The loyalty ladder is a relationship marketing concept that sees customers gradually moving up through relationship levels, starting at the bottom as prospects (those who have the intent to purchase but have not yet done so) and ending up at the top as advocates (intensely loyal brand champions). The loyalty ladder typically looks something like this:

According to the Wikipedia article: “The relationship marketer’s objective is to ‘help’ customers get as high up the ladder as possible. This usually involves providing more personalized service and providing service quality that exceeds expectations at each step”

In the conventional wisdom, loyalty is something that a business builds in its customers by consistently exceeding expectations. A customer’s enthusiasm for a company grows with every satisfying interaction until it reaches a peak level of support and the customer becomes a brand advocate and helps grow the business through championing and word-of-mouth.

There are two critiques of the loyalty ladder concept that I’m going to cover in this post: 1) Fred Reichheld’s take on customer loyalty in “The Loyalty Effect” and 2) the power of first impressions.

The Loyalty Effect

Reichheld’s basic premise is that some companies enjoy a loyalty premium over competitors: they have more loyal customers, more loyal employees, and more loyal shareholders. The increased loyalty of one group results in and from the increased loyalty of the others (i.e., happy employees create happy customers and, in turn, happy customers create happy employees, etc.). Companies that truly understand the importance of loyalty and commit to it from the leadership levels down simply outperform peers that pay it lip service. These loyalty leaders reap benefits such as lower cost of capital, increased customer lifetime value, and higher employee engagement.

Reichheld goes on to state that customer loyalty isn’t always something that a company can build. Loyalty leaders succeed because they target their customer acquisition efforts toward prospects who are more likely to be loyal in the first place. These companies recognize three basic principles:

• Some customers prefer stable, long-term relationships
• Some customers are more profitable
• Some customers will be more responsive to your particular business strengths

For loyalty leaders, the marketer’s objective is, first and foremost, to find likely people to introduce to his or her business. Efforts to personalize service or “exceed expectations” for customer segments that have little chance of being profitable waste resources and frustrate employees.  Relationship marketers have to start with the right segments and choose the relationships they want to build. It’s only then that personalization and high quality service can provide even greater returns for these qualified customer pools.

The loyalty ladder concept glosses over the inherent characteristics of prospects. Loyalty isn’t simply something that the relationship marketer builds. There’s a piece of sales wisdom: “You never know who’s going to buy.” Which means a good salesperson is always on. Questionable advice for a salesperson and disastrous advice for a marketer. Without targeting, without segmentation, without proper qualification of prospects, a marketer will burn up company resources and waste employee goodwill at the bottom rung of the loyalty ladder.

First Impressions

Customer championing, in Clive Humby’s Scoring Points, is pretty simple: “… if customers get an obvious benefit, then that benefit will become an aspiration for their friends and associates.” The question is: when is the benefit obvious to the customer?

The loyalty ladder has customers perceiving the benefit most intensely at the highest rung. This overlooks the power of first impressions. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell writes on “our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience.” Through taste, temperament, and social conditioning, we like and dislike new things very quickly. We make snap judgments. Our first response (to a person and how they treat us and make us feel) is automatic, and it’s difficult to dislodge. We’re most enthusiastic about something (a song, book, restaurant, store, etc.) when we first discover it.

The loyalty ladder doesn’t account for the very real fact that we often commit on the first visit. This first commitment is instinctive and emotional. It springs from our basic sense of something done right. Customers don’t scrutinize the relationship every step of the way. They take leaps. What they’re doing in subsequent visits is continuing to explore and revisit an original experience they’ve already committed to, not to find reasons to commit at a later date. In this view, the loyalty ladder is best seen on its side.

The customers who love you fall in love with you on the first visit. They’re at the core of every new pool of customers. With each subsequent visit, more of the customers who don’t love you fall away. With each subsequent visit, the customers who do love you make up more of the remaining pool. This is why customers who visit twice are more likely to return than customers who visit once (and customers who visit three times are more likely to return than customers who visit twice, etc.). It’s overstating things to say that customers who love you will never go away (people move, their needs change, etc.). But the main point is that the really important part happens on the bottom rung of the loyalty ladder.

The best way to build loyalty down the road, then, is to focus on loyalty and commitment on the first visit. Taking a cue from the arts world, it’s always opening night: there are always new faces in the crowd who are experiencing your business for the first time. Make the first visit special and everything else (loyalty, advocacy, lifetime value) will likely follow.

