Video is used for training, commercials, infomercials, internal communications and trade shows to name a few. Clearly video is powerful and using it to engage your customers is a priority. It is overwhelming keeping up with the latest trends for your website, however, there is help out there. A good production company will help you achieve these goals affordably and effectively. My company Clear Vision Video is a leading Boston video production company . We are on the forefront of bringing video to the web quickly and affordably. Statistics show that consumers react to video on the web. Three out of five consumers will watch up to two minutes of a product video and up to 174% of shoppers who view a video are more likely to purchase than those who did not.

Video can increase the time spent on your website because people will watch a video. Video on your website will improve your Google rank, turn visitors into customers and increase sales from your marketing investment. Videos should represent who you are or what your business is about. They should be short but targeted. Creative ideas which reach outside the norm are really effective and often attention grabbers. Online video does not make sense for all businesses. If having an online presence is important to your business and driving traffic and sales is important, video is a must.

Here is a short video for a Brewing Company website…

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Posted from http://clearvisionvideo.com/video-is-a-must-for-your-website/

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Here is the overal approach that single to multi-location businesses need to take to optimize for local searches

1. Create a optimized local landing page on your core domain. It can be a subdomain as long as it is linked through a breadcrumb trail back to your core site.
2. Geolocal content, well researched keywords, nap information on each page (name, address, phone), conversion focused design
3. Optimize for mobile searchers as local and mobile are intertwined more than ever.
4. Implement best practice on-site seo but more importantly, local seo, including kml, geositempas, schema.org, facebook open graph code, etc. (if you are using wordpress, check out this great new plugin: Local SEO Plugin for WordPress
5. Submit to G+ Local as a verified local business, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Foursquare and local aggregators
6. Set benchmark of current rankings and watch over the improved visibility over a 90+ day period
7. Continue your link building and social media strategy to really boost your local search rankings

We do all of this for our local business clients to our 100+ multi-location businesses and franchise systems. Scalability + Local SEO Best Practices will prove to be the winning formula for optimial local seo results!

Check out the: Empower Your Franchise Brand E-Book, specifically where we talk about some basic steps that you as a franchisor / franchisee, multi-location/single location business can take to get you found and chosen on the  local search engines. You can also read this recent write up from our friend Andrew Shotland and our partners at Yext.com.

Quote of Joseph Mohay’s answer to What would be a good seo strategy for a franchising company with multiple local based franchisees? on Quora

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1: How do I use Social Media to market my National Franchise to other potential franchisees?

2: How do we scale Social Media for our Franchise to the many locations across the country?

3: What are we doing wrong with our current Social Media strategy?

There are many intricacies that each franchise must consider before answering these questions.

The nature of your franchise

Are you in a regulated industry? Does your business include handling of proprietary information, either your own or that of your customers? Does public communication constantly need to be approved by legal before being shared? Is there potential risk of real damage to your company or your customer by inadvertent sharing of confidential information? Are you in a position where you can quickly do damage control if something bad happens? This may be true with certain companies in the health, law, insurance or governmental fields. If this is the case, consider whether you are able to put adequate controls in place to permit real-time (or frequent) social media interaction at a franchisee level.  You also might want to consider how you structure your marketing department.  Do you have specific territories that are managed by local marketing directors?  etc etc.

Individual presence vs one, overall brand

For instance, are there parts of your business that are different location to location? All franchisees believe their markets are different, and, in fact, they often are. They may be urban or suburban. They may have customers with different demographics or socio-economic status.  But are they so different that you accommodate that difference by allowing variation in your products, pricing, coupon offers, marketing, promotions, décor, etc.? If the answer is yes, entrusting franchisees with locally oriented social media may actually be more beneficial, not only for the customer, but for your workload too. Some franchises, however, may make more sense just having one Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter account to encompass all locations.

