i7 Marketing Blog

This is one of the most common questions I hear from business owners. Should I spend my marketing budget on SEO or Google Ads? And the honest answer is that it depends on your situation.

Most businesses have been burned by an SEO agency at least once. You signed up, paid monthly retainers, got some reports you didn't understand, and six months later, you're in the same place you started. Or worse.

It’s easier than you think!

Google is the most dominant search engine in use. If you want your flooring business to rank high in Google search results, it needs to have a Google My Business (GMB) profile. Research shows that GMB features are the single biggest driver for ranking high enough to get placement in the search engine results’ most highly valued real estate. In fact, the quality of your business’s GMB profile is the single most important driver in determining its search results page location.

You’re living the dream, right? Owning your own business, being your own boss, setting your own schedule—is it everything you’d hoped it would be?

You have a small business, and it’s doing well. Word of mouth has been good to you. You’ve built a great network from the ground up, and you maintain enough business to comfortably get by. Do you really need a website?

If you aren't using video to help promote your products, services, or to simply engage with your customers, it's time to catch up. Video is a prominently used feature that brings life to your business and helps give viewers behind-the-scenes looks and insight into your business. It's also a great tool to help explain how to use what you have to offer or to answer common questions from customers. 

It is amazing the amount of small businesses who hire outside business consulting firms to help give guidance and ask the right questions. I believe we all have the desire to be told we are on the right track, and, at the same time, we have the sense to know that we won’t be right 100% of the time.

On the next $1,000 you spend on marketing, do you (or your boss) know how much revenue you’re going to get?

Even better, do you know how much profit you’re going to make?

No?

At least you’re in good company; it seems like most don’t know, and I would argue that the lack of a solid number is the greatest self-imposed limit to your company’s growth.

Here’s my logic:

If you’ve had a serious conversation with an online marketing professional in the last two years, you’ve probably heard that more people are interacting with the web using their mobile devices, that mobile is getting more and more important, etc.