Sunday Before Valentine’s Day - Are You Open All Day?

Before I share this article, I ask that we first address the transaction - name and value.

#1 Order - This is what my competitors referred to a transaction as I slowly took theirs a little at a time.

#2 Relationship - The customer calling you trusts you. You earned this. You have the relationship-until you lose it.

When my competition was closed and I saw new customers calling and ordering JUST BECAUSE I WAS OPEN, I knew that was MY OPPORTUNITY! You see, I already had a catch-all system in place. When someone ordered for the first time, I target marketed them for the 2nd order with an aggressive account card mailing. If I got the 2nd order, I had the future relationship! If it’s easy to work with me and I am always available, why would they go anywhere else?

Art Conforti, owner of Beneva Flowers in Sarasota Florida with a bouquet of his signature long-stem rogue roses for Valentine’s Day. Beneva Flowers was open - and provided customers with unmatched service - 7 days a week - 365 days a year.

What is the value of a customer?

People order generally three more times after a first order. So if they are flower buyers and they order during a Valentine’s Day, the chances are pretty good there will be a second holiday order through the year. Add in an unexpected event or a birthday and you have four orders.

Average order with delivery is $85
$85 x 4 = $340.00

Customers looking to order flowers will call around until they find an open shop and that is where you have a 50-50 chance of ever seeing them again. I share this from a fact growing my business in Sarasota, FL. There were 30 florists in town when I started and when I sold after 30 years there were only six. Was it all me? Probably not. BUT, they came from somewhere!

• It’s one day, protect your future by securing the present.

• It’s competitive out there - showing up is half of it!

- Just sharing to help you possibly rethink what is best for your business. Only you know best – but I’m always here to help with tips and advice whenever you need it! Until then, be sure to visit out our YouTube channel for dozens of informative videos and guides -Art

Turn Trash Into Treasure With the Power of Great Marketing

It is hard to believe that great marketing can turn trash into treasure, but sometimes all it takes is adding a good spin to make people reconsider their perspective. Online marketing is exponentially more powerful and proficient than most people realize. When properly utilized, it can even completely reverse how the average person views their own values and beliefs by reintroducing an old idea and making it new.

One example of this are brand new pair of jeans from the mall. A generation ago, people who could not afford new jeans were often embarrassed to wear worn jeans with rips and holes. But things have completely changed from those days, and now it has become trendy to wear jeans that look old - and consumers pay a premium to do so. This is the power of marketing!

The closer you look, the more discover

A new spin on an old idea can change everything for a product or service, including its value in the market and how people view it. With proper execution, marketing is one of the most powerful ways to create revenue-boosting opportunities that not many businesses are taking advantage of today.

Another recent example of the incredible - if not unbelievable - power of marketing was a holiday promotion by the Lily Pulitizer store which offered special gift wrap with qualifying purchases totaling $400 or more. Although it may sound confusing, they would wrap any gifts you purchased in the store for free. But if you spent over $400, they would also ship Lily Pulitizer gift wrap to your house - as a gift of it's own!

While they certainly managed to put a new spin on gift wrap, the promotion itself seemed confusing - as well as disappointing - for several reasons. First off, the gift wrap as a gift was not even available in the store to take home, or to be used to wrap the item purchased in-store. While it was lovely gift wrap, it would have to be used at a later time to wrap a different gift.

Second, the gift wrap was only free for a purchase of $400 or more. This is not an easy number to reach for many people, and left out a lot of potential customers who may have loved the product but were unable to stretch the budget to reach that level. Meanwhile, a good portion of the people who did receive the promotion did not even know about it until after the transaction was already made.

As confusing as the promotion appeared to the average consumer, the marketing team at Lily Pulitizer knew exactly what they were doing when they offered their lovely wrapping paper as a gift. Using it on anything other than another gift from Lily Pulitizer would lead to certain disappointment for the recipient. Well played, Lily!

