Marketing: Are we ok, or do we need help?

[DiveNav]

......There are a number of businesses that have been built right here on ScubaBoard. Edge/Hog, Deep Sea Supply and others started right here ......

Pete, add DiveNav to the list .... 53,000 customers and counting.

Time for me to return the favor.

Alberto (aka eDiver)

 

[Wookie]

It's worse than I thought, judging by the number of PM's I'm getting...

 

[The Chairman]

Obviously, I'm not using social media correctly.

Dude, you're a social media Rock Star. If I were to get you, and everyone else who markets on ScubaBoard, to change only one thing: Cajole, beg or even bribe your customers to post here, on Trip Adviser and yes, on YouTube. Maybe this discussion is best for the B2B portion of ScubaBoard and I don't want to hijack the thread (next stop Key Largo). I've suggested something to more than twenty dive ops and I have yet to see one try it: post a picture of your customers having fun in a thread here on ScubaBoard and send them a link. It could be an OW class' group pic after they got certified, it could be a series of pics of people having a good time on a boat, it could be the customer that just bought a full set of gear and is excited about it. Celebrate your customers' fun and post it right here. If you've gone to the trouble to post a pic, I'll bet they'll go to the trouble to tell everyone just how much fun they had. They might even send their family & friends the link and you'll have even more social media love.

Another idea: If they got a simply cool shot of a Golden Gated Thingamajig, beg them to post it here and send YOU the link. It's OK to ask for their help. You'll find that getting people to help you is a fast track way to turn a customer into a fan... and a posting fan at that. Blogs that you write are great. Blogs (posts) that are written about you are worth more than gold. Just be sure to thank the peeps who posted about you or subsequently asked a question.

FWIW, Frank already gets a number of posts about the Spree. He needs more... a lot more as does every business reading this post. Wonder why I haven't mentioned Facebook? They're not Googleized. No one searches for information on Face Book: they Google it. If you want to make a big splash, you have to be seen by Google. Facebook is fun. Google is business. Have all the fun you can manage but don't neglect business.

 

[The Chairman]

Pete, add DiveNav to the list .... 53,000 customers and counting.

Thanks Alberto. It's been fun to watch you grow.

 

[SeaHorse81]

If you want to make a big splash, you have to be seen by Google. Facebook is fun. Google is business. Have all the fun you can manage but don't neglect business.

And here we are back at SEO.

I can tell you from personal experience that it matters. I started my own business in 2004, with the goal of never spending a penny on advertising -- just wanted to put excellent work out there and let word-of-mouth do the rest. That worked for over five years, then things got real slow for three years for no apparent reason. All that time, I'd had a well-developed website that I just assumed was popping up in searches. I'd been busy enough that I'd never had the need or thought of checking my own search results.

When things were getting downright bleak in 2012, I checked my search results and discovered that, lo and behold, I was invisible on the Internet! Perfectly good, well-maintained site with lots of information of interest to potential clients and the community in general, but nobody was seeing it unless they knew about the site and went there on purpose. The people who knew about it loved it, but too few people knew about it.

Since I had way too little work to do by then, I spent a few months self-educating about SEO and adjusting my site accordingly. I also studied the search results to see how my competitors were showing up and why; I took note of successful strategies and adopted them. The biggest surprise was that essentially everything I did to improve SEO resulted in my site being more attractive and user-friendly. That's when I learned that SEO is not about tricking the bots into noticing you, but having quality content and organization which gives the bots good reason to notice you. My site was good to start with it, but now it's good in a way that stands out from the crowd, and that's critical. Really, all you have to do to be noticed is a little more than most of the people around you.

Since I got myself out of the box and gave up what should have worked in favor of what now does work, I have literally more business than I can handle. I've been turning away excess business for over a year, which means I get to pick and choose my work. As far as I can tell, I'm dialed in for the remainder of my career, though one lesson from this is that another reboot or two may well be necessary along the way, given the breathtaking pace of technological change.

I'm not a different professional than I was before SEO, but now I'm a professional that people can find when they Google, which is how people look for everything. Because of that, I am not only still in business, but going strong.

