Blog – Page 66

Prospect Genius Announces Continued Company Expansion Despite National Economic Woes

Last Updated: May 18, 2011

Prospect Genius, a local online advertising company based in the Albany area, announces the addition of 2.5 new staff members. The new staff includes the creation of one full-time sales representative job and one full-time bookkeeper/accounting post as well as a part-time marketing position. This first-quarter personnel addition brings the Prospect Genius team up to nearly 20 employees.
The new sales account manager position will help increase sales of the PG lead generation program while the marketing slot creates the opportunity for additional development of the Prospect Genius brand as well as growth for PG client marketing strategies. Having a full-time bookkeeper on staff will aid in streamlining the billing process. With this personnel expansion, Prospect Genius will have the capacity to handle approximately double the client volume and provide improved service for the customers they already have on board.
Prospect Genius President Alex Pelli comments, “We’re still growing despite the bad economy. In the first quarter of 2010, we expanded our workforce by nearly 50%. Now, in the first quarter of 2011, we’ve just added another two-and-a-half positions. The strength of our SEO product is enabling us to grow when other businesses are struggling in today’s tough economic situation.”
Increasing their workforce means that Prospect Genius will be able to provide their lead generation services to a greater number of local businesses. As Pelli observes, “Our new hires should have a trickle-down effect. By expanding our workforce, we’ll be able to take on more clients, and hopefully increase the success of more local businesses by helping them reach customers in their communities.”
Prospect Genius is an Internet advertising company that leverages SEO to help local companies with effective web marketing.

Customer Reviews and You

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Got Reviews?

It used to be that just having a website was enough to set you apart from your competitors. But now, everyone has a webpage, and you have to set your site apart somehow… For many, the solution they choose is to make their website flashy and unique.
That’s good and fine, but when people are searching for a plumber, electrician, or other pro online, they’re not necessarily looking for the fanciest website or the one with the most bells and whistles. What they’re actually looking for is what other customers thought about your business. Whether you’re a roofer, car audio installer, or appliance repairman, online reviews can help show prospective customers what to expect from your company: the past satisfaction of other customers can predict the experience that future clients can anticipate receiving from you.
Customers can leave reviews for you in many places, including on Google Maps and on your business’s Facebook page. They can also e-mail them to you, and you can have the PG team post them on your microsite. In fact, the same review can do double duty if your customers put them on both Google Maps and your Facebook page, so encourage them to leave reviews where they can be seen in multiple places on the web. The most important thing is that the reviews are out there for prospective customers to find.
Perhaps you’re thinking that your customers aren’t going to take the time to write a review. While that might ordinarily be the case, you can make it worth their while to compose a review for you. Try offering them an incentive such as $10 off their next service. Not only will this help increase your stockpile of reviews but it can help assure repeat business!
Here’s an example of some great reviews on 919 Motoring’s website. Their reviews point out that:

Their prices are great.
They’re better than their competitors.
They’re honest and respectful.

Quite frankly, you probably couldn’t make up reviews better than these provided by their customers!

Faking It Isn’t Worth It

Speaking of making up reviews… Sometimes it might seem easier to just manufacture a few reviews and pretend they were written by customers, but that can get your company in serious trouble. It might look appealing to just dream up some reviews or “borrow” reviews from a similar company that’s, say, in another state, but this will end up biting you in the end.
Not long ago, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) charged Legacy Learning Systems Inc. with disseminating deceptive advertising. This company, which sells a popular guitar lesson DVD series, settled with the FTC and will have to pay $250,000 to resolve the charges. The short story is that Legacy wasn’t even making up reviews: they were simply utilizing reviews written by a paid affiliate and promoting them as unbiased reviews. The full story is available here.
And the Legacy case isn’t an isolated incident: two years ago, a cosmetic surgery company got caught writing fake reviews. They were charged in New York State for forcing employees to write fake reviews raving about how fantastic the company was. They also settled, to the tune of $300,000 in penalties and costs. You can find the full story here.
In short, fake reviews equal real pain. When you’re obtaining reviews from customers, it’s probably a good idea to save a copy of the e-mail or at least save their contact info. That way, should you be required to prove the review came from a real customer, you’ll be able to!

Online Advertising Company Increases Revenue for Local Car Audio Shop

Last Updated: April 30, 2011

Prospect Genius, an online advertising company based out of Troy, New York, has successfully turned business around for Original Soundz, a local car audio shop. Through innovative search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, website design, and general Internet savvy, Prospect Genius effectively promotes the car audio and mobile video electronics available from Original Soundz. Prospect Genius’s effective campaign resulted in wider visibility, more customers, and a substantial increase in revenue for Original Soundz.
Marking the beginning of their online advertising campaign, Prospect Genius launched the Original Soundz website on March 4, 2011; the mobile electronics shop had no website or Internet presence prior to this date. Since then, Original Soundz has experienced a surge in customer calls, online visibility, and total revenue. In fact, Prospect Genius sent them 130 customer leads in April 2011 alone.
Vincent LaMorticello, owner of Original Soundz, says, “Before we signed up with Prospect Genius, we were struggling to get the word out about our car alarms, car stereos, and other mobile electronics. But now, customers have direct access to us, and business is better than ever!”
Prospect Genius specializes in providing local companies just like Original Soundz with customized SEO strategies and services. Once the PG website design specialists build the company a website from scratch, they devise and implement an original SEO strategy to achieve a high ranking for that site on search engine results pages (SERPs). After the site listing has reached a high placement on the SERPs, it will be substantially more visible to a wide range of potential customers searching for related services. In the case of Original Soundz, Prospect Genius was able to garner them the coveted number 1 ranking on Google searches related to mobile video, car stereo equipment, car alarms, and more in their local area. As a result, Original Soundz is significantly more prevalent in searches performed by Albany-area vehicle owners looking for car audio services on all major search engines, including Yahoo! and Bing. This increase in visibility and accessibility has led to a massive upswing in sales and revenue for Original Soundz, thanks in large part to the efforts of Prospect Genius.
“Everyone at PG was really happy to hear about the success of our Internet marketing campaign for Original Soundz,” says Matt Gallo, a spokesperson and senior marketer for Prospect Genius. “They were already a great business,” he adds. “They just needed to get their prospective customers to notice.”
Prospect Genius is an online advertising company that specializes in providing small service providers with customized Internet marketing campaigns and SEO strategies.

