Help! I Don't Have a Budget! - Live Marketing Strategy Call

Yeah, no. Talk to me a little bit about why you reached out in the first place. What challenges are you having?

The challenges that I'm having are like I built my own website and so it's, it's not very user friendly. It's not meant to be interactive. It's just a landing page of information for how to do business with my business. But there's so much text and so much information that it just, it's too much for people to navigate. And I just couldn't think of a visual way around that just to have a static website because I only need it updated twice a year, like seasonally, just to say we're taking summer clothes versus winter clothes. So that was my struggle with my website and then with social media just not being able to think of any other content besides posting my inventory, which people love shopping online. But I'm just, I don't have a personality and I'm not engaging and I've always been afraid to find a personality because then you're not appealing to all people. And so I just keep it very neutral to try to just not turn anyone off. And so my social media is just very flat and like, here's what we got in this week. The end.

So let's start with the website. You. I did go look at it. So when you say the purpose of the website was to communicate how to do business with you, you really do have two types of customers. Right. You have people who come in the door and buy and then you have people who bring the goods in and consign them.

Right, Right.

So when I went to your website, I'm just, I'm going to share my screen now. Okay. Yes, definitely all text. And you built this on looks like weebly.

Yeah.

Right. Okay. So it says mint conditions, fashions and accessories for men, women and teens, plus furniture. It. When I first got to the website, I just blew right by the address. I blew by the address actually looking for the address because, because I, I was just like, I don't even know where she's located. And even though it was right there in front of me, it wasn't like my eyes didn't. Even if I was looking for a consignment shop, my, my initial thing for an address would be in the upper right hand corner or where most people are used to finding it is down on the bottom of every page where it's in a consistent place and you can even have it in the middle like you did, but visually call it out. So if you're good with It. I'm just going to walk through the website at first and just point out some things that maybe might help you then go make some changes that could benefit because you really. You make your money by people coming in and buying stuff. That's really what you want to happen. True.

Yeah. People, they don't find us from our website. They find us on Facebook and Google. And our address is on Google when they click on the Google listings website. But you're right, it does because it's so much text. It does all just blur together. So if. If they need to see the address a second time, it is just hidden within.

So when I did, I went to. I just did a Google search for consignment stores. Lake of the Ozarks. I searched like, the Ozarks, because when you do research around how people search, generally speaking, they aren't really searching the bulk. The bigger numbers aren't searching like Camden, Greenview, Eldon, Osage Beach. They're searching Lake of the Ozarks as a place. So you know you're gonna have your locals in Camden 10 that drive by and they know you're there. But if, if I'm in Lake Ozark as an example, and I'm looking for a consignment store, I just, I would search for consignment stores at Lake of the Ozarks, and your business doesn't come up at all on page one. We've got off the hook. We've got Flip Back, Hope House, so many. Except for you. That's actually an easy fix because you don't have a lot of competition. You really don't. So what you could do on your website is change your. And you do have the ability to do this in Weebly. See, when I hover over this, it says consigning Intro up at the top. So when I actually searched for you specifically mint consignments, when it brought up your home page that I'm looking for right now. So when I search for you specifically, here's what came up. And see this top page, it says consigning intro instead of mint consignments or consignment Best consignment store, like the Ozarks, it is pulling that. Google's pulling that from what's called a title tag on your website. So see where it says consigning intro at the top? And that's pulling it from the first piece of text, which is on your page, which is your button here. If you go into Weebly and look for, like your meta Tags, there's going to be a meta tag called a title tag. And in that title tag, and it'll be in your settings somewhere. The title tag on the homepage, you want it to say consignment Store or Best Consignment Store at Lake of the Ozarks. And then when Google re indexes your page, that's what it's going to say instead of this.

Wow. Yeah, that'd be cool. Because I have a lot of problems with Google because like when people like, it shows like my old location with my old address, even though I've tried to delete all of that. And then if people use their Apple devices or Bing, it shows my home address, which is an apartment in Osage Beach. And so people drive to my apartment trying to find my store and like Bing won't fix it.

Yeah, you can do that though yourself. By. Do you. It looks like you've claimed your Google business page. Do you know if you have or does that sound like.

Yeah, I claimed it years ago and I've always managed it and I've deleted the old address and put in the new address and contacted support several times. But it's. That old address will still appear in.

Google still because it. So Google, your address in Google is going to be different than where you would change your address for Bing or Apple Maps or any of that.

