Business Improvement – Mr Search https://mrsearch.com.au Premier Google Partner Thu, 25 Jun 2026 02:24:56 +0000 en-AU hourly 1 Why Having a RELEVANT and COMPELLING Landing Page is SO Important https://mrsearch.com.au/why-having-a-relevant-and-compelling-landing-page-is-so-important/ https://mrsearch.com.au/why-having-a-relevant-and-compelling-landing-page-is-so-important/#respond Sun, 08 Aug 2021 02:09:04 +0000 https://mrsearch.com.au/?p=54675 The post Why Having a RELEVANT and COMPELLING Landing Page is SO Important appeared first on Mr Search.

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Why Having a RELEVANT and COMPELLING Landing Page is SO Important

You’ve no doubt heard about landing pages. But why are we always harping on about them, and what makes them so important?

Joel

Joel

Director at Mr Search
Joel is a business consultant and full time digital marketing veteran of nearly two decades. He's the Director at Mr Search, an award winning top 3% certified Google Premier Partner. When out of the office, you’ll find him cherishing moments with his wife and daughter, or getting his hands dirty in the garden.
Joel

Latest posts by Joel (see all)

People say ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’. But when you’re online, what else do you have to go on? Bottom line, if you don’t give a strong first impression in the first few seconds, prospective customers will not hesitate to hit the back button and go straight to your competition. That’s of course not what we want as it means lost opportunity, and also that your investment in Google ads advertising isn’t efficiently converting into enquiries and sales, which is our number one objective.

A landing page, is simply the page on your website that we ‘land’ traffic on. This can be be a standalone ‘lead capture page’, or just a ‘service page’ on your website designed to introduce and explain to prospective customers what makes you a great choice, and help convert them into enquiries and sales.

Why should you listen to us?

With a $112M managed Google Ads spend, we’ve seen it all, and know a thing or two about what works, and what doesn’t. From a conversion rate optimisation perspective, we see websites making the same mistakes over, and over, and over again. Sometimes it even drives us a little mental. So help us help you avoid these common mistakes, and instead, let’s put you in a strong position to kick some serious goals!

Wow website visitors with a relevant and compelling landing page

A quick note about RELEVANCE

OK, let’s get this out of the way. If someone is searching specifically for Red Shiny Widgets, we can’t just dump them on a page talking about Blue Matte Widgets (or ‘general widgets’) and expect them to stick around. Attention is the currency of today’s world, and if people don’t get what they want within a few seconds, they’ll just go straight to your competition, killing conversion rates and ROI. Relevance is paramount.

How to stand out from the competition, compel people to take action and maximise ROI

There are a range of things your website and landing page must do if you want to maximise enquiries, sales and ROI. Make sure you’re not giving away business to the competition by missing these conversion rate best practices:

1. Be sure to include a relevant and attention grabbing ‘hero image’ that builds instant credibility

If you are a service provider, one of the most simple yet powerful ‘hero images’ you can include is a shot of your whole team (even if it’s a team of one) standing in front of your signed company vehicles and/or business signage with BIG smiles on your dials. This is not a beauty contest. People really just want to see that you are a REAL business that looks trustworthy, friendly and approachable, and not just some cowboy operation. You can’t fake this, and it can often make a world of difference, helping prospective customers to instantly ‘connect’ with you and remove resistance in them taking the first step and getting in contact. Just remember that nice wide landscape orientation images taken from a good distance back often work best, so your website designer can crop in as needed. If you are a product or e-commerce based business including team shots can certainly still be powerful, but oftentimes having a strong ‘hero’ image that introduces your product range might be more important.

2. Include a punchy headline that tells people what you can offer them and what sets you apart

It’s SO important that prospective customers INSTANTLY know who you are, what you offer, and why you’re the best choice. So many businesses make the mistake of simply saying:

Welcome to Our Website

or perhaps just

XYZ Widgets

This is generally of little to no help to prospective customers. It just makes you look like everyone else and does nothing to spark people’s interest and give them reason to stick around. For best results we recommend putting together a punchy and compelling headline that grabs people’s attention and helps set you apart. For example:

Our Team of 15 XYZ Widget Makers Have Been Delivering Prompt & Affordable City Name Service for over 20 Years

See what we did there? By investing a minute or two, imagine how your headline could pop!

3. Provide details of what you can offer, and what the benefits are in dealing with you

✓ Who wants to read a 500 word wall of text just to understand what you offer?
✓ We strongly recommend using short, sharp bullet points
✓ This tends to be FAR more effective in communicating the basics
✓ And also in holding people’s attention
✓ What can you offer, what’s your service area and what are the benefits of dealing with you?

4. Include strong call to action buttons

Making it ‘stupidly simple’ and gently prompting people to take the next step helps to maximise enquiries. The last thing you want is for people to have to go looking for contact details or to wonder what the next step is, as that’s a guaranteed conversion killer.

