First I want to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July and Happy Birthday to this wonderful country we call home. Too often, we take the blessings we have been born into or chose by immigration for granted. Take a few moments today to express some gratitude (silent or otherwise) for the gift of freedom.
And to everyone in every corner of the manufactured housing industry, I wish you the very best starting right now. Join the Manufactured Housing Revolution (more on this to come).
Independence is great on a national or global scale, but what about the practice and realization of independence in your own life and the lives of those around you?
An often overused (some might say clichéd) expression is “work smarter, not harder.” I recently read a thread in a forum where a member was complaining that the phrase is often used with no explanation of what the user means, making matters worse instead of better.
Taking that complaint to heart, I am going to explain what I mean when using the cliché “work smarter, not harder.”
Even before the Great Recession, many of us were working harder. Many of us were approaching the limits of endurance. This helps to increase production and generate wealth, but leaves us with precious little time to enjoy it.
And when you are working as hard as you possibly can (the ‘work harder’ part), how do you produce more leads and more sales, especially those working in the retailing and community sectors of the industry?
One answer is take advantage of available technologies (the ‘work smarter’ part).
What is the lifetime value of a customer to your business?
Most businesses don’t think of this when it comes to acquiring and retaining new business, but it is very important when budgeting the cost of acquiring leads.
In a retail business, it is likely that the business will only make one sale per lead. If that one sale earns you, say $5,000 – THAT is the lifetime value of that customer. Keeping that lead happy through the process of converting them to a sale and after can result in referrals, but we are not counting that for our purposes.
What is your conversion rate over time? If you convert 20% of your leads to sales, that would make the value of a lead $1,000 in this scenario.
So the absolute maximum you could spend per lead in this case would be $1,000. Ideally, you want to pay much less than that.
Arrowhead Ranch MHC, Campbellsville, KY – StarHomeUSA.com
In the case of community owners a lot rent of $250 per month, 10% net and 5 year average stay per tenant would equal $1,500 as the lifetime value of that one sale.
How much of a difference in your annual bottom line would one or two extra sales per month make? For most retailers, a huge difference! For community owners, it would mean a plummeting vacancy rate and a return month after month, no?
Now what can you do to make that happen, where you are now and starting with the tools you have right now?
We’ve all heard (probably repeatedly) the fact that 82% of all consumer searches for a new place to live originates on the Internet. That fact alone should convince any retailer or community owner who doesn’t have a website to get one – IMMEDIATELY! (we can help)
If you already have a website, congratulations. You have the first part of the puzzle in place.
But do you have any idea how important it is to have your website appear on page 1 of search engine results pages (SERPs) for your keywords?
For my own business, Orange Cat Productions, we have captured the #1, #1b, #2 and #3 positions
on page 1 for this keyword. What is not showing is that we also have #7.
Even in a small market, it can be the difference between getting those two extra sales per month and not getting them.
How do you get your website onto page 1 of the SERPs?
Either through hard work or working smarter. And the working smarter part involved in attaining a page 1 listing will generate secondary sources of leads and can even compound your success rate. Sensing a theme here?
Moving your website from wherever it is now in your local search rankings to page 1 is a time-consuming and laborious process – but carries with it great rewards. And this is one of those tasks that brings to mind the quote from Red Adair that appears in my signature every time I send an email, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur!”
Within three (3) days of launching this completely new website and domain,
Premier Limousine had the #3 position on page 1 for their keyword.
The more competitive the local market, the costlier in time and money gaining a page 1 position will be. But the greater the reward of success.
Making the wrong choice here will cost you money – a LOT of money. But far more important, it will cost you a lot of that irreplaceable resource – time. Time where you could be earning, but are still struggling.
The Twisted Sifter’s blog holds the #1 and #2 positions on page 1, and the website is #4. Rounding that out is a directory service entry holding #3 for a clean sweep of the top four positions on page 1 for this keyword.
For those of you who are inclined to take on this type of project yourself, I will be creating a product to help you ‘work harder’. I’ll be announcing it here in this blog – watch for it.
For those of you who choose the ‘work smarter’ option, help is just a phone call or email away.
Independence of this sort is a choice. Make your choice today.
