What!!! Who Needs to Build an Online Presence? Not Me | Our Business is Doing Good

Posted on September 1, 2014August 30, 2014 by Antonio Coleman

Some people feel as though they’re doing well offline, so why have an online presence? We are doing good offline by having tons of clients/customers, so why do we need to build an online presence?

Small businesses conduct business in a manner of what’s working today. They don’t seem to think outside of the box about who’s looking for their business online. Just because you’re a beauty shop doesn’t mean that people are only riding down the street looking for beauty shops to choose from.

Maybe there are a number of people who are on Google searching for “beauty shops in Shreveport, La.” There is a big possibility that people are going online to find great places versus word of mouth. Have you ever thought about the thousands of people who move into a new city every year, and they don’t know anything about the local businesses.

If they’re looking for“Restaurant in Shreveport, La,” and they do a Google search for that, guess who comes up and gets those thousands of potential customers just because they took the time to create what I call an online presence.

I want to go deeper just to ensure that you understand that having an online presence just doesn’t need to be about Google. Here is a list of places to build your online presence..

Google “#1 in my book”
Social Media
YouTube or video sites
Web 2.0 sites, create off site content
Blog Comments, yes it still works

Just the other day, I wrote a blog post on crushing my local market while eating a Bologna sandwich. What I was mainly talking about were the different avenues that I’m looking to take to dominate my local market. If you have a business, you must be willing to tackle your market from all sides versus having the offline world work for you.

Think about this…

I did some research on my local market here in Louisiana some time ago. What I wanted to see was how many people were looking to buy or sell real estate here in my local market of Shreveport, La.

I looked this information up by using Google Keyword Tool, and the numbers that came back almost knocked me out of my chair. I found that over 1,600 people search for the keyword “Shreveport Real Estate.” That is a lot of individuals looking to do some form of real estate business.

If you do a Google search, you will see that there is only one local real estate website that is on the front page. The rest of the sites are national sites, which no matter what, will rank for any terms you use that has the keyword “real estate” in it.

As I said before, there is one local real estate website, but it has been there for years. The only reason that it’s ranked that high is because no one else has the common sense to do the same thing. The reason for this is because all of the other real estate businesses around the town are only focusing on the “offline world,” which is crazy. Research shows that over 1,600 people are looking for real estate in Shreveport, so why not get your brand in front of those people.

This is just another example of businesses not caring too much about their online presence. There is no way in the world that I would have a real estate company, and not have my website optimized to be ranked for “Shreveport Real Estate.” It’s not smart at all, so I’m going to run through a list of things that you can be doing today to get that competitive edge over the local competition.

Google “#1 in my case”

Google continues to be the #1 source of building an online presence. For one, if you have a website then that website can get ranked locally for your given keyword. Now your site has to be optimized, right? Actually, what you need to do more than anything else is build content on your site so that Google can index it.

Social Media

There are tons of social media websites, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, just to name a few. These sites are supposed to be used for networking, but some businesses still think that it’s a place to advertise to people. Yes, you can advertise, but it needs to be done in a different manner if you’re seeking results. Besides that, social media allows you to build an online presence by engaging in local conversations. This runs even deeper on this subject, so I think that it’s best to stay tuned for a well in-depth guide on this subject.

YouTube “or video sites

Most businesses over look video marketing just because they feel as though it’s not important. You’re crazy for doing that due to the fact that video is the second highest searched content online. Again, if someone is searching for “Shreveport Plumbers,” and they have created a video of being a plumber in Shreveport, La, guess what will show up in the search results and on that video website. Videos are powerful, and they allow you to gain an instant online presence without much effort.

Web 2.0 sites “create off site content

One thing that you will learn about me is that I have a solution for anything that you’re going through. If you are a small business and just can’t afford a website as of today, then don’t worry because you can still build an online presence. Here is a list of 128 web 2.0 websites where you can use them to create content that ranks locally. It gives you the opportunity to build an online presence without starting with your own website.

Blog Comments “yes its still works”

Last but not least, is that you can still Google local content and leave a comment on there. This is not my favorite way to go but, if you just need to get recognized on some level just start commenting. Just search local websites and have it.

I’m not going to leave you hanging without giving you something that will help boost your business growth. I created a 31 tip marketing guide just for you if you want to dominate locally. So, all you have to do is that action and the customers and clients will come running.