We recommend including prominent attention grabbing buttons directly beneath your intro bullet points for [CALL 12 3456 7891] [Enquire Online] and making sure a call to action is always prominently visible somewhere on the page as you scroll down (for example including one as a part of each main section of your website). This helps to prompt and make it easy for prospective customers to take action and get in contact with you — or would you prefer that they just put off the decision, keep scrolling and go take action with your competition instead? Of course not! The aim then always need to be to make stupidly simple for people to do business with you.

5. Provide more detail

Once you’ve got the above basics right, you can then go into some more details for those who are interested in more specific details:

✓ Including an offer if appropriate to create a sense of urgency (Save this Month — Get a Bonus…)
✓ Reviews and testimonials from happy customers
✓ Photos of completed jobs, your team in action, before and after images etc
✓ How does your service work?
✓ etc

Making sure you get the basics right, as outlined above, can literally make or break. We take a huge amount of pride in our work, and work hard to tick every box when it comes to running a world class Google Ads campaign, and this is so, so important. But if we’re landing people onto a website which is not up to standard, and not following the above basic CRO best practices, then it can often all be for naught. In that case we’ll be fighting an uphill battle just to get Google Advertising to perform to a basic level. So please help us help you, and let’s get the basics right as outlined above. It really can make a world of difference and help us to run circles around the competition.

We hope you found this to be a helpful read. If so, we’d love it if you left us a thumbs up or comment below!

The post Why Having a RELEVANT and COMPELLING Landing Page is SO Important appeared first on Mr Search.

]]> https://mrsearch.com.au/why-having-a-relevant-and-compelling-landing-page-is-so-important/feed/ 0 How to Fix Your Gmail Footer Signature So it Doesn’t Get Stuck at the Bottom https://mrsearch.com.au/how-to-fix-your-gmail-footer-signature-so-it-doesnt-get-stuck-at-the-bottom/ https://mrsearch.com.au/how-to-fix-your-gmail-footer-signature-so-it-doesnt-get-stuck-at-the-bottom/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2020 04:01:46 +0000 https://mrsearch.com.au/?p=54564 The post How to Fix Your Gmail Footer Signature So it Doesn’t Get Stuck at the Bottom appeared first on Mr Search.

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How to Fix Your Gmail Footer Signature So it Doesn't Get Stuck at the Bottom

Want to keep your emails looking smart? Well, there’s one box you need to tick to make sure your email signature doesn’t get lost right at the very bottom of an entire email thread.

Joel

Joel

Director at Mr Search
Joel is a business consultant and full time digital marketing veteran of nearly two decades. He's the Director at Mr Search, an award winning top 3% certified Google Premier Partner. When out of the office, you’ll find him cherishing moments with his wife and daughter, or getting his hands dirty in the garden.
Joel

Latest posts by Joel (see all)

GMail Screenshot
What's the point of having an email signature when it's hidden WAY DOWN here?

Do you use Gmail? Or perhaps Gmail for your business email (known as Google Apps / G Suite / Google Workplace)? In running Google Ads campaigns all day every day, we do A LOT of email. We’ve been using Google Workplace as our cloud email solution for 13 years now (all day every day), and we love it. Having said that, there are a few things that do annoy us. One of those things are the way that Gmail handles email signatures by default. It’s a silly little thing that we see people having a hard time with on an almost daily basis. The good news is that there’s a very easy fix!

Why Gmail’s default email signature placement setting annoys us:

  1. What’s the point of having a nice email signature with your business logo and/or contact details if it’s hidden way down the bottom of a long email thread where no one will see it?

How to fix Gmail’s default email signature placement:

  1. Sign into Gmail on your computer
  2. Click the settings cog at the top right hand corner of the screen then See All Settings
  3. Scroll about two-thirds down the settings page until you get to Signature
  4. Under Signature Defaults tick the checkbox for Insert signature before the quoted text in replies, and remove the ‘–‘ line that precedes it. 
    Insert-signature-before-the-quoted-text-in-replies,-and-remove-the-'--'-line-that-precedes-it
  5. Be sure to click Save Changes at the bottom of the page 
  6. All done! Problem solved! Now your email signature will not get lost at the bottom of your emails. Instead, it will be included directly beneath your current email message, AMAZING!

We hope you found this to be a helpful read. If so, we’d love it if you left us a thumbs up or comment below!

The post How to Fix Your Gmail Footer Signature So it Doesn’t Get Stuck at the Bottom appeared first on Mr Search.

]]> https://mrsearch.com.au/how-to-fix-your-gmail-footer-signature-so-it-doesnt-get-stuck-at-the-bottom/feed/ 2 Why You Should NEVER Just Delete a Page and Why 301 Redirects are SO Important https://mrsearch.com.au/why-you-should-never-just-delete-a-page-and-why-301-redirects-are-so-important/ https://mrsearch.com.au/why-you-should-never-just-delete-a-page-and-why-301-redirects-are-so-important/#respond Sun, 06 Sep 2020 05:57:27 +0000 https://mrsearch.com.au/?p=54546 The post Why You Should NEVER Just Delete a Page and Why 301 Redirects are SO Important appeared first on Mr Search.