I have to think that any number of dive businesses could have this same experience if they decided to.

 

[HowardE]

And here we are back at SEO.

I can tell you from personal experience that it matters. I started my own business in 2004, with the goal of never spending a penny on advertising -- just wanted to put excellent work out there and let word-of-mouth do the rest. That worked for over five years, then things got real slow for three years for no apparent reason. All that time, I'd had a well-developed website that I just assumed was popping up in searches. I'd been busy enough that I'd never had the need or thought of checking my own search results.

When things were getting downright bleak in 2012, I checked my search results and discovered that, lo and behold, I was invisible on the Internet! Perfectly good, well-maintained site with lots of information of interest to potential clients and the community in general, but nobody was seeing it unless they knew about the site and went there on purpose. The people who knew about it loved it, but too few people knew about it.

Since I had way too little work to do by then, I spent a few months self-educating about SEO and adjusting my site accordingly. I also studied the search results to see how my competitors were showing up and why; I took note of successful strategies and adopted them. The biggest surprise was that essentially everything I did to improve SEO resulted in my site being more attractive and user-friendly. That's when I learned that SEO is not about tricking the bots into noticing you, but having quality content and organization which gives the bots good reason to notice you. My site was good to start with it, but now it's good in a way that stands out from the crowd, and that's critical. Really, all you have to do to be noticed is a little more than most of the people around you.

Since I got myself out of the box and gave up what should have worked in favor of what now does work, I have literally more business than I can handle. I've been turning away excess business for over a year, which means I get to pick and choose my work. As far as I can tell, I'm dialed in for the remainder of my career, though one lesson from this is that another reboot or two may well be necessary along the way, given the breathtaking pace of technological change.

I'm not a different professional than I was before SEO, but now I'm a professional that people can find when they Google, which is how people look for everything. Because of that, I am not only still in business, but going strong.

I have to think that any number of dive businesses could have this same experience if they decided to.

And there's the rub.

Most small businesses don't have the manpower available to spend the hours self educating as to how SEO and other important functions work. With more than 20 major updates to it's search algorithm in 2013, Google, the #1 search engine in the world, makes it challenging to stay on top of what isn't working today that did work yesterday.

Many businesses don't have the "resources" to spend time on Facebook building an audience, or responding to questions on ScubaBoard.

So while many businesses COULD have the same experience that you've gained... when time is money, is it better to just hire a marketing company that can handle things for you, or is it worth your time to start from scratch as a noob, and pay for that learning curve in your valuable time?

 

[SeaHorse81]

when time is money, is it better to just hire a marketing company that can handle things for you, or is it worth your time to start from scratch as a noob, and pay for that learning curve in your valuable time?

The answer to that depends on one's personal priorities, I think. Based on what I saw of the SEO world when I began to explore it, there are a lot of SEO companies out there that I believe might kind of butcher your site's material in the name of making it more searchable. Given that your site is your face to the world, it's important that its content be handled in a way that feels authentic to both you and the material on it. Nobody is more invested in that than you are. Nobody will try harder to protect its integrity than you will.

On the other hand, if you can't or simply don't make the time available somehow to do it, then the only choice is to pay someone else to do it. In that case, I'd recommend interviewing prospective providers of that service VERY carefully. Like anything else, it appears there are some really good resources out there, along with lots of hacks who just decided one day to anoint themselves SEO experts. The former could end up being the best business investment you'll ever make, while the latter will be like throwing precious money down a black hole, probably messing up your site in the process.

It's a shame that business owners have to deal with this now on top of all the other demands of running a business, but that's just how it is. I learned that the hard way, but fortunately, I learned it in time. I'm pretty sure those who tackle it are far more likely to survive than those who don't.