The title of this post comes from what was (and likely still is) Russ Greiner’s thought for the day. Just below it, he writes “I plan to update this daily… but that is not the highest priority.” I’m not sure Russ has ever updated “First things first; second things never”. The man understands priorities.

Russ is one of the brilliant researchers at the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Machine Learning at the University of Alberta (the school’s machine learning program attracts and develops some real talent). He was kind enough to hear out a somewhat urgent, out-of-the-blue request from us last week. A true gentleman, he turned it around the next day and wished us well.

First things first

In the startup world, you plan a little, you do a lot, but mostly you hope things go your way. I’m thoroughly grateful that Russ made our request a “first thing”. I’m pretty sure we weren’t on that list when his day started. He had to prioritize a new thing as a “first thing” — which suggests to me that “first things” perhaps aren’t meant to be fixed or pursued in a hard, singleminded fashion.

“First things” are instead flexible. They give way, even momentarily, to other “first things” (and “second things”) as circumstances shift. We see and act on what matters now. What matters tomorrow is notoriously difficult to pin down. The suggestion alone is an offense to anyone who puts strict faith in planning. But it seems to me that, in our personal and professional lives, we often outlive our plans — without outliving the claims they make on us.

The appeal of “first things first” — its terse and brutal clarity and uncompromising emphasis on process, process — is immediate for management types. It’s about efficiency, conserving and focusing powers — what Peter Drucker referred to as the essence of management: doing things right.

The idea can as easily be about determining what’s important (“first things”) and doing only that. This is what Drucker referred to as the essence of leadership: doing the right things. “Second things never” recommends that all your time should be spent on the important first things, which seems as much a formula for the good life as one for effectiveness and accomplishment.

A second look at second things

Let’s say the idea of “first things first” is less about setting (or sticking to) priorities than simply recognizing them. In this view, knowing what to do comes before the determination to do it. But how can you recognize “first things” without exploring the dreamy, distracting world of “second things”? “Second things” have a purpose: they’re suggestive. They open up possibilities for “first things”.

A big part of data-driven marketing is measuring. Measuring the outcomes of marketing actions allows you to determine what’s working and what isn’t: one of our favorite mantras. Having the right metrics in place is about defining “first things” — so that you can focus your efforts on moving the needle where it most matters. Figuring out how to move the needle is about wandering through “second things”. It’s more narratives than numbers.

Some random points

I did some wandering through first and second things while putting together this post. Here are some highlights (an affectionate defense of “second things”):

1. Who’s credited with with the quote?

Shirley Conran, the author of Lace, which was made into an ’80s mini-series starring Phoebe Cates. She is also known for having said “Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.”

2. Isn’t there a management book on this?

Yes, there is. At least on the “first things first” part. It’s by Stephen Covey. “Put first things first” is also Habit #3 of Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I had less success tracking down a management book that explores, much less advocates, “second things”.

3. It sounds like a manifesto.

That’s because it is. At least the “first things first” part. Ken Garland published it in 1964 as a challenge to graphic designers and visual communicators, proposing:

… a reversal of priorities [away from high pressure consumer advertising] in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication.

Rick Poynor has a discussion in Emigre on the continuing significance of Garland’s challenge for modern designers. Here’s the original manifesto from Garland’s site:

4. Where can I wander through “second things”?

The Discovery Channel! This is the sequel to The World is Just Awesome commercial. Darren sent me the link this afternoon. Diversions, like friends, are their own reward.

5. Where else?

In your head according to this Globe and Mail article. And Robert Browning’s poem Two in the Campagna is, among other things, an excellent tribute to the pleasures of mindful wandering.

Does your website help your business? It’s the bottom line question — one you’re probably already asking. Eight Leaves Marketing offers custom web, graphic, and design solutions for local businesses. We call it the Greenhouse Program, because, you guessed it, we want your website to actually grow your business — and we have the nuts and bolts know-how to make it happen. The Greenhouse Program is an affordable, all-in-one online marketing solution for small to medium organizations that puts the emphasis where it matters: building websites that stand out, get found, and convert new customers.