Reexamine your marketing efforts and make one change

The time is now to rejuvenate your business by trying something new. Some of history's most popular marketing started by taking a second look at unpopular item and reinventing it as on object of desire. Often times, one big change is all it takes to get yourself noticed by the right audience, and from there the sky is truly the limit.

Don't limit yourself to word-of-mouth advertising while your digital advantage remains untapped. Contact Bloomerang Solutions today to supercharge your local marketing efforts with proven results through social media as well as Google and Bing. From custom-built websites to location management to Google advertising and everything in between, we’re ready to make your business bloom! Call us today at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line here to get started today!

How to Get Good Backlinks (6 Simple Strategies)

One of the key ingredients to good SEO is having high-quality backlinks to your website. Backlinks are also known as “inbound links” because they are links on someone else’s website that directs traffic to your site. Generally, the more sites that backlink to yours, the more traffic you will receive and that means a higher site ranking from Google.

However, it is very important to remember that Google rewards quality much higher than it does quality. This means where the links are coming from are much more important than the number of backlinks connecting to your site. Backlinks from websites with a higher score than yours will help improve your score. Conversely, backlinks from sites with a lower rank than yours can hurt your score.

Backlinks play an extremely important role in boosting your search engine rankings because they are among the highest-ranking factors according to Google. This means that acquiring high quality backlinks to your site will strengthen your chances for a higher ranking. Here are a few simple strategies you can use to get high-quality websites to backlink to your site.

1. Find Backlink Opportunities on Your Own Website

The first step to improving your backlinks is take a look at your own website. Do you feature products from any vendors that may be willing to link back to your site? As long as you’re a good customer (and they have a strong website) then it never hurts to ask. Reciprocal linking is important to anyone paying attention to their SEO, so it isn’t an unusual or inappropriate request.

2. Check Your Analytics to Analyze Your Referral Sources

Next you can take a more in-depth look by checking your numbers on Bloometrix. The “top referral sources” will show you who is linking to your content and offering a backlink. Discovering the type of websites linking back to your site and the kind of content they desire may help you identify new opportunities to create similar content for more backlinks.

3. See What Your Competitors Are Up To

The best way to stay up to date on what is happening in the industry is to know what the others are doing. What type of content are they publishing and what are they doing to draw visitors to their site? Consider it “ethically spying” on your competitors in order to find their sources for backlinks and top-performing content, along with organic keywords and even what they’re doing on social media.

4. Pay Attention and Discover Opportunities

Your competitors’ backlink sources may provide you with some clever opportunities to earn a backlink for your site as well. For example, if they have a backlink from a forum or message board, you can create your own profile to earn a backlink. Signing up for their email newsletters and setting up Google Alerts will immediately notify you whenever they publish content or appear on another site.

5. Create High-Quality Content

One of the best ways to get backlinks is by creating unique, high-quality content that other bloggers, social media influencers, and industry experts find interesting or relevant enough to use and link back to your website. There are many different types of content you can produce including blogs, images for social media posts, and YouTube videos. In most cases you can do all that with your phone.

6. Get Involved and Participate Online

Writing testimonials on other websites and participating in online forums are also excellent ways to earn backlink to your site. Find websites relevant to your industry what have a high domain authority (DA) and submit a testimonial in exchange for a backlink. Actively participating in different forums will help you become an industry expert and will help drive traffic to your website.

These are just a few different things that everyone can do to improve search engine rankings by earning high-quality backlinks and increase the number of inbound links. If you would like to learn more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or how to view your analytics through the Bloometrix dashboard, Bloomerang Solutions is here to help. Drop us a line here or call us anytime at (913) 806-1911. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and like us on Facebook for marketing ideas, customer service tips, employee training videos and more!

How to Use Google My Business to Engage your Customers

Keep your customers up-to-date on what’s happening at your shop

As florists we know it’s almost impossible to keep up with all of the marketing opportunities available. Constant changes and new ways of using digital marketing channels that have been around for a while is enough to wear anyone out.

