Facebook, Again.

[kodydog]

Whats Zucherburg up to now? I've been noticing the reach on our fb business page has been creeping up.

When we first joined fb our reach was often 100 or more. Then it dropped drastically to around 10 or 15 per post. I got fed up and stopped posting. That's when Rose took over, about 2 years ago. Now I notice its up to 65 on one post and 85 on another. I'm thinking some kind of fb scam. But if its real I'll take it.

Edit: Just reached 380 on a before and after post. Haven't seen numbers like that in a long time.

[Mojo]

Ed:

We have more engagement off Facebook the last 6 months. We are getting more customers contacting us through PM's and we are converting more of these contacts into sales. We have 2 facebook pages, one for each company. Both have seen more engagement. I also have started lending more technical support on RV owner groups on facebook which has driven more traffic to our facebook pages. But sales from Facebook is minimal as compared to the action we get elsewhere on the internet, mainly RV owner forums, etc. Those venues drive our sales. I use Facebook as a small part of our overall internet strategy which boils down to " market presence ". I too have noticed our facebook reach numbers grow the last few months. I attribute it all to Zuckerbergs back room analytics and bullshit. I do not believe anything has changed and the only reason we have better facebook numbers is because we have been more active in facebook RV groups. I trust Facebook reach numbers like I would trust the mafia.

The problem I now have which is turning into a major headache is our growth has been phenomenal but a lot of it is coming off the backs of shows. I changed my branding strategies to provide more growth but it is now requiring me to spend months on the road doing these damn events. I have already done 4 in Florida, have one to do in Indiana, another in Louisiana, one in South Dakota, one in North Dakota, another in NY and another in Atlanta. It is getting old and I am tired of living in our bus for a month at a time.

I am going to do a phone conference with my consultants and start devising plans to gain growth from other sources other then these events. This is going to include reaching into brand new markets. I am tired of living like a hobo and these shows are a killer for someone our age.

Back to facebook - You should consider Facebook as a necessary evil. Your presence is required there only because it feeds into google SEO algorithms. Every post we make ( as well as our customers ) where our companies are mentioned all feed the same monster. Yelp, Google listings, searches by prospective customers, facebook, forum mentions, etc. all boost your online presence. Internet marketing never comes down to just one site. It is a combination of all these things. We have seen a tenfold increase over the last 12 months off google search sales for our fabric company.

I can tell you what has really propelled our online presence is when I installed storefronts for our parts company on our website as well as started an E-Bay store. Parts and component Sales have shot through the roof. I just closed the books for March and on a comparison of last years March sales and this years, our numbers increased by $ 25,000. That isn't much for a large company and would be laughed at by most CEO's but those are big numbers for a tiny company likes ours. A lot of that I attribute to our online presence. Like it or not, our society is going to the internet for everything, including their buying.

Mojo

[kodydog]

Ed:
I trust Facebook reach numbers like I would trust the mafia.
Mojo

Yep, market presence. We are on most of the business sites and try to update our pages on Google Business, Yelp, FB Business and most important our web site. I'm sure we do it on a much smaller scale than y'all. Sometimes I wonder if its worth the effort seeing most of our business comes from loyal customers and word of mouth but estimate requests keep coming in from these sites.

[SteveA]

I have an ad on Google - it's free and does fairly well for me.  Lately Google is sending me a proposal to list my ad with them and they will advertise more intensely for me and will charge me something every time a customer clicks on my site - 
Does anyone use this advanced pay for service feature and how is it working for you ?
SA

[MinUph]

I have tried pay for clicks before and gave up on it and to be honest all paid advertising. I will run an add on FB once in a great while but that is it. And I'm pretty sure I'm done with that also. I never get a Return for investment from paid ads.

[kodydog]

So far we haven't had to pay for online advertising. As long as the sites are free and we are getting hits we will stick with the status quo. I can see a time in the future where all business sites will charge to advertise. It would have to be a group effort. Funny thing is Angie's list use to charge customers to be a member. Then Home Advisor came along with free membership and Angie's List had to change their policy. 

Rose tried an upgrade in the Real Yellow Pages two years ago. The hard copy not on line. She went with bold print so it would stand out a little more. She says we are getting calls from it.