1. All the cool kids are online. More and more businesses, large and small, are exploring online marketing. Some are actually succeeding: they’re running campaigns in search and social media; their customer base is increasing; they’re measuring and improving their marketing ROI. These businesses are at the forefront of a movement that Deloitte predicts will eventually see the online share of all advertising reach 50%. The Greenhouse Program is about helping clients join this transition that’s well underway. We help you to not just get online, but succeed once you’re there.
2. We’re a data-driven marketing company. Why is that important? Our business is built around using data to acquire, engage, and retain customers. We study customer behavior data in many different industries; we know what motivates prospects to act and customers to buy. So you could go with a web design shop and have a website that looks great (fingers crossed), or you could go with us and have a website that looks great and grows your business. We know the difference and you will too.
3. Stand out. We focus on clean and simple design that creates trust and interest in your potential customers. Poorly designed websites frustrate users (and search engines) with irrelevant/inconsistent content, content that doesn’t sell the main product or service, poor navigation, and confusing visuals. We design sites that engage and convert users while doing all the little things necessary to rank well in search engines. And, by the way, we don’t do Flash. Zero. That means our sites work on Apple gadgets like the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. So what? Mobile devices are expected to make up the majority of Web traffic within five years! How do we know? Mary Meeker told us so.
4. Get found. A website that stands out is step one. Step two is getting the right people to visit the site: people who are searching for your products and services or people who, once they’ve been introduced to your products and services, choose to become your customers. From SEO to local listings to marketing on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to online advertising, we know how to drive qualified traffic to your website. This isn’t a tacked on service. You don’t have to deal with multiple suppliers for solving what is essentially one problem: getting customers online. The Greenhouse Program is about partnering with you through the whole process.
5. Convert new customers. Once prospects show up, the sales side takes charge. What does the selling? Your site! Knowing how well your site is doing and systematically changing things up to try different tactics and strategies is the last step. We work with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer to fine-tune your site’s conversion funnels. With the Greenhouse Program, you’ll know on a regular basis how well your site is doing in terms of generating customers, and you’ll be able to make and test changes to push performance higher.
6. Growth takes time and effort. There are no quick fixes. The Greenhouse Program is about setting up an ongoing partnership. We work with you to build a solid foundation for growing your business online. We’re big believers in working with clients that share our passion and excitement for business. It’s about seeing and planning for the long-term even while dealing with the constraints of the short-term.
7. You could pay a little or a lot. Or you could pay for value. There are discount shops who’ll do a site quick, cheap, and a little dirty. If price is your biggest factor, you’ll go with these guys. Somewhere at the other end, there are bigger shops whose proposals are more elaborate and much more costly. Their cost structure is a little off, but their sales pitch and client roster is pretty solid. You might be thinking they’re a good bet. We can see just how confusing it is to sort through all the players and options. When we were figuring out our goals for the Greenhouse Program, we looked at two questions: 1) What is the value we’re delivering to clients? and 2) What would it take for us to deliver it? We wanted to make sure that value and price made sense, and we know you’ll feel the same at the end of the project. We’re a business just like yours — we want to grow by treating customers better than anyone else.
8. Once a plant leaves the Greenhouse, it still wants to grow… Online advertising is competitive and complex. It’s hard to figure out. It’s harder to get results. We have the expertise. From keyword analysis, analytics, landing page optimization, testing, and optimizing search spending, we can help meet your evolving marketing needs as your business continues to grow.

The Greenhouse Program is an affordable, all-in-one online marketing solution for small to medium organizations. Contact us today if you’d like to learn more!

Case Studies

• Kirk Marketing: A leading Vancouver provider of direct mail and printing services.

Customer satisfaction surveys often allow customers to provide open-ended feedback or comments on their service experience. A while back, we gathered these responses from a retail client survey, in part to try to determine the differences in the language used by very satisfied and very dissatisfied customers. We felt that these differences, if they could be found, could provide insights to help fuel employee training and marketing and communications programs. I intend to post on how we actually went about this text mining exercise at a later date (and on all the wonderful analysis that can be done with customer satisfaction data), but, in the interest of getting some sleep, I’m going to just jump ahead and tell you the two words most used by very satisfied customers in that survey: friendly and helpful.

Being friendly

According to Wikipedia:

Friendly means showing kindness to someone, as a friend would behave. Thus friendly implies a mode of friendship as distinct from amiable or genial. Professional service is expected to be amiable or genial but not necessarily friendly. The opposite is unfriendly or even hostile.

