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Christopher Smith from Travel Alberta joined the Strong Coffee Marketing Podcast to talk about compelling consumer experiences. In this episode, we focused on creating good offers and packages. What constitutes an offer or a package? We looked at the makings of good offers and packages, and what tourism operators can do to make their offerings more appealing to consumers.

Keyword Strategy – Can your business do better?

In the digital world, your business needs a killer keyword strategy to get the most out of your online advertising and PPC (pay-per-click) efforts. After all, potential customers are looking for your services daily, and the majority of them are using search engines in their effort. By being highly visible where your customers are searching, you can get that leg up on your competitors.

As a business how then do you work out what people are searching for online so that they can find you and you are visible to them? This should neither be time-consuming nor difficult. That is part of what we are looking at this week.

Prepare

The main failure of many keyword strategies is a lack of research and planning. When you build a PPC campaign, you should make sure that the whole experience from the first click to final exit is a relevant and rewarding experience. This is often why PPC is handled by a third-party, as there are many intricacies and facets of planning that play a role. When preparing your plan, you should look at your analytics to determine what content is your most popular, who your customers are and how your website performs when they use it. This will tell you if your website is optimized for their experience, or if changes need to be made. You should look at what your competitors are doing – both for ideas and for things to avoid. You should also look at Google Trends and Keyword Planner to determine the best keywords to target and to get a sense of the potential costs involved. Finally, you should look at your landing pages and determine if they align with your business goals. For example, if you prefer leads via phone – is your website optimized for mobile? Solid preparation will set the groundwork for a solid campaign, and should not be omitted or underestimated.

Keep It Simple, But not too simple

The first trick is to stick to the very basics! Put yourself in the shoes of your customers, and ask yourself this question: What would I type into Google if I needed my product? The answer will usually be something simple like: “ ” and this should be your first keyword. From there, you can usually think of a few synonyms, and add-on words to further refine your list. Steer clear of very generic terms like just . The problem with these is that you have no context into what the person is really looking for. They could be looking to buy, they could be looking to sell, they could be looking to fix, they could be looking for reviews – you just don’t know. Since you don’t know, don’t waste your money.

The first trick is to stick to the basics! Put yourself in the shoes of the customer. What are the themes you would expect for people searching for your type of business online? Within those themes, you will find words that keep popping up and therein lies your first set of clues!

Quality Not Quantity

Stemming from our last point, there’s no need for 200+ keywords per campaign anymore. Use keyword match types to allow in terms that are synonyms to your product/service and use negative keywords to really hone in on the right traffic. If you go and target a large number of keywords that end up not being relevant, or not getting you any traffic, you’ll actually be hurting your overall campaign performance, and negatively affect your costs.

Don’t try to show up for everything online. That affects your quality ranking with Google for starters. As with any reputation, it is very easy to damage it and extremely hard to repair that damage.

5 Common Adwords Keyword Mistakes That Will Kill Your Results

Write Connected Ads

What’s that old saying, keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

Uttered famously by Michael Corleone in 1974 classic The Godfather Part II this little pop culture cliche imparts a great mantra for business owners: know what your competition is doing and how they’re doing it.

Keeping an eye on your competition has been a part of the business since business was business. And with most businesses having some online presence and strategy, it’s never been easier to keep tabs on your competition. Let’s get started with six tips on how to check out your competition online.

Social Media

Keep an eye on your competitor’s social media accounts. They’re out there sharing content and engaging with customers and potential customers (if they’re not, they probably should be) so you might as well learn from their successes and failures. You’ll want to pay attention to:



What type of content they’re creating and sharing

What kind of content gets the most engagement from their followers

How they handle the customer service side of social media

How they engage with their followers and how their fans engage with them

The size of their audience

How they’ve handled negative comments and engagement



Try searching Google for your competition and see what social media channels they’re on and scope them out. If they’re getting a lot of loyal engagement you know, there might be something to learn from them. Set yourself apart from the competition by understanding how they do and how you can improve. With that said, don’t rip off their social media strategy or their content, nobody likes a copycat.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews play a pretty pivotal role in a buyer’s journey. Think about how you might go about making a purchase decision. Do you do a quick Google search for what you’re going to buy and check out the reviews other’s may have left? I know I do. In fact, 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Customer reviews are important and there’s a wealth of insight to learnt for them. Be on the lookout for:



Clues regarding how they handle customer service.

