Business Articles - Marketing

One of the great things about the new media options business owners have is that they often cost nothing more than time and effort. Here are three ways you can drive traffic to your website, which you can then convert into prospects.

Build Your Personal Brand: Most home service companies are small enough that the owner is the primary driver of both strategy and sales. For that reason, owners are in a unique circumstance to be able to align their personal brand with the brand of the company. In short, you are the company. Where can you go to build your brand? Social media. Follow a couple of blogs in your area. Comment, and show your expertise. Participate in group discussions on LinkedIn and other social media sites.

Start a blog: One of the most important things in appearing high on the search engine lists is to update content on your website. For most small businesses, that means hiring someone to post articles. But if you set up a blog on your site and update it a couple of times a week, you'll be delivering fresh content, that gets the search interest. Plus, if you deliver quality content, you'll get a following that will help you increase qualified prospects. The cost is only time unless you hire someone to provide the content for you.

Expand your reach: Start a Facebook Fan page. I wrote about this last week and don't want to repeat myself. Again, the only cost is time. For more info, here's a link to my previous post.

Link, link, link: Establish a linking strategy on your site that connects you with peers in your community, such as trade contractors, building product suppliers, and other service providers. These people are often asked for recommendations on home service providers, and having your link on their site, and their link on your site nurtures a relationship. It's the kind of thing owners used to do by phone and get-togethers. Now, it costs nothing.

Paul Deffenbaugh writes "Next Gen Marketing Ideas" every monday.