Comment Time: Do you have an online presence?

Being Consistent, Being Knowledgeable, Being Aggressive Kicks the Local Competition

Posted on August 20, 2014August 19, 2014 by Antonio Coleman

You hear people talk a lot about starting their first business, and making a living outside the rat race. We all want good things in life from the house, cars and all the glamorous things that come with that. Business owners are all working to build their income, network and clientele.

At the end of the day, it’s all about Being Consistent, Being Knowledgable, Being Aggressive that transforms into growth. I’m always sitting down with business owners asking them where do you want to be in the next 3, 6 or even 12 months from now?

Most will say that they want more customers coming through the doors, because we need to be able to compete with the stores around the block. They’re continually thinking of ways to steal that customer who may be looking to shop at the competitor’s store. Overall, everything they do comes down to competing for that next customer’s money.

So, what can you do as a business owner to always place yourself in a position for success, and build your business?

1. Being Consistent

If you’re running ads in your local paper, which you’re giving out coupons so customers can cut out and redeem. Then, I would say that no matter if the turn out is not going as planned, continue to be consistent with it. Maybe there is an issue with how you worded the ad that really didn’t gain the attention of the customers.

Many business owners give up over time on growing their business when they see the hard work behind it. They stop greeting customers that come through the door just because they lost faith in marketing. Being consistent is all that I’m about when growing my business and those clients around me.

There are three major things every business should be doing daily…

Studying and researching their market
Building that online presence
Networking with other businesses

Studying and researching your market is all about knowing your competition, and understanding the customer base. You want to know if the business around the corner has a website, if they do then you might want to get one also. Plus, you need to know how many customers are looking for your services, because if you don’t then it will be hard to compete no matter how good your product or services are.

I’m all about dominating your local market by building that online presence. What I mean is that your business name, brand, website and logo needs to be found on every major place online. My customers, your customers are all hanging out online waiting to be served. So you need to be on all of the social networks such as Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook, just to name a few. Next, is to make sure your website content is on localized content that can be found through Google searches.

Networking is the key to any business success out there in the online or offline world. Let’s say that I’m working on a new book about “real estate marketing,” which I am, as me writing this post. Then, I will go out and network with every single person in the real estate niche. Now, some of these people will be investors, realtors, brokers and just pure real estate bloggers. The key is to network with people who have an audience where you can put your business in front of them. Offline business marketing goes the same way, which I talked about in my local store marketing post that helps you understand how to network the right way.

2. Being Knowledgeable

Educating yourself in your industry needs to always continue no matter how successful you are. You want to keep reading, studying to be able to keep up with changing times. You must know your industry in and out, so that there is no question that someone asks you that doesn’t have an answer.

This is how I’m in my industry of online and local marketing. For over 14 years now I have been educating myself everyday and night by reading tons of books at Barnes and Noble and Books a Million. Staying there for hours to read as many books as I can so no stones will be left unturned. Now it’s all about taking that knowledge, and going out to help local businesses and individuals all across the world. So, make it a priority to continue to educate yourself, because if you’re not, then I bet the business around the corner is.

3. Being Aggressive

Sometimes you must be pushy to get through the crowd of people who are just not being productive. What I’ve seen over the years of coaching sports is that the kids that are aggressive enough most of the time dominate. Now, that kid doesn’t have to be the most talented or the biggest kid, he or she must only be equipped with a willingness to be successful.

Being aggressive with your business is pretty much the same avenue if you look at it from a different angle. You may have two businesses that are pretty equal when it comes to the services they provide.

So lets take two donut shops..

One shop is on one side of the street, and the other one is right across from it. Both shops open up at the same time, and closes at the same hour. But one of them have a greeting chant as the customers comes through the door. One of them collect names and emails from their customers to send them thank you cards, birthday cards and holiday letters.