I think the good people at Wikipedia have it all wrong about service. Being amiable or genial is to aim for cheerfulness. And cheerfulness is like rain or sunshine — it falls equally “on the just and the unjust.” A customer-facing employee who’s cheerful doesn’t distinguish between customers. The customer sees a great show, it’s true, but she senses that it wasn’t especially done for her sake.

The opposite of friendly is close to hostile. But no one (who’s not buying lunch from this guy) expects hostile when entering a store. They worry about indifference, being overlooked. The specificity of “friendly” is very meaningful for customers, and their use of the word is telling. Friendly, unlike cheerful, is directed — like a flashlight, it lights up a smaller place. Being friendly is showing kindness and concern for a specific person for the specific person’s sake (some thoughts on friendship). Very satisfied customers intuitively use the word friendly rather than cheerful to describe employees who provide exceptional service. Just like these incredibly valuable employees, customers are able to make distinctions.

Being helpful

Customers enter a store to solve a problem. To serve a customer, a retail employee must first understand the problem which often means first helping the customer understand the problem. This can be grueling and frustrating. Customers struggle with navigating their own complex needs and desires. And they struggle to make sense of the complex and imperfect solutions businesses offer up to satisfy them. A customer who connects problem to solution is thrilled — and grateful for the help. Retail businesses face tradeoffs in deciding the best way to serve customers: price, assortment, quality, service, etc. Helping customers connect problems to solutions is a good rule to follow. Here’s another good rule.

Marketers often refer to moments of truth in customer service. Two words for employees to keep in mind when their moment arrives: friendly and helpful. Straight from the customer.

At the 2009 Sasquatch! festival in Washington, a guy got up, started dancing, stayed dancing. No friend in sight, just a guy by himself, sort of losing it on the hillside as Santigold played ‘Unstoppable’ on the stage far below. What happened next was…

At the end of the video, you can hear someone in the crowd asking in happy disbelief “How did he do that? How did he do that?” Because I’ve accounted for about 100K of the video’s nearly 3M views, I can suggest some answers.

1. He persisted.

There are a few other versions of this video, shot from different perspectives. They capture more of the response and commentary of people nearby. This one from higher up is helpful — it was shot over a longer period, and the group filming was chatty and clever and into him. (“See what one man can do. One man can change the world!”) It makes clear that Dancing Guy was at it for a while, winning quiet support, before the breakthrough. One of the popular comments on the first video sums it up:

… this video’s great it made me smile lots, well done to that guy for staying true to himself & dancing because he clearly enjoyed it. the other people obviously wanted to dance but wouldn’t do it unless it was normalised by lots of other people dancing too…

Dancing Guy tries to coax the crowd to join him when the song starts. When they don’t, he just keeps doing his thing. Most people don’t know what their “thing” is or can’t keep to it when pressed. By persisting in what, for him, was most normal in that setting (and assisted by a great get-up-and-dance tune from Santigold), he moved a bunch of other people’s sense of normal closer to his own. What once seemed remote…

2. He stayed true to himself.

Martin Kilduff and David Krackhadrt, in “Interpersonal Networks in Organizations,” discuss the difference between high and low self-monitors in organizational settings. High self-monitors search for situational cues. They ask “Who does this situation want me to be and how can I be that person?” High self-monitors maintain flexibility and tend to make little emotional investment in relationships. Their networks are strategic and far-flung. Low self-monitors, on the other hand, tend to choose and stick with a few friends they actually like and in whose company they’re at ease. They ask “Who am I and how can I be me in this situation?”

In the context of these two categories, Polonius’ advice to Laertes in Hamlet (This above all: to thine own self be true/ And it must follow, as the night the day/ Thou canst not then be false to any man) is tricky, because it says that while the most important thing is to stay true to oneself, the reason it’s important is to carry out one’s obligations (to not appear or be false) to others. Authenticity married to circumspection, awareness without self-expression — Polonious, compromised, full of contradictions, lauds low self-monitor virtues but denies their intrinsic good.

Low self-monitors are often out-of-synch, to the point of cluelessness. They also often provide society’s evolutionary leaps. By persisting in their authenticity, by expressing novel possibilities of seeing, thinking, feeling, and behaving, low self-monitors open up possibilities for the rest of the world to consider. If the timing is right and the audience is right, a low self-monitor can move the prevailing sense of normal. Emerson, in The American Scholar (his great exhortation to individualism and the authentic life), called this process “the conversion of the world.”

