What is the difference between traditional forms of advertising and local search marketing?  Listen to our lates podcast as we discuss how using video in Local Search Marketing will explode your results.

Male:   Preparing Business for Business is on the air.  Join hosts Marcia Hawkins, President of the New York Shop Exchange and Kyle Clouse, Vice President for insightful and creative

strategies to prepare your business for business.  Listen in for great guests and great offers from our guests and sponsors, as well as thought-provoking dialogue.  Preparing Business for Business offers usable content, insightful ideas and resources to jumpstart your business in an effective, economical manner and to prepare your business for growth and challenges. And now, your hosts for Preparing Business for Business, Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Local Search Marketing in your New Year Marketing Plan

Marcia Hawkins:  Alrighty, everybody. Good evening and welcome to the Business Preparing for Business radio program on the Preparedness Radio Network. I’m Marcia Hawkins alongwith my co-host, Kyle Clouse. Today is Wednesday, January 4 – oh, it just sounds like just so cold to me because it’s really cold in the northeast tonight, in the year of 2012. We are heading into the new year, 2012 is upon us. And we have some great shows lined up for you this year, we’re very, very excited about some exciting guests.

So we welcome you to the Business Preparing for Business radio program. The theme of our show is to provide you tools, contact information, products and services, you know, some really good resources to best prepare your business for more business or if we can assist you in any way in these challenging times, we want to be able to be there for you and provide that type of information or resources for you.

Now, we invite guests on our program that through their experiences and problem-solving can really share some of the methodologies and ideas and strategies that have worked for them and that will allow you to use and apply them in your business. So this is – you know, we really try to strategize and really think outside the box when we’re trying to get our guest list together for you because we know when we can find a really effective guest and somebody who’s really made their mark in the business community, we know that there’s something, some little nugget of information in there that they’re going to be able to share with you that you’re going to be able to apply to your business.

Now many of our Preparedness listeners tune in to hear helpful tips on information on Preparedness products. Now we essentially do the same thing, the difference is, we apply ours to business. Now whether you’re starting a business, you’re trying to expand your business, grow your business or your business really needs some strategy and you know, some really problem-solving tools, that’s where we come in. And again, based on some of our knowledge and our experiences and our services that we provide along with our guests that we invite on, we’re hoping that we can really kind of create a cooperative group here for you so that we can really pull those resources out and really try to help you with your business. We’re really passionate about that and I’m sure you hear that in my voice.

So, Kyle and I do welcome you to our program and invite you to email us at info@newyorkshopexchange.com. Again, that’s info@newyorkshopexchange.com for any questions or you know, any helpful hints that you might have that you can share with our listeners or if you’d like to be a guest in our program. info@newyorkshopexchange.com.

So now, let’s not wait another minute and bring my little co-host in here Mr. Kyle Clouse. How are you Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Hey, I’m doing great Marcia. Glad to be to be the little co-host.  I have to say that I’m really looking forward to talking about the new year and what business owners can do to increase their exposure across the Internet using local search marketing.

Marcia Hawkins:  Well I was going to say my little cohort but I decided to clean that up so…

Kyle Clouse:  Be more accurate.

Marcia Hawkins:  My accomplice, my accomplice I should say. How are you tonight?

Kyle Clouse:  Oh, great. Doing great. You know, really, two things – well, first and foremost, I’m excited about 2012, glad that we’re starting off the new year ready to get back in the saddle with our local search marketing campaigns and get things moving after the holidays. As much as I enjoy the holidays, I’m glad to be back in the saddle really pushing out a great year but secondly, where did 2011 go?

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, I know. It seems just like it flew by and I’m – you know it’s really funny, I was thinking about this as I was driving tonight and I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last couple of days and I kind of want to segue into our program with this, we held off on having a guest on tonight for several reasons. We thought it would be kind of neat to kind of jumpstart the new year with just a couple of different tools for the listeners so we’re really going to kind of get into that, in the meat of that in a few minutes. But as I was driving today, I was really thinking about how – when you’re you know, the build up of a new year, you know, new year’s eve, the new year’s resolutions and all this, you know, the things that people really think about. I’m sure most people don’t realize but gym memberships, fitness memberships catapults, just absolutely skyrocket in the first week of January right after the holidays. And the reason for that is people really feel commited to change, you know. They really want to try to lose that extra 10 pounds where they – you know, just – people tend to get you know, write goal sheets and do all sorts of new things but I’m really struck by the fact that a lot of people have joined fitness clubs and they did make new year’s resolutions and such but they don’t stick to it.

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah.

