Get What You Can Afford
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An online consulting firm helps you become an internet rockstar. Its service isn’t limited to search engine optimization. It also provides professional services in reputation management and lead generation.
Good reputation, legal search engine optimization and lead generation are the ingredients to online marketing success. Leads Ahoy believes your business website will not survive if you solely rely on SEO.
Let’s say you get a front page for the keywords “basement waterproofing in connecticut.” Your website produces quality contents but when you view its analytics, you only receive fifty unique clicks per day and 70% bounce rate.
It’s still useless, right? Quality contents doesn’t automatically mean people go to your site. These situations happen and it’s recommended to use your reputation in an aim to persuade the right audience to visit your website regularly.
And there’s more. You also need to convert these readers into leads. You need to gain their trust to a point that they are going to contact you for help.
In other words, an online marketing firm is your partner. The firm listens to you. The firm understands your business’ products and services. Most importantly, the firm knows how to promote your website online.
It takes time to find the best online consulting firm. These companies are every where. Some exist in the business for more than five years. Yet, not all are created equal. You need to choose the best five and once you have the list, figure out their:
1. Payment Terms
Your online marketing success depends on your budget. Your budget determines what services you need and what services you can afford.
Forget hiring if you’ll just pay a pea amount in exchange of services that require hard work and analysis.
Also, forget hiring if you’ll ask for guarantees. No online consulting firm can guarantee 100% success. These firms aren’t tied with search engines; therefore, it’s impossible to achieve number one ranking overnight or in two months time.
Instead of asking unrealistic guarantees, better ask for a realistic time table.
In the words of Alex Houg, the founder of Portage: “Client who ask for guarantees most likely fit in the 20% bucket of clients that cause 80% of problems. Work with people that already love you and are ready to go. (Forbes, December 2014)”
2. Online Reputation Strategies
Online marketing begins with good reputation. Reputation unlocks the door to success. Sadly, companies, these days, tend to forget how to reach out to their audience. These companies only ask the people to buy.
Leads Ahoy believes internet marketing isn’t about selling. It’s about offering. Give what the people can’t have. The goal is to use email and social media marketing to obtain new leads and connect with people, respectively.
3. Local Search Strategies
A professional website defines your online reputation. It’s your window to your products, services, free offers and daily blog updates.
Your firm needs to present a summary of their online marketing proposal. This proposal reveals the legal strategies in search engine optimization that will yield great and long-term results. You can tell the strategies are legal if it follows the guidelines made by Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Bear in mind not all strategies will work for your business. For example, if your website talks about basement waterproofing services in Connecticut, the ideal strategy is to target your website’s local search to the right state, right city and right audience.
4. Communication Process
Clear communication plays a role in internet marketing success. It’s part of your firm’s responsibility to send the monthly updates by mail. The firm needs to send the summary of your website’s performance, changes made in the website and campaign’s updates done offsite.
Some firms provide more than one service; therefore, request a separate mail for SEO results, another for reputation management and a separate sheet for lead generation. Make sure you also inform them to put these results into PDF file format. This format allows you to print the sheets and keep it for further review.
Online marketing results include technical terms that will take time to understand. For this, quickly look for the following: the total number of unique visits to your website, the total number of new active leads in your email list and the summary of positive/negative reviews collected through social media.
Leads Ahoy 
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