033: Marketing and Followup
/Recorded on January 14, 2014
Topics:
- Promise Pegasus R6, 4 TB RAID 6 failed 1 TB drive replacement – live rebuild during a workday, approximately 3 hours; Promise Utility had reported a PFA condition on Drive #5; sent log to Promise support who authorized an advance shipment RMA; drive reported several bad blocks the next day and went offline; drive replaced and RAID rebuilt successfully in 3.5 hours
- Google's algorithms rank local sites higher for local service providers
- Google text ads are often clicked indiscriminately by "normal" people even though we technical people often avoid them
- "white hat" vs. "black hat" SEO techniques
- put your phone number at the top of every page
- put your email address on the page; spam is a solved problem
- good to have separate pages for each type of service you offer, e.g. Remote vs. Onsite
- being a salesperson without sounding like a salesperson
- giving away your time on "good faith" and asking the client to write a good referral; prospects look for recent referrals
- alternatives to the ACN Consultants Locator for reviews, e.g. Yelp
- however, be wary: Yelp often removes positive reviews written by legitimate users, if those users have only posted one review; also, it has been reported that "Yelp will help you remove bad reviews…for a price."