How your price points and promotions stack up

Learn about their customer’s characteristic and better shape your marketing strategy

Their weakness and how you might be able to turn them into your strengths

What their customers value in their brand and how you might leverage that



Both, positive and negative reviews will help give you insight into where there might be market gaps in your industry or where you might be able to pick up some slack and win some of your competition’s customers. Keep on top of your online reviews is crucial and it actually might be your best social media strategy.

Google Alerts

It’s smart to look closely at your competition’s online reviews but you need to keep an on the big picture as well. Google Alerts is a great way to stay easily informed on what’s being said about you and your business online but also what’s being said about your competition.

Google Alerts allows you to monitor the web for interesting new content, in this case, your business and what your competition. Set up alerts for your company name, your competition, and your industry in general. You’d be surprised at what you might learn. Get creative with Google Alerts; ...

The breakfast is ready and the beds are made, but how do you market your bed and breakfast?

Bed and breakfasts have changed from the doily filled guestrooms and excruciating small talk over breakfast to an economical innovative way to spend some time in a new city and experience your destination with the help of locals.

Bed and Breakfasts have also taken a leap into the digital age with the advent of peer-to-peer rockstar Airbnb. Founded in 2008, Airbnb has taken the sharing economy to a new level allowing hosts to put everything from a spare room to an igloo to a private island up for short term rent to would be travelers. In fact, it’s pretty hard to believe that there are over 2 million listings on the site and about 500,000 nightly stays.

With that many listings, your B&B will need to stand out from the crowd. Here’s some Do’s and Don’ts to consider when marketing your bed and breakfast:



It might seem like pretty obvious advice to “post great pics” of your bed and breakfast, but photographs are the single most important factor when marketing your bed and breakfast. They allow would-be guests to get a sense of what they can expect when choosing your B&B and sell the experience of your B&B rather than just a room.

Great photos are a pretty big part of your marketing efforts, but they don’t need to break the bank. There are some tips and tricks for taking great photos for your website with your smartphone that don’t cost anything but time. If you feel like your pictures need a bit of an update here’s a few things to consider:



* Consider the details: if your photos are looking a little dull and redundant try adding a little flare. Maybe a glass of wine and cheese plate would make the picture of your suite’s balcony pop a bit more. Remember, sell the experience of staying at your B&B and not just the room. Make sure the beds are made beautifully, and everything is in the right place.





* Don’t post too many photos: You want to leave a little bit to the imagination don’t you. Consider capping some of the great photos you post to your website to about 10. Use those images to highlight your great amenities, the character of the area, the appeal of your bed and breakfast and leave them wanting more.





Most people book a bed and breakfast for two reasons: a) the ability to stay somewhere unique and, b) the opportunity to save a buck. Bed and breakfast, frankly, are alternative accommodations to hotels and appeal to travelers looking for such an experience.



* If you price like a hotel: you may eliminate some of the potential customer bases due to price. Remember bed and breakfast guests are often out to save a buck and have turned to you as an alternative. Is it better to rent your place less often for a higher price or more often for a lower price?





Improvements don’t have to be expensive, and they honestly can go along the way. It could be as simple as adding another phone charging station beside the bed or relocating your router to another location for better wifi. Make small incremental improvements to your bed and breakfast can go along the way.



* Have you stayed, as a guest, in your Bed and Breakfast? Give it a try; it might reveal a few things that a regular walk through of your accommodation might not. Experience your bed and breakfast as your guest does and see when some small improvements might be made. Use your knowledge to help improve the experience of your guest.



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Brand Ambassadors are people who use and talk about your brand in a positive and relatable way, preferably, in front of a large audience. No matter how fantastic your product or service might be it’s hard to promote without the help of awesome word of mouth recommendations that come from customers that sincerely love your brand.

With social media firmly grasping its way into everyone’s everyday life, that’s where you’ll find some of the largest and most engaged audience. Brand ambassadors can help build your business by building brand awareness with a much larger reach as social media has made larger audiences much more accessible.

What’s a Brand Ambassador and Why are They Important?