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Why You Should NEVER Just Delete a Page and Why 301 Redirects are SO Important

It Often Takes Just One Click to Delete a File. But in the Context of a Website What Could Possibly Go Wrong? A LOT… Here’s Why You Need to Think Twice, and Why 301 Redirects are So Important.

Joel

Joel

Director at Mr Search
Joel is a business consultant and full time digital marketing veteran of nearly two decades. He's the Director at Mr Search, an award winning top 3% certified Google Premier Partner. When out of the office, you’ll find him cherishing moments with his wife and daughter, or getting his hands dirty in the garden.
Joel

Latest posts by Joel (see all)

Deleting an old page on your website, or removing one to make space for a new replacement seems like such a simple action. But it could set in motion a whole range of problems that could hurt your businesses advertising and online exposure.

5 reasons to think twice before just deleting a page on your website

  1. Think about people who might have bookmarked the page you’re about to delete. How about people clicking through from Google Ads or Google Organic search results? Do you really want these people to be served up a dreaded 404 – page not found error? Because that’s exactly what will happen unless you take specific action to avoid this happening.
  2. What will prospective customers think when they’re dropped on an error 404 page? Is it going to give them a great first impression of your business. Not at all. A large proportion will simply hit the back button and move on to check out your competitors and do business with them instead. Naturally, that’s not what you want at all.
  3. To make matters worse, it won’t just be website visitors (including new and existing customers) who are are being dropped on an error 404 – page not found error page. Googlebot, Google’s web crawler for ads and organic search results, along with every other web crawler trying to index your website and make it accessible will also hit the error 404 page. That’s not good at all, and will result in your listing being taken offline, often leading to lost exposure, less clicks and quite likely lost business.
  4. This will do harm to your Google Ads Advertising, requiring your campaign manager to have to manually re-program every final URL pointing to that page, which then takes time for Google to process as well, meaning more down time, and this may well have impacts on Google Quality Score, cost per click, conversion rate and ROI as well. And there will likely be negative impacts as well on your organic search results as well, which may take months to recover from (if at all).
  5. Quite often there will also be other pages on your website that link to this same page as well, perhaps as a part of your menu system, text based body links, buttons and so on. And do you really want all these people hitting a 404 error page, and getting a bad impression of your business?
Simply deleting a page could set in motion a whole range of problems that could hurt your business
It's easy to avoid dumping people onto an error 404, and your customers will thank you!

So what’s the solution?

  1. Don’t delete pages from your website unless it’s absolutely necessary. Instead, update and improve your existing pages to keep these current. That way the page address will not change, and you can completely avoid all the problems that come with a 404 page not found error.
  2. If it’s absolutely necessary that you delete or move an old page, be certain to setup a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect will automatically and seamlessly redirect web visitors to the new page on your website, almost like nothing ever changed! If you need a hand with this, ask your website designer, they’re quite simple to put in place.

We hope you found this to be a helpful read. If so, we’d love it if you left us a thumbs up or comment below!

The post Why You Should NEVER Just Delete a Page and Why 301 Redirects are SO Important appeared first on Mr Search.

]]> https://mrsearch.com.au/why-you-should-never-just-delete-a-page-and-why-301-redirects-are-so-important/feed/ 0 Stay the Course: Coronavirus Tips & Advice for Your Business https://mrsearch.com.au/coronavirus/ https://mrsearch.com.au/coronavirus/#respond Wed, 08 Apr 2020 06:32:19 +0000 https://mrsearch.com.au/?p=54488 The post Stay the Course: Coronavirus Tips & Advice for Your Business appeared first on Mr Search.

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Stay the Course: Coronavirus Tips & Advice for Your Business

Coronavirus is Having a Real and Substantial Impact Impact on Every Business. What Actions Can Your Organisation Take NOW to Stay the Course and Position Itself Strongly for Recovery

Joel

Joel

Director at Mr Search
Joel is a business consultant and full time digital marketing veteran of nearly two decades. He's the Director at Mr Search, an award winning top 3% certified Google Premier Partner. When out of the office, you’ll find him cherishing moments with his wife and daughter, or getting his hands dirty in the garden.
Joel

Latest posts by Joel (see all)

FIRSTLY, just to confirm, Mr Search remains open: We’re not going anywhere and are here to help you get through this, and come out strong on the other side.

Wow. What a start to the year. In managing a multi-million dollar managed spend for our clients, we get an ‘inside glimpse’ into how COVID-19 is impacting Australian businesses big and small, and across dozens of different industries. Bottom line: so many businesses are hurting right now and wondering how best to ‘ride out the storm’.