Yeah, I tried to change it in Bing, but they said I had to pay to sign up and then I can't change it in Apple because I don't have any Apple devices.

Okay.

It's just like a mess.

You don't have to pay for Bing. There's other ways to get that accomplished. So here's your Google business listing right here on the right. Is this the current correct address? Yeah. Okay, so Google has your address right now. If it's coming up when you search in Google and there's other addresses for you, then it would be wrong on those other pages. So you see here you've got request.

Yeah, I've tried to crack that and they won't update it. I've tried four times. Yeah, and they won't do it.

And when you say you've tried, what did you do? Do you just contact their support or what?

You can go on there, like on the map and report that something's wrong and then write in the correct information. And so I've done that four times. And then I've also contacted support with no response all four times, just like Bing.

Okay, so if this is a big problem for you, which it there's a lot of things that impact your Google rankings and the links back to your website from third party sites like MapQuest and other directory aggregator sites, if they see different addresses, they do not think it's the same business. So getting those addresses corrected is, in my opinion, real priority for you. And I'm going to email you, we do offer that service and we do have a tool that does does it. It'll correct it on about 200 sites across the Internet, including Bing, including MapQuest and all of these. I'm just going to send you that it is not super expensive to do and you do not have to do it manually. And what it does then is it locks down the listings once the listing gets changed. It locks it down so it can't be changed again. If it's not locked down, then what happens is these aggregators like MapQuest and these other things, they just crawl the Internet and they collect these businesses and these addresses and then they update their directories with these addresses that they find. So even if you change it once, it could get changed back. Because they're aggregators and they're automated. There's no one really looking at them except the business owner. Of course. That is a service that we do. I know I told you this isn't a sales call and I don't mean it to be, but there is a solution for this particular problem. But what I want to call to your attention besides this, this top thing, the consigning intro. If you were to take this address and then put it in the expected location, all the way down at the bottom of every single page and go ahead and leave it highly visible near the top too. But put it on every single page of your website. And then you want to make sure that this right here reads exactly as Google has it. So it has 8297 MO5 unit number three. And you want to make sure that it's written exactly that way on your website and it is not. And then you want to make sure that it says Camden 10 mo capital mo. Which you do, 6502. So that's good. So you want to go on your website and correct it so that it looks exactly like this. Okay. You want the address to match the same everywhere. If you do continue to work on getting your address updated in other websites, always use the way Google has it listed. Okay. And then make sure it's on your website that way too. Exactly as Google has it listed.

Gotcha.

And then what I would do also is with Your address. Also make sure that you have your contact phone number. So on every single page of your website in the same place. Okay, so priority one is update that title tag. Go into your web application. Update that meta. Tags, Update that title tag. So it says Best consignment store at Lake of the Ozarks and then dash and then Mint consignments. So put your business name in the top two. Or you can even reverse it. You can say Mint consignments and then dash or colon best consignment store at Lake of the Ozarks. And then make your address consistent across all the pages. Make sure it matches what's in Google. And then what I would do, just from a branding perspective, visually put your logo up here. I know you can do that in this tool that you're using Weebly. Do you have you figured out how to utilize the graphics part in Weebly now?

I wasn't able to figure out how to get the logo up there. That's not true. When I built the website like six years ago, it gave me the option to do a teeny tiny logo in the top left hand corner. And so it wasn't like it didn't really stand out. So I figured out how to delete it. But I was like thinking about going in and changing the whole entire theme and layout so that I could figure out how to put graphics in there. Because I can't figure out what this current theme, but it's just making the time and spending the 11 hours to redo it all.

Yeah, yeah. Just from a branding perspective, I recommend that you, at least, even if it's small, get your logo up here. Because people, when they find you in Google, they see the photo here and you actually have a really nice logo. People don't. I'm gonna say people care about your logo. They don't care. But if the visual representation that matches your business, at least they know they're on the right website visually. Right.

That makes sense.