Plus, this same shop goes out of their way to give big time discounts from 20% to even 50% off your next purchase. They are being what I call aggressive with their marketing, and not waiting for the customers to make the move. They’re making moves controlling their business growth, and this forces the arms of the people who are looking for donuts to come into their place of business. Just by them being aggressive, it just over shadows the donut shop across the street and chances are they’re losing massive amounts of business because of this. So sad huh

Comment Time: So tell me are you being consistent, knowledgeable and aggressive? Comment Below

How I’m Crushing the Local Competition While Eating a Bologna Sandwich

Posted on August 18, 2014August 17, 2014 by Antonio Coleman

If you read my blog long enough you will see that all I’m about is dominating my local market. I’m a big believer in building your online presence right in your back yard before going world-wide. No need to jump out of the gate as a real estate company looking to set up branches all around the world. Heck, you’re not even the top real estate company in your city, so how will you be able to possibly take any other market?

So, the plan is to go out and become the top dog in your town or city, and then move on to bigger and better things. Trying to walk that walk before you’re ready will only get you..

Frustrated
In Debt
Kicked out-of-town
Closing doors

I’m not that type of person to go and do things like that even though I might have the right tools to succeed. But, I’m only looking to dominate my local market, which is right here in the Shreveport – Bossier City area, when it comes to my marketing company.

The way that I’m doing this is a slow but grueling process that is done every night while I eat my Bologna Sandwich. Don’t tell me that you guys don’t eat bologna sandwiches, because we were all raised on this stuff. So, a big glass of good old Kool-Aid and that bologna sandwich, I’m ready to take on the world.

What I’m Doing

What I’m trying to do is to become the #1 marketing company right here in my back yard. I want people to search for “Shreveport Marketing Companies” or Bossier City Marketing Companies” and come across my website here. Once here, my website will pretty much do all of the work for me since I set it up in that way.

My only goal is to be found online, and this is something that I wrote about in my 31 tips of dominating your local market guide. We all, as business owners, need to start thinking outside-the-box, and start marketing where your customers and clients hangout. I say that everyone has a computer, phone, iPad, nook and whatever devices they have on the market today.

People go online and search for…

Dallas Marketing Companies
Atlanta Marketing Companies
Chicago Marketing Companies
Minden Marketing Companies

The list goes on and on for what people are searching for when they’re looking to grow their business. Me being the person that I am, my goal is to capitalize on every opportunity I can. So, my goal for the rest of the year is to target a lot of content around my targeted market, but also giving you guys the overall picture of local marketing. Even though I may be talking about Shreveport – Bossier City, I will still be presenting my content as though it’s your market even if you’re in the USA , Canada or somewhere across the world..rules will still apply.

Here’s My Procedure

To be able to dominate any local market, you first must know what people are typing into the search engines. Without the right keywords, your plan of attack will pretty much be wasteful. I say this because if you have a lawn care service in “Shreveport, La,” and you may have a website, but if there is no content on your site about “shreveport lawn care services,” then you will not be getting found.

The way that I’m looking to be found to be able to attract people who are ready to go, now type people versus those who I have to convince it’s time to do local marketing, is by using keywords.

“Yes Keywords”

I’m starting a campagin on creating massive amounts of content surrounding my local market. I’ve done a lot of research and found tons of potential keywords that I can be using to help drive targeted traffic to my website. People who are looking for that marketing company in shreveport- bossier city, will come across some content, and it will be something of value to them.

So, the goal is to educate them on their business in hopes of them asking for more help. If not, then it’s ok because I will be adding value to their business by giving away tons of free marketing material and more. People don’t always have to buy or use your services to help as long as you can provide good quality content for them to read, the rest will take care of itself. If they decided to keep reading more of your material, or never come back, you managed to get found which is the #1 one goal.

Lastly

Local domination is what I teach on this website, so I’m going to go deeper into what my plans are, and how it’s going to grow my business. I’m going to continue the process of writing good quality content surrounding my local market to get found right here in my local area. Bu,t I’m going to take this a step further since I’m in a happy mood.

What I’m going to do is create an “Ultimate Local Marketing Guide” for the following industries for my local community.

Real Estate
Dentist
Lawn Care
Restaurants
Beauty Shops
and ect…

The goal here is to create as much content as I can around all of the top businesses in my local market. These guides will be well written guides on, how If I had that business, the route that I will take to grow it massively.

Before it’s said and done, I will have created hundreds of guides on every single market I come across. If they have doors opened, and welcomes clients or customer,s then I’m looking to write about their industry. The guide will serve as a hand shake from me to them in hopes of them continuing reading my website, or even better, coming on as a client.

