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June 22, 2023 by

SEO And Marketing Your Local Business On Patch.com

This page will use Dallas Texas as the example city for various ways in which local businesses can market their products and services on the Patch.com website. There are several ways in which a local business can see an increase in new customers or clients by using the features inside (and outside!) of Patch in intelligent ways.

First, let’s compare Patch with sites like Craigslist and NextDoor:

Craigslist

Service listings in Craigslist now typically require a monthly fee (roughly $5/month) for service business classified ads like HVAC, roofing, and even licensed professions like tax returns and real estate. This is different than it was in the past. However there is no targeted zip code/regional advertising other than the flat monthly fee.

Craigslist doesn’t permit reviews and it doesn’t have a “social” component to its features. You can list events for free, but you will have to pay to get exposure in other regions if your business crosses Craigslist’s regional boundaries.

NextDoor

Nextdoor has very basic free listings for businesses such as this Dallas-area business. Your business is allowed to add a logo, some pictures, hours of operation, a website link, and a small business bio. You will have to pay to get exposure outside of a small radius around your physical office/building/store location. Nextdoor users are allowed to leave reviews, but business owners have minimal option to reply to those reviews unlike Google Business Profile (Google Maps) business listings.

So Why Use Patch?

Patch, at the time of this post, is more powerful at the local level than most people realize. It has the ability to offer some nice benefits to any local business owner:

  • Free to join
  • You can have two listings -> one “personal” and one official “business”
  • Your services can be added as “Classifieds”
  • Your company’s events can be promoted locally
  • Paid advertising options within Patch exist (see more here)
  • The classified ad service listings, if optimized properly, can rank in Google on their own for local keywords
  • You are allowed to add an image with your classified listings (not all classified ad sites permit this)
  • The links inside your business profile and classified listings can help power up your main website, Google Business listing, YouTube channel and other web properties to rank higher in the search engines
  • You can follow other local businesses and like/share their postings, thus raising awareness of your business once they see you engaging with their content
  • Local news keeps you updated on happenings in your area
  • You can post local news (not just service listings) and start to build trust in your company from other local Patch users

Combining the above, you can increase the chances of your business gaining new customers/clients and building goodwill in your local market.

Examples Of This Working

This local Dallas sports bar offers a stage with large screen, DJ booth, microphone system, and more in case a private party wants to rent the restaurant for an awards event, live music event, or even a large birthday party. Their Patch listing ranks #1, even above Maps, in Google for those seeking such a venue:

If you post an event, the links inside the description can be used for “off-page SEO link building” to help send traffic to the inner pages of your website. The goal is to use relevant, authoritative and trustworthy websites to point links to these non-home page portions of your website in order to boost those pages higher up in the search engines.

Patch is interesting in that even after the event has concluded, it keeps the original listing live. This means that the power of those links doesn’t go away once the event is finished. This listing is still live even though the event concluded a few weeks ago (from the time of this post):

Your listing on Patch even can rank well when people go the search engines and look for a wider geographic area. In this case, local training classes for “Dallas Fort Worth” are ranking #1 in the organic listings (just under the Maps listings) in Google despite the Patch listing only being posted in the “Dallas” community:

Sometimes you need to increase your company’s brand name plus the city in which you are located for increasing search engine authority that your business is a legitimate local company. Here is one such example where this was done, especially for a business with office out of the home:

Some times you may be entering a niche within a highly-competitive local market. Bathroom remodeling in Collin County is highly-competitive with the County’s overall revenue potential for quality contractors, so this niche (shower glass doors) is using Patch to begin to enter that market and start getting phone calls:

Occasionally you get a unique situation such as this driving school located on the Garland-Richardson border. The main instructor also is approved by Texas DPS to be an off-site “third party” driving test location. This is so that people won’t have to wait for weeks to take their driving tests, especially in high-population areas like Dallas and Garland.