Marcia Hawkins:  And that’s kind of too bad because for – being able to really, how do I want to word this? Really being able to establish goals, being able to establish changes that they want in their life, changes they want to make in their business and being really commited to that. So I kind of want to talk a little bit about that and how people can really try to change their framing and their belief system to really kind of adapt that philosophy that they not only want to change but their able to take the action to make those changes. I want to talk a little bit about that and kind of segue into where we’re going, about what are becoming the new norms of business so we can kind of go off on a couple of different avenues on that but I know we’re going to specifically talk about marketing.

So it is, it’s 2012 and everybody is just excited to about the new year, we’re in a full blown election year at this point and of course that, in and of itself, everybody is you know, everybody’s talking about changes that they want and things that they want to have happen and I really do believe that you and I are very passionate about one thing and I really want to get in to this. We really believe that small business really need to have an avenue to be able to have a fighting chance of survival. Two-thirds of the workforce is made up by small business and I know you and I are very passionate about finding an avenue and tools and resources for small businesses to be able to not only survive in these challenging times but thrive.

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah. You know it’s important, just to kind of bring back to what you’re talking about and we can then segue into using video in local search marketing, is you know, businesses have to start – you know, you talked a little bit about mindset and the business owner, especially in 2012, I’m sure that the small business owner is looking, okay, this is the year that I’m going to thrive. And there has to be a shift in the mindset of that person, in the mind of that business owner. As you were talking about the gym memberships and the new year and people starting off something new and really commiting themselves for the first couple of weeks or the first couple of months. You know, I’m a – I have a regular, I attend the gym regularly. And it’s been interesting the past month, you know, everyday that I’m there – 11 months out of the year I’m not – I don’t see the cleaning crew at the gym. I literally do not see the cleaning crew at the gym and for the past month, every single day, they have five – they have a full staff of cleaners at that gym constantly cleaning and I think they’re preparing or trying to get the word out that hey, we’re a clean gym to get those sign ups come January or you know, for this month. And you know, along with that, you and I talk about a book, The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. Great book, highly recommended. And really, it’s kind of a spin on words when he says in The Millionaire Fastlane, “There’s really no true fastlane unless you want to try your luck on the lottery and live big time.” But he uses that terminology as kind of a selling point to sell his book and he’s a bestseller. But one thing that he posted when we’re talking about mindset, changing lifestyle, changing habits, he said you know – he put up on I think it was Facebook. He put up there that he has a – you know, he was getting his green smoothie ready for his morning breakfast and got a list of the ingredients and he’s putting in that spinach and some other green stuff and you know, just really you know, stuff that people will turn their heads at. And one of the things that he said, he said, “Show me what you have for breakfast and I will tell you how successful you are in your business.”

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh yes, I remember seeing that post.

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah. And I think that’s so true. You know, what our daily habits as a business owner, what are we doing to think outside the box, to look at new things and what are our daily, hourly, and minutes habits and do those dictate, are those taking us on a path that’d make 2012 a successful year and will bank?

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah, exactly. It really is true. I really believe that people, if they could just map out, you know they do their goal sheet but it’s so easy to write a goal sheet. It’s very, very easy. I think if everybody sat down and made a goal sheet, they would be able to say, yup, this is what I want to do, I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to start a business, I want to grow my business, I want to get my roof done in my house, I want to get my house painted on, get my yard reeling, whatever. But the problem is, what are they doing to take the action to execute that plan? You know, that’s it. Are they executing it? A lot of people, that’s what they struggle with. Very easy to make a list and very easy to really come up with a million and one things that you want to get done but it’s the execution of those plans and those goals that I think really are why usually, by the third or fourth week of January, many of these goals have already been – and resolutions have already been abandoned.

Kyle Clouse:  I think the people are looking for – you know, we live in a microwave society. Instant result…

Marcia Hawkins:  Magic bullet? Is that what’s you’re going to…

Kyle Clouse:  Their is no magic bullet when it comes to advertising and especially in local search marketing.  Their are things that a person can do that will increase their chances of having a successful marketing campaign but as far as magic; that’s just not the case.  And people are looking for, they set a goal in a business and they – for the first week or two weeks, third, gung ho on that goal and they’re doing anything possible to make – they’re almost trying to force that goal to happen. And when it doesn’t, when it doesn’t take place or they’d go, it doesn’t work and they give up and stop or get frustrated or whatever and there’s a book out that I read – yeah. Funny thing is, it just slipped my mind.

Marcia Hawkins:  I hate it when that happens.

Kyle Clouse:  One of the things that he talks about, it will come to me, one of the things that he talks about is he says, you know, if you look at someone who’s obese and overweight and you look at them, that wasn’t a one-time event. And it’s the same thing with people who are very successful, we look at those people and we think, oh they just got lucky. They got lucky or they did something right and that…

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, that is such a good point. I hope you do remember what book that is so I can read it.

