My wife and I recently visited Door County for a week of vacation.
For those of you who don’t know anything about Door County, it is in the thumb of Wisconsin. It is a peninsula that is surrounded by Lake Michigan.
It’s one of the biggest tourist draws in Wisconsin and it’s a beautiful area.
We seem to end up there every 5 to 8 years. Often enough to be familiar with the area, but we don’t know it well.
We were taking our camper, so we looked for a campsite to make sure we had a place to stay.
We started with a Google search – doesn’t everybody these days?
We found several campgrounds and we booked one of the ones with the best ratings on Google in the area we wanted to stay.
We were going to tour Washington Island and a good way to get around is to bike. We didn’t bring our bikes so we Googled bike rentals on Washington Island. We had one choice. That was interesting.
Later in the week, we talked about changing our morning routine. I was going to run and my wife suggested that we meet for breakfast after the run. I thought that sounded good. I Googled breakfast in Egg Harbor, the town we were staying at, and we had 2 choices. That was interesting as there were over 30 restaurants in the area. Neither sounded like what we wanted after reading about them and the reviews so we decided to eat at the camper.
Now to the point of this…
- We drove past several nice campgrounds in the area we stayed that hadn’t shown up in our search. They didn’t exist as far as we knew.
- There were other places to rent bikes on Washington Island. They didn’t exist as far as we knew.
- After driving around Egg Harbor we found there were other restaurants serving breakfast. They didn’t exist as far as we knew.
I know this is all about a tourist area, but what about locals?
People are moving all the time.
People are looking for new restaurants and things to do.
People pick up new hobbies and interests.
People are visiting family and friends in your area.
How do people find you? How do they connect with you?
As you can see there are many reasons someone may be looking for your business. Do you exist?
Here are my top 3 inexpensive ways to be found online:
- Make sure to optimize your Google My Business Site. If you haven’t claimed it yet do it now.
These are the sites that Google gives to every business for FREE. You may already have one as Google set up many years ago but if you haven’t claimed it you have no control over it. These are the listings that show up when someone searches in your area for your type of business.Your Google My Business site is where your Google reviews show up. You can find out more at https://www.google.com/business/ - Set up a Facebook Page with your business name. This takes as little as a half-hour to maybe a couple of hours if you fill it out completely. Then post on it 3 times a week talking about what your customers may be looking for. Your Facebook page does show up in Google searches, especially when you fill in the description and your story and you sprinkle in words people use to search for your business. In the example above any restaurant with breakfast in it would have shown up in my google search. We have clients whose Facebook page shows up right below their website on a Google search.The key to having a Facebook page that gets you results is filling it out completely and posting at least 3 times a week.
- Have a company website that has at least basic SEO built into it. I put this last as to do it well will take a few days or more of your time or you’ll need to hire this out. Most websites for a local business that has the SEO that’s needed cost in the $2000 to $10,000 + range depending on what features you want. This is an investment in your business. If it’s not in your budget right now, get started with the first two and budget this next year. It’s 2020 and your customers and prospects expect you to have a website.
Remember as you’re adding this to your business it is an investment. You found the location you wanted, and you put signs on it and you’ve worked hard to get people to your business.
Now make sure that your online presence is doing the same thing.
If you already have an online presence, open an incognito window in your browser and type in your business name and see how you show up.
If you’re not showing up like you expect you have some work to do.
If your Facebook page is the issue, reach out to me and we can help you get it going with a plan on how you can monetize it. You can visit http://brianscalendar.com/ to schedule a time to talk.
Have a great day!
Brian
P.S. If your online marketing isn’t bringing you the results you want, feel free to schedule a Complimentary Discovery Call at http://brianscalendar.com/ and we’ll talk about what results you want and how we can help you get there.