3. He sold happiness.

Dancing Guy kept selling happiness on that hillside, the chance to be completely free and jerk and twist and jump up and down and feel just as free and just as happy as he did. There’s a market for happiness. It’s called Earth. If you’re in business and you can manage it, try to sell happiness. Don’t sell satisfaction, or quality, or value, or low prices. Sell happiness. Make customers “smile lots.” Sell happiness, and keep selling it, and make it easy for customers to get it.

4. He found an advocate.

In this version of the video, you can see Dancing Guy had lots of partners early on. At one point, a guy in white shades comes down to be a prop in Dancing Guy’s show, and after getting his rear slapped, he exchanges high fives and leaves.

During the Santigold song, at the critical point, this guy comes back… and he brings friends! What’s that thing called? Right, the tipping point. Dancing Guy reached his tipping point with help from a repeat customer, someone who bought in to what he was doing, and enough to drum up support among his friends.

So why go through all this trouble for a throwaway YouTube video? It’s about a goofy guy on a hill and the boozy, sunbaked twenty-somethings who join him in acting like an ass. It is and it isn’t. My wife gave me a poster with a quote from Andy Warhol when I started Eight Leaves Marketing with Darren. Although our work is quantitative, I like what it says.

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

At our company, whenever we grope for some basic understanding of human behavior, we rely on science, but we also reach for art.

UPDATE

I came across some other discussion on the video I thought was interesting:

• Ideas Into Execution (on techdirt)
• How to Make a Movement (by Derek Sivers — for a different read on how he got there)

Why pursue SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to everything you can do to improve your ranking on organic (as opposed to sponsored) search results of popular search engines (primarily Google since it handles the highest search volume — by far). Ranking high on the first page for relevant keywords can help you attract new qualified customers who are specifically searching for products and services that your business provides. Generally, the higher you appear on the first page for your target keywords, the more traffic and (with a well-designed site) the more qualified customers you acquire.

SEO has two parts

Part one is building and optimizing your site; part two is building and optimizing links to your site. The first part involves knowing and following the many site-specific content and style guidelines that help Google do its job: helping its users find what they’re looking for. The second part involves building relationships, not just links. You need to create a strong online presence for your business through endorsements and support from quality sources in the larger online community. Effective SEO is a lot like good PR.

Some basic SEO activities

A few of the basic activities to undertake to ensure high rankings for your website on target keywords include:

• Target Keywords List: Researching the most frequently searched keywords and phrases for your line of business.
• Link Building: Obtain “back links” from related websites, client sites and quality directories in order to generate link popularity.
• Content Optimization: Optimizing of text of various html tags, meta data, page titles and page text as necessary.
• Website Structure: Improve the structure of your website navigation and code for SEO purposes. Through our Greenhouse Program, we can work with you to develop highly engaging landing pages.
• Content Generation: Generate additional keyword specific web pages, twitter updates, blog entries, resources and content in general for the purpose of “catching” target keywords.
• Competitor Analysis: Monitor, track and improve your performance relative to your local competitors.
• Analysis & Tracking: Create traffic and ranking reports for your website detailing performance and conversion rates.

How we can help

SEO is an ongoing competition to come out on top in as many high-value categories as you can. It requires (for a start) a good awareness of the shifting state of the art in order to develop a winning strategy for your business as well as access to powerful tools for analysis, execution, monitoring, and reporting. It also means knowing the influencers, participating in the right conversations, and building the right attention for your business and gradual goodwill. SEO isn’t short-cut generic link-building. We practice SEO to create long-term success for our clients.

Contact us today for a no-obligation consultation!

Related blog posts

• The Greenhouse Program Case Study: Kirk Marketing

In September 2009, the folks at Kirk Marketing engaged Eight Leaves Marketing to revamp the functionality of their website and to perform organic search engine optimization.  Kirk Marketing is a provider of direct marketing, printing, and mailing services in Vancouver, Canada.  The company began as a small, family-owned business and has grown to become one of the largest independent printing and direct mail houses in Western Canada serving clients across North America.

Goals

Kirk Marketing enrolled in the Eight Leaves Marketing Greenhouse Program.  Greenhouse is all about creating effective websites that attract and convert new customers.  The program builds new business for our clients.  In addition to an initial site review and upgrade, Kirk asked us to perform follow-on SEO work to boost the company’s rankings on key search terms.