Kyle Clouse:  Yes. Well, what he’s saying is is that it’s not right. They made decisions every single day and they were serious about their decisions and they were methodical about their decisions and the accumulation of those decisions over a long period of time is – you’re basically seeing the end result of that.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right.

Kyle Clouse:  And that’s the same with people and we’ll get back to that, it’s because it’s kind of an easy thing to draw the analogy from. If you look at someone eating a salad for lunch, that one salad is not going to make that person healthy. And the same thing is true for someone if someone is eating a slice of pizza for lunch. That one slice of pizza is not going to make that person unhealthy or is not going to make that unhealthy.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right

Kyle Clouse:  But the relation of that over time, over months and years will make the difference.

Marcia Hawkins:  You know they say, sum total all of your decisions, that’s so true.

Kyle Clouse:  Exactly.

Marcia Hawkins:  Very, very true. And that’s really true when you apply it to preparing your business, I think that sometimes I get a little frustrated because I feel that people sometimes – even though the fine details are so critical, very, very critical, I find people try to micromanage those details that actually prevent them from actually getting the job done. It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine.

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah. I just remembered the name of the book. We’ll come back…

Marcia Hawkins:  What is it?

Kyle Clouse:  It’s Slight Edge. And it’s almost kind of like you know, the name of the book, The Slight Edge, it’s like people that are successful or that make the certain decisions, it’s almost as if they’re walking a razor’s edge of necessity for the success in whatever they set out to do in life.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right.

Kyle Clouse:  They have this you know, the path is – in religious terms the straight and narrow path and it’s the same way in life. It’s a same way in life. If you want to be successful in your business, in life and in family, society, whatever it is, there’s a path to take that is narrow and it’s a slight edge. And every single day, making decisions towards that, the accumulation of that is what get you to your goal.

Marcia Hawkins:  That’s exactly right and I do believe that you know, getting back to the details and execution of goals, you know, it’s really funny when you look at a goal sheet and you really have to take that goal and say, okay, what type of decisions or what type of action plan do I need to instigate in order for this goal to happen? And I’m just struck by the fact that people don’t realize that that writing a goal doesn’t accomplish it. It just doesn’t do that. And I really want our listeners to really look at that and really look at their – I’m a big fan of writing them, don’t misunderstand me. I really believe it’s really your road map. We are our own vehicles to get us to where we need to be, whether it’s in our relationships, whether it’s in our business, our personal goals, whatever. We are our own vehicles. And I use the term a lot that some people are really comfortable hitchhiking and jumping in the backseat and then these other people that are get-out-of-my-way-I’m-going-to-drive-this-vehicle and I think you and I are drivers for sure. But you know, getting – it’s funny they get caught up in the fine details that – I was just having a conversation with one of our team members the other day about how they will spend all this time organizing what their logo’s going to look like and what their business card is going to look like and they get so caught up in all these details that they forget the big picture of actually having a business.

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah

Marcia Hawkins:  It just absolutely drives me crazy.

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah, there’s that – it’s easy to get caught up in things that don’t really matter. And too many people, far too many business owners spend the majority of their time on activities that do not bring in the income, that don’t have an income end result. And then they wonder why they struggle financially in their business.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah, and you really don’t have a business without the financial piece of it. You know, without the profitability, you really don’t have a business. And so let’s kind of segue into what we – what the theme of the show is going to be about. You know, starting your business off on the right foot this year. And I again, not to be redundant, I really, really believe that you need a goal sheet. I’m a big proponent of a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day, 120 day goal program. And then one year, where do you want to be one year from now? And really utilizing that as your roadmap to where you want to go, whatever your destination is. You know, you can’t get there if you don’t know where it is that you want to go. So I’m a big proponent of that. And then of course, the action piece of it. You really have to boil those goals down and those objectives or benchmarks, whatever your calling them, to how you’re going to achieve them. You know, if it means you want to grow the business by 25%, 20%, whatever it is, what action are you taking in order to grow that business?

Kyle Clouse:  Yes. There’s no guarantee.

Marcia Hawkins:  And it’s interesting – go ahead.

Kyle Clouse:  A guarantee that people have as they’re setting their business goals for the year, how much growth they want to have, what certain things they want to accomplish within their business. Guarantees and goals you can guarantee there’s going to be obstacles with each goal. And the key is spending about 10% of the obstacle and 90% on the solution.