We wanted to take an opportunity to highlight an important feature Google has available that does not get enough visibility. The feature is called Google My Business (GMB). Even though it has been around for awhile, its power of is often overlooked.

Google My Business (GMB)

This is one of the Google features that gets very little recognition as a powerful tool to gain visibility for your shop’s “3 Pack” on Google’s search engine results (SERP) page. Think of GMB as the “account” that you can control and through that account you can manage information that will show up in the Google 3 pack.

Do you target local consumers?

Based on what people are searching today, if your business does business locally, appearing in Google’s 3 pack and keeping your company’s information current is crucial.

The 3 pack is a widget on Google’s SERP that highlights businesses that offer products and/or services that match up with the search phrase that someone typed into Google’s search box. It’s called a 3 pack because the widget displays what Google considers to be the top 3 most relevant websites. Users can click a link to show more businesses, but most users won’t click the link to see the rest of the businesses listed.

Page 1 on Google search results

The other very big benefit to the 3-Pack is that it is displayed on the first page of the SERP. The first page of the SERP is critical for visibility. Google’s 3-pack is on the first page of Google’s SERP. So by showing up in the 3-pack you are on the first page of Google for the search phrase that the user is using to find what you do or what you sell.

Why Local Search Matters

Google reports that around 46% of all US searches are “local” which means people are using the phrases “near me” or “where to buy.” So, what are the features of GMB in today’s context?

Are you open?

The first feature that you must keep current in your GMB account is your company’s current availability. What days of the week are you open? What time of the day are you open. These are the first things that your customers are checking before they leave the house. With all of the upheaval they want to know if you’re going to be open of if you’ve altered your hours of operation.

Is the information listed current?

Another feature of Google My Business is the ability to post to your account. You may be doing a very good job of keeping your information up-to-date, but your customers doesn’t know if you’ve updated it recently. In fact, because so many businesses don’t keep their listing information current, it would be helpful if you posted to your GMB the last time that you updated your hours of operation. This will build confidence in your customers that the information that they are looking for is current.

Start asking questions

With Google My Business, your customers can ask a question right from your 3-pack listing. How much more simpler can it be! You can setup your GMB to allow for questions and when it’s setup properly you can get an alert on your smartphone as soon as someone submits their question. At that point you can promptly reply with an answer to their question, making you a customer service superstar!

Set up appointments

Many businesses are moving to an appointment system. If an appointment system is right for your business, you can setup your GMB to give your customers the ability to schedule an appointment with your company.

Let them know you are safe

Many people want to know what you are doing at your place of business to keep them safe. Use the posting feature of GMB to keep them up-to-date on your policies and activities that will give them the peace-of-mind to do business with you.

Do you need help with your online marketing campaigns? Bloomerang Solutions can help! From Google My Business to websites and social media, we're here to make you look you best. Give us a call today at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line here to find out what we can do to make your business bloom!

The Value of Reviews is Skyrocketing and Bloomerang Has You Covered

Let's look at where digital is going and how fast it's getting there...

Where? To the moon! Remember the Honeymooners? Well, reviews are just out of this world. It's so valuable and getting you covered is what we plan and have been doing for our clients at Bloomerang.

You see, the biggest problem is, It's NOT EASY to get a review! Think about it, you complete a job and now your client wants to say THANKS and leave you a review…but where?

It's not always easy for your customers to find a place on your website to leave a review if they want to, and some websites make it extremely confusing to the customers as well.

Imagine if you had a BloomNation website! For example, let's try this one - just watch the video below and see for yourself!

Make it easy

The Bloomerang Difference

At Bloomerang, we manage and MANUALLY reply to EVERY REVIEW for our customers and always have. We will contact you to discuss any issues BUT, we continue the manual process. We are not like the rest. Bloomerang clients expect more and they get more!

This information was made public by Birdseye for all to know and be aware. Remember, digital allows you to take responsibility of your brand and show people why you deserve their business. It's all about trust and exceeding expectations!

Please reach out to us if you have any questions.

-Art.