For many of our customers located in densely populated areas, making their business known to potential clients is their greatest challenge.

A practitioner in Grangeville, Idaho is not likely to have direct competition in their area of specialization. However, in San Francisco or Manhattan there are probably hundreds of similar businesses which anyone can choose to patronize. How does a professional get their business noticed among the clamor of online ads/business listings, and advertisements in newspapers/magazines/bus stops?

Make More Noise

One approach is to be more noticeable than other businesses by advertising more intensely. If you out-bid other advertisers for Google AdWords placement, you can get priority placement for your ad in search listings and websites. If you spend more on newspaper and magazine ads, you can make yours larger than those of other services. You can pay for preferential placement in business directories, above the free or lower-cost ads.

Make a Different Kind of Noise

When Deadline Express Couriers in New Zealand wanted to emphasize that they make their deliveries on-time, they had a billboard literally explode at the end of a countdown. 3M boasted about their security glass by displaying large stacks of money behind the glass in a bus shelter. While advertising like this is probably way outside of your budget, these publicity stunts might be inspirational in dreaming up a campaign that is practical for you. Can you think of a hook that people would remember and associate with your business?

You, Tubed

A free form of advertising you can use is the YouTube video site. Online videos which anyone can play and which might turn up in Google and other searches are a very effective marketing tool, a way that you can get noticed in a crowd. A video that is humorous enough or interesting enough can become “viral” so that other Internet users are promoting the video, doing your marketing for you. When using this tactic, the video should nonetheless represent your business professionally. The result may be the opposite of what you intend if your business is associated with a laughable gimmick that doesn’t have anything to do with your service. Videos can be easily made using a low-cost digital camera (many of them have video recording capability) or video camera. Once the content is transferred to a computer (and the manual for the camera should tell you how this is done) it can be easily uploaded to YouTube. Some types of video you might create and post on the site for anyone to find: a video tour of your office, a personal introduction to your business, or snippets of conversation with satisfied customers. You might for example stage a conversation with an actual customer about how much they appreciate your service. The customer could be given discounted service for helping you market your practice. The videos can also serve you other ways. A video could be embedded in your website or you could email a link for a video to an individual when the video can illustrate something you want to say much better than text or still images.

We Can Help

Included free with every CoachingWebsites website subscription is our comprehensive set of tools and assistance for Search Engine Optimization and marketing your business. It takes time and commitment to become very visible in some of the more densely crowded markets, and nobody can guarantee #1 placement in search engines. However, we can get your business in front of many sets of eyes and maybe even help you make your business more recognized than your toughest competitor. The website templates are optimized to encourage prominent placement in search engines. We show you how to customize the content with the terms that are likely to be searched by a person looking for your service. We create listings for you in many online directories including Google Maps and Yahoo! Local. To learn more about what we can do to give your business prominence in your market, just contact us!

Brian S – CoachingWebsites Support
Email any questions to [email protected]