Tag: Google

5 Cost Effective Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses

November 14, 2023

By Sydney Bailey, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing Director Seasoned business owners know that every industry experiences ebbs and flows. There are times when the phones are constantly ringing and the calendar is packed. On the flip side, there are stretches where work is more scarce. It’s often during the slow seasons where cutting back on expenditures is a natural impulse, but business owners should be careful not to handicap their marketing efforts. Marketing is critical for reaching new clients and keeping your business top-of-mind for your established referral sources, so you should be hesitant to cut your marketing spend when business is down. With that said, there are ways you can be more intentional with your marketing budget. If you find yourself limited on funds, here are a few cost-effective marketing strategies worth exploring. Refine Your Communication SkillsStanding out from your competition is critical when business slows down. For some owners, explaining to prospective clients exactly what sets their business apart can be difficult. While effective marketing and networking can make your phone ring, it won’t do much good if the person answering the call doesn’t conduct themselves with enough confidence to actually book the job. With this in mind, business

Marketing Insights: The Importance of Finding Your Audience

October 31, 2023

By Zach Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s Senior SEO & Marketing Strategist Any experienced marketer, when speaking about how to grow a business and reach long-term goals, will preach on how important it is for a business to find its audience. For many business owners, this might sound a little strange. After all, shouldn’t entrepreneurs be looking to find as many clients or customers as possible in order to convert on leads and maximize their sales? Of course this is true! But this doesn’t mean that the best marketing strategy is to speak to everyone all at once. Imagine you’re making a speech in a massive auditorium. For most people, the more people there, the more difficult it will be to capture everyone’s attention. If too many people are there, the audience further in the back will struggle to see you, and even the most expensive sound equipment will start to fail, leaving your message completely unheard to many. In the same way, marketing to a massive audience tends to be expensive, and a business that chooses to market in this manner can often see their message lost, becoming indiscernible as it competes with too many other businesses for attention. Instead of

Standing Out From the Crowd with Content Marketing

July 18, 2023

By Michael Trimble, NPI, Inc.’s Content Marketing Coordinator Converting leads into actual customers can feel like an uphill battle at times. Business owners are tasked with finding an audience who might use their services, explaining why their service is relevant to that audience’s needs, and then providing enough evidence to prove that their services are more worth their audience’s time and money than the competition’s. Navigating all of these hurdles as one person is daunting, but owners should know that there is a workable solution. Content marketing is the life-blood for every business’ online activity, and more often than not, entrepreneurs that don’t have a good handle on their content marketing tend to have trouble engaging their clients. This is no reason to be intimidated, however. Small business owners have the opportunity to learn the gist of developing a content marketing plan in no time. But first, let’s discuss a few essentials. What is Content Marketing?Every social media post, blog article, infographic, and video tutorial released by a business is a form of content marketing. While content marketing can come in many, many different forms, they all have a shared intention to ultimately promote the use of a business’ products

5 Strategies to Get More Reviews for Your Small Business

May 30, 2023

By Zach Vesper, Senior SEO & Marketing Strategist Let’s say you’re heading out to eat in an unfamiliar city. You want to try something unique and high-quality, but searching online leaves you with an endless list of options. Mood and taste will certainly come into the picture, but how do you make your final choice? Check the reviews. Across all industries that rely on pulling in new clients and customers consistently, online reviews are crucial for instilling confidence in service quality. Adding positive reviews on websites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp improves where small businesses rank on Google and increases overall visibility through SEO. According to marketing analysts at Entrepreneur.com, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. To start improving upon your online advocacy channels, here are some great strategies for getting more reviews online. For more help building your online marketing strategy, reach out to your Omaha marketing team. today! If you’re interested in learning more about franchising with NPI, get your free info packet.

Technologies That Are Innovating Home Inspections

April 25, 2023

By Jon McCreath, NPI, Inc.’s Training Director The home inspection industry is a far different animal than it was just a decade ago. With new toys and tools designed to provide more thorough and precise services, home inspectors have the potential to elevate their product to higher levels than ever before. While adopting new technology can be viewed as intimidating or overly expensive compared to the value added to a single inspection, home inspectors should consider how much these tools can separate themselves from their competition. Many trending home inspection tools not only add increased accuracy to their inspection reports, but they can cut down on the time it takes to perform an inspection considerably. As any small business owner knows, additional time means more opportunity to market or book additional jobs, leading to more revenue. Read on to learn more about some of the advanced, industry-changing tools that every home inspector should consider adding to their toolset. Drones, Robots, and ScopesThe first major category of tools that can elevate a home inspector’s value are those that offer increased access and mobility. Tools like aerial drones and crawling robots give home inspectors the ability to view areas that were previously