If you are expanding into a new region, you also can use Patch to test (probe) and see if you need to invest heavily in pay-per-click for a new niche. In this case, a video production company with a Downtown Dallas address wants to enter the niche (“podcast video recording”) in a suburb of Dallas – in this case McKinney. The Patch listing ranks #1 in Google after the “Sponsored” paid ad section of the search result.

What Else Can Be Done With Patch?

In addition to ranking in the search engines and using the description of your profile & classified ad service listings for SEO link building, here are some first step suggestions:

  • Engage with the local businesses and active people in your geographic area. Do this to start to build awareness and trust in your company.
  • Post any open-to-the-public event that you are hosting or promoting. Using the sports bar example earlier, they should use Patch to promote the nights when they have boxing, MMA, or major professional or college sporting event watch parties.
  • Test new niches and/or markets with an ad to determine if your Patch listing will rank in Google quickly (like the podcast video recording example above). If it doesn’t rank on the first two pages in the search engines after a week, then your “probe” indicated that you likely will need to invest more into SEO hard costs like link building, content creation, on-page SEO development and possibly something like a paid press release.
  • Do some low-cost advertising within Patch to reach neighboring areas. Using the sports bar example again, they are located on the border of Dallas and Irving/Las Colinas. Currently they are in the “Dallas” Patch community due to their physical address, so they should consider paying to get exposure in the “Irving” Patch community for their services and/or events.
  • ** An advanced technique is to consider any listing on Patch (your business profile or one of your classified service ads) which links to your website as a “Tier 1” web property. In competitive local markets you can boost both your Patch listing as well as your main website with intelligent “Tier 2” link building, CTR traffic, social sharing and other advanced off-page SEO techniques. Contact us for more details about your specific needs.

Finally, be sure to geo-tag your images with appropriate latitude/longitude, meta data in the Properties field and more to help your efforts. You likely spent time and/or money on your photos and graphic designed image files, so take a few extra steps to give each image file the best odds of helping you. Once geo-tagged you can use these image files where appropriate, such as on your Patch business profile and your individual Patch classified listings.

While Dallas Texas was used as the example in this post, the action steps mentioned are applicable to most areas of the United States. In some cases, you can reduce website costs if you only care about getting quick wins in the search engines; but please note that you can lose your rankings overnight if your Patch profile gets deleted. It always is best for you to have a fully-optimized website which you control all aspects: domain registration, website hosting, content, SEO optimization, images, other multimedia, and control the access as to whom can make changes.

Thank you and hopefully you found some benefit in reading this far! If you need help with your local internet marketing then Contact Us to schedule a call. We then, together, can customize a game plan to help you achieve what you would like to do in order to grow your business.

Filed Under: classified advertising, Event, internet marketing, link building, local marketing, online marketing, SEO
April 5, 2015 by

Case Study – Restaurant Grand Opening Marketing Online

In future blog posts I may add some case studies to determine what has or hasn’t worked when using online marketing to help generate new business.  A recent project is worth a short case study due to the fact that it simultaneously both worked and did not work as well as expected.

OVERVIEW:

A fast-casual and drive-through restaurant chain, with the majority of its locations and headquarters, is based in Northern California.  The company desired to expand and chose the Dallas Fort Worth region as its main expansion focal point.  This is due to the influx of people and businesses moving into the DFW Metroplex area which meet their primary demographic audience.

There is significant competition for the type of food that they serve.  With that understood, one of their differentiators is to have a grand opening where they give away free food and offer some light entertainment (music, bounce house for kids, etc.).

THE CLIENT’S BELIEFS

Their belief is that free food, like it does for high school and college kids, is enough of an enticement to get people to show up.  From there they believe that the word-of-mouth should take over and help boost day-by-day traffic to the restaurant in conjunction with basic social media and real-world marketing:  coupons, flyers, direct mail, etc.

They asked me to help promote the grand opening event with various online marketing elements:  SEO, paid ads, free listings, etc.  The end result was their best turnout ever for a grand opening, despite the weather being less-than-ideal during a cold Saturday afternoon in February in North Texas.