Strategy

Kirk Marketing operates in a competitive industry and, as a company, it offers clients a variety of services.  Clients can choose to work with Kirk in just one area (e.g., printing) or across the company’s integrated service portfolio.  We identified two major areas of Kirk’s business that we felt could best benefit from SEO efforts: direct mail and printing services.  We researched and ranked keywords in each of these categories using sophisticated text-mining algorithms.  From our findings, we created extensive keyword portfolios to target for each category.  We then focused on building specific, keyword-rich landing pages that would appeal to searchers and search engines.  This systematic approach helped us take advantage of many on-page SEO factors, and it enabled us to focus on a smaller keyword portfolio that promised the most benefit to the business.

Implementation

• Content Management System: We migrated Kirk Marketing’s existing design into an open source content management system (CMS).  Kirk could then easily add and update new content to their website, which allowed the company to commit to providing customers with valuable news and information on an ongoing basis.  Active sites attract return traffic; and returning traffic tends to convert better than first-time traffic.
• Keyword Research & Development: We researched Kirk’s industry and its main competitors both online and offline.  This helped us understand the language used in the industry and to then develop a list of target keywords for our SEO efforts. We cross referenced this list with monthly search volumes reported on Google to help set priorities.
• Content Optimization: We edited the site content to incorporate the target keywords most likely to be used by potential customers who were searching for services offered by Kirk.
• Local Listings: We submitted Kirk’s website to all major listing sites as well as niche sites that focus on their industry. We defined and managed the content, presentation, and analytics for these listings sites.
• Analytics: Prior to our involvement, Kirk wasn’t actively measuring the effectiveness of their website:  there were no defined site goals or conversion funnels. We corrected this by setting up and configuring Google Analytics so that they could easily track performance and conduct periodic rank analysis of keyword traffic coming from Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
• Social Media: To kick-start the customer conversation, we developed an integrated blog for Kirk based on the same CMS.  The focus of the blog was to both post pertinent corporate announcements and tips and information that would benefit their clients.  We also set up Kirk on Twitter so that blog posts would be automatically tweeted from their account.
• 301 Redirects: We monitored and fixed all broken links (due to legacy site changes) in order to make sure that Kirk didn’t lose any link strength.
• Link Building: We developed a go-forward strategy for the Kirk Marketing team to participate in the social sphere online and to build valuable links from and to their suppliers and customers.

Results and Next Steps

After our initial work, we monitored the rankings of the Kirk website on our entire target keyword portfolio in Google, Bing & Yahoo search results pages (SERPs). The table below highlights Kirk’s ranking over time on a few example keywords on Google Canada.

Moving forward, Kirk plans to continue to post relevant, quality content that informs and educates current and prospective clients.  Kirk also plans to release monthly newsletters as part of their overall communication strategy.

Conclusion

Kirk Marketing, like all our clients, built its success by valuing customers and working hard on relationships.  Our SEO efforts simply highlighted these strengths.  What we made possible was for the company to approach online marketing as a new and effective way to continue to build relationships and grow their business.

Check out our HowTo on Google Local Listings for more information on how to get listed.

The world of printed Yellow Pages is dying fast. Now-a-days, most of your target customers will search for your services on popular search engines. Google continuously works to improve their relevance in local search by emphasizing local business listings tagged in different industries. For example, a quick search for “lawyers in edmonton” will yield a listing of Law Practices in Edmonton (see below) with a Google Maps display to the left. This is prime real-estate on the search results page, and ranking highly in this area can significantly boost traffic to your site. Better yet, the people visiting via local search are highly qualified prospects with good potential to convert to customers. Don’t miss out on this traffic; if you haven’t already done so, you need to (at the very least) claim your Google Listing today. Then, an ongoing SEO effort will also help you appear higher in this important list.

Claim Your Listing Now!
If Google Local already has a record of your business, claim it – if it doesn’t add it. Just like your brand, it is important to ensure you own your listings to prevent competitors from using it to their advantage. Further, you want to ensure the data is up-to-date (current address, phone number, etc.) and accurately reflects the contact information for your business. It does involve a little creativity in copywriting and some thought into what keywords best describe your industry, but otherwise, the process is very straight forward. Whether you are claiming or adding a listing, visit Google Local Business Center and click the “Add new business” button to get your business showing on Google Maps. We also have a tutorial for setting up your Google listings here.

