2019 NYC Small Business Expo Experience
- Paula McLarren Johnson
- Jun 10, 2019
- 4 min read
On June 5th I attended the Small Business Expo at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. This was my second year attending, my goal was to connect with others and make sure I don’t spend any unnecessary money. This experience was much better than the first.
Lessons learned from the Google presentation:
Update your website often.
Have a structure on your website.
Search query - people are not going to page 2 on the results page. Related searches appears at the bottom it's good to see the competition.
Free resources to assist your business to appear in search.
Use relevant and original content.
Share ‘how to’ information.
Have a page title and description.
Use Optimized images for easy loading.
Make sure your site is mobile friendly - people are looking at your site from their mobile devices.
Check your website speed: G.co/Testmywebsite.
See Google trends: g.co/trend, to look at trends/terms or seasonal activities in your industry.
You can also measure your site performance: G.co/searchconsole.
Use Google Business profile. This helps your business stand out to customers.
Post updates to your business profile similar to any social media.
Turn on text message in Google Maps from your business profile to communicate to prospective and clients directly.
Google Insights helps you know why people are visiting your site. More information can be found at Google.com/business.
Paid Service:
Google ads - reach customers with online advertising.
Grow with google. You can get google ad certified.
Smart campaign makes it convenient to create an ad ads.google.com. Create your as with a goal in mind: call or visit website. Decide where your ad will show up by choosing a business category.
Create your ad using two headline 30 characters, 1 description and other display URL. Make sure you deliver on your promise, take customer directly where you promise.
Use pictures.
Create a budget - Pay per click set your dollar amount. What's a good budget? Look at how much clicks to your website as a base.
Schedule your ad, remove irrelevant words. Go to G.co/grow/adstemplate to create your ad.
There are free classes in Manhattan at 111 8th Ave go to g.co/GrowNYC to register for a class.
Lessons learned from the Internet Marketing training.
Help your customers decide what they want. Too many choices is not advisable. The example used was Cheesecake Factory, it takes a long time to order because the menu is too long.
Think about what people buy. People make purchases based on results.
Give away something for free.
Give tips and show results.
Try to get the contact information to build a relationship. Just getting an email is suffice.
Your website page should have information about them and take them to the sale page.
Instead of ‘buy’ use ‘add to cart’.
Use PowerPoint to create your story.
First thing to do is to relate, do an introduction by talking about yourself.
Use testimonials, talk about results.
Talk about their fears, usually it’s time and money. Take the fears and issue a challenge around it. For example, internet marketing is hard work so if you don't want to work hard then leave.
Use 3 minutes for product/service opportunities.
Close by being yourself, be genuine. Value is determined by the customer not you so don’t reduce cost for a limited time.
Follow up with customers not leads.
Treat customers like family, treat them special.
Once they make a purchase take them to the ‘corporate site’ because they are now familiar. Objective here is for them to buy more. The corporate site is ‘About Us.’
Dun & Bradstreet Table
One of the best tables for me was Dun & Bradstreet because I learned several things.
1. Once you registered your company you are assigned a Dun & Bradstreet number to build business credit. Go to Education.dandb.com for more information.
Once you registered your company you are assigned a Dun & Bradstreet number to build business credit. Go to Education.dandb.com for more information.
If you want to secure contracts with the government, they are interested in your payment history therefore that will call Dun & Bradstreet for more information about your business.
You have to build up your business credit report, it’s not like your personal credit score that is reported by businesses to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
The price for Dun & Bradstreet services can start as low as $899 per year or at the high-end over $1,000. Your payment is based on approval.
Overall the experience was great. I have a few businesses to follow up with, the employees at the Google Booth had lots of patience with me to merge my business profile. I already updated my Google Business profile next is to update my website to make it more about the customers and less about me, the ‘corp look’. I now know my Dun & Bradstreet number just have to keep it updated.
Have a wonderful rest of your day.
Paula
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