Posted by Mike Massie on January 23, 2010
Why It Pays To Hire A Professional SEO
All this stuff may be confusing to you, but you still need to get a high search ranking in Google for your business.
So, Gary is one of our Fighting Fit and Self Defense program instructors who is starting a school right now. He’s hired me to do some additional online marketing for him, first to create a custom blog, and now most recently he took me up on the SEO offer I sent out yesterday…
So, yesterday afternoon I went to work on his SEO campaign.
As of this morning, he has 4 of the top ten listings in Google for two of his most important keyword phrases in Google. Not only that, but the main site we’re driving traffic to went up about 2 – 3 spots in the rankings for those keywords as well.
Of course, there’s a lot more work to do… I won’t be satisfied until he has three of the top five spots for his keywords.
The Importance of Having A High Search Ranking In Google
Why is this so important?
Because, here’s the breakdown of the average clickthrough rates for the top ten listings for any search engine results page in Google:
Spot #1: 42.3% of clicks…
Spot #2: 11.92% of clicks…
Spot #3: 8.44% of clicks…
Spot #4: 6.03% of clicks…
Spot #5: 4.86% of clicks…
Spot #6: 3.99% of clicks…
Spot #7: 3.37% of clicks…
Spot #8: 2.98% of clicks…
Spot #9: 2.83% of clicks…
Spot #10: 2.97% of clicks (not a typo)
Obviously, it pays to have the higher search ranking spots in Google for the most important keywords in your local market.
And, the results schools get when they do bear this out. In a mid-size market (a town of about 100,000 in the Midwest) one school owner I know of gets 60 leads a month from his website…
And wouldn’t you know it, he has the number one spot in Google for “(his town) martial arts”. I know this because one of his close friends is thinking of hiring me to do the same thing for him in his own town.
So, imagine what it could do for your business to dominate the top five spots in Google for “(your city) martial arts” in a large metropolitan area?
Or, even in a smaller town – even ten leads a month (actually, I was getting 5 – 10 leads a week in a town of 10,000) could make a huge difference in your bottom line.
If You Want To Dominate The Search Engines In Your Area…
I still have one spot left for a school who wants to achieve multiple top ten rankings for their school in the next 90 days. Call me at 512-535-6858 if you’d like to get started (leave a message on my voice mail if it’s over the weekend). Remember, I guarantee my work – packages start at $399 per month, and if you don’t get results in 90 days I keep working for free until you do.
- Mike Massie
P.S. - No lie, that’s a deep discount off my “real” rates because I know the martial arts market so well. It makes it easier for me because there’s less research involved. So I can charge martial arts school owners less for the same results. But the downside is, I have to limit how many packages I sell at that rate. Sorry, but I can only take so many clients at that deep of a discount.
P.S.S. – If you want to know more about my internet marketing firm, check out http://moderndigitalmarketing.com.
Posted by Mike Massie on November 5, 2009
Know Thy Image
I fully expect some clown to start offering martial arts for pets or some such nonsense at some point - which would be an extreme case of trying to offer something for everyone... or every-pet, in this case.
Trying to be all things to all people is a sure-fire way to become nothing to no one. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t diversify into having multiple programs for multiple age demographics. Not at all… in fact, for most school owners and in most locations I think it’s a mistake to just go after a single demographic.
Know What Pays Thy Bills
However, I do think you need to know what pays the bills, and be practical about pursuing that demographic and making it the priority in your school. For example…
In my first school, I built the entire school on kids programs. That was my whole image, and even though I taught adult classes, fitness classes, and so on, my entire image was tied up in being a kid-friendly school.
But in my most recent school, I focused more on presenting the message that we had programs for the whole family. Still, I wanted to teach more adults, so I focused more on that.
The thing is, getting kids in your school is usually the easiest task. It’s the adults that are much harder to attract. That’s why I always go for the kid’s market first, then go after the adults once the kid’s programs are paying the bills.
Know Thy Demographic
What’s that have to do with image?
Well, all my ads are pretty much middle of the road as far as raciness goes. The raciest thing I’ve ever run was for my boot camp, and that’s because the model showed midriff and had a belly piercing (it looked good, though – the ads performed well).
Mostly, I’ve stuck with mom-friendly stuff, because in the areas I operated in most of my clients and decision-makers were moms.
Know Thy Target Market
Here’s something to consider, though…
Say you run a gym that’s MMA oriented, and your enrollment is mostly made up of the 20- and 30-something, tatted up, Affiliction-wearing guys.
Chances are good that your kids classes are going to be made up of kids from those households.
So, you’ll still get some “contact” enrollments just by virtue of farming your existing clientele – it’s just going to fall out that way.
But, that “bad boy” image isn’t going to go over well with families who just walk in off the street. Your average soccer mom is going to be turned off by it, and she’ll take her kids down the street to the plain-vanilla-typical-suburban-family-image school down the street.
This is just one example, and I think you can see the converse also applies. If your school is viewed as a “kiddie” school, chances are good that will work against you if you are marketing hard core MMA or adult self-defense programs.
Know Thy Image As It Applies To Thy Demographic
This is why it’s important to understand the demographics of your area… so you can make sure you don’t have an image disconnect between the image your marketing projects and your local market.
In more densely populated urban areas, it may be possible to pick and choose your ideal student by targeting a particular demographic. This is what you see advertisers doing in mass media marketing – the audience is broad enough to allow the advertiser’s to pick and choose their market to a certain extent.
However, your market reach is effectively only 5-10 miles from your location (ten being on the extreme edges of your market).
So, the demographic found in that geographical area absolutely dictates what your marketing image should be.
—
Questions? Comments?
Let Mike know! Post your comments below…