Reviews Reviews Reviews
Google Local Listings supports customer reviews and displays this information publicly. You should encourage your customers to go online and write honest reviews about your business. (WARNING: Do not create multiple accounts and give yourself glowing reviews. In the long run, this doesn’t help you at all (Google knows everything!), and, what’s worse, it will hurt trust and confidence in your business if/when you’re discovered.)  Getting reviews will help you on two levels:

• Google is more likely to rank you higher on the local listings because of your reviews
• Potential customers are more likely to click to learn more because they are able to see the great things other people have said about you.

So how do you get more reviews. Ask your customers to write them! You’ve got to ask to get anything. You could also consider some incentive to write reviews, e.g. coupons & discounts, rewards, etc.

Link To Your Listing
Just like any other page on the internet, the link strength (i.e. the number and reputation of websites linking to your page) greatly determines your position on the local listings. This is especially true for highly competitive local search terms. You should, at the very least link to your listings page from your website’s contact page. Depending on local competition, you should consider a link-building campaign for your listings page.

Localize Your Address
I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but local listings are governed by proximity of your business address to the search term. While some people will search for a product or service near a postal code, most people will merely search for products/services near a city, e.g. “Lawyers in Edmonton”. Google translates the city (e.g. Edmonton) to a location marker near the downtown-core. Therefore, when adding listings, after weighing the possible confusion it could cause your customers, you should consider the following:

• Add a listing for every possible address your business operates from. This improves the likelihood of getting listed because of your proximity to the search term.
• Consider getting a physical or mailing address located in the downtown core. This will improve your visibility in search terms that mention just the city.

WARNING: Do not submit multiple listings for the same address. Do not provide false details about your address in your listings. These two things will only damage your reputation and confuse your customers.

Analyse Your Traffic
Google Local Maps  provides with its Local Listings an online traffic tool that helps identify the top keywords driving traffic through that local listings. Integrating these statistics with those from your website can prove very powerful in providing insights as to how best to optimize your listing and categories. It is important to always keep the data up-to-date and conduct ongoing SEO, even on a local listing.

Seek and Manage Other Listings
Google scours the web and other listings (e.g. 411.ca) sites for mention of your business to help determine your rank in local listings. If you are listed in the printed Yellow Pages, more than likely your business listing will appear in a variety of forms on many different sites that have imported the printed Yellow Pages. However, because these imports are usually automated, your listings will vary in content across all these sites.

From a customer perspective, as well as to improve ranking, it is important for you to unify the message and content on these different listings. You want to make sure all the listed address and contact details match exactly down to the street suffix (e.g. 10230 Jasper Ave NW vs. 10230 Jasper Ave).

Below are some of the major listings sites that you should claim. Some are free to claim, others require annual/one-time fees.

• Google Canada Local Listings
• 411.ca
• Canpages.ca
• Yellowpages.ca
• Bing Canada Local Listings
• Yahoo Canada Local Listings
• Yelp.ca

You should also actively seek out other relevant listings pages. You should examine what other websites in your industry are doing in different localities. With ongoing SEO, you will be able to monitor your and your competitors’ local listings (and the pages Google has attached to the listings), to be able to track down potential listings and directory sites applicable to your industry. See our soon to be released post on link building.

Conclusion
Although simple and straightforward, Google Local Listings offers a very powerful and free platform for you to advertise your website. You are given 100% control over the content of the listing, and with a few straightforward rules of thumb, you can get your site displayed prominently and start receiving many new qualified leads.

Check out our Google Local Maps & Listings post for more information on why you should get listed on Google Local and other local listings.

To claim or add your business to Google Canada Local, go to Google Local and click the “Add new business” button. Fill out the forms that follow and you’re set to go. Below are some guidelines for some of the information to provide.