What to do with your online exposure?

We’re not gonna be shy about it. Sales are the lifeblood of every business. Times are tough, so do you keep Google advertising at full speed, or scale back? The answer depends on what’s going on in your industry. Most businesses are seeing below average search volumes meaning less people searching, less people clicking, and less people buying — plus a lower investment in Google Ads as a natural flow on effect. However, something is better than nothing right!? Absolutely, just as long as you’re continuing to see clicks converting into enquiries and sales at a reasonable level, meaning you can continue to generate a positive (or even neutral) ROI from your investment in advertising. This being the case, it’s probably best not to scale down your Google Ads advertising. Doing so would likely only make things worse. Any business you can get will help to get through this challenging time, and decreased numbers of people searching in many industries will translate into decreased investment in Google clicks anyway.

chess
Coronavirus Google Advertising Chart
TRY NOT TO RUSH A DECISION: Here is a real example of one of the Google Ads campaigns we run, and people adjusting to the new normal

We’ve seen many examples of clicks/enquires taking a dip for a couple of weeks while everyone is adjusting to the ‘new normal’, and then returning to somewhere near normal levels. Had advertising been scaled down, things would be much worse and would remain that way! If in doubt, ask us, we’re here to help and will be happy to have a chat about your specific situation.

If you’re no longer able to carry on normal business, or if the quality of traffic/enquiries has really taken a big dive (due to market uncertainty) and remains consistently low for a period of weeks, that’s when things might be different. In this situation it would be best to have a chat with us to see if there is anything that can be done to adjust messaging and perhaps try and drum up demand with a special offer on your website.

If necessary, there is also the option of scaling back Google Ads campaigns to reduce your ongoing investment and ensure we’re focussing on any priority areas of your business to help you ‘ride out the storm’. If that’s something you’re seriously considering, be sure to have a chat with our experienced team to look at options, as we want to try and avoid making the situation worse.

If your business is being heavily impacted, wherever possible, you may need to consider adjusting your product/service offering and messaging. For example:

  1. Are you able to offer virtual meetings / tele health appointments (using FaceTime / Zoom / Skype etc) in place of normal in-person meetings? If so, be sure to prominently promote this as an option on your website.
  2. Are you able to place more emphasis on e-commerce or home deliveries?
  3. If customers keep asking if you’re still trading as normal, it might be worth popping a notice on your website making it clear that your services are still on offer, and that additional safety measures are in place.
  4. Can you sharpen up your ‘offer’, or trial a compelling ‘ever-green’ offer/bonus on your website to help maximise enquiries even during uncertain times?

The most important thing is to use this time to take REAL ACTION to help turbocharge your recovery on the other side:

Who would start a business during uncertain times!? How about during a recision? General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Microsoft, HP Disney, Apple, Airbnb, WhatsApp, Uber, Slack and Square are just a few examples.

Now is the perfect time to take real action and do the things you normally might not have a chance to. While your competitors are paralysed and panicking, you can be propelling your business forward. What will you do? Here are a few ideas:

When business is quiet, it's the perfect time to get ahead!
  1. FINALLY FIX YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY: Good photography (team shots, head shots, product shots etc) makes a world of difference when it comes to building instant credibility on your website. If your website doesn’t give a strong first impression and come across as being genuine and trustworthy within the first few seconds, prospective customers will simply hit the back button and move on to one of your competitors, it’s that simple. This is really important stuff that tends to have a real and substantial impact on how efficiently your website converts clicks into enquiries and sales, and therefore on ROI. A shot that often works really well is getting your whole team in uniform standing in front of your company vehicles/signage/office/a completed job, SMILING, arms crossed and looking at the camera. Simple, but very effective. Make sure your shots are nice and ‘wide’ and not cropped in too close, that way your website designer can crop in as needed, and these sorts of ‘wide’ shots often work really well on your website banner.
  2. MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT MISSING CALLS: We get it. You can’t always get to every single call. Why not put in place a system to automatically forward unanswered calls to a professional Australian based call answering service? That way you’ll get a text message with call back details, and will never miss business as a result of missed calls, you can read more about it here. At an absolute minimum, make sure you have a compelling and professional voicemail message in place reassuring prospective customers that their call is important to you, and that you’ll typically return their call within 2 business hours (for example). More tips here.
  3. CONSIDER MAKING PLANS TO EXPAND YOUR SERVICE AREA: Why not grow future revenues and profits by expanding your footprint? If you service Melbourne, why not expand into Geelong as well? If you’re based in Brisbane, why not expand to service the Gold Coast / Sunshine Coast as well? If you service Sydney, why not consider expanding into Wollongong, the Central Coast and Newcastle? If you currently service all of Australia, why not look at the New Zealand market?
  4. PERFECT YOUR BUSINESS SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES: Email templates, checklists, FAQs, training, follow up procedures, deliverables and so on. This one might sound boring, but this is essentially what your business does. So if you can do it better and more efficiently, that will not only help put a smile on customers faces, but it will also help improve business efficiency and business profits.
  5. STAFF TRAINING: Having the best team with the best training will help you offer better service than anyone else. Aim to maximise customer satisfaction, repeat customers, referrals, and business returns.
  6. FRESHEN UP YOUR EMAIL STATIONARY: Perception is everything. If you look the part people will likely take you more seriously. And communicating important contact details, opening hours and social media channels makes it easier for customers to know how best to reach you.
  7. PLAY SECRET SHOPPER: Check to see what your competitors are up to, and make sure your product/service offering remains competitive, and the most compelling choice for customers.
  8. GET MORE REVIEWS: When prospective customers are researching your business and search for your business name, what reviews and star rating do they see? People tend to take reviews really seriously in today’s world — this is so important. We recommend making it a standard part of your business process to ask happy customers to take a quick minute to leave you a review. That way you can continually grow your number of positive reviews and make sure people get an excellent first impression of your business. We can even help you out with an email template to send to happy customers at the end of every job. Get in contact with us, and we’ll be happy to tailor this to your business.