I'll add an important p.s. Based on my experience, it appears that it's a LOT easier to design a site from the ground up with SEO in mind than it is to tweak an existing site, as I did. My site is big, with lots of separate pages for various kinds of information. Every time I learned something new I went through the whole site, altering one page at a time. I learned lots of new things, but never in batches where I could do them more efficiently. Frankly, though, had I tried to incorporate more than one change at a time, I don't think I could ever have kept track of it all. It was a lot of work but at the end of the day, it was still thoroughly MY site, done in a way that felt completely congruent with who I am and the work that I do. For me, it was worth it. Time is money, and I consider that time to have been a fantastic investment, which has yielded, frankly, a significant increase in income.

 

[The Chairman]

Both of you have very valid points. It's important to know your strengths and weaknesses. Me? I'm smart enough to surround my self with brilliant people, both paid and volunteer. Yes, there are a lot of self proclaimed SEO and Social Media experts out there who are using the sudden popularity of Social Media to make a quick buck. They're nothing but hucksters and give the legitimate people a bad name. You would be wise to look at their work before you go with someone and ask others about them. Separate the hype and promises from the actual results. One of my favorite all time spoofs: Increase your Twitter followers by eleventy-billion in seconds.

I'm convinced that too many people substitute "me media" for actual "social media". If you're providing the majority of the buzz about your business or product, you aren't being very social with your media. Social Media isn't about "Look at me!" It's about "Look at them!" That the "them" are in your shop or on your boat when you are promoting them is a good thing. It's like photo bombing where you're always in that social media picture... just not nearly as obtrusively. Be the back drop for their fun, celebrate their fun but don't point out that you're the backdrop. It's a subtle thang. You'll find that people are attracted to fun and that being a vendor of fun will pay off in dividends.

 

[HowardE]

I'll add an important p.s. Based on my experience, it appears that it's a LOT easier to design a site from the ground up with SEO in mind than it is to tweak an existing site, as I did.

With this, I'll respectfully disagree.

My site is big, with lots of separate pages for various kinds of information. Every time I learned something new I went through the whole site, altering one page at a time. I learned lots of new things, but never in batches where I could do them more efficiently. Frankly, though, had I tried to incorporate more than one change at a time, I don't think I could ever have kept track of it all. It was a lot of work but at the end of the day, it was still thoroughly MY site, done in a way that felt completely congruent with who I am and the work that I do. For me, it was worth it. Time is money, and I consider that time to have been a fantastic investment, which has yielded, frankly, a significant increase in income.

I personally have clients where we've done complete over-hauls for their website with a fresh new and responsive look all recreated using the current copy. It saves us time, which saves them money. With only minor tweaks to some copy, their search traffic (in many cases) increases exponentially.

For many people, the lack of an optimized site is as simple as their URL structure, and the absence of some key elements that Google actually looks at. Frequently, there is also the lack of quality copy on the page. Some people still have fancy text on a page, which is just an image with fancy text and not real text... even worse, is the homepage for a site that has no copy on it at all, just pictures and links. This does nothing for google, and probably hurts more than it helps. Even still... some people are using 3 year old techniques like using meta tags which are depreciated by just about everyone.

For your business, do you have employees to manage? Are you working at a store? Or when you don't have an appointment, do you have time to sit and spend a few hours learning the tricks of the trade?

Hiring a professional doesn't necessarily equal expensive, in most cases, the cost of hiring people who know how vs. the cost and learning curve of DIY just makes a lot more sense. If it didn't, then people like us who have built a company that specializes in helping scuba businesses with their marketing wouldn't exist.

YMMV.

 

[SeaHorse81]

I didn't realize this is what you do for a living, Howard. Obviously, you know far more about it than I ever will, and I respect your information. All I can offer is the point of view of one business owner who tripped into this area by necessity; I offer it in the hopes that it may help other business owners who read this. If one has the money and a trustworthy professional to hand the task over to, that would be awesome. If I could have identified someone who I trusted with the work, paying them would have been a lot easier than doing it myself.

My fear is that many people either won't have the money (I didn't have much), or won't be able to locate somebody who will do quality work for them (I didn't know of anyone). If either is the case, I want people to be aware that it can be done, and that it's well worth the effort. Whatever you do, don't let your business just lay down and die, for heaven's sake. If you're not optimized to some degree, you're probably missing a lot of easy business, assuming that you're offering a quality service that people want.