Ep.2 - Get Your Biz Online NOW

What's going on, everyone? This is Rhine and this is episode two of the Marketing Madness Podcast. Thanks for chiming in and listening today. I am going to talk about how to get your business online and Y, you know, especially in this day and age like we're in twenty twenty one. Now, if you're not online then you're goingnna be missing out on a whole waack load of potential clients and exposure for your business. Um, as we know, people are glued to their phones, Um, and other electronics, and Y, you know they're not looking through phone books or magazines or things like that anymore. And if they are going through that, then again they're online. Um, So if your business, even if your business does not sell directly online, you need to have your business online so people can still find your brand and find out if you're a brick and mortar company, they gotta find out where you are, like where you're located. Um, y, you know the Google Maps if you're not on on their Google Maps is even uh. ranking y, You know somebody can look for your service or your product, But if you're not online and optimized they won't even see you. They'll find your competitors. Who who are optimized? Um, So so it's not only just getting online, you got to optimize yourself and build your brand online as well. And that's what. Uh, That's what I'm goingnna, kinda get into today. I'm go. I'm gonna do a ten step thing of you know, just a just a quick start guide for you to get online. Um, for the people who are just starting off and and don't know what to do. I know it's it's It's a lot of work. Um. there's a lot of things to do, Um. starting a business. It's not easy. Um, but stick with it. It'll pay off if if you stick with it. So number one, what you want to do is you want to go get a domain name and the domain name. You can either get at a, um. y, you know you can go online. For example, we usually buy our domain names with go, daddy, Um, it just seems to be the easiest to work with and to host there. Um, So so you just go and go out, you, and you literally just sign up for an account and you put in different domains, Um of of what you of what you want, so that this can be your brand name. Um, it can be an abbreviation. It, it can be whatever you want, but it'll tell you if it's if it's actually available or not, and you can do different extensions like a Dot com, Dot C, a dot net, et Cetera And you know, for example, our marketing agency is Marvel marked in Dod Sta, So it's a direct brand name domain And you know there's two ways to go about it. You can do it like that where if your name is John's Pizza Dot Com or John's Pizza, you can go get the domain name John's Pizza Dot Com. If it's available you now. if you're in Canada, you can go. then if if the dot com is not available, you can go and see if the Dot C A is available, because a lot of times the dot com will be already taken, but the Dod C A will be available And this is because people in the States cannot get a docier domain. So that's kind of the trick with that. The other way about it is, you can go get a. You know, if it's John's Pizza, you can go. You know you could change it to Metro Pizza or Calgary, If you're located in A, in a city, you can go Calgary, Don's pizza or Calgary, or whatever. The only thing you got to be careful with with putting an location with anything in your branding is it's really hard to expand if you ever get to that point. If you want to expand to a different city 'cause then you're having to do different branding to either go Edmonton, Johns pizza or Vancouver, John's pizza. You can't stick with N with the same brand and we've run into a couple of our clients doing that and it's not easy and it gets more expensive. So I would recommend doing A if you can in an an exact brand domain. And then you can you know that's way easy to brand If you expect banned. Um. After you get your website you're gonna wanna go get some hosting, uh website hosting, which you can get from good Daddy as well, but I don't recommend the hosting from Go, Daddy. It's not the best. Um. Y, You know, there's a number of hosting companies though that you can go. uh, get hosting from Y. Site ground is one. Um. there is blue host as well. Um, but we usually stick with site ground for our clients. You't go there and there's different kinds of hosting guys like you can get shared hosting or you can get dedicated word press hosting. Um. The dedicated hosting is going to be a little bit more expensive, but you know overall it's worth it. It gives you an advantage because you're not sharing that hosting with other people. Um. Now if you're just starting out and you're really on a budget that that shared hosting will work for you, and eventually you can bump up to the dedicated hosting. Um. but if you can go with a dedicated hosting, it's you know, On average, it's probably going to be ten to twenty bucks a month. Um, as a business expense, It's worth it. Then you're gonna want to get your website, and this, Y, you know, the majority of websites these days are unfortunately started on website builders like wicks, um, A, and these become a headache. People kind of get halfway through and they're like Okay. this is too much. Um, you know, we either don't have the time or it's become too difficult. I don't know how to do this. I don't want to do that and they end up coming to us and we immediately get them off them and we swap them over to Word press. We, actually, you know, we tell them you know, as long as you're not, you know ninety five percent on their website if they. if they're just a little bit through, Uh, you know like fifty percent. We're like Okay. We're going to just switch you over a work press. We're not going to charge you any extra, because in the long run, it's going to be a heck of a lot easier for us, Um, and a heck of a lot better for them. And this is just because you know I'm not. I'm not trying to bash the the Um. companies like Wicks and Square space is another one. but Y, you know they do make it easier for for the person