A couple of days ago I was at Macy’s department store with my wife, getting some perfume for my daughter.

Honestly – not so exciting for me.

But as I was wondering around, I saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks.

Stupid Marketing

This is a picture I snuck while the counter girl wasn’t looking. I blurred the details to protect the innocent, but you can see it is a list of names and phone numbers.

Across the top it says:

Name..Phone number…Call me for special events

And people are dutifully filling this out.

Hello? – is this 1983? 1965?

Nowhere on this form was a place for email.

So let me ask you this – who do you think is actually going to call the hundreds of people who are filling out this form?

My guess is: nobody.

They didn’t even specify a cell or home number, so they have no idea when to call or where they are calling.

Fools. I mean really – fools.

You and I realize that getting customer’s emails would be far more powerful.

Further, I would get some old $100 laptop, connect it to the wifi, and have a permanent email capture form telling customers the great benefits, sales, special events and discounts they will get if they just leave their email.

When they hit submit, I would take them to a page that tells them to go home and look for the confirmation email and click on the link to get their first special deal.

After 30 seconds, that page would redirect automatically back to the opt in page for the next customer.

With this method, Macy’s doesn’t have to get someone to enter hundreds of names and email addresses into some program. The customer takes care of it – and is happy to do so.

With a nice database of emails building up every day, Macy’s can run specials to get customers in the door.

I might even have the customers enter their cell phone number so I could do some mobile marketing. Maybe send a text message every once in a while when there’s a really good deal running.

All this would take is an old laptop, an hour or two of set-up, and a $29/month Aweber account.

Anyone can do this for any local business and help them tremendously. And at the same time, charge them for set up and even a monthly fee if you wanted to help them with the emails.

Here’s another idea.

What’s the #1 thing every local business wants?

It’s to show up on the first page of Google for their key search term, like “Merrimack NH Orthodontist”

Getting on page one of Google for something like that is far
easier than the kinds of competitive national terms you typically hear about.

Interesting SEO Lesson:

I originally posted this late at night. The next morning, I happened to do a Google search for “Merrimack NH Orthodontist” and, amazingly, my blog ranked #2 on the first page for the term.

This resulted from the use of quotation marks around the phrase. As people become more sophisticated searching with Google, more people will use quotes for their searches.
This indicates that it might be a good idea to use quotes around your key search term at least once in any pages you are trying to rank.

Another interesting note: I rank #2 when I search using Internet Explorer and #3 when I search using FireFox. Hmmmm…..

If you’ve been doing some reading and studying about internet marketing for any length of time, you already know enough to help local businesses with their marketing, and be paid nicely for your effort and knowledge.

Watch this video to learn more.

So, what is your thought on this? Let me know!
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