Above all, stay POSITIVE. When this health crisis subsides, people will still absolutely have a need for your services. Yes, we need to ride out the storm (and that might not be easy), but if you can use this time to get ahead and take some positive steps forward for your business, that will really help position your business for a strong recovery. We’re here to help. If you’d like to have a chat, please reach out to our team. We’ll be happy to have a chat and offer some expert ideas and advice specific to your business.

 

We hope you found this to be a helpful read. If so, we’d love it if you left us a thumbs up or comment below!

The post Stay the Course: Coronavirus Tips & Advice for Your Business appeared first on Mr Search.

]]> https://mrsearch.com.au/coronavirus/feed/ 0 Is it a Mistake to Include Your Email Address on Your Website? https://mrsearch.com.au/is-it-a-mistake-to-include-your-email-address-on-your-website/ https://mrsearch.com.au/is-it-a-mistake-to-include-your-email-address-on-your-website/#comments Sun, 02 Feb 2020 06:00:56 +0000 https://mrsearch.com.au/?p=54419 The post Is it a Mistake to Include Your Email Address on Your Website? appeared first on Mr Search.

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Is it a Mistake to Include Your Email Address on Your Website?

It might seem like a ‘no brainer’ to prominently include your email address on your website. Many business owners and website designers do it. But should you? What could possibly go wrong?

Joel

Joel

Director at Mr Search
Joel is a business consultant and full time digital marketing veteran of nearly two decades. He's the Director at Mr Search, an award winning top 3% certified Google Premier Partner. When out of the office, you’ll find him cherishing moments with his wife and daughter, or getting his hands dirty in the garden.
Joel

Latest posts by Joel (see all)

Your email address. To include or not to include. This is a conversation we regularly have with clients when doing a CRO (conversion rate optimisation) and tracking audit. The short answer: we firmly believe the answer is ‘NO’, in 99% of instances — you should not prominently include your email address on your business website. Read on to find out why.

Why you should NOT include your email address on your website.

1. It’s impossible to accurately track conversions when people send you a normal email (sure, we can often track ‘clicks’ on your email address, but that’s far from a guarantee that the email enquiry was ever sent!). And conversion tracking is an absolutely vital part of our ongoing AdWords campaign maintenance and optimisation. Without proper Google Ads tracking, our campaign optimisation is hamstrung, so this can be a conversion and ROI killer.

2. Most customers browsing your website would just prefer to use a quick enquiry form. It’s generally faster and easier, and that way they never have to even leave your website, and know what info they need to provide.

Email
Including your email address often isn't the best idea

3. It will drive you mad when customers getting in contact via email keep forgetting to include important details. Like their phone number, suburb name, and so on. Quick enquiry forms with compulsory form fields make sure that you never miss these important details, saving everyone time and maximising efficiency.

4. Do you want to put out the welcome mat for spam bots? Including a real email address with clickable mailto link (like this: mailus@spammerswelcome.com) is an open invitation to spam bots, and includes ZERO ability to stop spam bots from sending your email and filling your inbox. Sure, your spam filter will hopefully catch some of these, but do you really want to make it easy for spam bots and constantly have an overflowing spam folder? And why would you, when a quick enquiry form works so much better in most instances?

Email addresses and online enquiries — the bottom line:

  1. In 99% of instances there is no reason to include your email address on your website, and using a quick enquiry form is MUCH better in almost every way (tracking, and conversion rate optimisation, collecting the required info, usability and spam minimisation).
  2. Go right ahead and DELETE that email address from your website. Instead, direct people to your online enquiry forms, and make sure your quick enquiry forms are ‘next level’ good. Fast, easy and super-compelling. In a future guide, we’ll show you how to avoid the top mistakes that businesses make on their contact us pages, and how to make your online enquiry forms next level. Follow us on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss it.

