By Casey Sung, Grace Corporate Park LLC
| The net effect of these campaigns is that links to my website appear almost everywhere a person would go on the internet to find a service like Executive Office Suite or Virtual Office Service. |
How would you like to have your potential clients call you for a change? How would you like it if you got qualified lead calls almost on a daily basis and it never stops? Talk about a qualified lead! A sales lead can't get more qualified than that. Sounds too good to be true? Through internet marketing efforts it's very possible. My company, Grace Corporate Park, is in the business of providing executive office suite spaces to businesses and professionals. We basically provide everything you need for an office infrastructure like phone, internet, printer, copier, fax, you get the idea. Believe it or not, nearly 100% of all of our clients and potential clients find us on the internet. Literally every single day we get calls from potential clients inquiring about our office space and most of them found us on the internet. Are they qualified leads for us? They sure are.
So what's our secret? We work very hard to maintain a content rich website, make sure that we are listed in as many directories as possible (both paid and free) and participate in paid marketing campaigns. The net effect of these campaigns is that links to my website appear almost everywhere a person would go on the internet to find a service like Executive Office Suite or Virtual Office Service. In one of my conversations with a prospective client, she said to me "You guys are everywhere on the internet". That's true but partially. We are not really everywhere on the internet. We just seem to be everywhere only to a person looking for executive office suites, temporary office spaces or virtual offices.
As a sales manager, this makes my job so much easier because my qualified leads call me. If you are an experienced sales person, you know the value of a qualified lead compared to a blind cold call.
Quality Content Rich Website - the key to qualified leads
| What ever you decide to do with your website, it's important to remember that you need to offer something more than an electronic brochure. You need to give a little extra on your website that your visitor can appreciate and have something to remember you by. |
When I talk to my business-owner friends about building a website for their business, I always get the same response; I have a website. When I visit their website however, it's not much more than an online brochure. Unfortunately, many business people consider a website to be just a nice-to-have extension of their business card and brochure. Don't get me wrong, I believe that any website with an address, phone number and some description about the business will always be better than not having one at all. But they could be doing so much more. For my Executive Office Suite business, a website is absolutely critical for success. People who look to Executive Office Suite service for their office space needs want much more than just an office. My office suite clients have various reasons for coming to me but many of them want the intangible benefits that only a company like Grace Corporate Park can provide. Benefits like professional business image, intelligently built office workspaces, and instant yet flexible setup. And because my clients are looking for that special professional image as well as a functional work environment, they want to get a feel for what we are like before calling me. What better way to do that than through a business website?
| I also try to include affinity content on our website. Affinity content is content unrelated to my offerings but may still be interesting to people who are looking for my services. For example, a person looking for office space would probably find interesting an article like "How to double your business revenue by concentrating on critical business activities". |
When a potential client visits our website they are treated to a plethora of information about how our executive suite operates and what our office suite looks like. Additionally, we offer information about other office options which we may not necessarily offer - office space options like leased office spaces or subleased office spaces. Why should I make available information that may potentially drive away my leads? I want my visitors to be absolutely sure that what they are looking for is an Executive Office Suite before picking up the phone to call me. In other words, I'm interested in highly qualified leads. The information also lends credibility to my website. I also try to include affinity content on our website. Affinity content is content unrelated to my offerings but may still be interesting to people who are looking for my services. For example, a person looking for office space would probably find interesting an article like "How to double your business revenue by concentrating on critical business activities". The contents of the article may have nothing to do with office spaces or virtual office services but someone looking for an office suite space would likely have an affinity interest on the topic. This article is another example of affinity content. Affinity content helps me establish my website as a go to resource among the kind of people who might eventually find a need for my office suite space.
What ever you decide to do with your website, it's important to remember that you need to offer something more than an electronic brochure. You need to give a little extra that your visitor can appreciate and have something to remember you by.
Internet Directory Listings - the key to getting exposure
| Getting listed on directories involve submitting your request to each of the directories one at a time. This can quickly become a tedious and time consuming process since the object of the game is to try to get listed on as many of the free directories as possible, especially if you are working on a shoestring budget. If you don't have the time or the wherewithal to submit your website to all possible listings, at least get listed on the big guys like Yahoo and Google. |
Internet directories are the guide to the 100's of millions of websites and resources that are available on the internet. On the top are the giants like Yahoo and Google. If you don't do anything else, get listed by the giants. Aside from the few giants, there are thousands more specialty or general directories that specialize in "feeding" the giants. Some try to replace the traditional telephone books and some are very specific to a subject or industry. For example, there are numerous directories for executive office suites and temporary office spaces. General directories usually have both free and fee based listing services. Industry specific directories are almost exclusively paid listing services. Getting listed on directories involve submitting your request to each of the directories one at a time. This can quickly become a tedious and time consuming process since the object of the game is to try to get listed on as many of the free directories as possible, especially if you are working on a shoestring budget. If you don't have the time or the wherewithal to submit your website to all possible listings, at least get listed on the big guys like Yahoo and Google. If you do have a real marketing budget, you can hire companies to do this for you. Prices and results vary by company. Since my business offers two main products, office spaces and virtual offices, I try to get each of the products listed separately under different categories within the same directory service. I also try to find directories that specialize in listings specific to each of my products. For example, I'm constantly searching for directories that specialize in listing executive office suites and also directories that specialize in listing virtual office services.