Budget

Are you willing to invest in consultative resources to ensue that both your corporate team and local franchisees are educated online reputation management, content curation/ generation and measurement?  If so, you need to have the ability to put together social media guidelines and a policy that makes sense for your franchise.  You also need to schedule training for each your locations on best practices in social strategy, paid advertising, positioning in the local markets.  Whether you go with a centralized approach or local, you need to be ready to invest in hiring someone or a 3rd party to handle this for you.

Having said this, I’ve put together 2 ways to market your franchise using Social Media that any franchise can start today.

1: Create a Community

Being a part of a community will help market your franchise on so many levels.  For example, if you’re a commercial cleaning franchise and you want to attract more franchises in regions that you don’t currently have them, you can utilize social media to start combining the appealing entrepreneurial mentality of your target market along side your cleaning opportunity.  More specifically starting up conversations on social channels with these people and getting them engaged with your website, start nurturing them with email content, and tying in the social network amplification effect by having their interactions with your community amplify out to their network.  You can then identify influencers and people more engaged with your brand to do further marketing amplification.  I recommend partnering with agency that specializes in working with franchises on this level.

 2: Local Optimization

Implementation of a social media strategy  for your franchise can come from many forms.   Most common are contests, updates, pictures, video and measurement.   Now with the focus that Google (Google Plus Local) has on local and mobile, you have to start thinking about social media from these angles.  You also have to think about how other local social media sites like Foursquare, Yelp and listing sites like YP.com affect your local SEO.   Ask yourself things like… Do all 3000 locations of my franchise have the most up to date location data?  Are people finding me on Google Maps? Are my franchisors active enough on social media enough to affect the search engine results of local consumers?  What happens when I want to change that data?  How in the heck do I manage it!?  Are my local listings affecting my overall SEO?  What are people saying about me on local social media sites?  You should seriously consider all of these questions and take immediate action internally or through an agency has had experience in this area.

3: Listen

Ill keep this short. Too many brands and small businesses are using social media to blast out messages. No one cares about your widget.  The fact of the matter is that millions of people are on social channels, engaging in conversations relevant to your local car wash business.  You should be engaging with these people to HELP them with their daily life.  In turn, they will follow you and share your content.  Listening can also come in the form of Research and Development.  Target your listening into other communities similar to your franchise and listen to what people are saying.  You’ll be surprised on what you can learn about your target demographic by just putting your ear to the wall.

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Do you have any franchise marketing success stories?  Have you used social listening tools to capture good insights about your current or potential customers?  Please comment below.

The post 3 Ways to use Social Media to Market Your Franchise appeared first on Integrated Digital Marketing | Local Internet Marketing Company.

With the arrival of social media, the increasing relevance of Search Engine Optimization, the ability to manage our online reputation,  and the need to analyze all of our online activity in one place, it’s increasingly apparent that companies require an integrated digital marketing strategy that works  in concert to connect everything.

No longer is it acceptable to build only a beautiful website without taking into account all the elements of proper onsite Search Engine Optimization, user experience (UX) and ways to capture leads. This includes title-tag alignment with relevant key words on each page.  It’s also imperative to ensure that your company is listed in:

• Major search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo.
• 100+ online directories such as Yelp, Trip Advisor and major internet Yellow Pages.

Trying to manage an integrated, Local Search Engine Marketing program involves extensive time and a high level of expertise.

The majority of businesses today don’t have the time or knowledge to manage the complexities of an integrated digital marketing strategy. Working with several vendors to meet the individual needs of a company is time consuming and lacks cohesion. Due to the complexity in today’s digital marketing world, it’s more important than ever to have the right marketing partner.

Because of this, we’ve listed 4 questions you need to ask the potential agency that would handle your local optimization and digital marketing strategies.    

“What’s going on inside your agency?”    

Take a look at the business model of the companies you interview to manage your local marketing needs.  Do they take an in-house approach and hire a full staff to manage everything within the agency?  How much time are they willing to put into listening to your business goals? What is the company culture like?