WHAT WORKED:

In terms of what worked to promote this restaurant’s grand opening, from the online marketing perspective, it boiled down to three elements:

  • Targeted Facebook paid ads
  • Online event calendar listings via the classified ads
  • Dallas Fort Worth-specific “things to do” calendars

The clear winner, of the three, was the Facebook paid ad method.  Although people surveyed at the event mentioned the above 3 virtually to the exclusion of other methods, the Facebook paid advertising method was the best far and away.

Instead of paying to have people “like” the Facebook page, or paying to have them leave Facebook and be taken to another website, we crafted a basic post to go on the Facebook page.  It answered the “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” questions; and it had a graphic of the free food which would be given away that day.

In order to overcome resistance, we emphasized that the person didn’t need to bring any coupon or have to show anything at the event.  All that was required was to show up and eat free food.

METRICS

We split test different ads to determine which would have the best “metrics”.  Unlike regular online ad metrics, paid ads in social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) have additional measurements of success which include:

  • “likes” of the post
  • shares of the post (the biggest one as it reaches people via a “tacit” endorsement)
  • post comments
  • clicks through to the website to get more information

Remember that the restaurant business, especially in a high-competition environment like Dallas Fort Worth, likely will draw people from no more than 5 miles and, likely, more like 1-3 miles.  In order to address this, we targeted the paid advertising to JUST the zip code where the restaurant’s location is.  This can be altered in your case if your location is near the line of two zip codes; but the restaurant in this study was in the middle of its zip code.

We then targeted the Facebook paid ad (promoting the SPECIFIC post on the Facebook business page) by this method:

  • zip code(s)
  • genders (we targeted both men and women)
  • language spoken (in this case, just English)
  • age range (we chose ages 30-40)
  • interests:  we chose interests based on those which would be “liked” or groups liked by parents with kids in the 30-40 age range.  These include local youth soccer, PTA, kids TV shows, etc
  • marital status:  we chose all, but your specific post could targeted those who are only “married”, “divorced”, “separated”, “single”, etc.
  • workplaces:  we did not narrow the list to those only working for specific companies, although you have that flexibility if you are running a Facebook ad promotion for those working for major employers in your area

END RESULT

The Facebook paid (promoted) post got shared/commented/liked over 700 times according to the paid ad stats provided by Facebook.  Based on predetermining percentages of those who took action, with those who showed up, the client and I figured that the efforts produced somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 250 people showing up as a result of the Facebook paid advertising.

The cost to have one person actually show up, based on the total ad spend, was around $0.80 (eighty cents).  The acquisition cost-per-new-customer was more successful than they imagined it would be.  In conjunction with their real world efforts, such as promotions at local schools and churches, the efforts led to a combined turnout better than they ever had at any grand opening in company history.

THINGS WHICH DIDN’T WORK

While the above is great, a case study wouldn’t be beneficial to you without understanding what didn’t work.  The following list doesn’t mean that these techniques are bad.  It just means that they didn’t work for this particular grand opening in February 2015 in the DFW market for the type of food being promoted.