building it if if they have no experience, but in the long run they're very restricted. Um, it's almost like Apple where you know if when you buy a phone you'll also go, Got to go get the the head of the headphones and the charger and everything, and you can't use anything. else. You got to use their brand. And that's the same thing with wicks. Um, and I don't like it, because it really restricts you, especially when it comes to the s e O. part of things. So we we bring everyone over toward press, And that's what we focus on Word press or shopifiy. If if they're if they're doing an Ecom store, Um, Both allow for really good, Um, optimization and customization for both design and s e O. So that's what we bring them over to and to do that. Um, usually you're hosting. If you, if you get dedicated Word Press hosting, you can start up a Word press Ra, in there. Um, guys, I don't know how many people have gone to the to the wrong word press and paid for Word press. You do not have to do that Word press is free. You do not have to pay for Word press. Um, you know, this is really where I would recommend getting someone that knows what they're doing to help you, even if you have to just get a consolt on it to get you set up and to start building your website. Um, Y, you know, maybe you don't have the budget to to pay an agency or a web designer to do your whole website. But as at least get it set up properly, it'll make your life a lot easier. And then when you get in there you can start y, then you can use what they call it, Click and drag, Um. builders. you know, a really well known one is elementor. Um, you know you can use this and it's almost as easy as wicks or uh, square space to do. so, Um there, there's really no excuse to not get over to Um. Word press, So moving on, Uh, after you've got your website kind of set up, Uh, you want to start creating content and the content you want to create. I see on a lot of websites is very short, very poorly written, not thought out, kind of just whimmed, Um it. this is something. this is a. This is a step that you do not want to overlook. It's something that you should spend a lot of time on or dedicate some of your budget towards getting done, Um. Content. These days you can build a website and I'm goingnna go into this right now. you can god, the website and you can get it online, but it's really useless if no one can see it. It's like buying a Ferrari and just literally keeping it in your garage. Um, and never driving it. No one ever getting to see it, no one ever getting to experience it. And so on, Um, you know the same thing as with website. If you just have your website built, you put your time into building it and no one can see it. Well, then what's the point and what I'm getting ont to is s. c o searchs optimization, which heavily relies on really well written and thought out content. So what I mean by that is you want to make so. First off I to tell you guys, s o, um, websites are not ranked on the entire website. S. e, O is ranking your website per page, so each page you should be focused on ranking for something different. Um. you don't want to rank for the same thing on two different pages. Um, that's what we call duplicate content. Um, And so your content should be. You know each service that you provide, so let's say a, a landscaper, and you do. Um, you know, lawn maintenance and snow removal. Uh, okay, lawn maintenance should be one page. Snow removal should be a separate page. I see a lot of times people putting their services. They just have a page for services and they put all their services on one page. Ge. This is not how you should do it. It's fine to have that service page and have maybe a short description on the service. But then you should have a link or a button or whatever that brings you to the actual service page and that service page needs to go into heavy detail. Um, and this includes titles, Uh, well written, Uh, you know, paragraphs, short paragraphs to the point, Um, like grade five level, Um, writing should be very easy to read short sentences, Um, bullet points, including bullet points, Um topics that people are searching. So you want to? Um, you know an easy way to do that is you can go to Uh, Google Trends, or you can just go and do a search on Google. put in, you know, lawn maintenance, your city, So lawn maintenance, Calgary, and it will. Google Will Lily, put on a silver plater For you, questions That people are asking those C. Those questions that you see on the search results they're putting there. They're putting those Googles put in those there, because that's what people are searching. So if you go answer those, that's go to build your Eth online authority, and Google's go to see you as a highly authorative Um brand in that space, And that's how you're going to get ranked. So this is all why content is very important for when you're building your website. Um, the other thing you want to do is include images and Y, you know it's really easy to go. Include stock images, and well, I agree that there are you know spots on a website where stock images are just fine and you kind of need to fill space, Um, and do that you should, especially on your home page. Includes some uh, unique images, like images of your team, images of your business, images of your location, images of your team at work, Um, your products, your services, Um, there's a lot of things you can include, and you know should be unique images for your business and brand it. Um, try to get your logo in there. You know if if if your team is wearing branded uh attire, get that in there. Um, you know it helps tremendously. I see a lot of people just going on Google or free uh image sites, and in getting random images to put on their site And that's really not helping. Um. The other thing you want to do is get your what's called Google my business listing set up, which is the, whenever you do a search for a company or a product or service, usually you'll see map results in the Google search results, and that is a g, m b or a Google my business listing, And you want to