• Company/Organization: Use your common business name (not legal names with numbers, etc.) and try and incorporate some target keywords. For example, rather than “Sanderson & Hughes LLP”, consider “Sanderson & Hughes LLP Chartered Accountants”
• Street Address: Make sure you include a local address! Remember your ranking depends on your proximity to the search term. Since many people search with city modifiers (which have markers in the downtown core), you should emphasize your branches/locations closest to the core. Further, don’t rely on abbreviations and try to spell things out fully, e.g. Boulevard, Street, etc. Be as descriptive as possible, so your customers can find you, and ensure the location is plotted properly on the map. You can use the “Fix incorrect marker location” tool to make corrections.
• Main phone: Include all phone numbers that a potential customer would find useful. For example, accounting firms could have different numbers for general information and specific services offered. Remember, you want to make it as easy for customers as possible to find and contact you.
• Website: It’s amazing how many people ignore this opportunity. If you have a website, be sure to link to it; if not, call us to see how we’ve set up sites for clients that are helping them grow their business.
• Description (200 max): You are given a very limited space to describe your business. You want to be concise and yet highlight your key services and tell the customer why they should choose you. You are trying to sell yourself in 200 characters. Hard, yes, but possible. Further, you want to inject as many of your target keywords in this description as you can to improve your ranking.
• Categories: The categories you choose play a major role in whether and how high you rank on local search terms. You need to thoroughly research your industry and local search traffic statistics to determine the best categories to select. Remember, suggested categories are not necessarily better. This process should be an iterative one in which you monitor traffic response due to minor and incremental changes you make. You need to optimize for the keywords that will provide you the maximum traffic. This is part of our ongoing SEO service.
• Hours & Payment / Photos: Provide as much detail as possible. The more information you provide, the more useful the listing becomes to prospective customers and overall, the more searchable information Google has on your business–this is a very good thing. Photos are very catchy; it will help capture your customers’ attention and draw them to your site. It also provides an avenue to receive traffic from image searches.
• Custom Fields: Go crazy with these fields. Upload all your services and products, certifications, experience levels. Remember, the more information you provide, the more Google can search and rank you.

To confirm your listing, you will need to verify your listing, either by mail or over the phone. Pick the option that best suits you. Here is a quick video by Small Business Online Coach that I found helpful.

The Harvard Business Review article by Daniel Yankelovich and David Meer contains some interesting thoughts on the use of market segmentation. Some highlights:

• If properly applied, market segmentation guides companies in tailoring their product and service offerings to the groups most likely to purchase them.
• Psychographics is very weak at predicting likely purchases.
• Segmentation, as currently practiced, takes an excessive interest in consumers’ identities. This distracts marketers from the product features that matter most to current and potential customers of brands and categories.
• Segmentation places too little emphasis on actual consumer behaviour, which is unfortunate because behaviour definitively reveals consumer attitudes and helps predict future business outcomes.
• Practitioners are guilty of an undue absorption in the technical details of devising segmentations. This estranges marketers from the decision makers on whose support their initiatives depend.

Market segmentation, as it’s currently practiced

Companies such as Environics combine census, survey, and third-party data to “segment the Canadian population based on key drivers of consumer behaviour: demographics, lifestyles, and values.” Businesses and non-profits use proprietary consumer segmentation systems (such as Evironics’ PRIZM) to identify and target profitable segments and for trade area analysis, merchandise mix, and media buys.

A few of our clients have had detailed segmentation studies conducted on their customer base by leading Canadian providers. In their (off-the-record) opinion, there’s a disconnect between the promise and reality of the business benefits of this type of work. It comes down to the Yankelovich point above that the modern approach to segmentation places too little emphasis on consumer behaviour and too much on fixed consumer identities — the findings feel pre-fabricated and somewhat lifeless.

It may be the way a market segmentation business is structured: the quantitative talent works on creating the segments and avoids the relatively mundane work of applying these segments to a client file. As a result, their work, seen from the perspective of any one client, feels generic and, yes, routine. I can see how the routine part is necessary for the whole segmentation industry to stay afloat. I just can’t see how it benefits clients.

The problem of faith

One more criticism: consumer segmentation systems are proprietary. The sources of data, the methodology, the criteria for selecting segments are never disclosed. Which leads to less-than-helpful summary lines in (bulky) reports: “Urban hipsters make up 12% of your two most profitable customer segments.”

If I tell you, as a marketer, that 12% of your two most profitable customer segments live in Edmonton neighbourhoods like Glenora (or Windsor Park, or Henderson Estates) I’m telling you a fact. You can confirm it. You know these neighbourhoods exist. Just like you know that caucasian people exist, and single detached houses exist, and males in their 50′s exist. When it comes to behaviour, you know there is a group of customers that visited your store once last year, and another that visited two or more times. Using data in your sales and CRM systems, you can always verify these sort of claims.

You can’t verify claims made about Urban Hipsters. You have to take them on faith. In fact, you have to take the existence of Urban Hipsters on faith. There’s something shamanistic about current consumer segmentation systems. Marketers who rely on them are relying on their mysterious or extraordinary quality or power — which is to say they’re relying on magic.