Barry J. owns a 22-year-old HVAC company in Nashville, Tenn.*, a Midwestern city with a half-million residents.
He’s a heavy Yellow Pages advertiser with multiple full-page ads in up to seven local phone directories. Ten years ago, he was the first contractor in town to invest in a Web site. He promotes his Web address on his trucks, cards, stickers and print ads. Other than some bundled Internet advertising with Yellow Pages publishers, he had not focused serious time or energy on Internet marketing until last year.
“My nephew, Robbie was pretty smart about the Internet, and he wanted some money to start buying ads on Overture (now named Yahoo Search Marketing) and Google. I gave him two hundred dollars to see what he could do. That was about a year and a half ago. Now, we’re up to about $3,000 per month, and I expect it to keep growing.”
Robbie experimented with dozens of online advertising programs and made several mistakes along the way. Because he keeps a close eye on every aspect of the Internet advertising, he caught his mistakes before the damage was too great. He shared with me the mistakes and lessons he learned from them.
Mistake #1 — Being too general
“There’s a real danger in being too general on the Internet,” said Barry. “We have a very specific geographic area that we service, and beyond those boundaries, it’s too expensive. We also want to focus on the more profitable aspects of the business.”
“The first mistake I made was buying generic keywords such as [plumber] and [heating].” I quickly found that lots of foreigners were hitting our ads and costing me money, but they weren’t ever going to become our customers.”
The solution was to add more words so that we were reaching qualified customers. For example, Robbie replaced the keyword [plumber] with a series of keyword combinations such as [Nashville plumber] and [plumbing repair in Nashville, Tenn.].
By including geographic terms, Robbie focused his ads to local customers. “It made an immediate difference in our call volume.”
Mistake #2 — Hiding the phone number
Barry’s website designer followed typical site design templates, which placed Barry’s phone number on the “Contact Us” page of his website. The placement required site visitors to search for the phone number.
Robbie instructed the website designer to place the phone number prominently on every page of the website. Beside the phone number is a photo of a technician wearing a headset and the words “Call me now. I’m here to help you.”
Mistake #3 — Internet Yellow Pages listings
Barry’s first foray into Internet advertising was through his Yellow Pages rep. Barry was reluctant because the medium was unknown, so he purchased an inexpensive package that included links to his website, but did not place him near the top of the page.
“I didn’t get a single customer from their Internet package, so I figured it was another expensive lesson.”
Robbie found that the Internet Yellow Pages site was continually among the top search results on Google and so he took a different tack.
Robbie purchased ads that placed Barry’s company at the very top for the three most important categories:
- Plumbing Contractors
- Heating Contractors
- Air Conditioning Contractors
The impact on Barry’s business was immediate. We started getting many more calls from the Internet Yellow Pages. The quality of calls was second only to our referral business.
Barry tracks the source and profitability of every customer. He found that the customers that came in as referrals spent the most money and were the most profitable. The customers that came in from the Internet Yellow Pages were a close second. They were ready to buy, and were twice as likely to buy maintenance agreements as our average customer. My only complaint is that there aren’t enough customers coming in that way.
The solution for Barry was to position his company at the top of the Internet Yellow Pages search results. Publishers have their own rules for top placement, so you’ll need to find out what it takes to lock in the top position.
Mistake #4 — Ignoring lesser known websites
When Robbie began Internet advertising, he focused entirely on Overture (now called Yahoo Search Marketing). Later, he expanded to Google and then on to various Internet Yellow Pages. As he expanded the number of distribution points, his cost of customer acquisition declined.
“I have a simple approach to deciding where to advertise. I search Google or Yahoo the way a customer might look for us using terms like [plumber in Nashville]. Then I look to see which websites show up in the search results. I figure that our customers are likely to click on those, so I check them out and often buy an ad to see if it gets customers.”
Robbie also places ads on Craigslist.com, a free classified ads site. He wrote three different classified ads for each area of his business and places one every few days to keep his company near the top of the page. “It’s free, but it takes time, and if you don’t do it right, they kick you off,” says Robbie.
According to comScore Networks, a global leader in measuring the digital age, Google and Yahoo account for 60% of local searches. Microsoft and Time Warner (AOL) both have significant share, and often have less local advertising competition.
Robbie sums up his advice regarding Internet advertising. “Read everything you can find on local Internet advertising. Try everything that makes sense. If it doesn’t show results in 60 days, you have two choices: 1) make a change and try for another 60 days, or 2) pull the plug and go on to something else.”
Dick Larkin is president of Weblistic, Inc., an advertising agency that uses online marketing to help their clients attract local customers. More information is at www.Weblistic.com. You may contact him at Dick@Weblistic.com.
I received the following email today from a contact back east. Can anyone with inside information shed some light on this?