As simple as that. And then I don't know that you need to have all of this stuff on the home page because you have a page for consign your fashions. So what I would do is I would prioritize making your homepage about getting people in the door. So across the top when you or even bought next to this area where you have the mint condition fashions and accessories, just do a really nice photo of your store. So not so much the outside, or maybe the outside combined with a couple of these really great pictures that you have from the Inside so people can see right what's in here so they know what to expect. It makes it worth the drive. They're like, oh man, look at that. They've got a, they've got a really large selection. So having that on your homepage where it's highly visible will drive more traffic in the door of people looking to buy stuff at your store rather than just the front. Just the front makes it look like a tiny place. And they're like, yeah, maybe if I happen to be out there, I'll go. But if you show stuff like this, they're like, ah, okay. I mean there's great clothes, looks like there's nice shoes, there's handbags, there's art, there's all this stuff. I need to go in there. And then somewhere toward the bottom of your homepage, I would put this Missouri's Best as well. Because that gives kind of social proof, right, that people voted for you as being a really great consignment store worth driving out to the Greenview area to visit. Right. That alone I think would pay for the time investment you make in just getting the pictures added in. Because I know your time is worth money and making time is hard, but doing that I think could have a significant impact on the traffic through the door. And then just changing this title tag up here so that it says Best consignment store at Lake of the Ozarks. That's what Google's going to pick up on when it tries, when it starts crawling your website and you want to utilize that or that language like consignment store at Lake of the Ozarks Consignment store near Camdenton where so you're, if you're close, it says next to Dollar General. I would put language in here around the locality. But make sure you also include the Ozarks because that's what people are going to search for mostly. And then that is how you're going to improve your rankings. For this consignment store, the Ozarks, you need to have that language on your page.

That makes sense. Yeah, I can definitely do those things. There's a problem with people. Most of them access my website from their phones and we get like, my main demographic is like women 50 and up and most of them don't know how to use like they don't know what a hamburger menu is or a drop down menu. So when they're on their phone, those tabs at the top completely disappear and they're forced to use the hamburger menu, but they don't know that they're supposed to click on that to access, like, other information about how to do business with me. And because of that problem, that's why I have all that text on my homepage, because some people don't make it past that. And so I want the homepage to be very attractive and visual like you're talking about. And I want to get rid of the text, but I'm not sure how to solve that problem of people not knowing they're supposed to go to other tabs.

Yeah, so that's a really good point. And I like the fact that you brought up on mobile in the hamburger menu. And you're right, there's a lot of people that still don't understand how to use those. So a couple things. Look in your settings on Weebly. I keep forgetting the name of the one you're using. Yeah, Weebly. Look in your settings and sometimes those will allow you to toggle on or off the hamburger menu. And if it doesn't, that's okay. So what you do is here, you've got the visual look and then down below, what are we accepting? And then you can say, click here to learn or even you can leave this so people can see it and then click here. Just say, click here to learn more about how to consign your fashions. Then you don't have all this stuff for people who really just want to come in the store and shop. But then it still gives very specific instructions to the people who want to consign their fashions or want to consign their home goods. And the benefit of that from a search engine ranking thing is that now I don't have visibility on your Google Analytics. But right now what's probably happening is that people are just looking at this homepage and leaving, not doing anything else. And what happens then is you get a high bounce rate. So Google, in Google's mind, it says, oh, this site doesn't give them what they're looking for because people are coming and they're bouncing off and not doing anything else. What you really want to happen is provide a path for your site visitors and you want them to click on more than one page. You really want them to go to a secondary page. If the hamburger menu and not having the hamburger menu isn't an option in Weebly, then what I would do is do your visual up here and then the number one's great. I love that. That's social proof. But what you really want to do first, because this is about you, not about your Visitors. And the visitors really care about themselves first. So you want to show pictures of the fact that you have this really large inventory. And then the next thing I would do, I went and looked at some of your reviews and. Because the reason you want to really pay attention to your reviews when it comes to your website is because you want to hear what people are saying that they love, and then you want to double down on that. You want to communicate that. Like, when I was scrolling through these reviews, most people were saying that your store is organized by style, which. And then some people said, which most aren't, and they really liked that. You go by style first and then by size. Is that true? Yes. Since all everybody who's reviewing you is saying that, what I would do is on your site because that appeals to people. I. I would say something up here. Our stuff is mint conditions, or we're mint consignments. Here's all the stuff we have. All of our clothing is organized by style first. So you find the style you love quickly. We've got a huge selection, and then you've got your pictures. So it draws in people. Yeah, most stores don't do that. And I love that because if I just wear, like, sporting stuff or I wear, like, Chico style, I don't know, but you know what I'm saying. The various styles, I could quickly go to the section in your store, and then I saw one first. So you find the style you love quickly. So we've got a huge selection, and then you've got your pictures, so it draws in people. It's. Yeah, most stores don't do that. And I love that because if I just wear, like, sporting stuff or I wear, like, Chico style, I don't know what you. But you know what I'm saying. The various styles. I could quickly go to the section in your store. And then I saw one review that said, like, you have food there so people can come have parties.

