Surefire Local’s DNA is in education. It always has been.
When Chris Marentis (Surefire’s Founder and CEO) first started the company, his goal was to close the gap between small businesses and the growing influence of digital on local businesses. He’d speak at some of the most prestigious contractor conferences, and get asked by many of the business owners in attendance to do everything he was telling them to do for them. These founding principles that guided him then still hold true to this day and are evident in everything we do.
Principle #1: No Matter How Small…You Can Compete
To win in today’s world (in 2009 it was a different world, yet the founding principles are still applicable) digital marketing and a well-distributed footprint enable local (smaller) businesses to compete with bigger businesses.
Principle #2: Local Marketing is the Best Marketing
Local Marketing in the sense of marketing for businesses who serve customers in a specific geographic area or if the business has multiple locations. Multiple service areas are very different than just buying services off the shelf from multiple providers when it comes to marketing and creating an online presence. An integrated web presence that has all parts working in symphony with each other is critical for success.
Principle #3: Recency and Relevancy are Rewarded
You cannot build it and forget it. Just like how homeowners need to get their roof and HVAC equipment inspected and remodel to increase the value of their homes, business owners also need to invest periodically in getting their digital presence inspected and make upgrades if necessary. Maintenance of your web presence is also required.
Your audience wants to read about your business and research your business. You can help this research by telling your story through content marketing and making your web presence have fresh content regularly. Who likes to see a website that was updated 3 years ago? How do you know if that company is even still in business? Today not only human visitors to your website but search engine crawlers send signals back to their server masters “Nothing to see here”.
Principle #4: Referrals Are Not Solely Offline Recommendations
Power of “Word of Mouse”. You love your business, do right by your customers, and have a successful business depending on your existing referrals…but is that enough to sustain success? In today’s world, your referral leads are looking for information on you and sometimes will know more than you do from the information they find.
To get in front of your referral leads, take the steps to appear when your prospects are looking for you. The results in your Ads on Google, organic results on Google and the newly introduced Local Service Ads, show the reviews your business has. Google also looks for first party reviews on your website from trusted sources where you can ask customers for reviews but have to post them on your website without editing them. The more reviews you have, the better your chances are of getting higher ratings.
Our Success Starts with You…Our Customers!
These founding principles are still very much relevant today. Its why business owners have put their faith in Surefire and adopted our approach to digital marketing. Our community includes different niches within the home improvement industry, an industry which is highly seasonal and unpredictable across the country. That’s why the only measure of success that is acceptable for our team is making an impact on each of our client’s business. Did their business grow due to their digital marketing? Did their other marketing efforts closely integrate with their digital marketing? These are factors we closely watch and advise our customers to help us with content as the way to tell their unique stories.
We owe a lot of our success to our customers. They’ve been with us from the beginning and have helped our company achieve a remarkable feat…ranking in the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for the 5th straight year.