Michele Petrillo has built a profitable business during the past 15 years.  From her offices in Dumont, NJ, Michele creates and distributes gift baskets to consumers and corporate accounts.  Baskets-n-beyond has gained success regionally and nationally by offering high quality custom gift baskets at a competitive price point.  Perhaps more importantly with personal items like gift baskets, the level of service provided is always referral worthy.

Recently Michele called upon G Street to enhance her online lead-gen with the goal of increased sales overall.  Michele has been advertising on Google, and Yahoo for years with some degree of success.  Unfortunately the only measurement of that advertising spend is predicated on questioning the caller about how they found Baskets-n-beyond. 

The goals for transitioning Baskets-n-beyond to managed Search Engine Marketing services by G Street are:

#1 Free Micheles time to focus on her core expertise. Creating and selling gift basket packages.

#2 Identify not only what works, but more importantly what does not work in her advertising.  This will allow G Street to “cut” the ineffective spendingand free up that budget for refocusing on the higher perforning elements of the ad-spend.  This is a key ingredient in the plan to grow her business along with her marketing budget over time.

#3 Focus on soft targets in her competitive market.  In other words do not spend money on keywords like “gift basket” at several dollars a click.  That 3-5 dollars is more effectively spent on garnering 6-10 clicks for keywords like “kosher gift basket” or “yankees gift basket” than it is to get one click on the very general “gift basket” keyword.  I would add that those clicks are not only less expensive, but offer a more highly qualified prospect.  The more specific the keyword phrase, the more specifically the prospect has defined the need they want to address.

#4 Transition some percentage of Michele’s sales to online.  Baskets-n-beyond is installing ecommerce shopping cart functionality on the site.  This will allow us to drive direct sales through the online technology versus traditional telephone.  This is like giving Michele an employee that can take calls and sell 24 hours a day.  Only this way is far less expensive then a human resource.

 Finally, it should be noted that we are starting this initiative in a targeted geography including NY Metro.  Once this effort has been proven one of the easiest modes of expanding the scope is to broaden the overall geographic targeting.     

Situation:
Many small businesses are cutting back on marketing and lead generation or waiting for the economy to pick up before they invest in websites and Google advertising.

This blows me away!  Now is the time to stake a claim online.  Much like real estate, in this economy online advertising presents a buyers market.  There is no better time to assign a budget to developing a plan for growing your business online. 

There are 2 types of businesses that we are having success with right now:

#1
Small businesses that are thriving. Real estate agencies, title agencies, lawyers, mortgage brokers, and other organizations that in many instances are actually doing more volume than a year ago.  These clients are calling us to capitalize on this momentum and expand upon their ability to pull in and sell new prospects.

#2
Businesses that are hurting and need to make adjustments to accomodate a slowdown in their market.  Many small companies are concerned about a drop in activity.  A great percentage of these companies never had an online marketing/business development agenda to begin with. 

The slowdown has prompted such businesses to finally take a look at how the internet is the primary hub for sustainable and affordable business development.  Website development, and search engine marketing (Pay Per Click advertising) are the primary methods these businesses are using to stop the bleeding and develop an online initiative.

If you are kicking butt, it is a great time to figure out a way to capitalize and generate some tremendous growth potential for the coming upturn in the economy.
OR
If you are concerned about a big slowdown, it is a great time to make the adjustments you need to “recession proof” your business.

Good luck!