s journey. Think about how you might go about making a purchase decision. Do you do a quick Google search for what you’re going to buy and check out the reviews other’s may have left? I know I do. In fact, 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Customer reviews are important and there’s a wealth of insight to learnt for them. Be on the lookout for:

Both, positive and negative reviews will help give you insight into where there might be market gaps in your industry or where you might be able to pick up some slack and win some of your competition’s customers. Keep on top of your online reviews is crucial and it actually might be your best social media strategy.

It’s smart to look closely at your competition’s online reviews but you need to keep an on the big picture as well. Google Alerts is a great way to stay easily informed on what’s being said about you and your business online but also what’s being said about your competition.

Google Alerts allows you to monitor the web for interesting new content, in this case, your business and what your competition. Set up alerts for your company name, your competition, and your industry in general. You’d be surprised at what you might learn. Get creative with Google Alerts; they’re an incredible tool.

If your competitors had a brick and mortar store, you’d probably check it out. A website is no different in the digital age. Your competitor’s website is their brick and mortar store and deserves at least a glance.

Web sites are much more than just a one-page billboard with some contact information on there. They help sell your services or product and inform the customer as to why you’re the best choice to help with their problem. Ask yourself:

Websites are all a little different and often service a particular strategy or goal. Learn from the work your competitors have put in and apply those lessons to your web properties. Get a top level understanding of they’ve positioned themselves and how you might be able to best them.

Email marketing works. While marketers are usually on to the new shiny thing customers, love the old’ faithful. In 2015, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment was $44.25. Marketers consistently rank email marketing one of the best tactics when it comes to acquisition, conversion and retention.

Try signing up for your competitor’s email newsletters and see what type of content or promotions they’re sharing with their mail list.

See how you stack up against your competitors in the SERPS (search engine results page) for the keywords you’re trying to target. Without getting too deep into the SEO (search engine optimization) analysis, it’s important to take a look at where you stack up against the competition in the search results. Consider testing these few things when you’re scoping out your competition’s rankings.

The post 6 Tips on How to Check Out Your Competition Online appeared first on Strong Coffee Marketing.

Bed and breakfasts have changed from the doily filled guestrooms and excruciating small talk over breakfast to an economical innovative way to spend some time in a new city and experience your destination with the help of locals.

Bed and Breakfasts have also taken a leap into the digital age with the advent of peer-to-peer rockstar Airbnb. Founded in 2008, Airbnb has taken the sharing economy to a new level allowing hosts to put everything from a spare room to an igloo to a private island up for short term rent to would be travelers. In fact, it’s pretty hard to believe that there are over 2 million listings on the site and about 500,000 nightly stays.

With that many listings, your B&B will need to stand out from the crowd. Here’s some Do’s and Don’ts to consider when marketing your bed and breakfast:

Great photos are a pretty big part of your marketing efforts, but they don’t need to break the bank. There are some tips and tricks for taking great photos for your website with your smartphone that don’t cost anything but time. If you feel like your pictures need a bit of an update here’s a few things to consider:

Reviews are important. Whether you’re trying to put heads in bed or sell a product, what other people say about your business online to other people is of the utmost importance. It might be your best social media strategy to mind your reviews, but they’re also a source of great customer feedback:

The post Dos and Don’ts of Bed & Breakfast Marketing appeared first on Strong Coffee Marketing.

Brand Ambassadors are people who use and talk about your brand in a positive and relatable way, preferably, in front of a large audience. No matter how fantastic your product or service might be it’s hard to promote without the help of awesome word of mouth recommendations that come from customers that sincerely love your brand.

With social media firmly grasping its way into everyone’s everyday life, that’s where you’ll find some of the largest and most engaged audience. Brand ambassadors can help build your business by building brand awareness with a much larger reach as social media has made larger audiences much more accessible.

Brand Ambassadors are people who eat, sleep, and breathe your brand. They’re usually already loyal customers who know and love what you sell or the service you offer. They can also be customers who have been extremely pleased with the service they just received and want to share their experience with their social following and friends.

Traditionally, brand ambassadors were often celebrities who had large social clout and air time. Now, the makeup of brand ambassadors sits more firmly with the blogger or the social media guru who has cultivated a large and loyal following.

Through social media, brands have been getting the benefit of positive contributions from their fans and followers without even having a formal brand ambassador program or a plan to build one.