Marcia Hawkins:  Absolutely. That’s great advice, Kyle. Absolutely right. We talked about this on our team meeting today about how when you join a gym, you know, if you’re – you know, let’s just say you got 50 pounds you want to lose and you sign up for a gym membership and the first week you go and you lose five pounds. You’re working out, you got a trainer scheduled, you go in, you work out, you’re watching what you’re eating and the next week, you’re like, you only make it there one day. And by the first week, you’ve actually put on those five pounds, you’ve gained them back maybe even with a little bit of interest and now all of a sudden you know, you’re not so much liking the gym anymore. When the reality of it, it’s not the gym. It’s the decisions that you made about not committing.

So in commiting to those goals and commiting to what you want for your business and how you – let’s just say for example, you know, growing your business is going to be part of it. You’re looking to increase your revenue by 20 – you know, your gross revenue by 25%. Many people and I would guess that most of our listeners would say, oh I totally would love to grow my business by 25%, 30%, whatever. That’s kind of a slam dunk I think for everybody listening. And I completely agree with that. However, I don’t think that people realistically sit down and figure out what steps they need to take in order for that to happen. And would you not agree, I’m of the belief that 2012 that there’s going to be some breakaway trends? And you and I both know when our business for example, we believe that video marketing is the way that people are going to be spending a lot of their advertising dollars. And of course, we’re happy to say we’re not expensive and there’s a reason for that. Would you like to get in to our philosophy of why we don’t believe it needs to be expensive?

Kyle Clouse:  Well, you know, if you think about it, if you build this system and you’re able to allow someone to plug in to that system or that vehicle or machine that you’ve built and basically automate the process so that it simplifies it, it happens, it’s effective, that should not be expensive.

Marcia Hawkins:  Exactly, exactly. When you can build a product that is superior or provide a service that’s superior and you can make it affordable to the masses, you will be successful. And I believe, Kyle and I are beyond compassionate about that. We truly believe that the product and service that we’ve built for small business, two-thirds of the workforce is small business and we really believe that there has to be a vehicle provided to small business in order for them to survive. Let’s face it, the Internet, where it’s at, you know, phone books, traditional forms of print advertising are really starting to fall to the wayside. And I know just in a lot of the business conversations that I’ve had with a lot of our new clients, they are all about 2012 being the year of change for their advertising and marketing platforms because they’re recognizing that 2011, the traditional forms that they were utilizing were just simply not effective.

So I really believe – I don’t believe, I am commited and I know without a shadow of a doubt that video is going to have a very, very prominent place in the Internet this year. And so what’s become the new norm, Kyle? I mean, let’s go, let’s take a step back historically, what typically has then you know, the number one, maybe the top five advertising avenues for small business?

Kyle Clouse:  I think the number one – well, you know, if you look historically and let’s talk about the last decade or last 20 years, number one has been the yellow pages.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yes.

Kyle Clouse:  Number one, a big advertisement in the yellow pages and you know, where that’s moved now is you can do a search online and most of the time, the yellow pages end up – they’re used for one of two things: they’re just taken immediately from the doorstep into the recycle bin or they’re used as a booster seat for someone with a new child.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. So that’s one.

Local Search Marketing VS. Traditional Advertising

Kyle Clouse:  Secondly, you know you’ve seen television. Television is another really popular means of advertising. If you look at television and you know, we talked about the switch effect, an advertising switch effect. And what I mean by that is – you know, you talked about this being an election year and this sparked something that I heard on the news last night. As you’re talking about as the GOP, these people running for the GOP as they’re going in to New Hampshire, they were talking about the television advertising spots that the television stations have set aside for political advertisements. And they were saying that Mitt Romney had purchased most of those and that there wasn’t a whole lot left. And so, for anyone who had been sitting on the sidelines, they come in. Now they’re not able to purchase any television advertisement.

But secondly, it also has what we call a switch effect where you pay for the advertisement, you’re on the TV, you hope you get in front of the right audience and when they see your ad the first time, you probably got to run seven different ads for that to really sink in for them to pick up the phone and make that call to your business or walk in your door. But once that advertisement, once that campaign is over, it’s over and it turns off.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right.

Kyle Clouse:  And the only way to turn it back on, you know, pull out the paycheck, pull out your checkbook, write another check to the media station and go through it again. That’s not even including the actors of the television ad or anything that you have to put together just to be on the TV.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. So we’ve yellow book, we have TV, I’m sure you’re going to segue in to radio. Specifically, can you talk about traditional forms of marketing for the Internet? Which is where we usually go in and…

Kyle Clouse:  Traditional forms of marketing, again, it comes back to the light switch effect. I mean, it’s obvious that there’s pay per click, everyone’s under you know, they do the pay per click and they built a search engine and the reason they built a search engine was to get people to use it so that they can sell advertising spots to get in front of the people that are using the search engine. The problem with pay per click is that the click goes to the highest bidder and if you don’t have the pocket for it – well, let’s go ahead and we’ll get back into that after the break, Marcia.

