How do you save a struggling business? If a company is losing money, how do you fix it? These 3 steps are how you can improve your business.
In order to save your business, you must create a sales funnel, stand out from your competition and invest in crushing your competition with SEO.
Create a Sales Funnel: Company Video, Facebook Advertising and a Simple Website
As discussed in my other post, “3 Steps to an Effective Sales Funnel That Will Grow Your Business”, you will need to invest in videography, digital marketing and web design. Those three components are paramount to having a successful sales funnel using the internet.
- Videos capture people’s attention, videos also act as a medium to “create a want” in a consumer or inform them of your products benefits.
- Digital marketing such as Facebook advertising or Google Adwords is the most cost-effective way to advertise. Licensing Facebook and Google’s information is incredibly cheap and when partnering with a company like Longhouse that can target your ideal customer’s demographic, you can gain a lot of value for your business.
- Landing pages are concise one-page websites that avoid the information overload that causes people to click off your main website. If someone is clicking an ad on social media, they need to understand how to buy/book within 10 seconds or they WILL close your page and possibly never return. Designing a landing page is easy if you know to keep the website simple, under 1,000 words and highly visual. I always think it is a good idea to have your video embedded on the landing page in order to establish credibility and to give clickers the option to avoid reading and opt to watch a video instead.
Stand Out from Your Competition: High-Quality Social Media Content and Branding
Investing in branding and a killer social media feed is important for two reasons; credibility and authority. If your business looks cheap, people will expect cheap service.
One tool we use to make businesses grow is social media management. We come to a business once a month and take professional photographs of your location, products and services, then edit them and post them to social media with optimized captions and hashtags. The process of developing a killer social media feed can make a business that really makes $100,000 per year look like a national firm grossing $5,000,000. When you look legit, people feel more comfortable spending their money on your services.
Having a premium business logo and marketing materials makes it so that your business looks credible. We suggest investing in having a professional graphic designer develop your brand and marketing materials such as profile photos, flyers, brochures and door hangers. Doing graphic design yourself can save money, but when the customer is holding your self-made business card you may not always get the response you are hoping for.
Crush Your Competition: Use SEO to Rank Higher Than Competitors on Google Local Listings and Google Search
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a scary investment for many business owners. The progress can be hard to track and there are a lot of deceptive businesses out there that are full of false promises. With this said, when SEO is done correctly, it allows businesses to crush their competition and increase their flow of customers organically.
When was the last time you looked at a search result below the first page? If you are anything like me, probably never. Most of the time Google searchers only look at the FIRST THREE listings. If you are not ranking on Google, you need to spend the time and money to get there.
Depending on the type of business you are you may need to rank locally, nationally or globally. Past clients of ours such as restaurants or physiotherapy clinics may just need to rank within the Vancouver region, potentially only within a few kilometer radius; others such as a technology company may be looking to be seen internationally.
Our search engine optimization strategies include content writing (blog posting), outreach/backlink building and on-site technical SEO. When choosing an SEO company to help improve your business you MUST choose one that is transparent and gives you the tools necessary to track progress. Without transparency, it is easy to get deceived by these businesses.
In Conclusion: SEO, Social Media Management and an Internet Sales Funnel Will Save Your Business
It may seem counter-intuitive to money on a business that is not turning a profit, but in order to save your business you may need a bit of a stimulus. Using the tools suggested in this article may cost you a lot less than you would think!
Contact Longhouse Media today and we can talk about websites, Facebook advertising, video production, Google rankings, social media and more.