That was at our old location. We don't anymore. So that might have been an old review from a few years ago. We had to relocate when that building sold. But, yeah, we used to do, like, food and drinks.

Okay. I thought that was amazing. I'm like, that is the coolest thing ever. What a great idea for a party. Okay, so don't mention that then. But you hear what I'm saying on so above the fold, the first thing people see is they can see you've got this massive inventory. And then it says, people love us because we organize stuff by style to make your shopping experience super easy. Find stuff that you love for a fraction of the cost. Everything's mint condition. And then you can come down below social proof number one in the state four years in a row. And then, and then you can say something like this. Get directions. Here's where we're located, here's our hours. So you can put that in your copy, but also put it down at the bottom on every page. And then below that it's want to consign your stuff. And then say click here to learn how to consign your fashions. Click here to learn how to consign your home goods. And normally I wouldn't advise someone to say click here. But since you're dealing with a 50 and up crowd and you want to make it clear what you want them to do, I would probably do it in your case, actually say click here and make it big so they can read it. Because if they're on their phones, most of them, it needs to be big.

Right, Right.

And then move this stuff to those pages so that you get people to go to those other pages. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So I'm just essentially creating an additional tab. Like my homepage is more short, sweet and to the point and visual just to draw people in. But then some of that text that we're seeing on the homepage could be moved to a consigning page, like a new tab. Because then my tab isn't just for like general guidelines like for how to consign. It's like specifically, what do we take?

Yeah, so you've got, you've got the pages here already. So then I would just reorganize those. And having a lot of text on these pages is fine because these are people who are actually looking for how to do it. So if you give them exactly what they need and exactly how to do it, then that's great. So I wouldn't even worry. Just organize it so it's easy. And put this homepage then. And then just call this home instead of consigning intro. And then like I said, put the make your title tag in Weebly. It's usually under Site settings is where you'll find that stuff. So you want to go in and look for it there. And if you can't, if you can't find it, reach out to Weebly Support and say, where do I find my title tag? This is the language. I'll send you a link to the recording of this. Where do I find how to edit the title tags for my pages and the meta Descriptions for my pages. If you can't find it, that's the language you want to use when you reach out to them.

Got it.

Yeah. And let's see. Yeah, I just think, I think that would just dramatically improve. Number one, it'll improve your homepage. Number two, it'll improve your search engine rankings. And then the visuals with the messaging of just super short and sweet. It's like people love that we organize our stuff by style and so that it's easy, super easy to find what you love at a fraction of the price than retail. Just something like that. And I think if you just start with that on your website, I think you'll see a huge difference pretty quickly. It's not going to happen overnight. Obviously Google will need to re index the site and all of that, but driving people to secondary pages will help. Changing the language will help. And then visually, for the users to get them in the door, having the visuals will really help.

Yeah, sounds like it.

And then on Facebook. Okay. Oh, this is awesome. Yeah, you've got a good following. Good. Your posts are good.

Thanks.

Pictures are great. Good. This is great. You get a lot of interactions. I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about not having a personality in your post. Your whole goal is just to sell the stuff. Your posts draw attention. You get a ton of interaction. I wouldn't change anything. I. If anything, I'd just do more of it.

Okay. So I did feel like it was disappointing that there's 2000 followers but only an average of 30 comment.

That's. Believe it or not, that's really good. This is organic reach. Your reach is probably higher. I don't have visibility on your stats other than, you know, the vanity metrics showing right here, but to get people to interact. 24 shares and 29 likes. 24 shares is fraking amazing. And I assume you're not promoting these posts. You're just. This is just all organic, right?

Correct.

Yeah, I would be super happy with that.

Okay, that's nice.