The post Is it a Mistake to Include Your Email Address on Your Website? appeared first on Mr Search.

]]> https://mrsearch.com.au/is-it-a-mistake-to-include-your-email-address-on-your-website/feed/ 1 Why is it Quiet, and What Should Your Business Be Doing? https://mrsearch.com.au/why-is-it-quiet-and-what-should-your-business-be-doing/ https://mrsearch.com.au/why-is-it-quiet-and-what-should-your-business-be-doing/#respond Fri, 22 Mar 2019 00:32:22 +0000 https://mrsearch.com.au/?p=54349 The post Why is it Quiet, and What Should Your Business Be Doing? appeared first on Mr Search.

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Why is it Quiet, and What Should Your Business Be Doing?

Quiet = peace, right? Not so fast. In business, extended quiet times can be stressful. So why’s it quiet, and what can you do?

Joel

Joel

Director at Mr Search
Joel is a business consultant and full time digital marketing veteran of nearly two decades. He's the Director at Mr Search, an award winning top 3% certified Google Premier Partner. When out of the office, you’ll find him cherishing moments with his wife and daughter, or getting his hands dirty in the garden.
Joel

Latest posts by Joel (see all)

As an advertising agency and Premier Google Partner, we speak with a lot of businesses. Even more so when it’s quiet, and business owners are needing to ‘drum up business’.

 

Why is it quieter at this time of year?

We’ve heard from a significant number of clients in recent times and have received a lot of feedback that it’s pretty quiet out there for many businesses, even those with a strong online presence and large advertising campaigns (although these businesses tend to have a lot more flexibility to scale up to maximise business during the quieter periods). While this doesn’t affect all industries, we’ve got a number of factors at play at this time of year:

  1. A lot of people tend to do a bit of ‘belt tightening’ at this of year. Summer is well and truly over, so it’s time to pay back Christmas debt, or perhaps that international holiday. And this can often mean putting off non-essential spending as well as being more price focussed.
  2. As we draw closer to tax time, consumers can also oftentimes delay non-essential spending in anticipation of their annual tax return.
  3. Elections! Read on below.
Waiting for the phone to ring, but all you get is 'crickets'? You're not alone.
Australian-Election-Advertising
Over just the past week or two, our mailbox has been buried in election advertising!

What about elections?

As Australian’s we’re very fortunate to live in a democracy. However, the cost of democracy is elections! As you can see in the image above/beside, our mailbox has been overflowing with election advertising. We’ve received 16 separate pieces of advertising just over the last fortnight! So when people say that elections create uncertainty, it’s pretty easy to see why. Much of the messaging is designed to create fear and uncertainty. If you don’t vote for X, then the world will supposedly end! And this is ONLY print advertising. Add to that online advertising, tv advertising, outdoor advertising, and so on. And that’s JUST for the NSW state election. Just wait till the federal election rolls around in a couple of months time.

All this fear and uncertainty for many businesses, can lead to clients/customers delaying non-essential spending. NSW based businesses get a double-whammy this year with BOTH state and federal elections just months apart. While many businesses we speak to indicate things are a bit quieter around elections, there are certainly some businesses who are less affected, particularly those that offer products/services which people are not able to put off.

So what should your businesses do when it’s quiet?

  1. Sit tight and ride it out as best you can.
  2. Encourage your staff to take a holiday and use annual leave. This might even be the perfect time for you to jump on a plane and take that well deserved break, making the most of the quieter period.

Want to be a bit more proactive?

  1. Consider running a time limited special promotion to encourage prospective customers to take action, even though they might have originally been planning on putting it off.
  2. Play secret shopper, and check to see what your competitors are up to, and make sure your product/service offering remains competitive, and a great choice for customers.
  3. Use this quiet time to improve your website and make sure your website is working for you at full speed, to convert browsers into buyers. This is REALLY important, and can often help to accelerate your business both during quieter and busier times. Need some ideas? Start with these basic landing page tips. Want more? Email our friendly staff, and we’ll be happy to do a ‘once over’ on your website, and put forward some expert CRO (conversion rate optimisation) recommendations tailored to your business.
  4. Are there other business improvements you’ve been putting off? Now is the time to get these sorted. For example:
    — Is it time you upgraded your phone system?
    —  How about setting up a live answering service to ensure you never miss calls or business again?
    — Updating your email stationary
    — Setting up an email newsletter
    — Posting some social media updates
    —Taking some team, office before and after photos for your website (which can really help to give an excellent first impression and maximise sales/enquiries).
    — That other thing you’ve been trying to get done
  5.  Consider increasing your investment in advertising to try and drum up more business. If you’d like to discuss the option of increasing your Google Ads click budget, please shoot us through an email, and our team will be happy to give some expert advice, and make a recommendation.
When business is quiet, it's the perfect time to get ahead!