So, the over all goal is to keep eating my bologna sandwiches, and keep writing 1,000 words a day. By dong this, I’m allowing myself to become a well known marketer and authority online in my local market.

Comment Time:What do you guys think about this? Comment Below

Antonio’s 5 Local Store Marketing Tactics Implemented for Pennies

Posted on August 11, 2014August 10, 2014 by Antonio Coleman

Local Store Marketing Tactics

Saving money is what all stores are looking to do in 2014 going into the new year. The local store marketing tactics I will be discussing today are some of the cheapest, cost-effective ways to grow your business without all the headaches of getting into debt. When I talk to local store business owners in my surrounding area of Shreveport, Bossier City and Minden, one thing that I stress to them is how in this market you must think creatively not with the dollars you can spend, but with the tools and resources available to you.

So, the question comes down to how can I market my business locally without going into debt?

I will bet that most of the business owners run promotions of some sort to get more foot traffic through their stores. No matter if you have a restaurant, clothing store or a beauty salon your overall goal is to get people coming through those doors every single day without spending a lot of money.

Those promotions that you’re running may or may not be as profitable, or if it is then unfortunately you may be losing money. Don’t worry because I’ve decided to produce my 5 local store marketing tactics that works, and most importantly saves you tons of money and time.

Piggyback off other Businesses

With my 31 tips of dominating your local market I go into this subject a lot more deeply. But, what you can do here is exchange business cards, coupons, products or anything that will be of value for someone to have for free. You can approach any of the local stores in your community to exchange promotion items.

Example: Your hair salon shop may want to exchange promotional items with the local beauty store. That beauty store sells all of the items your hair salon uses, and plus your potential clients shop there. Not only that, to reverse it, the beauty shop would love to give you their promotion also because your clients will benefit from shopping in their store. So at the end of the day, you’re not competing with each other, the money is just flowing hand to hand without you going into debt.

Your Cost: Price of promotion items

Benefits Who: Local businesses with brick and mortar

Put on an Event

Putting on events is something a lot of local businesses just don’t do enough of. Those who do try, are all catering to a small group of local businesses. Putting on an event in your local city that invites everyone together, will be effective in networking. You can make a simple event where everyone just introduces themselves, and explains what type of business they run.

Light Bulb Moment: One of the main reasons that I would do this is to implement step one of these local store marketing tactics. I will be on the grind to create some cross promotions with them while I have all of them in one place. That’s called killing two birds with one stone.

Your Cost: $50 to $200

Benefits: Who: All Local Businesses.

Be Everywhere

My good friend, Pat Flynn, talks a lot about being everywhere so that people can find your business. Take out some time to view your local market, but first look at your local competitors to see what they’re doing. Just go to their website and see if they’re on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest and so on. If they’re not on all of those platforms, then please believe that I’m signing up and building my business up through those profiles.

Remember: You still need to have a website even though you’re on these social sites. Reason for this, is because there is nothing like owning your own home, if you get what I mean. So, don’t build your house on someone else’s land and expect them to let you stay there forever.

Your Cost: Totally Free

Benefits Who: All businesses in a competitive market

Give, Give, Give

Education is something that I preach all of the time on CMG. This is to teach people what you want them to know, and they will come back for more. If you own a gardening store, I’ll create a website for my store. In front of the page, I will set up a big opt-in box for gathering customers and future customers that I will be getting.

From here, I would write a simple guide on how to keep a beautiful garden. How many people do you think will enter their name and email address just to get that valuable information? From here, you can email them updates on items for sale and countless other things.

Your Cost: $20 for auto responder..get a free trial here

Benefits Who: Any business who wants insane business and growth

Support Fundraisers

One of the best ways to get your brand, product or services in front of your targeted audience is through fundraising. I’m not saying to do a fundraiser yourself, I’m saying it would be wise to give to certain groups who would present your business to their given audience. You can support the fundraiser by giving money, products or offering some form of your services.

All you’re trying to achieve here, is to get your name out there by supporting a cause to build even more creditability for your brand.

Comment Time: What type of things are you doing to get your brand out there locally?

153,000 Words in 153 Days Challenge

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Antonio Coleman

153,000 Words in 153 Days Challenge

Goals are achieved or broken every single day. Us as people are looking for ways to motivate each other on making the right moves in life to set us up for success. So, one of the ways we can all achieve our goals is by writing them down, and sharing them with world. “Like me.”

