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Introduction

What is the biggest pain of any entrepreneur? The answer is uncertainty. In any local service business, you need consistency, more specifically, consistent revenue. However, most local, small, business owners monthly revenue is largely unknown month-over-month; it’s a constant ebb and flow fluctuation. 

Uncertainty - Month-to-Month Revenue Fluctuations

As we all know, local small business owners wear multiple hats dividing their time among the many facets of their local business. The primary areas they focus on are sales and delivery to keep their business making money.  Without a full online marketing solution, most local businesses live in a world of uncertainty, not a fun place to be.  

Here’s the typical scenario that produces these monthly revenue fluctuations. Month one, you are working hard on finding sales qualified leads (SQL’s) and turning this SQL into a sale.  This means low monthly revenue. The next month you are focused on delivering the service or products you sold the previous months.  This means increased monthly revenue, but you aren’t focused on generating new SQL. The following month you have no new jobs and focus back on selling, which means decreased revenue.  You are essentially back to square one. It creates a continuous vicious cycle of constant fluctuation in your small business creating the dreaded revenue uncertainty. 

Uncertainty - Why Does Revenue Fluctuation Happen 

Let’s analyze this month-to-month revenue fluctuation in a little more depth and back into how online marketing can help solve this problem. Why does your business have fluctuating revenue month-over-month? You don’t have consistent sales to keep your delivery team billing and generating invoices.  So, the next question is, why doesn’t your business have consistent sales?  Because you don’t have consistent SQL (sales qualified leads). Okay, then why doesn’t your business have consistent SQL? The first reason is that your online store fronts (website, landing pages, and Google My Business) are not converting visitors to SQL.  The second reason is that your online marketing services are not driving enough quality visitors to your online store front? Finally, why is your business not driving enough quality visitors to your online store front? Because you don’t have a marketing department consisting of an online marketing plan, the marketing people make it happen, and the marketing resources support the execution. 

Do You Have Consistency?

Since we now know the direct cause of the inconsistency of revenues, it is now time to address and fix it. Here at Stradigi, we are aware that every business has a different pain. We would like to help you find the root cause of your problems. However, 

How do I fix my ebbs and flows?

The solution to this common problem is twofold: 

1. Driving   quality visitors to your online store front. 
2. Converting these quality visitors into SQL.

How do you drive enough quality visitors to your online store front? The answer is coordinating and implementing several online marketing services that work together to push your target market to your online store front.  The three most effective online marketing vehicles are: 

1. Organic marketing - Getting found online, your online presence. Ranking higher when a keyword search is performed in a search engine. Organic marketing is critical to driving visitors to your online store front and your overall online marketing efforts. 
2. Outbound target marketing - a.k.a. drip marketing cadence campaigns, which are preset outbound communications (email, SMS, voice) sent to a target list of prospects, existing clients, leads, etc. 
3. Inbound target marketing - a.k.a. Paid marketing, more specifically, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This could be setting up PPC ad campaigns on Facebook, Google Ad-Words, etc. and layering over-top search and/or website retargeting.  These three marketing vehicles provide three individual ways to drive quality visitors to your online store front.  

Once you have quality visitors to your online store front, the next goal is to get them to take an action and turn them into a SQL.

How is this accomplished? 

1. Self-Identifying - You have less than 5 seconds to say something to a website visitor that relates to what they are looking for and entices them to stay and investigate your page further. This is where your hero image becomes mission critical.  It needs to help the visitor self-identify that your page is for them. Your hero image needs to tell the visitor in one sentence or less what you are offering, who you are offering it to, a benefit of using your service or solution, and a pain of theirs your service or solution solves.  

For example, “Stradigi offers an end-to-end online marketing solution for local business owners who want to grow their business while reducing the cost of marketing by 50%+.” 

If you can’t relate to what they are looking for they bounce off your page increasing your bounce rate.

2. Research - Once the visitor has self-identified that your page most likely contains what they are looking for, they will scroll down to further research your solution to their pain. They are looking to identify if your solution solves their other pains, the benefits they receive by using your solution and most importantly, your differentiating factors. Your differentiating factor is what makes your business, product, or service unique and separates it from the competition. It’s something they can’t get from your competitors and sets you apart.

3. Credibility and validation - Now that the visitor has self-identified and did more research on your solution, they will want to know you're a credible business and looking to validate you. This is done by showcasing your customers, reviews, awards, certifications, etc.  

4. Lead Magnet - The next step is to get your visitor to take an action.  A lead magnet is used to gather contact details in exchange for a free item or service that is given away. For example, lead magnets can be trial subscriptions, samples, white papers, e-newsletters, and free consultations. Marketers use lead magnets to create sales leads. This is the point where the visitor becomes an SQL. 

Results

Once you have completed those steps, you will remove the uncertainty of your revenue and produce consistent month-to-month revenue. After you achieve consistency, you will want to gain predictability, to build out revenue projection, to plan for growth scalability. We will talk more about predictability and scalability in later content and our Talking with Tapolci video series. 

Conclusion

Solving the right problem in your business is key to your success and longevity.  Marketing is not the problem you are trying to solve; uncertainty and inconsistent revenue is the problem to solve. We know exactly how to remove the uncertainty in your local small business and replace it with consistency. You need experienced and successful entrepreneurs who have been there and done that; entrepreneurs who know your pain, who have lived your pain. We are the preferred end-to-end solution, built for entrepreneurs… by entrepreneurs… If you would like to learn more about how you can remove your uncertainty, schedule a 30-minute meet and greet and we will tell you how you can get a free 30-point online marketing assessment. Learn your online marketing score and our recommendations.