Picture Worthy Moments For Marketing

During the month of September you will start to see flyers and posters popping up all over. However depending on where you are located you may see monsters in a local parade or at a farmers market, in a store. You know what happens when people see this in our wonderfully connected world. Smartphones start coming out and pictures get snapped of the monsters and with the monsters. Then they send those pictures to friends and post them to Facebook, Twitter and Google. Now you have created buzz in your local community. Do something picture worthy to grab attention because if you do it will get shared its what we do in this connected world.

Top 10 FEAR Pics for the week of May 11, 2014 | Nightmares Fear Factoryand throughout the rest of the year.
Found at http://buff.ly/1kIA2Ij

A great example of the picture situation is Nightmares Fear Factory a haunted house in Niagara Falls which snaps photos as they scare you. Their pictures are famous for October

Social Integration

Every haunted house I go to or see sites for has began embracing social media. They have twitter feeds, Facebook pages, Google pages, LinkedIn pages they do it all. I am still surprised when I go to a local business and they have no links to social media profiles. These days social media and the engagement that comes along with it when you do something spectacular is a top factor in your success in local marketing strategies online. These main sites are where your audience is at. During the 2012 season we run a ton of Google and Facebook advertising and while we did not get to track a whole lot of it we did ask everyone Halloween night and what we found was shocking. Well over 60% had found out about the haunted house from those two locations. Not only that but on slow nights we could post a ticket promotion out to our Facebook fan base and in some occasions double our attendance. Whats that online marketing saying “The Money Is In The Email List”. Well its not just the email list, your Facebook following, Google+ and Twitter following (automate it with CinchTwet) work the same exact way. The great thing about Facebook is you can run ads on there for dirt cheap that target your exact audience so if you know your demographics you can go after them only. On Google you can target location specific really well also. With those two paid advertising locations you can do wonders.

Local Business Promotion Ideas

We give tickets away on the radio, Facebook and other places. One year we did hearse taxi service where we actually sent a funeral attendant out to pick up our promotion winners in a hearse. Talk about coverage on the radio, that went over great. We put the haunted house on the side of the hearse for promotional purposes and got tons of attention driving our victims to the haunted house.

NorCal Pirate Festival Pirates of Emerson – Google Search
Found at http://buff.ly/1kIGj6H

Other ideas are based around local events that can be tied into the haunted house. At the Nor Cal Pirate Festival every year the Pirates of Emerson bring their terrifying pirates to the festival and hand out flyers. Scary pirates, pictures and flyers. Think that gets shared online at all? Among that crowd which is also very likely to visit your haunted house… Yes!

Now imagine these iconic characters of your haunted house in a parade. Don’t have monsters and scary pirates you ask, well do you have a mascot? No mascot, what about sponsoring a float in the parade or doing your own? Now your in front of all those guests and able to hand out coupons, flyers, swag with your logo or business information on it. Think that might work? If your saying no you need to rethink because these haunted houses thrive on this type of stuff and they pull in all their guests in a single month. A mega haunt can see 40,000 to 60,000 guests in a month and on average spend $2-$5 per ticket sale on marketing to bring them in. This stuff works and it works well. How many times during the month of October do you see interviews and specials on local haunted houses. I always see something on my local news.

Local Business Marketing Scares Outside The Box

Haunted houses know how to market and they do it fast and hardcore. They push out tens of thousands of flyers to local shopping centers and related Halloween store locations. They participate in parades and other local events. They giveaway tickets and other swag on the radio and at local events. When you have to attract 40,000+ victims in a 1 month window you start a month prior and you push out marketing like no one else. Why do they do it? Because it is effective. The pictures get shared year round, especially on Pinterest. So when September rolls around in your town if you have a haunted house pay attention to what they do, some are small scale but the mega haunts you will find everywhere if you pay attention. Take a tip or two from this tiny industry that spends an incredible amount of its money on marketing every year, it could work for any business, just think outside the box and apply it to your business.

The post Market Like A Haunted House – Local Business Marketing appeared first on Grant Brott's Local SEO.

79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Over the past several years there has been a trend in trust with reviews and fewer reviews are being read prior to making a decision. 73% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust a business more which is a 15% increase over the 58% in 2012. Bright Local 2013 Local Consumer Review Survey

The facts from the survey just reinforce how important reviews are. So now the question that remains is how do we obtain reviews.

Get Online Reviews By Asking Your Customers

The first and easiest method of obtaining reviews is to just ask your satisfied customers to leave you a review on your Google Business listing or Citysearch or any other site your trying to get reviews on. I did not mention Yelp since they have strict guidelines against soliciting reviews. The only way to get reviews for Yelp is to just make sure customers are aware your on Yelp.

Review Handouts & Review Business Cards

The next easiest step to working toward obtaining reviews online for your business is to provide some kind of handout or instructional sheet for your customers. A great handout for Google Reviews can be generated for free from www.whitespark.ca.

Another interesting method I have started using and I have seen others mention and talk about often are review business cards. These can be rather simple such as a quick thank you message on the front and then a request to leave a review. Some even put some simple instructions on the card to walk the customer through the review process. These however are not as detailed as the review handout seen above.

How To Get Reviews From Customers Via Email

Emailing customers to request feedback is a common tactic but a tedious and time consuming one. Well it use to be. There is a new review tool out called Get 5 Stars that was put together by Don Campbell and Mike Blumenthal. If you are unfamiliar with either of these guys then it is well worth it to take some time and check out their blogs. I have heard Mike talk on reviews on several occasions and it is always valuable.

Get Five Stars is an easy to use review tool. It allows you to setup a business in the system and then add your customers as seen below.

Once you have added a customer sending feedback is as easy as a click of a button.

Once you click the Send Feedback Request an email is sent requesting feedback. This email is fully customizable.

The email will direct the customer to a page where they can leave feedback and rate your business service on a scale of 1-10.

If your customer leaves a review equal to or above your positive feedback setting then they will be forwarded to the following page.

From here your customers can pick what review site they want to leave a review on and then click and be directed to that profile.

If however they leave a rating below your positive feedback threshold then their response is sent to you via email so you can resolve the situation in private out of the public’s eye.

Final Review Getting Thoughts

With all these tools at your disposal you are setup for success. You have to take action now to get those reviews. You must ask your customer for that review, then hand them a handout or business card. Make sure to collect your customer’s contact information which should include an email address which you can use to send a feedback request email via Get 5 Stars. Now you have all the tools now its in your hands to make sure your business succeeds.

The post How To Get Reviews For Your Business appeared first on Grant Brott's Local SEO.

Currently this should only be used if your still in the old Google Places dashboard which you can see a screenshot of below.

To access the form go to the following URL https://support.google.com/business/#topic=2794267&ts=3054546,3141976&contact=1

Once you click that link you will see the following Google Review Transfer Request screen where you need only fill in 3 boxes and submit the form.

Once the form is submitted it is just a wait game as the ball is now in Google’s field. If you do not see the reviews transfer over or receive any feedback within a week or two I would go to the Google and Your Business forum and post there for additional assistance.

The post Google Review Transfer Form And How To Use It appeared first on Grant Brott's Local SEO.