Now something totally different. I was joking around with my niece on FaceBook. I told her "all men are pigs" in response to her post. FB wrote me a note saying they're deleting my message. I guess they were offended. Here is what I don't get, people can post some of the most vulgar drivel about president Trump and that's okay. I wonder how hard it would be to get FB to delete my entire page? :) 

[gene]

SteveA, I have never used google Adwords. Here's a link that has some info that might be helpful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/search?q=google%20pay%20per%20click%20ads&restrict_sr=1

gene

[SteveA]

Thanks for the replies - Google doesn't seem to be too expensive but I have to research it a bit more.  I don't want to have exposure so far out of my area that travel makes the job unattractive and i think with advertising this can happen.  What has worked for me is the town has a local paper and I put a small print ad there.  I also have a small ad in the back of the Church bulletin.  Otherwise it's older clients and word of mouth -
Last April + May was terrible for me but this year has been much better and steady  because of those printed ads.  Gene I was thinking when I clinked on your link there'd be a loud thud and an unruly violent crazy guy  pounding the screen :) 
SA

[kodydog]

Steve, if you are looking for more exposure and haven't considered Houzz yet check this out.
https://www.houzz.com/pro/edwin-northuis/ladd-upholstery-designs

This web site is mostly geared toward Interior Designers and has brought us some good jobs including the home theater built in's. You do awesome work, I'm sure you could build an impressive page. And the best thing is its free.

People calling or texting for estimates outside our area is a nuisance. The only way I know to fix it is ask where they are calling from. We had a lady call and ask about gym mats she dropped off. Rose was clueless. Come to find out she was in Ladd Illinois and looking for Ladd Upholstery there. 

[Mojo]

Steve:

We did the Google paid ad once. Big mistake. We got overloaded with fax calls and scams. I dropped it 3 months later. The bad part was that it was pure hell trying to get Google to drop the ad. That took 3 more months. Once they did the fax calls and spam calls stopped.

What is funny is 3 months after we cancelled our ad's, sales started picking up off google searches. We have a customer contact form we use in house and ask every customer where they found us. A lot of our sales are coming off google searches. I hired one of my son's techs to do an SEO optimization and whatever he did must have helped. I still attribute a lot of our internet success to our online store front for parts and products. This is one of our sites which is a division of Talin Manufacturing. - www.talinrv.com   This also feeds into the parent companies website  www.talinman.com . There are links here which feeds into our other company  www.stonevos.com .

One of the other benefits we are seeing from increased traffic is our our outside rep status with international big brand companies. Their product listings on our website boosts traffic for us. The one thing I learned in web site design was the use of keywords. I make sure I utilize brand names on our website. Using words like Sunbrella and other household brand names also helps as these keywords get a lot of search activity. I structure our websites to use many keywords that are used in google searching.

I am far from being an internet expert and admit to not knowing much about SEO's but what some of the experts that shared info with me and I latter applied seems to be working. It just seems that with more sales we gain more inquiries and with more of those we gain more sales. The more click thru's on the searches leads to even more click thru's. It is crazy how it all works but it is obvious that the bigger you get the more internet traffic is fed to you.

The problem we are now having is that we are getting a lot of sales off E-Bay for products and that grinds me. I hate selling on E-Bay because I hate giving them bastards some of my profit. But they do move products and our sales have been great on e-bay. My buddy is pushing me hard to go to Amazon. He is an inventor and designs LED lighting, has it manufactured in China and sells on Amazon. His sales are killer. I have resisted thus far but may have to revert to Amazon. If I do that then it will result in a bigger footprint for us on the internet.

Mojo

[SteveA]

Houzz is interesting for sure.  I did a search for a restoration company in my area but when they asked for specifics - name, address, etc. I x'd out.  Looks a little like Angies list for free.  I will check it out a and let you know how it is going.

I agree - key words are very important.  I list my town name - the words restoration, and home service all of which I can deliver to folks here locally.
My buddy has a pro web site - optimized - and the hits he gets are a business changer.  I have been fortunate that he sends some of the ones he can't handle my way.  I did google, Bing, and Yahoo business pages after someone here suggested that.  I also took your advice and went to Score - they helped me set up the web site - it's doing a great job and all the coaching was free.  Last April and May was slow but not this year and I owe it to Score and the advice I got here.  Can't remember if it was Mojo or Kody but Many Thanks Guys -
SA

[kodydog]

Our Score guy is a retired web site designer. He had some impressive accounts for big companies.

My main concern was getting our website higher on the search engine list. One thing I did not know is when google are doing a search it reads EVERYTHING on your page including the tittle you assign to your images. This is a good way to get those keywords onto your web site.

For instance, I was labeling my images in my computer like this, Jones Sofa. Pretty generic right? Instead he suggested Jones Duncan Phyfe Sofa. "Duncan Phyfe" is a keyword that people may be searching for. He also said to use an underscore between each word. So my image title will look like this, Jones_Duncan_Phyfe_Sofa. When I upload images to my web site the image tittle uploads with it and google picks up on that. I have lots of pictures on my web site and that translate to lots of keywords but this is not "keyword stuffing" which google frowns upon.

This meant I had to change all the names of all the images in my computer and then re-upload all those images to my website. It was a lot of work but that and some other changes the Score guy suggested moved our Google search ranking from page 3 to 2nd or 3rd on page one.

One more cool thing about Houzz. When you do a search for upholsterers in my area Houzz often comes up 1st or 2nd. And guess who is the #1 upholsterer in my area on Houzz?