Today’s blog post is not about dominating your local market,which is what I talk about 90% of the time on my website. What I’m looking to do today is to bring you on a ride in my goals for the next 6 months.

These goals are achievable only if I take action, and leave no stones unturned. My actions will be performed every single day to get to where I need to be for my website www.Colemanmg.com, and most importantly, Coleman Marketing Group LLC.

This year I’m looking to bring my online presence of this website, and my brand into the mainstream. The only way to achieve this is by sticking to the plan. So, this is the reason for the title of this blog post,which is,“153,000 Words in 153 Days Challenge”

Basically, I’m looking to write 153,000 words in a matter of 153 days which begins August 1 – December 31 2014. So, if you break down the number, this comes out to a matter of 1,000 words per day.

This may seem like a lot of words but it actually is not because I can type1,000 words in an hour or so just depending on the topic. It’s all about sitting down, putting my fingers to the keyboard, and getting to work on the journey of completing my goals.

Now..Let’s Talk Goals

My First Book

Believe it or not, I’m writing my first book on a certain subject which is…you guessed, it local marketing domination. Plus, it’s not going to be that general targeting all industries. I figure my book will be more profitable if I targeted a certain niche such as,

Sporting
Clothes
Pets
RealEstate
Restaurants
Furniture Stores
Dentist office
and many more…

I could have written a book on these subjects in general, but I felt that it would be best to do this by category. So, I picked one, did some in-depth research, and found that I could write a book on it in the form of dominating the market.

So, from the day I start this challenge to the day that it ends at the last days of December, I will be working on this book which should come out to be at about 200 pages.

At nearly 300 words a page, no matter if it’s a kindlee-book, amazone-book, or just the plain old paper back book. It’s going to take about 60,000 of those words to complete 200 pages. The book may go over this number, so the plan is to stay substantially underneath it.

153,000 – 60,000 = 93,000 words left

Just with the book I’m losing about half of my word count, but at the end of the day a book surrounding your brand is priceless, and you set yourself as an authority in that industry.

CMG Blog Posts

While writing my book, I don’t want to neglect the CMG community without posting great content. Even though the book will take up a lot of content, I still have to keep building the content here on my website.

I will still be writing about local marketing, case studies, new local research and doing my favorite..list posts. These are my best pieces of content because they include top notch content from people whom I network with across the world.

So, I’m looking to keep a fresh two blog post on the website each and every week. This comes out to,

2 blog posts a week
8 per month
40 over the next 5 months

I’m looking to use approximately1,000 words per blog post, so that puts about 40,000 words being used.

93,000 – 40,000 = 53,000 words left

This will allow me to work on my book and never miss a beat of posting content to the website. How about them apples?

Targeted Keyword Post

With about 53,000 words left,you maybe asking yourself what will he do with that. I thought about using them for guest posts, but I said no way because when I create great content I’d rather it be for my website.

This goes for posting on article sites, which is good for in-house exposure, but not good for the over all success of your website. Guest posting and article sites are only good these days to post content and get a so called quality link.

So, what I said that was best for those 53k words is to just add them to my website. My goal is to write content centered around the book that I will be writing. This content will talk about this industry and the ways of marketing it to thousands.

Now, these won’t be the 1,000 word posts, these will be what I call “Targeted Keyword Posts.”These are only 300 to 350 words a blog centered around a certain keyword that gets some traffic in the search engine, but its really low like 50 searches per month.

Doing this will allow me build up a list of people who will be interested in the book that I’m writing. So, when the launch day comes I will have a large list of people who are ready to buy my book.

So the numbers break down like this…

300/1,000 words is rounded to 3 post every 1,000 words.

This gives me at around 150 or so posts centered around my book targeted market. Plus, hopefully I’m getting at lest 1 visitor a day from each post with an opt-in rate of half of that.

Closing Words

These are my goals all from writing a measly 1,000 words a day. This on top of the networking that I’m doing, which I will be talking about in the next blog post, will just make this even more powerful.

So, if you just want to get more exposure for your website, business or social networks, then I would say just start writing. It doesn’t have to be 1,000 words a day, but it does have to be at least 1 word.