You know what I would do though? One thing with your website, and this might be something to invest in. Either have someone like us do or do it yourself, but do it on your homepage. You could create a lead magnet or. And it doesn't even have to be something written. Just add to your website something that allows people to sign up to get notifications of stuff that's in the store. And then so you do mailchimp. And mailchimp has a free plan. And the cost of mailchimp goes up by number of subscribers. So you really don't pay much until you actually have more subscribers. And then it becomes worth it because the money's in your list. If you send an email with store stuff, if you get great pieces in and you want to draw people into the store store, then you just go into mailchimp, you send out an E Blast with pictures, just like you do in your Facebook posts. So anybody who comes to your store can sign up to get notified. You send this kind of stuff to them, and then what you do is you post on Facebook and do it a lot. If you're doing one of these posts every day, later in the day, do a post about subscribing to your list, send them a link to your website to go sign up, and then these people right here, your 2.7k or 3000 followers, let's just say you get a thousand of them to go subscribe to your emails. And you do an email once or twice a week with this. Because not every one of these people see these posts, right? You know that because Facebook organically only serves it up to a small percentage of your list. So with email, you actually own that audience, right Now, Facebook owns your audience. So if something happens to your Facebook page, you lose this audience. So what you want to do is take this audience and drive them to your website and get them to subscribe. And once you have their email addresses now you own the audience. So you're not dependent on Facebook. If Facebook randomly shut your page down for some reason, which I've seen happen a lot, it doesn't look like you're doing anything here that they would do that for, but you just never know. You don't own this platform. You own the audience. You communicate to them multiple ways. You do it this way, and you do it through your mailchimp account, where you send E Blast. And I wouldn't overthink it because you get a lot of interaction from these people who love to shop consignment stores. They love to shop consignment stores. So only people who want to get that stuff are going to sign up. So you couldn't send them too much of it.

Okay, so the emails, just send them a link. Hey, we've got new inventory. And it just takes them to the Facebook where they can comment on the stuff.

I would actually put the inventory in the email rather than sending them to Facebook. So these pictures that you put in here, I would just put them right in the email. I wouldn't send them back to Facebook. I would say new arrivals, check these out, put the pictures in the email. Mailchimp is super easy. It's a drag and drop thing. So if you can add pictures to Facebook, you can add pictures to mailchimp. And it doesn't have to be a ton. Like pick maybe six of the coolest new things that have come in the store. Maybe do one on Monday and one on Thursday. So then you get people in the store over the weekend and just make that a. Make that a regular thing so people know what to expect. And I bet you get a lot of traffic into your store as a result.

Okay, yeah, I could try that. I did the texting campaign for a couple years, but that didn't really do anything. But that's probably because I couldn't post pictures on the text.

Yeah, no, your stuff is visual, so absolutely you want to have pictures. Because I'm like, oh, these are really cute. And I'll bet she's got more. So, yeah, I would come in just to. To look. Yeah, you are in a very visual business and the stuff you have is very nice. It's not junky stuff. So I'd stick with the pictures. And this is clearly working. So just double down on it and add another mechanism. So you own the audience. Facebook is great. Don't stop. But also own your audience. On Facebook, you don't own your audience. So there's always risk there.

That makes sense. It hurt me. Like, my guess is that with mailchimp Chimp, you would want people to email you back, but I wouldn't want them to do that. So what happens on my Facebook is people can comment on a photo and claim it and I'll hold it for them to come look at to see if they want to buy it. So I'll hold for a couple business days. But if I'm having to keep track of holds that people are claiming on Facebook and email and I have to try to look at the timestamp for who's first for claiming dibs? That would be really problematic for me. So then it's. Would it hurt me if I didn't allow the people on email to reply and make them go to Facebook to comment to hold?

Yeah. So what you could do then, when I said don't send them to Facebook, I didn't have that piece of information. So what you could do is. Let's just use this post as an example. Maybe what you do is you. Do you work on a Mac or PC?

PC.

PC. Okay. So you can make your post like here. And then what you could do is on your PC, you could use your snipping tool. Have you ever used that before?

Yeah.

Okay, so just do this. So I'm just going to go to the snipping tool and I'm just going to. I'm going to grab this. Right. So now I've got this. And then what I would do is probably, I would circle this. Maybe not with that color, but you get the idea. So circle this with a. So they can see. Right. So now you've got your picture and they can see that there's 76 other things here. Okay, so save this picture and then in your mailchimp, make this your opening picture. And below when you write, you just take, here's the stuff. And now link to our Facebook page and say, go to our Facebook page, look at the full gallery of stuff I just uploaded and contact us through Facebook. If you want us to hold something, come into the store and shop the rest of your message. And then just put at the bottom with a little star, just say, we cannot hold things through email. You have to request it through Facebook. So then send your email so they know.

Okay.

But then your graphics, it's super easy. All you're doing is uploading one image and you're going to link the image. And you're also going to put a link in your email to your Facebook page and say, go check out the gallery of everything I just uploaded that's come in. Cool.

Yeah, that sounds like a great solution.