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| In an increasingly digital world, traditional businesses and service professionals are finding that old-school sales and marketing strategies no longer cut it. (AFP Photo) |
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New York.
Just over a year ago, Arvada West Decorating and Flooring in Arvada, Colo.,
didn't have a website, much less a Facebook fan page.
Now a
Google search for "Arvada flooring" returns the 30-year-old store's
website as the No. 1 result. The top listing for "Arvada decorating"
is the shop's Facebook page.
That's not
by accident.
Store owner
Matt Vagts, whose family has been in the flooring business since 1954, hired a
full-time search-engine and social-media expert three months ago to bolster
Arvada West's online presence.
He believes
the strategy has helped the shop win roughly four out of five recent bids for
contracting jobs.
"I'm
getting 80 percent of the work because of my credibility on the Web,"
Vagts said. "You take a little mom-and-pop- owned shop like mine, and I
can now compete with the big shops."
In an
increasingly digital world, traditional businesses and service professionals
are finding that old-school sales and marketing strategies no longer cut it.
Door-to-door
pitches have given way to Facebook and Twitter social media postings.
Receptionists and cold calling are out, while do-it-all smartphones and online
lead generators are in.
And Yellow
Page display ads have been replaced, or at least supplemented, with so-called
search engine optimization strategies to bolster rankings in online search results.
"If I
was selling a vacuum cleaner 50 years ago, I'd walk door-to-door and shake
someone's hand and look them in the eye," said Ryan Estes, Arvada West's
tech guru. "We want to do the same thing and do that on social
media."
Posts on
Arvada West's Twitter and Facebook accounts go beyond sales announcements to
messages about the community and other topics to create a dialogue.
That's
aimed at improving the store's rankings in search results, Estes said, because
Google tweaked its search algorithm in February to find more "high-quality
sites" with fresh content. Other search-ranking factors may include the
location of the person posting the query and a site's traffic.
"I try
and shape all that together to drive Google's search results," Estes said.
"If someone is in Arvada and they type in 'tile floor,' we want to be No.
1."
A Google
spokeswoman wouldn't disclose whether certain social media activity can affect
a site's ranking, stating that results are "automatically determined by
computer algorithms using hundreds of factors to calculate a page's relevance
to a given query."
"We
can't divulge the actual ranking signals used in our algorithms because we
don't want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the
experience for all users," she said in an e-mail.
Other
businesses are using social media to raise their profile with potential
clients. Jason Wagner, owner of Denver-based Sonic Conscious Studio, has been
mixing music for about 10 years but only recently set up a blog on Tumblr and a
Facebook page.
"What
I'm working on is the reputation," Wagner said. "There are mix
engineers that get $2,000 to $5,000 a song. I'm nowhere near that. That's my
goal — to have a reputation, have people come to me and have enough work and
demand to raise my prices."
In the past
year, Golden, Colo.-based ServiceMagic, which provides leads for thousands of
service professionals, doubled the number of employees who develop mobile sites
and Facebook pages for businesses in its network.
"Facebook
is certainly something they're aware of," said ServiceMagic chief
executive Chris Terrill. "They're using it personally, but they're
beginning to realize the benefits of it professionally."
Beyond
social media and search, businesses are leaning on mobile technology to
streamline their operations.
ServiceMagic
conducted a survey of professionals in its network in May and found that 63
percent use a smartphone for their business. That's nearly double the 35
percent of American adults who use smartphones, according to a report by the
Pew Internet Project. As such, ServiceMagic recently hired 10 workers to focus
on mobile application products. The company employs roughly 1,100, with the
bulk in the Denver area.
"I
pretty much run my day through my iPhone," said Arvada West store owner
Vagts.
To manage
contracting estimates and appointments, Vagts uses the cloud-based Google Docs,
where everything is stored on remote computer servers and can be accessed via
the Internet.
"Mobile
is taking the desktop into your hands," said Daniel Rogers of Cañon City- based
MyAppToGo, which develops mobile apps and websites for businesses. "That's
why you have apps. It's simplicity. It's convenience."
NY Times Syndication
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