“Do you offer the service that’s right for me?” 

Not only is the experience important, but truly finding a digital marketing agency that will manage all of the needs of your multi-faceted business is imperative.  This includes working with a partner that offers a complete portfolio of products and services to form a unified strategy.  Every business is different.  Therefore it’s important for the local-focused marketing agency to be flexible enough to adapt to the way your specific business operates.

“What is your experience in working with small to medium sized business?”

Running a commercial during the Super Bowl or buying an ad in Sports Illustrated sound like awesome marketing promotions and can be a major ego booster.  But for local, small to medium sized businesses, this is somewhat unrealistic. Unlike those corporations or larger entities that have piles of cash to burn, your small business needs to be able to attribute a much tighter ROI to your marketing spend as well as build customer relationships along the way.  The agency you choose should be able to demonstrate success with other small to medium sized businesses and give you ways to measure your marketing investments.

“What is your pricing structure?” 

Most local agencies or consultants work by charging hourly fees that are primarily based off experience, the project and company overhead.  The rate is usually built into a project fee based on the # of hours that are estimated to complete the work.  Make sure you’re fully aware of the pricing and the length of terms before you get started with the digital agency you choose.  Ask as many questions as possible in the beginning so you’re not surprised by marketing agency hourly pricing down the road.

Now What?  By asking the RIGHT questions and choosing the RIGHT agency to develop a comprehensive digital marketing program, your small to medium sized business is taking the necessary steps to stay competitive in the ever changing world of those shifts from traditional to new media.  Those companies that fail to adapt and take advantage of new opportunities face the possibility of experiencing an erosion of new business. Innovate or Die.  Conversely, companies that embrace an integrated digital strategy have limitless opportunities by retaining existing customers and acquiring new business in exciting new ways.

The post 4 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Local Marketing Agency appeared first on Integrated Digital Marketing | Local Internet Marketing Company.

This issue was of little  importance in the days when telephone numbers rarely changed. People either found you in the Yellow Pages and White Pages or called 411. Today there is an endless array of data points for people to reach you. Cell phones, smartphones and traditional landlines, social media, and email are all commonly used to communicate. It is important to monitor how you and where your company is represented online.

Fortunately, online reputation management helps to search the Internet and find all mentions of your company. This service provides basic information regarding the who, what, where and when of a company all from one location. In addition, references in social media and review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor are sent to you regularly. Reputation management allows you to monitor good comments if your company is mentioned in a positive manner. Conversely, when complaints or negative comments are uncovered, this service may provide a great opportunity to take corrective  to help provide better service.  In some instances, it is possible to act proactively by responding directly to the consumer by making  good on a bad interaction.

For example, if a patron to your restaurant complains on Twitter about bad service or poor quality, you will receive an alert as soon as the following day. This allows you to promptly reach out to the dissatisfied customer to assure them that you want to make good on their negative experience. Perhaps offering a complimentary meal, or even desert or a drink. This corrective action will let them know that you care and are aware of the situation will go a long way toward improving your reputation. Conversely, it you receive rave reviews, you may want to post the good news on Facebook or Twitter to generate positive publicity. At IDS, we strive to provide you with the tools to accentuate the overwhelmingly good reviews that most businesses receive, thereby overshadowing any negative publicity- which is often almost impossible to erase.

Integrated Digital Strategies (www.idigitalstrategies.com) provides a robust reputation management platform and listing push to more than 100 popular internet sites. This enables companies to closely monitor posted reviews and how they are represented online. We will help you set up a custom dashboard that provides frequent updates so that you are kept abreast of any information that references your company. The good news is that most companies generate positive comments. Estimates are that 75% of all reviews and references online are positive. Those that aren’t positive may now be addressed and possibly corrected.

Contact us today and let us know how Integrated Digital Strategies may assist you in managing your company in the positive manner you desire. We will provide you with  the technology required to instantly monitor feedback and present your company in the best light possible.

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