How Keeping Your Website Fresh Will Boost Your Small Business

March 28, 2023

By Sydney Bailey, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing Director A website is absolutely crucial to a small business’s long-term success. Especially in saturated industries and competitive markets, business owners should take advantage of every opportunity they have to get noticed. While setting up a modern, engaging website is a great start towards online relevance, it’s only step one when it comes to making a lasting impression on the web. To get the most out of your small business website, business owners should regularly check in and update their site to keep it relevant. For the best strategies to achieve a consistently fresh and impactful website, here are a few website strategies every small business owner should pursue. Keep Your “About Us” Up To DateWhen setting up your “About Us” page, it’s always best to collaborate with an experienced copywriter to ensure that you’re properly highlighted as an expert in your field. Specific details about your professional background and certifications can inspire trust and credibility. With your background and related achievements correctly detailed, your About Us page is also your opportunity to humanize your team and establish a rapport with your client base on a more personal level. Share a bit about your

5 Ways that Blogs Boost Your Small Business

March 7, 2023

By Michael Trimble, Content Marketing Coordinator The internet is a wonderful, terrifying place at times. In an age where any fact is available at your fingertips in a moment, we’ve all dove down a rabbit hole and become an “internet expert” at some random topic. What you may have noticed are the encyclopedia-like libraries of information found on blogs. More and more, businesses are investing into blogs, informing and entertaining their audiences with these dedicated monthly, weekly, or even daily articles. Today, blogs are everywhere, but why have they become so standard? Let’s discuss the benefits that blogs bring to small businesses. Blogs Attract TrafficFor many businesses, jobs and clients can be largely generated through personal relationships and referrals. Those interactions are great, but businesses that excel in just face-to-face marketing could be missing out on a lot of business if they neglect their website and social media. An attractive, informative, and user-friendly website will draw in new clients organically, and blogs can build upon that organic traffic. The numbers don’t lie. According to Hubspot, a leading voice in marketing and sales, businesses that utilize blogs receive 55% more visitors to their websites than businesses that do not. If you’re

Best Ways to Ask for Reviews

June 15, 2021

By Zach Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s SEO and Marketing Specialist It can’t be stressed enough how essential review gathering is to forming a strong presence for your business online. Living in the digital age, you have to take advantage of it or risk being left behind. Especially as younger generations, namely Millennials, are hitting the age where they’re ready to buy a home, reviews are a necessity. If it’s been a while since you’ve marketed for reviews or if you haven’t ever started, here are a few ways to get the ball rolling. Why do you need to stay connected? So how important are reviews in someone’s final decision? Great question! While Millennials do tend to be more plugged in, the general statistic for people that make a choice on who to do business with based on reviews alone is over 90%. Over 80% trust them like a personal recommendation, and nearly 70% decide whether you’re a quality business in as little as 3 reviews. That means you don’t have much time to make a great first impression. Not only are positive reviews important, but stockpiling them is as well. If you only have low-star reviews, a handful of reviews, or

The Benefits of Having a Site Blog

May 18, 2021

By Adam Kiesel, NPI, Inc.’s Digital Marketing Assistant Nowadays, it seems every business, no matter its size, has some sort of blog. In fact, there are over 600 million active blogs across the world. These cover topics on everything from sports, to clothing, and lifestyle advice just to name a few. With as popular as blogging has become and will only continue to be, let’s take a look at the question, “What can blogs do for you?” Pump Up Your SEO Search Engine Optimization or “SEO” is a major part of your business marketing plan. You want to get the most out of your website to appear higher in the search results to get customer traffic to your page. A blog is one simple and effective way to help you inch closer to the top of the SEO summit. Search engines use fresh content to determine where to place a page in the results. Having a blog that’s updated on a consistent basis provides that fresh information to index you above your competition. Also, including keywords in your blogs will make them more relevant to customer’s searches. Incorporate it Into Social Media Keeping your social accounts up-to-date is just as

Daily Videos: Reaching Tomorrow’s Homebuyers with Social Media

September 24, 2024

How can inspectors can utilize short-form video content creation on social media to boost their presence? We’ll discuss realistic ways that won’t overwhelm their busy schedules.

Responsiveness: The Traits of a Successful Property Inspector

September 10, 2024

Being responsive is a valuable quality in any professional industry, but we’ve found that property inspectors who prioritize this trait separate themselves from their competition and set themselves up to leave a lasting first impression.

Viewing a Hire as an Asset, Not an Expense

August 27, 2024

It costs time and money to find the right candidate. How do you make the shift from looking at the cost of a new hire to seeing the opportunity for growth that they bring?

Inspection Insights: How to Stand Out with Sample Reports

August 13, 2024

By Jon McCreath, NPI, Inc.’s Technical & Training Director In any industry, success often comes from separating yourself from the pack. Some businesses have exceptional communication skills, prioritizing customer service above all else. Other business owners invest in a diverse array of add-ons, making them a convenient one-stop shop for their clients. Then, of course, veteran business owners might trust that the quality of their products and services will naturally trump all in the end. Dedicating your attention to becoming the best among your competition is an excellent goal, but proving yourself to clients takes work, too! We’ve talked about how to get more reviews by prioritizing Google business listings for better online searchability, but there is another powerful tool that too few home and property inspectors utilize: sample reports. Home inspectors who host a sample of their inspection report on their website can display the quality of their product for any prospective clients and answer many of their burning questions before they even pick up their phone. If you’d like to start using sample reports on your website but you’re not entirely sold on the concept yet, let’s review a few of the benefits and discuss some of the