Marcia Hawkins:  Okay. Yeah, we’re going to take a quick break to recognize our fine sponsors. This is the Business Preparing for Business radio show on the Preparedness Radio Network. I’m Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse, please stop by and visit us at <a href=”http://www.newyorkshopexchange.com/”>NewYorkShopExchange.com</a> and we’ll be right back.

Alrighty, welcome back. Again, this is Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse, this is the Business Preparing for Business radio show and tonight we’re speaking about jumpstarting 2012 off on the right foot for your business. And we’re talking about many things from your goalsetting, to execution of those goals and ways to kind of grow your business to really get this year off to the right start.

Welcome back, Kyle.

Kyle Clouse:  Hey, glad to be back, Marcia. Listening to the sponsors for the night, I’ve actually met the Freeze Dry Guy. So, super nice guy.

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, terrific. I know, we’ve got some pretty nice guests on this program, this radio network for sure. Prior to the break, we were talking a little bit about the traditional forms of marketing. We talked about radio, we talked about TV, yellow pages, obviously, the one that comes to mind is newspaper. Let’s talk a little bit about the avenues for small business to advertise online.

Kyle Clouse:  Well, as far as several avenues, you know there’s obviously you know, you hear people talk about setting up a blog, making sure that blog is on your website. What we see far too many times is that someone has a website and they start blogging somewhere else on a completely different platform and what they don’t realize is that Google loves your website to have rows of fresh, new content that is, you know, cause an increase and expanding. And when you’re going on another platform that’s not a part of your website, you’re building up someone else’s platform and putting the content there and not on your website. So can be really detrimental. Well, not detrimental, but just you’re not getting the result that you had hoped to get because of that.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. I think that we’ve talked amongst ourselves and of course we have mentioned it on the program before especially when we had Paul Koenig the week before regarding the affiliate marketing. That affiliate marketing can be very effective for your business especially you’re selling online or selling the service online but I think we can all agree that traditional forms of online marketing typically has been banner ads and pay per click which we all know, people can click themselves right out a business. The thing that I think disturbs me about pay per click ads is the fact that you really have to control over that. People can click on those until the cows come home and the unfortunate thing is, that doesn’t necessarily instigate a sale for you.

<a title=”Kyle Clouse” href=”http://www.kyleclouse.com”>Kyle Clouse</a>:  Right. Right. Yes, absolutely. Another form too that we’ve seen a lot of, that we continue to see a lot of and a lot of these companies out there, I mean, there’s a lot of kind of a dime a dozen and you’re kind of wondering as well. A lot of terms of what you’re actually getting for your money, that is a search engine optimization or SEO companies, link building companies, people that do that.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. And the search engine optimization is very, very critical but I think most people do not understand it. And more importantly, they can spend tens of thousands of dollars on this particular service without actually knowing what it’s supposed to do.

So I think – you know, one of the things that I was thinking about today, we really, and what we’ve built with New York Shop Exchange which is – for those of you listening don’t understand what we do, we do video marketing. We have provided a video Internet billboard if you will, a video Internet channel for small businesses and online sellers to actually create an ongoing ad campaign that they can change anytime they wish. We have a couple of different programs but I’ll talk about the one that – well, we’ll talk about the two most popular. One being valued for $497.00 a year, you can purchase a channel and you can manage it. You can create your videos.

Can you talk a little bit to our listeners about specifically what an annual membership looks like for a small business or online seller on New York Shop Exchange?

Kyle Clouse:  Sure. So what an annual membership, you know, someone creates their own video for their business and they upload it to New York Shop Exchange and then our engine on the backend of New York Shop Exchange grabs that video and that channel on New York Shop Exchange and distributes it out across the Internet, everything according to the title of the video and the description of the video so that whatever they’re looking to target on the Internet, that’s what our engine – we’ll just call it an engine, for layman’s terms, that’s what our engine does. Grabs that according to those terms and distributes it out across the Internet.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. And will you talk about titling and tagging? Can you explain to our listeners specifically what we’re referencing?

Kyle Clouse:  Sure. So if you think about – I was actually having this conversation with someone today. They have a video out on the Internet and the video is of a testimonial of one of their clients. And I’ll give you one guess what they titled this video. They titled it “Client Testimonial” and we were talking about this and I was telling him, that video’s doing absolutely nothing for you because when a search engine looks at that, when Google or other search engines look at that, they’re looking at that like, oh, okay, this video is about a client testimonial. But it has nothing to do with their product or service that that business is about. That’s what they’re getting for that ad in. That’s what it does, actually, it’s no good, it does nothing for them as far as getting in front of you know, allowing the search engine to get that index, to cache it and get it in front of the audience that is searching for their products and services.