The way most people talk about their user experience has changed. Nowadays a customer who might have had a great experience can share it instantly with a potentially large social media following, which extends your brand awareness. In fact, millennials are much more likely to show their purchases to their friends on social media and write online reviews. Customers as a whole don’t trust brands but they do trust other customers. Passionate recommendations from a fellow customer will be taken far more seriously and then a message from the brand itself.

So we know that brand ambassadors are important but where are they and how do I find them? Well, it’s a lot more simple than you might expect. Hunt down people who love your brand or locate the people, your target market, that will love your and don’t know it yet.

Bloggers have a lot of power and usually, they know it. With a single post, an influential blogger can shape social media chatter and alter public opinion. This is exactly what you’re looking for when developing a brand ambassador program or looking to reach out and make connections.

Now that you have an idea of what a brand ambassador is and how to locate and reach out to them, you’ll need a strategy in place to feed your brand ambassador machine.

A solid brand ambassador program starts with your most loyal customers and your employees. They know your brand message the best and can share it with a much larger and engaged audience that you alone couldn’t reach.

The post Turn Customers into Brand Ambassadors appeared first on Strong Coffee Marketing.

So you have your social media profiles and blog all set up. The tools are in place for you to start feedings those machines with great content, but where do you start?

Generating content ideas for your website’s blog or social media profiles can sometimes seem like an overwhelming task. Everyone understand the importance of blogging and content for your business but one of the hardest parts of the process is finding out what to talk about.

In this blog, we’ll be discussing some of the platforms, processes and tools, you might consider when generating your content and blog ideas.

It’s a question we hear a lot as content marketers, what should I be blogging about?

The short answer: You should be blogging about your industry, answering your customer’s frequently asked questions, offering a behind the scenes look at how your business operates, and sharing your industry knowledge. Sometimes the best content is right in front of you.

Sharing your thoughts, theories, or perspective on your industry is a great place to start when trying to figure out what to blog about. You’re a savvy entrepreneur and have a lot to say about your chosen industry, don’t squander that perspective. Use it to create blog posts and social media content that your customers and competitors will look twice at.

As a business owner you undoubtedly get a lot of questions about the services or products you provide to your customer base. Use those questions to help spark both blog and social media content. The truth of the matter is that if one customer had a question about your product or service, others will have it as well. Be proactive and give those looking to have their questions answered, the answers you know they’re already looking for.

Providing a glimpse into how your business operates and functions is a great source of content ideas. We use the example of a local Food Truck business in this week’s Strong Coffee Marketing podcast and suggest a look inside the food truck with a video during a lunch or dinner rush. Using your smartphone you’re able to capture people’s attention with something that might seem trivial to you and your co-workers.

Sharing industry knowledge is arguably the bedrock of content marketing and is one we often miss. Creating content around the knowledge you already have in your particular industry starts your journey to becoming an authority in your space. When you become an authority in your industry people, or customers, are more likely to turn to you for your service or product. Here’s a great example of sharing your knowledge. Be helpful in the knowledge you share and try and help potential customers looking for a trustworthy knowledgeable business to help with their problems.

We all use tools to help make tasks a little easier, so why not look for the proper tools when trying to come up with content ideas for your business’s blog or social media feed.

There are a number of tools out there to help with the generation of content ideas. Here are some of the ones we like to use at Strong Coffee Marketing:

Staying informed is not only a great way to keep on top of the latest trends, news, and ongoings in your industry, it’s also a great way to help peak some content ideas. RSS feeds are simply a way to get the latest published content from your favourite websites, blogs, or news sources.

To help bring all the new information from your favourite industry blogs and website, those who subscribe to rss feed usually user a rss feed reader, something like Feedly. Here’s a great tutorial on how to set up an rss feed and how to customize it to your needs.

It’s not always easy to find those really hard hitting articles or blog posts out there. Sometimes you have to dig a little bit deeper – that’s where BuzzSumo comes in. The tool takes your search query and shows what articles have been shared the most in a defined time frame. Read more about BuzzSumo is past blog post and find out how you can use this tool to your content marketing advantage.

Reddit is a social news website and forum where news stories and images are curated and promoted by site members. The site is made up of hundreds of sub communities known as subreddits. Each subreddit focuses on specific topics such as politics, technology or music – there’s a subreddit for almost anything.