get that set up Ace up, Um, so that you'll put in your business name, You'll have to get it verified. Youll have to put in content to fill your hours, et cetera you want to fill it out a hundred percent, and you know, put your website there. There's a spot there where you can lik your website. Um, Next off you'll want to go Ma, create your social media pages. And I would say you know, create as many as you want. Um. But obviously different social media platforms are going to be better for different businesses. It really depends on what you're doing, but I would say no matter what business, um, Facebook would be one instigram would be another one and you probably want Twitter as well. Um, you know, and then you can get into other ones Like those are the base ones for for any business that you want to get, Um, I would also recommend getting a linked in that is very, a very good one. And then there's also tiick. talk, Um, A. And then there's there's a whole bunch of others you can do. But those are kind of the. you know, the the base ones that you want to start with and actually really have. And you want to start building on There you want start. Uh, you know, getting followers and you do that by again putting a good content, Um, putting out posts putting up uh images. You know, there's a whole bunch of things you can do to Um to build your social media following, Then you want to. Really, start driving traffic to your website and you do this by. You know, the easiest thing to do is making blogs, and I say it's the easiest thing to do. Is is probably the least expensive. But then it's time consuming. so really is at least expensive. I don't know. Um. it really, depends on what you're doing what you want to do. Maybe you want to outsource it. Um, but you really wantnna. what blogs do? The nice thing about blogs is you know if you put a blog post out once a week, it just shows Google that your business and your website is active. You're alive and that'll help your rankings. But as well, those blog posts should be really thought out and should be on topics that people again are are wanting to know. Um, are searching on Google, and you do this by doing keyword research, And you know each blog post should be on it on. like I said, a certain topic, and then can be linked to pages, which then can be supporting content to your main pages on your website, which will in turn help your main pages rank higher on Google. Um. The other thing you can do is you can do some email marketing. You can join online communities and pages. Um. you can set up a shop on market place. you can run promotions. There's also the paid options like running uh, Google ad campaigns, Facebook ad campaigns, which would also be uh, instigram ads, Um, So there's a whole lot of things that you uh, can start doing to start bringing traffic to your website and your entities. Um. But but what you really want is your website, Um to generate leads, and uh, you do this by getting that traffic to your website, But you want your website to obviously convert, And that's another part of your website that you want set up. You either that to decide that are people going to directed from your ads and your traffic and all that. Are they goingnna be going to the main pages. Are theyre going to be going to landing pages, et cetera And you got to make sure your main pages do have follow throughs for click like, uh, uh, click throughs for for people to go to your contact page or to purchase a product or purchase a service. Um, you can't just have content on there and then noer for them to contact you. So and then we want to Um. Obviously the last thing would be measuring your um progress and seeing what's really working, seeing what's not, and then going in there. and you know, optimizing where you want to uh, hone your focus on and where you want to direct your budget to. Um. you also want to keep your website in shape. You know, if you're using Word press, you're gonna be using Uh plug ins. Probably, so you want to keep your plug ins updated. Um, you want to be updating content on a regular basis. You know, maybe things change and you need to you know, change your services, change your prices. Um, et cetera you want to track your website's performance to make sure your website is continuously moving up in rankings and you're not dropping off. Um, you know these are all things that you want, Evaluate, and eventually, guys. these are all things that you can get. You know you can pay for. you can pay an agency, like like Marvel marketing, Um, or there's tools online, too, Um to help to help make this all easier. but it's all costing money. So if you're just starting out, Um, you know, I know just as much as anyone else starting a business. Um, Y, you know, you're probably short in cash. And and these things are? Um, you know luxuries. and you know, if you put all your money towards these type of things, you, then you have no money for anything else. So I get at the beginning. You're gonna have to do a lot of this stuff yourself. But hopefully you get to a point soon enough that you can start Um, outsurce these things, Uh to companies, because you know then it gives you your full time to work on your own business, And you know that's really how you're going to excel. Um, but this is kind of just a quick overview of how to really get your business online. How to do it quick? Um, and hopefully this this helps. There is a lot more stuff that can go into detail. And if you need any guidance, or if you need help, or if you are ready to hire an agency to to help you with all this you know, give us a shout. We do free consults for anyone. Um. No obligation will give you free advice if you need if you have a question. Reach out to me, Um, either on social media, you can find the on Facebook instigram, linked in, Um, or shoot us a message on our website Marvel marketing, Dt, C, A, and we will be happy to to answer any questions or help you out. So again, thanks for listening in. This is episode too, of the Marketing Madness Podcast, and we willll see you an episode three.