Spark Live presented by Spark Marketer

• They way we think customers get to our website.

1. Search for a product or service on a search engine (Google, Bing)
2. Go to Facebook organic and click on the link to the website

• Is this true?

1. Yes
2. And No

• How else do they get there?

1. Referred through Facebook
2. Referred through Next Door or other local and neighborhood sites and apps
3. Ads (Google, Facebook, IG, Messenger, etc.)
4. Word of mouth
5. Billboards
6. Reviews

• Truth is, it’s normally a combination or two or more

a multichannel approach to sales that focus on providing seamless customer experience whether the client is shopping online from a mobile device, a laptop, desktop, or in a brick-and-mortar store. ... Even when in-store, they will still go online to continue their research.

Okay, I get it from a retail shopping point of view but I’m a home service guy. Why should I care?

There are a few things in the definition we’d like to point out.

• Seamless customer experience

• Does your website, trucks, uniforms, invoices, messaging, etc. reflect the same seamless customer experience you would like your customer to have?

• Mobile device, a laptop, desktop

• When consumers are online do they see the same messaging, colors, design, logo across multiple devices (responsive design) and platforms? (FB, Insta, TikTok, website, trucks, billboards, etc.)

• Continue their research

• When conducting research what will they see across platforms, on reviews on multiple platforms, are your listings consistent across the web, are you paying attention to what is being said about you and your company? 

Omnichannel Marketing is more than going into a store and shopping the prices on Amazon. It is about consistency in branding, messaging, and your customers journey in every place they might find you online and off.

Why is it so important?

• You want to be remembered (recall)
• You want to be noticed
• You want to be known
• You want to be the peoples choice

Consistency is key in omnichannel marketing

Let’s start with Original Images.

• People want to see who will be coming to their house to do the work
• They want to know it’s someone in their community
• They want to see what YOU do, how YOU do it and why they should hire YOU.
• Stock photos are slick and out of touch and should only be used if;
• • You have no other option (no photos what so ever)
  • Your pictures are so bad that _______ (fill in the blank)
  • You don’t own a camera, or a smart phone (almost impossible!)

If a picture paints a 1000 words then how many does a video paint?

• Videos are just moving pictures
• Lets you get your message out on many platforms and usable many times
• Keeps you at the forefront of your competition
• Shows your personality (or lack of one…)
• Gives you multiple opportunities to shine in your community

The bottomline is…

• If you’re not using video and original pictures you are not putting your best foot forward.
• If you’re not using video and original pictures you are falling behind in marketing because Google, Facebook and all the rest love original pictures and video
• If you’re not using video and original pictures your letting your competition get in front of you because they are using video and original pictures in their marketing efforts
• If you’re not using video and original pictures maybe it’s time to rethink your reasoning and start doing it now that you know you really should.

What is a Chatbot?

• It is a computer program that simulates and processes human conversation
• It allows humans to interact with digital devices as if they were communicating with a real person
• It is programed to work independently from a human operator

Why use a chatbot when you can just talk to people?

• They are available 24/7
• They can generate more conversations
• They can handle multiple conversations at the same time (You know from all those inquiries)
• They are consistent - no mood swings and never sick
• They can collect and analyze data
• They can help you personilze conversations with customers
• They speak multiple languages
• They can automate many processes
• They can be deployed across many channels
• • Slack
  • Facebook
  • Messenger
  • Text, etc…
• And finally, as more and more consumers become accustomed to chatbots, they will become increasingly crucial for a positive customer experience

How to get started with chatbots

• Start with setting up your Facebook chatbot. This will give you a great intro and let you see how a chatbot can work for you when you’re not around to answer every channel.

What exactly is conversational marketing?

• People want to talk to people
• • Consumers have a question, 82% want an “immediate” response
  • facilitates a personal & instant connection between marketers and customers
  • This form of marketing is available across multiple channels
  • It allows brands to meet customers on their terms: on the devices, platforms and time schedules that suit the customer not the business

What are some ways your business can facilitate conversational marketing?