And so someone title the video and put a description behind that, put a tag behind that. We want that to be about the product or service. We don’t want it – you know, they can put their business name on it but we don’t want it to be about their business name because the only people that are searching for you, for your business name are people that already know about you.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right.

Kyle Clouse:  We want to expand that market.

Marcia Hawkins:  Your title of your video is essentially what you believe and you want your customers to find you for. We really – you rang my bell on something when you said, “guess what the customer titled their video”. And I just want to really drive that point home that we really want to assist our members with their channels, to make sure that they can maximize the results. So once they’ve paid their $497.00 for their channel for an entire year, they have full control over that. And I really believe that – like, we were talking with one of our clients the other day and he was talking about having websites that you can actually access and change up and he said, guess what? 99% didn’t do it. And I believe the reason for that is because they didn’t know how. And you know, Kyle and I are really passionate about making sure that when you buy a video channel on New York Shop Exchange, we want to be able to show you and teach you how to effectively manage that channel to maximize the results. You buy a pay per click ad, nobody’s going to call you up and say, let me give you some pointers on that. You can e-mail or call us at anytime and we’re happy to go over it. We want you to be successful, that’s why we built the platform. And more importantly, there are clients we have that simply say, this is great, I can completely use this service.

Video marketing is going to be the next revolutionary thing on the Internet for not only small business but for large business but we’re specifically targeting small business and online sellers. We created a search engine specifically for you. And I believe that there are many people that would love to have the time to do that but they’re too busy running their businesses. So can you get in and explain a little bit about what our monthly management program is involved?

Contracting Out Your Local Search Marketing

Kyle Clouse:  So most people don’t have the time, the resource, the know-how to create their own video, manage their channel research the keywords that they want to target, make sure that everything is titled correctly, that the descriptions correct, the tags or title, they just don’t have the time, they don’t want to educate themselves to do that. They want to focus on what they do best and that’s handling the business end of their business. So the monthly and we do that for them. We create two videos per month and obviously can’t pay them to be expanded and grown but the most basic portion of that is we create two videos per month, we manage the channel for them, we upload those new videos, append them to their current channel so that we’re basically beefing that up, increasing that. And then making sure that the syndication, everything like that takes place as well, the distribution of the video.

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Marcia Hawkins:  Right. And so we really, we’ve broken it down for the small business that really does have a few minutes here and there to manage their channel and of course we have businessses that say, you know, this is great, we definitely want this service but we really don’t have the time to manage it. And that’s where a more comprehensive, a more aggressive marketing plan comes in.

So Kyle, what about – yeah, go ahead.

Kyle Clouse:  I was going to say, you know, one of the things that I want to hit upon too is, why video marketing? What makes video marketing so effective? And why businesses are looking at video or should be if they’re not, they should be looking at video marketing as a portion of their marketing portfolio or platform if they’re not already doing that?

Marcia Hawkins:  Right, I know video is definitely where it’s at. You don’t need to look any further than the popularity of YouTube to understand how powerful it is. So let’s – while we’re talking about YouTube, let’s explain the fundamental difference of YouTube and our video marketing platform.

Kyle Clouse:  Okay.  So on YouTube,  the thing is basically, you know, your one video in a sea of other videos, some about business, some not about business…

Marcia Hawkins:  That’s my favorite catch phrase about that, Kyle. I always say it when we’re talking about having and hosting your video on YouTube is great, I mean it’s perfect as it’s got a lot of advantages but you have the – you have everything from Ed the plumber to grandma doing the chicken dance. So you have hundreds – I think there’s over a hundred million videos on YouTube alone, so anyways, I’m sorry. You can keep going.

Kyle Clouse:  No, yeah, exactly. Yeah, but I – and so on New York Shop Exchange, it’s strictly a platform for business owners about business. And that’s what separates us.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right, it’s specifically directed at small to mid size businesses and online sellers. It’s a search engine to host your video specifically to drive traffic over to your website and have customers come to your door exactly. And I think that, you know, a lot of people – we get this a lot, say I have a video on YouTube, and that’s great. But it doesn’t mean that anyone’s ever going to find that video. What we’ve developed with New York Shop Exchange and our software programs that actually grab your listing, we take those listings and actually market them. We want to make sure.