  • Press release:  not enough distribution through social channels to reach the very-defined audience in one zip code.  The retail consumer’s ability to be accessed via basic online press releases (for just “free food”) is not newsworthy enough.
    • The press release DID WORK, however, in terms of ranking in the search engines for “XYZ food TOWN Texas” and “XYZ catering TOWN Texas”.  This gives merit to the press release strategy for getting new walk-in customers and catering orders months after the grand opening is completed
    • The press release has to be optimized for these phrases, however, so be sure that you know what you are doing
    • Link building to the press release helped the press release stay on top of the search engines.  Contact us if you need help with boosting your previous press releases for certain keywords in the search engines
  • Contacting the “things to do” people in Twitter for that town.  Even though this made good sense, it just didn’t work out as the people running those Twitter channels either didn’t care or weren’t given enough incentive to make repeat endorsements to their followers (which supposedly had hundreds from that town)
    • If your grand opening really has something newsworthy, like a famous band or pro athlete appearing, then these Twitter channel owners may help you; but otherwise their influence appears to be exaggerated
  • Using Twitter hashtags for the specific town
    • It just didn’t work for this case, despite 5 tweets all using the city’s most in-demand hashtag (supposedly)
  • YouTube videos from previous grand openings in nearby cities
    • Nobody seemed to care, as the view counts, despite being marketed to the new town just never increased markedly.  No comments/likes/etc. of the video from the previous city’s grand opening
    • This was weird as both the client and I thought that “social proof” (seeing other people having fun at a recent grand opening) would generate some anticipation of what was to take place at the upcoming grand opening.  It just didn’t work out that way
  • Relying on friends and employees to tweet, like, share the information.  Unless forced or paid to do so, the staff just “never got around” to promoting the grand opening’s “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” information to THEIR OWN friends and family
    • This can be deemed “sad”, but it confirms the stereotype of the “employee mindset” when they have no vested interest in generating one new person to appear
    • Corporate office is rethinking the incentives on certain days (not just grand openings) to give employees a financial incentive to market to those they know; but that process is still in its infancy
  • QR Codes:  this didn’t work because the staff barely gave out the material with the QR code to those who attended early in the afternoon to “check in” or leave a review on Facebook which would entice friends to attend the event later in the afternoon.  The few who handed out the material couldn’t convey why someone should scan the QR code
    • This ties in with the employee mindset mentioned above
    • It also shows a lack of understanding by corporate office, as they realized later the power that QR codes can have on generating positive reviews on sites like UrbanSpoon.com, Yelp, and other review websites

TAKEAWAYS FOR YOU

Thank you for reading this far.  I want you to have an honest look at what did and did not work in this particular case study.  Some of the methods COULD have worked, but they needed more time or refinement; and, in some cases, they needed to give their own people more incentive to promote the event.

As for your upcoming grand opening or other event that needs online marketing to help increase attendance there are some takeaways:

  • Give staff some sort of incentive to promote the event
  • Free works, but not in all online media
  • Some methods, which you expect to work, will fizzle (i.e. the YouTube video of the previous grand opening for a city 20 miles away)
  • Hyper-targeted paid ads, even though they are paid posts, likely will generate a very low cost to acquire a new customer (client).  This has to have lots of planning beforehand, however, in order to maximize your ad spend
  • Sometimes an effort can generate business in the long term, even though it lost out in the short term
    • The press release is the example in this case

I hope that all of this helps you better understand the role of online marketing when having a live grand opening for a local business.  If you need help with any aspect, especially the paid ads, then you are welcome to contact us for strategy and/or implementation assistance.

Filed Under: Event, grand opening, Local Business Revenues, pay per click Tagged With: ,
July 3, 2014 by

The Merits Of Internet Marketing For Local Live Events

I want to thank Greg Smith for the opportunity to contribute a post to his website this week.  He was kind enough to let me share some suggestions and thoughts about the merits of incorporating internet marketing for local events, either free to attend or requiring paid ticket admission.  Here is the link to the article I posted:

Greg and I share some of the same thoughts about tiered link building, promotion of “Tier 1” properties as standalone landing pages and much more.  What this means to you is that, much like most local businesses only care about the phone ringing (or receiving e-mails from qualified prospects), whenever you promote live events you primarily care only about how many people show up to the event/game/show/etc.  There are over 20 online marketing methods to get the word out, and some offer you benefit long after the event has concluded.

Should you find the post to interesting then you are welcome to share it or visit more about our event marketing information and consulting here:

Filed Under: Event, internet marketing, lead generation, local marketing, online marketing, tickets
May 9, 2013 by

May 14 2013 Workshop – SEO For Properties Other Than Your Website

Next week (May 14, 2013) I will be leading a portion of an afternoon-long workshop regarding a rather unique element of internet marketing.  The topic will cover search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) for web properties OTHER than your own website!