Brand Ambassadors are people who eat, sleep, and breathe your brand. They’re usually already loyal customers who know and love what you sell or the service you offer. They can also be customers who have been extremely pleased with the service they just received and want to share their experience with their social following and friends.

Traditionally, brand ambassadors were often celebrities who had large social clout and air time. Now, the makeup of brand ambassadors sits more firmly with the blogger or the social media guru who has cultivated a large and loyal following.

Through social media, brands have been getting the benefit of positive contributions from their fans and followers without even having a formal brand ambassador program or a plan to build one.

The way most people talk about their user experience has changed. Nowadays a customer who might have had a great experience can share it instantly with a potentially large social media following, which extends your brand awareness. In fact, millennials are much more likely to show their purchases to their friends on social media and write online reviews. Customers as a whole don’t trust brands but they do trust other customers. Passionate recommendations from a fellow customer will be taken far more seriously and then a message from the brand itself.



People are talking about your brand whether you like it or not. So, you might as well utilize that word of mouth brand awareness and make brand ambassadors out of them.





With Millennials more prone to talking about the products or services they buy on social media you want to direct the conversation in a positive manner.





Reach a much larger and more diverse audience with the influence of brand ambassadors.



How to Find Brand Ambassadors

So we know that brand ambassadors are important but where are they and how do I find them? Well, it’s a lot more simple than you might expect. Hunt down people who love your brand or locate the people, your target market, that will love your and don’t know it yet.



Looking within your own organization: Employees are a great place to start when trying to find the brand ambassadors for your product or service. They usually know the ins and outs of your brand already so they make great candidates.





* Turn to your customer base: Take a really good look at your customer base and pinpoint the most loyal ones. Your customers are the end users of your product so t...

So you have your social media profiles and blog all set up. The tools are in place for you to start feedings those machines with great content, but where do you start?

Generating content ideas for your website’s blog or social media profiles can sometimes seem like an overwhelming task. Everyone understand the importance of blogging and content for your business but one of the hardest parts of the process is finding out what to talk about.

In this blog, we’ll be discussing some of the platforms, processes and tools, you might consider when generating your content and blog ideas.

What Should I Blog About

It’s a question we hear a lot as content marketers, what should I be blogging about?

The short answer: You should be blogging about your industry, answering your customer’s frequently asked questions, offering a behind the scenes look at how your business operates, and sharing your industry knowledge. Sometimes the best content is right in front of you.

Blog About Your Industry

Sharing your thoughts, theories, or perspective on your industry is a great place to start when trying to figure out what to blog about. You’re a savvy entrepreneur and have a lot to say about your chosen industry, don’t squander that perspective. Use it to create blog posts and social media content that your customers and competitors will look twice at.

Answer FAQs

As a business owner you undoubtedly get a lot of questions about the services or products you provide to your customer base. Use those questions to help spark both blog and social media content. The truth of the matter is that if one customer had a question about your product or service, others will have it as well. Be proactive and give those looking to have their questions answered, the answers you know they’re already looking for.

Behind the Scenes

Providing a glimpse into how your business operates and functions is a great source of content ideas. We use the example of a local Food Truck business in this week’s Strong Coffee Marketing podcast and suggest a look inside the food truck with a video during a lunch or dinner rush. Using your smartphone you’re able to capture people’s attention with something that might seem trivial to you and your co-workers.

Share Your Knowledge

Sharing industry knowledge is arguably the bedrock of content marketing and is one we often miss. Creating content around the knowledge you already have in your particular industry starts your journey to becoming an authority in your space. When you become an authority in your industry people, or customers, are more likely to turn to you for your service or product. Here’s a great example of sharing your knowledge. Be helpful in the knowledge you share and try and help potential customers looking for a trustworthy knowledgeable business to help with their problems.

Tools to Help With Content Ideas

We all use tools to help make tasks a little easier, so why not look for the proper tools when trying to come up with content ideas for your business’s blog or social media feed.

There are a number of tools out there to help with the generation of content ideas. Here are some of the ones we like to use at Strong Coffee Marketing:

RSS Feeds

Staying informed is not only a great way to keep on top of the latest trends, news, and ongoings in your industry, it’s also a great way to help peak some content ideas. RSS feeds are simply a way to get the latest published content from your favourite websites,