The good news is that quiet times don’t last forever. Take the opportunity to invest this quieter time wisely, whether that be on business improvement (as outlined above), or that well deserved holiday, so you’re refreshed, re-charged and well positioned for when business does pick up.

The post Why is it Quiet, and What Should Your Business Be Doing? appeared first on Mr Search.

]]> https://mrsearch.com.au/why-is-it-quiet-and-what-should-your-business-be-doing/feed/ 0 What Would Happen If Your Business Never Missed Another Phone Call? https://mrsearch.com.au/what-would-happen-if-your-business-never-missed-another-phone-call/ https://mrsearch.com.au/what-would-happen-if-your-business-never-missed-another-phone-call/#respond Sun, 24 Feb 2019 05:03:57 +0000 https://mrsearch.com.au/wp/?p=53912 The post What Would Happen If Your Business Never Missed Another Phone Call? appeared first on Mr Search.

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What Would Happen If Your Business Never Missed Another Phone Call?

3 Down-to-Earth Strategies to Minimise Missed Calls and Missed Business

Joel

Joel

Director at Mr Search
Joel is a business consultant and full time digital marketing veteran of nearly two decades. He's the Director at Mr Search, an award winning top 3% certified Google Premier Partner. When out of the office, you’ll find him cherishing moments with his wife and daughter, or getting his hands dirty in the garden.
Joel

Latest posts by Joel (see all)

Missed Calls = Missed Business

It’s been a busy day. You’re ready to take action. After Googling and looking at a couple of options, you’ve found a business that looks like it can help solve your problem. You press the call button on their website (hopefully it works and the tel link isn’t broken), and the phone starts to ring. It rings, and it rings. AND, it rings. And then you get it…

‘Hi, the person you’ve called is not available. Please leave a short ten second message…’.

You hang up. Who’s got time for a game of ‘leave a message and see if they call me back’? So you call the next service provider/s and end up doing business with them instead. So what’s the cost of a missed call? Well, not only did the first service provider miss your business, but your perception of them probably isn’t amazing either, so you might not even bother trying them next time, and you certainly won’t be recommending them to your friends and family. They might have a world-class Google Ads campaign, but ultimately it’s for naught if nobody is answering the phone!

Missed Call

Most People Just Won’t Bother Leaving Voicemail Messages

This exact situation happens to almost all of us on a semi-regular basis. If we’re feeling patient, or if their website or voicemail message was super compelling, we MIGHT leave a message. But oftentimes we just won’t bother, and will instead just call the next business instead.

Have you ever experienced this? I think it happens to all of us. But how about your business? Are you (and your staff) able to answer ALL calls? Or almost all calls? Or do you have frantic days we’re you’re already tied up on another call, out of the office, out on a job, away from your desk or otherwise unavailable? I believe this is a challenge that all businesses deal with. But like many things in business, it’s how you deal with it that makes all the difference.

3 Practical Strategies to Help you Deal with Missed Calls

1. Make use of an Australian ‘live answering’ service

Imagine the peace of mind you’d have knowing that all your calls are being answered 24/7 365 days a year. How does it work? You can easily setup your phone to divert to live answering when you (or your staff) are busy or not answering (for example after 3-5 rings). With live answering, your call will be promptly answered by an Australian operator along the following lines:

“Thank you for calling ABC Business, John speaking, how can I help?”

“Hi, I’m just looking to get a quote on ___________”

“Sure, we can help with that, our team is currently tied up, but let me take your details and have someone call you back ASAP.”

“OK, my numbers is _________, please have someone call me back…”

You’ll receive a text message and email with the person’s contact details as soon as the call ends, so you’re able to follow them up asap (rather than just ‘giving away’ the business to your competition).

Think about how much it would cost you to employ reception staff to attend to your phones 24/7 X 365. A good call answering service will cost you only a tiny, tiny fraction of that, and is likely to pay for itself over and over, while also giving you peace of mind that your marketing efforts are not just being wasted. We can recommend a service provider we’ve had good experiences with. They have plans starting from only ~$39. Feel free to take a look here, give them a go, and see what you think!

 

2. If you’re not able to take incoming calls, is there another member of staff you can count on and redirect your phone to?

While option one above tends to be the easiest and most practical option for many businesses, if you’re not ready for that, if possible, why not make another staff member responsible for handling incoming calls when you’re not able to. If possible, automatically redirecting your phone when you’re not answering is often a good idea, or if you’re taking the afternoon off, perhaps just get them to look after your phone?

Want customers to leave a message? Make your voicemail message irresistible.

3. Make your voicemail message irresistible

As a final option, and at an absolute minimum, if prospective customers are left with nothing else but a voicemail message to compel them to do business with you, and hand over their contact details, you better make your voicemail message irresistible! Options one and two above tend to be much more effective, but hey, something is always better than nothing.