Here is the breakdown of information:

  • Who:  Steve Smillie (Lynx Search Marketing) will be talking about your website’s design and your e-mail marketing + Mario Wilson (Market With Mario) will be talking about social media marketing.  I will talk about SEO for your other web properties (LinkedIn page, YouTube videos, etc.)
  • What:  3 events will take place that afternoon:
    • Luncheon
    • Workshop
    • After Hours Event
  • Where:  Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites (Fairview/McKinney).  3220 Craig Dr, McKinney, TX 75070.  Hotel desk phone is (469) 952-2044.  The hotel is on Craig Drive, south of Eldorado Parkway and west of Highway 75/Central Expressway
  • When:  Luncheon is 11:30 and the Workshops begin at 1:00
  • Why:  The common goal for each of the 3 speakers is to help any business owner or executive discover new ways to reach unknown (as of yet) prospects and convince them to contact the business for more information
  • How:  You can sign up at the event registration links here:
  • Price:  There is a fee for the lunch and another for the workshops.  All fees go to Networking University
  • Discount Codes:  Early1 is the code for the luncheon.  Member 1 is the code for the workshops.

Questions about all of the events are welcome to be directed to Debra through her contact information  at Networking-University.com.   You are welcome to contact me with questions about my portion of the workshop that afternoon.

Filed Under: Event, local marketing, SEO, Training, workshops
August 27, 2010 by

Presentation From Aug 25 McKinney Chamber Of Commerce Luncheon

On August 25, 2010 I gave a presentation at the McKinney Chamber of Commerce’s WAM “Lunch and Learn” seminar.  The topic was on how attendees can begin to customize an internet marketing strategy which is best for their business/industry as well as their individual personalities.

If you would like a copy of the presentation, slightly revised based on the feedback from those who attended the event, then you are welcome to download  a copy here:

Should you like the presentation then you are welcome to send copies to friends and colleagues; or you are welcome to send them the link to this page.

Many thanks to Angie Bado, Cheryl O’Hagan, and Tara Stelluti for their invitation and encouragement.  I appreciate the opportunity to help and convey information which can help everyone’s business!

Also, thanks to Tammy for sponsoring the lunch AND for bringing her delicious food from home!

A final thank you to Jodi Ann, Beth, Becky, and everyone else from the McKinney Chamber of Commerce for their help and encouragement.  Your hospitality was terrific!

Should you like more information on internet marketing for your business, or if you need a speaker on this topic at an upcoming event, then you are welcome to contact me at your convenience.

Thank you, Matt.

Filed Under: Event, Resources, Training
July 7, 2010 by

Dallas Event Online Marketing

When talking with business owners and decision makers after the completion of Chamber of Commerce meetings, networking groups, and other Dallas area networking events, I notice that many of these people express frustration with not being able to get the word out about their open-to-the-public events.  Whether it is an annual event at a retail store, a golf tournament, a charitable event, a workshop, a small conference, or any other event open to the public these business owners seem completely at a loss as to advertising their events outside of the newspaper.

The beauty of today’s technology is that these decision makers now can post their events on various internet sites which will give the event more exposure AND syndication to more people who may be qualified.  There are several categories of sites designed to help increase attendance at these local events which are open to the general public.  For example, if a Dallas-area retail store wanted to get more people to its annual fall sale then it could:

  • promote the event via free and paid press release distribution services
  • promote the event on the online event calendar sites, which send the upcoming events to people’s e-mail addresses who have subscribed to receive these notices
  • promote the event on local review sites
  • promote the event on local classified ad sites which allow for event listings
  • promote the event on Dallas-specific sites which syndicate the content such as the event calendar on Dallas.com
  • promote the event on the business’ specific social media properties like Facebook and Twitter

There is an art to this process, especially if you are looking to “tag” your content with keywords which get large amounts of demand.  Several Dallas-specific keyword phrases relating to activities, events, and entertainment get thousands of searches each month; and it would be helpful to put your content in front of those searchers as well.  You can do this by promoting the event and/or your profile page on event sites  by using these high-demand keywords.

Should you need help with any Dallas-Fort Worth online marketing for your event, or events in any other area in the U.S., then please contact me to discuss how I can help.

Filed Under: Event Tagged With: , , , , , , ,