| Many directories are also syndicated with other popular sites where they feed their directory listing to the syndicated sites. If the directory is syndicated, then the combined number of visitors should be in the millions per month. These directories usually offer higher visibility than the specialty directories but your visitors may not be as targeted as you'd like them to be. |
When you submit your request to be listed on the free versions of these directories, you will notice that many if not all of the directories also offer premium listings for a fee. The fee can range from just a few dollars to hundreds of dollars per month. You can do the math and quickly realize that your marketing budget can run into thousands of dollars per month if you are not careful. I'm going to guess that cost is a big issue for you as it is for me. When you consider premium listings for your website, carefully research the service before you sign up. Make sure that the listing site receives at least thousands of visitors per month and that the fair proportion of the visitors are your target market. Many directories are also syndicated with other popular sites where they feed their directory listing to the syndicated sites. If the directory is syndicated, then the combined number of visitors should be in the millions per month. These directories usually offer higher visibility than the specialty directories but your visitors may not be as targeted as you'd like them to be.
Paid Advertising - the key to getting noticed
| The hard lesson we learned early on was that careless placement of paid ad campaigns can blown away an entire month's budget in one day with very little to show for. Having said that, we still do our paid ad campaigns but we do it very carefully and monitor it diligently. We still do paid ads because done correctly, paid ads can generate highly qualified leads. |
This is different from paid directory listings because the directory listing fees are usually fixed on a monthly or annual basis. The paid advertising fees can vary from month to month based on activity. For the purposes of this article, paid advertising includes both "banner" and "pay-per-click" advertising. Paid advertising in this regard can become very expensive very fast. While I mention it as an option for those who are fortunate enough to have a real budget, be very cautious about where and how you do your paid advertising. The hard lesson we learned early on was that careless placement of paid ad campaigns can blown away an entire month's budget in one day with very little to show for. Having said that, we still do our paid ad campaigns but we do it very carefully and monitor it diligently. We still do paid ads because done correctly, paid ads can generate highly qualified leads. Another benefit of paid advertisement is that you get noticed because your ads are set aside, usually at a screen location where it's easy to be noticed. Also, more people associate legitimacy with companies that can afford to pay to be listed. While this may not be entirely true, this is how people think.
| The nice thing about pay-per-click (PPC) ads is that you don't pay for the display of the ad as you might guess from the name. You pay only if the user clicks on your ad. For example, my PPC ad campaign specifies the phrases Temporary Office Spaces, Virtual Office Services, and Executive Office Suites. |
Banner ads typically appear on sites with little input from the viewer. For example, when you visit a popular news website to read an article, you might see a banner ad appearing across the screen. Banner advertising is usually a blanket approach which is good if you are selling consumer products and services such as cars, insurance, calling cards, etc. However banner ads are not so effective when you need a more targeted approach like selling executive office suite or virtual office service. Pay-per-click ads (a.k.a. Sponsored Listings) only appear when the visitor searches for something and if the search phrase matches the advertiser's criteria. The nice thing about pay-per-click (PPC) ads is that you don't pay for the display of the ad as you might guess from the name. You pay only if the user clicks on your ad. For example, my PPC ad campaign specifies the phrases Temporary Office Spaces, Virtual Office Services, and Executive Office Suites. When a user searches for these and other variations of these terms on Yahoo or Google and a host of other sites, a link to my website along with brief description of my business appears as part of the search result. If the user clicks on my link, I pay. How much I pay depends on several factors like how popular the phrase is and how high up the list I want to be place. For example I pay more for the phrase Executive Office Suites than for Temporary Office Space because the former is more popular. Likewise, Call Answering Service is more popular than Virtual Office Service but I'm not in Call Answering Service so I don't do that one.
Some advertising services can also combine PPC and Banner ads where you pay one price for getting your ad displayed an another price for the click. For more information on any of these methods of advertising, just visit your favorite search engine. Remember, paid advertising can give you a high return on investment or no return on your investment at all. What you get depends on how much research you are willing to do before you start the campaign.
Conclusion - get on with it!
Carefully coordinating your internet marketing efforts by maintaining a content rich website, getting your website listed in as many directories as possible and participating in paid advertising programs can result in a continuous stream of qualified leads for your business. While the time and effort you spend on these efforts can be high, I believe the benefit is much greater. Most business people are willing to do anything to get highly qualified leads. If you are one of these people, then get going. Get a website up, spends some time adding useful information for your viewers and get listed in multiple directories. I can't stress enough the benefits of doing internet marketing. Since Grace Corporate Park launched our internet marketing effort, we have seen a steady increase in our call volume from people specifically looking for temporary or executive office suites or virtual office services.
About the author
Casey Sung is a Principal of Grace Corporate Park, an Executive Office Suite company providing affordable turkey office and workspace solutions to businesses and professionals on a temporary or permanent basis. Casey's main responsibility is Sales and Marketing.
If you have internet marketing success stories you would like to share with us or want to send your comments about this article, you can contact Casey at csung@corporatepark.net.