We had one customer say, “Geez, you know, New York Shop Exchange, I have heard of it, but I don’t know how many other people have heard of it.” And no, are we a household name yet? No, we’re not. However, that’s not our mission. Our mission is to make your business a household name. I always say we’re like traffic cops on the Internet saying, “No, no, no, this is where you want to go, this is where this traffic is going. Here you go.” It’s like I always feel like I’ve got a whistle and a blue suit on and I’m directing traffic into the – in over to their websites into their businesses. And, you know, it’s – a lot of times when businesses sign on for a particular service, they advertise on a particular website, what they’re essentially doing is they’re paying that particular website for their traffic saying “Okay, you’re a very heavily-trafficked site.” And although New York Shop Exchange is a very heavily-trafficked site, we take our traffic and say we don’t care about people finding New York Shop Exchange, the only thing we care about is making sure that your customers can find you, we’re just a very powerful traffic portal. So Kyle, you know, in that same vein, can you explain to people why the effectiveness of what we’ve created and how impactful it can be on their business?

Kyle Clouse:  Well, yes. I think it comes back to the service end and why video marketing, like someone has asked the question, “Why should I do video marketing? Why should I do that for my business and include that in my marketing platform?” And there’s a few key fundamentals on why someone should do video marketing. First and foremost is that videos are indexed within hours and days, not – sometimes, hours. They’re indexed and cached by Google and ranking on Google and other search engines. This is a typical website which takes weeks, months to rank for specific keywords that you’re looking to rank for, the fundamental difference of why someone should do video marketing, fundamental difference. Secondly is that have you ever done a search on Google or other search engines and you see a video from Nell’s? And a video from Nell’s, someone’s going to click through, studies have been shown 80% higher click-through rates on videos from Nell’s and just a text-based website, you get more eyeballs with a video from Nell. And thirdly, as people – well, let me – I think I’ll take it a step further than just three points, but people learn. With a video, they’re learning both visually and they’re learning audibly. So you’re getting in front of them and you’re able to captivate them and capture their attention far more than if they have to sit behind something with text and just read that. You’re able to captivate them, you’re able to put impulse to actions, you’re able to get to them emotionally, those emotional drivers within people that motivate to pick up the phone and make the phone call to your business or take an action towards your product offering. You’re able to get them emotionally.

And then for us, we’re able to – we have several of our clients who are on monthly programs and we’re able to expand their local markets. Case in point, just as an example, we have a business who is in – located in city A, but surrounding those, you know, surrounding city A, your have several other cities, B, C, D, E and F. I’ll just keep it as general as possible. What we’re able to do is specifically target those additional cities and key through them, then get in front of their niche market  in their demographic area and expand their local market reach, very very key and very fundamental to them expanding their base. Because typically, wherever business  is located, they were restricted to the demographics or, you know, how far other leads they have in that area.

And well, you hear a lot about local search marketing and getting on Google Places, which is great and a business absolutely should do that, if not on Google Places, they should do that absolutely. But within that, you’re also restricted to that city that you’re listed in on the Google Places. We’re able to expand that quickly and effectively using video. And that’s why someone – that’s why a business should take a long hard look at incorporating vide marketing into their marketing plan.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah, and you were hacking about being able to, you know, get their potential customers or clients, whatever they’re calling them, engaged, get them emotionally engaged to their business. And I think the one thing that I’ve really – has really struck me about utilizing video is the ability to actually interview somebody before you ever pick up the phone and call them. It’s powerful, very very powerful, being able to watch a video and say – for me, I really – I want to stress this to the listeners so – video, it doesn’t need to be professionally done. If that’s your deal and you want something very professionally done, hire a professional videographer. That of course is completely fine. But you and I both know, Kyle, it’s not a  necessity. With the ability to grab your smartphone, the ability to grab a flipcam, whatever it is, whatever your ability is to make that video. I am stunned by the quality of the smartphones. We’ve done several of them just to prove  our point how effective and how the quality is perfect. You grab the smartphone, you shoot the video, you upload it and boom, you’re done.

I mean having the ability to have a 4-minute video and jump in front of your clients, customers, whatever it is you’re calling them, can be so powerful. You’re able to really drive home your keypoints of what the benefit is for them to pick up the phone and call you. I also like the fact that we have so many avenues within their channels, their Internet video billboards, if you will, where we drive those people over to their website. If you don’t have a website, we have – some of our members are using their New York Shop Exchange panel as their website. The ability to keep their content current and relevant, they just change that video, the tags – when we talk about tags, I know we keep mentioning that word and let’s just for the sake of understanding, let’s assume that the listeners don’t know what we mean by that. Could you just talk briefly about what tags are?