• Chatbots
• Personalized videos
• Personalized emails
• Virtual selling assistants
• Automation

The challenges conversational marketing bring to a service business

• All the platforms that need to be monitored
• How do you pritorize platforms and phone calls?
• Hiring the right people for this position
• Using automation in a smart intelligent way
• Technology 

Who writes the guidelines?

• Quality Raters write the guidelines. Google’s quality raters are a team of anywhere from 10–100k people that Google has hired. They determine how well Google’s search results solve a user’s needs.
• • Google uses their feedback to help understand the impact of algorithmic tweaks.

The document has three main sections:

• Page Quality Rating Guidelines – This section explains the main factors that quality raters should look for in the search results. These include the purpose of the page, E‑A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) signals, content quality, ownership of a website, and the website’s reputation.
• Understanding Mobile User Needs –This section breaks down how Google views mobile interaction.
• Needs Met Rating Guidelines – This scale evaluates how well a search result solves mobile user needs.

The high points that matter!

• Pay attention to what other sites say about you
• Address positive and negative reviews (we have talked about this for years!)
• Show off your expertise
• Clarify who is responsible for information on the page
• Keep your About Us page updated and current
• Add extra E A T signals for Your Money or Your Life sites
• • Health + fitness
  • Safety
  • Shopping
  • Finance
  • Government or law
  • News
  • Groups of people (specialized groups like disability, nationality, veterans)
  • College
  • Jobs
• Ensure your website clicks work deeper into the site
• • Test your interactive content. Use any tools or calculators on your site and make sure they work.
  • Watch embedded videos. Videos are a common source of UX issues. Make sure any video embeds play as expected and don’t negatively impact the user experience in other ways.
  • Go through your checkout. Add products to your cart and go through the checkout process to ensure everything works as expected.
• Avoid low quality practices
• • Overly shocking or exaggerated post titles (when the page title elicits a click but then still leaves the user confused).
  • Copied main content or scraped content This isn’t to be confused with syndicated content, which Google says is OK if done correctly.
• Make sure ads don’t distract from the content.
• Make your 404 pages informative
• Pay attention to keyword intent and freshness

What Google really wants

• Its algorithm to reward high-quality content and avoid malicious or thin content.
• High-quality content isn’t content that just “looks good”; it also needs to be helpful.
• Site reputation doesn’t stop at the site level—off-page factors play a bigger role in Google’s algorithm than you might think.

Bottom line: These guides are written by real people, which should make you feel a little bit better about the rules and guidelines.

• Marketing analytics is a set of technologies and methods used to transform raw data into marketing insights.
• The goal of marketing analytics is to maximize ROI from an enterprise’s marketing initiatives. 
• Marketing analytics encompasses tools for planning, managing, and evaluating these efforts across every channel.

Establishing the KPI’s for your business

• Marketers use established business metrics, and sometimes create new KPIs, to measure the success of their organizations’ marketing initiatives. They include:
• • CTR
  • ROI
  • ROAS
  • Profitability segmented by demographic
  • Churn rate
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Public perception

Benefits of marketing analytics

• Analytics makes advertising more effective and automates many rote tasks
• Marketing analytics helps stakeholders achieve a comprehensive view across all marketing channels, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, and social media.
• Analytics can clarify the big picture, as well as dig down into more granular marketing trends.
• Marketing analytics tools improve lead generation by providing the insights needed to optimize advertising efforts and target the most profitable consumers. Better leads generate more sales and improved ROI.
• Marketing analytics provides insights into customer behavior and preferences. Businesses can then tailor their marketing initiatives to meet the needs of individual consumers.
• Marketing analytics enables real-time decision support as well as proactive management.
• Modern analytics tools make it easy for stakeholders to analyze data as it comes in, so marketing can be adjusted as required by changing trends, and they also allow businesses to use predictive analytics to anticipate those trends rather than react to them.

If it’s so important why doesn’t everyone take advantage of marketing analytics?

