Need some help with ideas for offline client

[J smith]

Hello warriors,

I have an interview set up with a local car repair shop and am looking for some ideas as to what I could offer them as far as online marketing etc goes.

They have a decent site (not a shining example of on-site seo, but better than many local sites) that ranks on page 1 of google for at least 1 term (car repair shop town state) as well as being in the top 3 of google locale listings for 1 keyword phrase (but interestingly not for others)

They have a newsletter sign up on their site, but it's not really highlighted and I am pretty sure they don't send any newsletters (I signed up for it but never gotten anything as far as I can recall)

So obviously email list and active news letters containing discounts, tips, useful info etc seems like a good point to start. But I am wondering what other, more experienced warriors can suggest?

Thanks for your ideas!

[Asher]

I can recommend a few things... Showing them
their site and pointing out all the different problems
of the site. Tell them you've even signed up for
the newsletter but you got nothing. Is the site
design good?

In any case, if you can't convince, confuse!

You can also help them to create a newsletter
using an autoresponder using your affiliate link.

Soooo much you can do =)

Asher

[MarkR]

After fixing the problems you've already identified, I'd go after:

1) Keyword research (that's where everything should start!)
2) A Blog for SEO / community branding / outreach purposes
3) Google Local Business Center listing / optimization
4) Social bookmarking the site for traffic / backlinks
5) Video marketing for traffic and more Google site listings
6) Squidoo page
7) Press release generation/submission

There's a ton you can do. Identify the business owners main areas of pain and attack them. I always try to own the first page of Google with 7-10 different web properties (optimized for the main keyword/phrase), that all point back to sites that promote the business owner's business.

This thread should be absolute gold for you - Marketing Ideas For Chiropractor

[J smith]

Thanks for the ideas guys.

Also, forgot to mention it, I did some keyword research and annoyingly enough there isn't much there. The keywords are just generic (ie. car repair shop etc get tos on searches, but anything with state or town doesn't seem to get searched at all) Obviously no keyword tool is perfect, but what I found doesn't really give me much.

Which is why I am thinking that pushing email as well as leveraging their existing customer base is a better way to go than trying to get good serps.

Anyone else has any suggestions or ideas?

[tracelemental]

thanks for raising this topic and the responses... I've got some local clients I would like to speak with >> I'll have a similar issue so there is some really great points here.

Nice one

[BigManta]

A newsletter and integrating a blog would be several good steps you might want to look at implementing. Also, since it's a local auto repair company you will find that using coupons can be a great way to start driving traffic and generating awareness.

As far as promotion on other sites, you will also want to look into local resource sites like Yelp, SuperPages, and even the local news sites or sites that specialize about the city (hubs/portals) as a lot of these types of sites offer lots of free or inexpensive advertising for local businesses.

[thunderbird]

A lot of your ideas can come directly from the client. They'll say what their concerns and objectives are, then you give them a web-based response to that, to help them achieve it. Many principles are the same, but each small business has it's own unique characteristics, so it's not one size fits all.

[Dustin Bow]

Great advice in this thread.

A business like that can present online marketing challenges for sure. Depending on the local population and surrounding areas - certain online marketing isn't super applicable (like twitter for example)

A lot of this depends on how you position yourself

Are you an online marketing consultant?
are you an seo consultant?
are you a online lead generation consultant?

It's been my experience that potential client's go for the lead generation position.

It's also been my experience that lead generation makes you more responsible for the results of your marketing

It's one thing to get page one rankings for someone (that's easy) It's another thing entirely turning those rankings into actual, sell-able leads for that client.

Lead Gen is mainly a matter of focusing on conversion tactics and driving the click, but still - it's a heavier responsibility.

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by J smith

Which is why I am thinking that pushing email as well as leveraging their existing customer base is a better way to go than trying to get good serps.

Anyone else has any suggestions or ideas?

Ding, ding, ding - we have a winner!

The very first place you should be looking is their house file of past customers. If you are lucky, this will be computerized, but even a file cabinet stuffed with old invoices is golden.

Go ahead and clean up the site and activate the newsletter. In the meantime, work up a mailing list of past customers. Send those customers a postcard with a tip, an invitation to sign up for the newsletter, and a discount for bringing in the "Welcome" email.

Have some counter signs made up with the same offer, add the offer to the register tape if you can, make up some half-sheet or quarter-sheet fliers and staple one to every invoice that gets paid.

Experiment with a Twitter account. Tweeting a special on slow days could help even out the business. There's a script out there that will allow you to reward followers for re-tweeting your offer - use that to generate referrals.

There is a lot more, but this should keep you busy for awhile...