Kyle Clouse:  Well, tags are the same thing as the tag on a description. If the title of your video is about makeup, you’re not going to tag it for something that’s about a bakery. So yeah…

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. Well, I think as far as the tags go, I think the one thing I’d like to drive home about that is the fact that those tags of keywords actually have two functions on New York Shop Exhange. You can actually tag the video so that people can actually jump to that portion of the video where that particular tag is. For example, if you were selling skin care products and you had an anti-ageing cream, if you tagged it with anti-ageing it would automatically then jump to that portion of the video, so if you didn’t happen to want to watch the entire video, you could do that. But also, you’re going to tag that video with keywords and phrases that you know you want your customers to type into the search engine to actually find you.

Kyle Clouse:  Let’s talk about – let’s kind of incorporate that so that we’re talking about businesses being sound so that’s what – in the end, the business just wants to be found and that’s where local search marketing comes into play. They want to be found, they want to be found credibly. So if we talk about, you know – through a video, someone’s able to interview a business owner or interview that business or – and whatever they’re about, get a feel for them before they even do business with them, that’s what a video allows us to do. Another step of credibility is, you know, what we’ve been able to do as far as placements, paid one place in front of Google for some of these businesses. Some of our businesses that are on a monthly plan, they have five, six, seven placements on page 1 of Google and this is through our distribution process. And so when someone is searching for them and they come across and they do a search on Google or other search engines for this business and they’re coming across five, six, seven placements on page 1 of Google, A, that gets – I mean they’re really dominating that and really getting in front of their customer, but B, that lends – and studies have been shown that lends credibility to the business. And especially in today’s world where we have so much lack of credibility and politics and business and so on and so forth, for someone to find a business and be able to come across in a credible way and really get their attention, that’s how business is won.

Marcia Hawkins:  They really do. You know, I’m just looking at the clock and I know that we are winding down the hour and I really just kind of want to really get into that and just really drive that – you know, just that whole goal setting, the execution of the goals and really trying to figure out a way to really make your mark this year. And we really believe that we’ve created a platform just for that alone and being able to provide small business. We’re very very passionate about the fact that we understand that small business do have a nominal marketing budget sometimes and they really have got to be able to find an effective, credible, affordable manner to market their business. And we really truly believe that we have designed that, we’ve created it and we are really wanting to share it with small businesses and online sellers and just basically be able to provide them with that vehicle to really help them and assist them with their business and really prepare them. If you’ve never gone into business or run a business and you’re thinking about doing it, boy I got to tell you, the marketing end of it and the online marketing more specifically is probably one of those hard lessons you have to learn early on because there’s nothing worse than calling on a client. And I know, Kyle, you can relate to this in terms of people you’ve spoken to, when you call people and you speak with them or you run into someone that you know that has a business and you mention things like pay-per-click or banner ads or whatever and they just shrug their shoulders like aw, I don’t want to tell you how much money I spent on that. And I just think it’s just very really disheartening to have people to have to understand and learn that the hard way, that their marketing budgets are really being stacked up against, you know, the much larger companies on the Internet and at that point, there’s really no way to compete. Do you agree with that, Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Absolutely

Marcia Hawkins:  So in wrapping, as I said, I know that we’re closing out the hour and I almost wish that we could just stay for another hour because I know there’s just so much more content that Kyle and I simply could not get to but unfortunately, we are out of time. And we will make a point to bring this subject back of marketing for your business to get 2012 off to a right start. But again, we are out of time. So Kyle and I wish to thank you and of course, our sponsors and of course, our listeners. We invite you to visit us at NewYorkShopExhange.com where you can get some more information about what we’re talking about. And we can grab your video business channel and help you advertise your product or service. We would welcome and love the opportunity to host your business video. But more importantly, we want to promote you. We will see you back here next week, Wednesday evening at 7:00 p.m. but until then, I sure hope you have a wonderful, happy and productive New Year and of course, have a great night.

Male:   You’ve been listening to Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.  Questions or comments?  Email the show at info@newyorkshopexchange.com.  Also, find them on the web at http://www.newyorkshopexchange.com.  Until next time, for the best tips on how to manage and grow your business, tune in again for Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

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Local Search Marketing by Kyle Clouse

Free Consultation – No Obligation

Fill out the form to the right or call me direct at 480-200-4222.

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Are you an Attorney in Salt Lake City Utah looking to boost traffic and increase clients?

For Attorneys that depend on the Internet to get new clients, local search marketing is an absolute must.

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Did you know that video is 50 times more likely then websites to show up in the top 10 of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo?

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So what are you waiting for? Call me direct at 480-200-4222. Isn’t it time to get your local business noticed?

Call Kyle Clouse at 480-200-4222 if you are a business owner looking for Salt Lake City Local Search Marketing.

The type of marketing that we provide is not restricted to your Google places.  We use video to strategically distribute across the internet and secure you a dominant position on page 1 of Google.