This is a great place to find new content, ask questions, or contribute to the conversation when it comes to your industry. As we talked about sharing industry knowledge as a potential content idea generator, Reddit is a great avenue to take.

We use social media to chat with our friends, to find interesting news and entertainment articles, and to vent our worldly frustrations, so why not use for content idea generation. Whichever platform you might use to keep in touch with the internet there is surely a community for your industry. Find them and start following and participating in the conversation, you’ll be surprised at the with how helpful it can be.

Generating content ideas doesn’t have to be a struggle every time you sit down to write your blog or social media post. With a little knowledge and some helpful tips there are plenty of way to get those brain waves rolling.

The post Where to Find Blog Content Ideas appeared first on Strong Coffee Marketing.

Sometimes as a business owner you simply do not have the time and resources to execute grand marketing plans. Many entrepreneurs are left wondering how to maximize their efficiencies without necessarily breaking bank or devoting too much of the little time they have to improving the visibility of their business.

You want to market your business but you don’t want that to be too taxing, right? You want to put more money back into the business than spend it on other things. How then can your marketing activities align with those goals? Digital marketing is a good start when you consider budget constraints and return on investment.

What better way to use digital marketing than turning to the one device you have with you at all times; your smartphone! Smartphones are extremely powerful devices that constantly open doors we never knew existed. Savvy business owners should be aware of this fact. Use it to your advantage!

Here are some easy ways to market your business with your smartphone

You can turn your smartphone camera into a smart business tool. Capture moments and devote time to doing it well. This includes capturing photos and videos. If you are a ski hill then you can get pictures of the ski slopes from numerous angles, people having fun at your ski hill, even the sky. Using the restaurant example from the very first Strong Coffee podcast, if you are a restaurant you could take pictures of well-presented meals, restaurant set up, staff having fun etc.

Among other ideas, your camera can also be your tool of choice to get instant video testimonials from satisfied clients and get real-time product images for enquiries. You might not always use every picture or video you take but one thing you always want to have is options.

Before you dig into the world of social media, follow these 5 golden rules as a foundation for how you use social for business:

iii) learn what’s important to your audience

Use your social media apps on your smartphone to create content that ignites and engages your audience. Make sure that it is relevant and resonates with the people who make up your customer base. Here are some great social media apps to turn to on your smartphone as business tools:

Customer service – Many individuals are gravitating towards social media as platforms to engage with their favourite companies and quickly obtain information. With that in mind, your social channels can be your customer service kiosk. If you are helpful, transparent, answer questions and skillfully join conversations, you could turn customers into some solid brand advocates for your business.

Blog Updates – delicate balance between quantity and quality. Blogs often are about consistency and value. Have you considered blogging while on the train home or when you have a bit of down time while on the go? Numerous platforms that host blogs make this an easier-than-you-thought experience.

Review platforms – use these to know what your customers are saying about your business. It is a good way to respond to the good, the bad and the ugly to show that you take what your customers say seriously. You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. For your marketing, such an approach builds brand perception. You can then post the good reviews to your website.

Both have excellent apps.

Use RSS or newsfeed aggregators – Building a personalized newsfeed. Why is this important in your marketing strategy? It’s a good way to find ideas, learn more about and keep in touch with happenings within your industry. Knowledge of which is essential to your strategic direction. Closing yourself off from what is happening around you is not necessarily a good idea.

What the phone was designed to do – video call customers or follow up with them as a way to build relationships and go above and beyond for customer satisfaction

The major stepping stone to using your smartphone for business is realizing the power of apps. Knowing how to fully use your smartphone and the different apps available to you will help you to fulfill your marketing strategy more efficiently especially if you are pressed for time of which many business owners are.

You can get more information on this topic by listening to the Strong Coffee Marketing podcast where we discuss this topic at length. Episodes are available on iOS and Android via iTunes and TuneIn.

Use your smartphone to the benefit of your business!

The post Easy Ways to Market your Business with Your Smartphone appeared first on Strong Coffee Marketing.

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are all great social media channels but which one’s right for your small family restaurant? That’s the million dollar questions isn’t it?

Strong Coffee Marketing has put together a podcast to talk about the ins and out of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter when it comes to marketing your small family restaurant on social media.

We chat about the wide audience of Facebook and how it help with grow your social community. We talk about growing the conversation in and around your family resturant on Twitter. We even discuss the visually appealing side of Instagram and how it help you sell more of what you make, food!

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