Think of all the cliche things that annoy you about other people’s voicemail messages and the generic telco default messages. Make sure you DON’T do those things. Here are a few ideas to consider:

  • Aim for a friendly, confident and genuine tone of voice
  • In a sentence give people compelling reason/s why they should go to the effort of leaving a message
  • Last but not least (really important), try and give people an estimated turn around time. Show them that you’re serious about following up, and make sure you follow through.
  • Try and keep it simple, yet compelling

Here’s a basic example that you can adapt or add to as needed:

Thank you for calling ABC Business (optional business description: e.g. Area Name’s award winning XYZ provider with more than X years experience). We’re really sorry we couldn’t take your call right this minute. We typically follow up within 20 minutes during business hours, so please be sure to leave your details, so we can follow up without delay. Thank you, and talk soon.

I know I’d be much more likely to leave a voicemail message when presented with the above, compared with the generic ‘We’re not available right now. Please leave a message after the tone”. How about you?

In summary:

Sales are the lifeblood of any business. Missed calls = missed business, so make sure you’re not ‘that business’ that has awesome marketing, but then misses out because your phones aren’t answered.

There are a number of affordable (and free) solutions to deal with this challenge (we listed three above). Why not take a minute and put a plan in place for your business and find out for yourself what happens when you never miss another phone enquiry.

The post What Would Happen If Your Business Never Missed Another Phone Call? appeared first on Mr Search.

]]> https://mrsearch.com.au/what-would-happen-if-your-business-never-missed-another-phone-call/feed/ 0 Is 2019 Finally the Year to Ditch the Fax Machine? https://mrsearch.com.au/is-2019-finally-the-year-to-ditch-the-fax-machine/ https://mrsearch.com.au/is-2019-finally-the-year-to-ditch-the-fax-machine/#respond Fri, 22 Feb 2019 03:01:53 +0000 https://mrsearch.com.au/wp/?p=53872 The post Is 2019 Finally the Year to Ditch the Fax Machine? appeared first on Mr Search.

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Is 2019 Finally the Year to Ditch the Fax Machine?

It’s Been a Long Time Coming. Is it Time to Say Goodbye to the Fax Forever?

Joel

Joel

Director at Mr Search
Joel is a business consultant and full time digital marketing veteran of nearly two decades. He's the Director at Mr Search, an award winning top 3% certified Google Premier Partner. When out of the office, you’ll find him cherishing moments with his wife and daughter, or getting his hands dirty in the garden.
Joel

Latest posts by Joel (see all)

I believe the short answer is ‘YES’

I’ve never much liked faxes. They are slow, cumbersome and costly compared with modern email and cloud systems. Originally being patented in the 1800’s (before the telephone), use of fax technology peaked in the 1980’s to early 2000’s.

Ask anyone born this millennium about the fax machine and you’ll generally be met with a blank stare. Why? Because to 98% of the population, it’s a relic of the past, serving no useful purpose — just like tape cassettes, video cassettes, CD’s, iPods and so on.

Goodbye-Old-Friend-Fax-Machine
Using a Computer
Put simply, with far superior technology on offer today, we believe it's time to ditch the fax

But what about the business sector? Businesses need fax machines right? For legal documents, paperwork and so on. As much as we’ve been itching to ditch our fax line, for more than a decade we’ve taken that view. And for much of it, it’s been true. As a business, we’d receive multiple faxes each week from clients with various documents, forms and so on. But that’s just not true anymore.

For some time now, we’ve noticed the number of genuine faxes we receive falling off a cliff, and the number of spam faxes we receive increasing. We’ve held off for a long time, but it’s 2019 and we think it’s time to say farewell to the fax.

We ran the numbers and in more than 2 years, we’ve received only 2 legitimate faxes. That’s an average of 1 fax a year! And very close to zero in the next year we estimate, hardly worth the expense of maintaining a functioning fax system.

Our fax line has been cancelled as of today

Today, we made the call. Within the next 30 days, our fax line will be completely disconnected. I highly doubt you were about to, but please do not send us faxes, as they will go nowhere. Instead, send us an email. It’s faster, more secure, more versatile and more reliable.

Does your business still maintain a fax machine? Did you cancel it years ago, or perhaps just never had any need for it? My advice would be to run the numbers on how many legitimate faxes you’re actually receiving. Unless they’re very different to ours, is it time to cancel your fax service altogether? Or if you really must have a fax line, my advice would be to bring it into this century and switch your fax line to a machine-less ‘fax to email system‘. That’s what we had in place for the last 10 or so years, and found it to be a whole lot more convenient, more secure, and more cost effective. Will you miss the fax machine? Frankly, we’re happy to see it go.

The post Is 2019 Finally the Year to Ditch the Fax Machine? appeared first on Mr Search.

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