Expanding Your Audience by Becoming a Bilingual Business

July 30, 2024

New business owners often feel that they are racing to find a client base and develop trust with their local community. Finding leads, converting them into sales, and creating advocates to spread the word of all the good work that they do – the fight to gain credibility in a market takes plenty of guts and hard work. But after that growth slows, it can be difficult to find a new client base to tap into. Language barriers in diverse populations can limit a business’s market reach, posing a significant challenge. There’s certainly an opportunity to expand by becoming a bilingual business, but making this change involves more than simply translating a flyer into Spanish and calling it a day. Owners who learn a second language or hire employees with language skills may be able to grow their business, but that’s only the start of the story. If you’re wondering what it would look like to start marketing in a second language as a small business, here are a few of the considerations to take into account first. Learning a Second LanguageOne strategy that business owners may consider if they’d like to start marketing in multiple languages is to learn

Franchise Planning: The Importance of an Exit Strategy

July 16, 2024

Without proper planning and vetting, businesses can get mismatched to new owners with the wrong industry knowledge, the wrong skills set, and the wrong expectations.

Keeping Up to Date as an Entrepreneur

July 2, 2024

By Jon McCreath, NPI, Inc.’s Technical Supervisor & Training Administrator When running a business, owners work extremely hard to find their unique strategy for consistent success. Winning over a share of the market takes time and plenty of energy, but one common pitfall that entrepreneurs frequently encounter is losing that initial fire to learn and experiment. Too often, professionals find a comfortable place in their industry and then fall further and further behind while competition follows trends and implements what works into their businesses. So, what’s the solution? How do small business owners stay up to date in their industry? In the home inspection industry, some may point towards licensing requirements in each state as a solution, but this doesn’t resolve the problem for a couple of reasons: Ultimately, keeping up to date with your industry has to start with an internal desire to improve your services and elevate your business. Required courses will not cut it! So, for any property inspectors out there who want to keep their business practices and their personal knowledge on the cutting edge, let’s discuss a few of the top strategies. 5 Ways to Stay Up to Date in the Home Inspection Industry 1.

Ranking Up: Debunking the Service Area Myth on Google

June 18, 2024

By Zach Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s Senior SEO and Marketing Strategist As a multi-national property inspection franchisor, our marketing team gets a lot of questions about how to increase ranking on Google. Of course every small business’ marketing efforts should be multi-faceted, with a mixture of in-person relationship-building efforts and digital campaigns. With that said, there is no question that Google is king for digital marketing, and that all starts with optimizing your Google Business Profile. There are many features on a Google Business page that can be utilized to improve visibility and ranking, but we commonly see people turn to their service areas for answers. Many business owners seem to think that slight changes to the service area field could create the presence bump they need in certain areas. But we’re here to say that this probably won’t be the solution to any Google ranking frustrations. To better understand why this is the case, let’s discuss what service areas actually are, how they should be properly set up, and which strategies are the real secret for ranking up on Google. Defining Service Area BusinessesGoogle Business Profiles can be created for free and are broadly set up in one of two

Game Plan for Growth: Stop Selling & Start Making Connections

June 4, 2024

By Kimberly Stevens, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing & Business Coach People become entrepreneurs for many different reasons, whether it’s the freedom to control their schedule, the direct impact they have on their business growth, or the prospect for financial independence. For many, “being your own boss” can be a career goal all by itself. However, despite the benefits, there are aspects of business ownership that can be intimidating as well. One challenging aspect that comes up again and again? Sales. Despite your skillset or previous experience, the need to sell yourself, your products, and your services can stop you in your tracks. Maybe you don’t think you’re charismatic enough, or the thought of selling things feels deceptive, selfish, or “slimy.”. The truth is, though, that “sales” has a worse reputation than it deserves (maybe thanks to one or two too many pushy telemarketers or sales clerks). Whether you’re extroverted or introverted, everyone has a unique way to relate to people so that they can become effective “salespeople” and set their business goals in the right trajectory, in a way that’s actually enjoyable. So, to all future entrepreneurs out there: stop selling. Instead, let’s discuss how important it is to invest in

Is Social Media the Right Platform for Political Commentary by Your Small Business?

May 21, 2024

By Michael Trimble, NPI, Inc.’s Content Marketing Coordinator You probably haven’t noticed, but 2024 is an election year! Okay, so maybe you have noticed. In the midst of heavy polarization, heated disagreements, and the general anxiety that comes with national elections, it’s understandable if you want to distance yourself from the political dialogue sometimes. Navigating political discussions in your personal life can be tough, but small business veterans understand how much trickier it can be in the professional sector. Despite this, many feel compelled to jump on social media and add their two cents, either on their personal profiles or through their business pages. The temptation is clear. As a small business owner, you’ve worked hard to build your social media following. Now that you have a platform with people interested in what you have to say, it can seem natural to use it for everything. Some business owners may feel it’s their social responsibility to speak about a particular topic, while others argue they’re exercising their rights. Some may even argue that staying silent is a statement in itself. Before you hit send on your next political post using your small business as a platform, here are a few