Things To Consider When Outsourcing

Last Updated: April 29, 2011

There is a common misconception when it comes to outsourcing, many people think this means sending work overseas. However, this is simply not true. In reality, you probably “outsource” some of your business functions already to other local businesses. For example, if you pay an accountant to prepare your taxes or have your company vehicle serviced at the dealer, that’s outsourcing!
When deciding whether or not to outsource a function of your business, there are few things to consider. It helps to look at the cost vs. time and how cost effective each scenario will be. Most people forget to pay themselves when they consider doing it in-house. Your time has value! If you typically get $40/hour and the task will take 10 hours a week, that’s $400 your company will spend each week.
Another thing to consider is the value you will receive from doing it yourself or paying a professional. Outsourcing a task that you are not skilled at, whether it is online advertising, tax preparation or hosting email servers, could actually save you time and money. Take the above example, it could cost your company $400 to do a sub-par job in-house which could lead to complications or mistakes, or $480 to give the accountability to a professional who is trained in the area.
Once you have decided to out-source certain things, the problem arises of who to choose to work with. Simply, DO YOUR HOMEWORK! The simplest way to research a company is to go on Google and search the company’s name + “scam” or “complaints”. You can also check with the BBB for their assessment of the company. Doing these two relatively easy things can give you a pretty good understanding of the company and how their customers feel about their services.
There is an old saying we like to share: “Good is rarely cheap and cheap is rarely good.” Remember to ask detailed questions. Too good to be true offers usually are just that, too good to be true. Good luck!

Dial 1 for Business Success

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Are you using your phone as effectively as possible to help your business get ahead? Here are a few ideas to harness the latest cell phone technology for your business.

Sprint and Google Voice: Expanded Technology for Your Phone

Here at PG, several of our staffers use Sprint cell phones, and as a result, we noticed an interesting announcement. Sprint recently publicized a new partnership with Google that will give all Sprint customers access to Google Voice on their phones. That means you’ll have fully integrated access to Google Voice’s free services right on your cell.
You can find out more about all of the different features Google Voice provides here, but one of the most versatile for small business owners is this: you can assign several phones to the same number and have them all ring when someone calls you. That means one phone number can ring to your office phone, your cell phone, your assistant’s desk… all at the same time. And whoever picks up the phone first, wins. Just think of all the possibilities this feature could offer in terms of staying connected with current and prospective customers. Google Voice also offers visual voice mail and a whole bunch of other features that can boost your ability to manage inbound calls.

Voice Mail of Doom

Tons of small business owners still let callers get their voice mail on a regular basis. Some of you may even send incoming calls straight to your voice mail inbox. But these behaviors can be a death sentence for your business! That’s because we’ve seen that the vast majority of customers won’t leave a message if they get your voice mail. Instead, they’ll just hang up and move on down their list—straight to one of your direct competitors. If you let your clients get your voice mail all the time, this is something you need to seriously consider changing.
Here are a few options for how you can shift away from relying on voice mail to make sure you’re not losing business by not answering the phone. Why not try:

An Answering Service
Google Voice (see above)
A Receptionist

Regardless of which option you choose, the important thing is to ensure you’re handling incoming calls as quickly as you can so you can avoid losing calls to the competition. Remember, very few customers will leave a message and those that do, probably also call someone else as well.

Turn Your Cell Phone into a Credit Card Processing Machine

If you’re tired of using those annoying carbon copy credit card slips or just plain not being able to accept credit cards when you’re away from the office, you may already have the answer to your problem right in your pocket…
Did you realize that there are applications available that allow your smart phone to process customer credit cards? No more purchasing a pricey point-of-sale machine or renting an expensive credit card processing terminal: all credit card processing can now be done using the technology you already have. All you need to do is download the application and you’ll have access to credit card processing at a very, very competitive rate.
For iPhones and iPads, the application you need is called Square. For Android or “Droid” phones, an application called Payment Max is available. If you have another type of smart phone, you can simply google “your phone name,” e.g. Blackberry, and “credit card processing” or “credit card reader.” These searches should pull up all of the available options for processing credit cards right from your phone.
From making and taking calls to processing credit cards, your cell phone is one of the most vital tools for the success of your business. Make sure you’re getting the most out of your phone with some of these easy ideas and tips.

Prospect Genius

Prospect Genius Announces Continued Company Expansion Despite National Economic Woes

Online Advertising Company Increases Revenue for Local Car Audio Shop

Things To Consider When Outsourcing

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