• It can be challenging at times.
• • Centralizing the information can be hard coming from multiple sources
  • Businesses lack of analytics experience and understanding
  • Analytics cannot answer revenue questions when revenue is separate from analytic data
  • Marketing analytics are different in different industries (KPI’s, Goals, etc.)
  • Data collection concerns

How to use marketing analytics

• Make it a point to understand the goals of the company and how analytics can help you reach those goals.
• Identify the KPI’s to watch for the designated goals
• Understand search marketing
• • Website
  • Google Ads, Bing Ads, etc.
  • SEO
  • Facebook Ads, etc.
• Social Media will have different goals and KPI’s
• • Use the platform’s analytics to drill down further
• Email will also have different goals and KPI’s
• • Most of these platforms also have analytics

Most of these can be brought together with Google Analytics so you can see them in one place. AND it’s free!

When you rely on Facebook to market your business and communicate with customers, getting thrown in Facebook ‘Jail’ can be more than just an inconvenience. So… 

✅ How do you stay out of Facebook Jail?

✅ What can you do if you find yourself in Facebook Jail?

✅ How do you know what you did to land there, so you can avoid it in the future?

We’re covering all that and more on this week’s Spark Live.

• When should you do a website review? (every 6 months or…)

1. Have you changed (added or removed) services?
2. Have you fired, hired, lost, or found new staff?
3. Did you rebrand the logo? Use a different logo on a truck wrap, etc.?

• What should you review?

• The words! How long has it been since you actually “read” the site?

1. The pictures. Are they up to date?
2. The videos. Do you have them, are they current, do they need to be redone?
3. The testimonials. Are they current? Do you have better ones now to use?

• When to think about a refresh or redo

1. Are you seeing other sites in your area that look newer and more inviting?
2. Is your phone number in a prominent position? (Upper right hand side of header)
3. Do you have testimonials in a prominent position on the homepage?
4. Do you have a nice team picture on the homepage?
5. Is your website really slow?
6. Do you look at your website and hate it?
7. Are customers and/or employees telling you it sucks!?

• What’s the difference between a refresh and a redo?

1. Refresh uses the same logo, colors, and theme and reworks, adds, and subtracts to give you an updated modern look and feel.
2. Redo normally has new branding, colors, and a totally different look and feel.

• What to be aware of when you do a redo with a different company.

1. 301 redirects for SEO purposes.

94% of consumers have used a business information site to find information about a local business in the last 12 months. Why?

• To find new local businesses to consider (66%)
• Find businesses they have heard about but never used before (66%)
• To find information on a business they have used before (48%)

What are the most commonly used sources of business information?

• 1) Google (89%)
• 2) Facebook (48%)
• 3) Yelp (32%)
• 4) Instagram (32%)
• 5) Siri (18%)
• 11% of consumers used Waze, 15% used Google Home, and 18% Siri (which uses Google for its broad search results, and Apple Maps for local information). This means that a grand total of 91% of consumers used the Google search engine for local business information. You can find the entire breakdown here: https://www.brightlocal.com/research/business-listings-trust-report/

85% of consumers found incorrect or incomplete information on a business listing in the last year. In addition, 77% saw conflicting information on a business across different online directories. 75% of consumers contacted or visited a business but it didn’t offer the product or service that it said it did online. The reason this is so important is;

• Finding incorrect information on a business listing would stop 63% of consumers from using that business.
• Only 8% of consumers said they definitely wouldn’t be stopped from using a business due to incorrect listings.

What to make sure is correct.

• Phone number (66%)
• Address (60%)
• Business name
• Opening hours
• Email
• Photos - 45% of consumers say that poor-quality or outdated photos would damage their trust.

42% would call the business if the contact details were wrong online, while 20% would look elsewhere online to check the address. But, 39% would either jump ship to an alternative business or give up their search entirely. 

In the past 12 months, 81% of consumers visited a business that said online it was open, but that was actually closed due to the pandemic. 76% of consumers arrived at a business too early or late because its opening hours were wrong online.

Impact of Local Business Listings

• 87% clicked through to a website from a business listing
• 86% clicked through to find the website no longer there or the link was broken
• 80% contacted the business through the listing but never got a response from the business
• 72% called a wrong number that was associated with the business online
• 64% visited the wrong location because the address was wrong
• 63% tried to reach a business through social channels and never got a response

In Summary: Keep your local business listings up to date and correct. Especially around holidays when people forget to update that information.