The mission of Click First Services
Our mission is to help people and businesses selling products and services in their local communities get found online and attract new customers.
In fact, this isn’t just our mission, it’s our passion. Why? Because getting found online today is not only the simplest, most powerful and cost effective way for people and businesses selling products and services to grow and prosper, for many, it may be the only way.
From Real Estate Services to Local Online Marketing
Click First Services was founded by local entrepreneurs who recognized that it was very hard to continuously find new customers. At one point in time we were in the real estate business. We bought and sold investment property, managed real estate properties, rented executive office space and provided a variety of associated support services to our clients. Our biggest concern was our ability to continuously find new customers. We discovered that working through traditional networking groups and running local advertising campaigns was both time consuming and expensive.
More importantly, we learned that most of our clients had the same problems and concerns running their own businesses. In fact the most frequently asked question from our customers was not about the products and services we offered, but if we could help them find new customers. As a result, Click First Services was born.
Why the Name Click First Services?
Our personal experience trying to find new customers for the real estate business taught us many lessons about marketing; often hard and expensive lessons. The most important of all the lessons we learned was this; knowledge and understanding are critically important to growing your business and making more money.
When we realized our real estate marketing efforts were not working and that most of our customers had the same problem finding new customers, we wanted to know why. Like most people today, we started our research with a click of the mouse on the computer. Our research was enlightening and empowering. We realized that with the time and money we had to spend, our marketing efforts were never going to work.
We wished we had “clicked first” and learned all about local marketing before wasting lots of time and money on marketing that would likely never provide us any positive return on the investment. As with most problems, there is a solution. We developed a marketing solution for local businesses and named the company that provides it Click First Services.
We Can Help You Grow Your Business
Today the real estate company is gone. We are now leaders in providing local online marketing knowledge and services. As an example of what we do and how we do it we’ll showcase a local business. This business is a family oriented sports bar. To protect the owner’s privacy we’re not going to publish the name here. This sports bar is a typical client for us with some unique characteristics that make it easier for us to demonstrate how local online marketing works in our world today.
They have three locations in the Tampa Florida area. The owner has over 30 years of relevant experience in the business and opened the first location in Clearwater Florida more than 20 years ago.
The owners experience in the business has taught him many things. He knows exactly who his customers are, what they like, how they like it, how much they will pay to get it and how many customers he needs to make a profit. He also knows is that local advertising produces very little return on investment.
Because I personally know the owner, he agreed to allow me to show him how getting found online and attracting new customers might help him grow his business and make more money at a very affordable price.
We started by listing the business on more than 160 local business directories, search engines and online social networks. Then we showed him how to use those business listings to increase his local visibility and connect with customers and potential customers. Over time I was able to show him how the number of people visiting his website, social networks and business listings were steadily increasing. In turn he reported that number of people visiting the restaurants was increasing and that profits were increasing as well.
The reality here is that the direct effects of local online marketing and advertising are very hard to measure. With regard to the particular case, we can make several observations and some reasonable assumptions. For personal reasons only two of the three locations are actively using these online marketing techniques to get found online and attract new customers. They all operate within the same general area under the same economic conditions with the same logo, menu and brand image. The two locations actively managing their online marketing efforts continuously appear on the first page of search engine search results pages, they are very active on social networks and appear at the top of search results on local business directories like Yelp. Both these locations have significantly more customers, more online reviews and measurably higher profits than the one location that does not. In addition the two locations managing and using online marketing techniques have increased their year over year net profits while the third location not only makes far less money, but has experienced little or no net growth in net profit over the same time period.
Conclusion: local online marketing techniques at the very least help increase local visibility within a target market which helps increase market share and profitability.
It’s Not Online Marketing; it’s a Way of Doing Business
Today the two of the three locations have people that are fully engaged in their online marketing efforts. They interact daily with customers online. They post pictures, talk about events, feature menu items, announce special offers and respond to comments and reviews. These efforts were once considered just part of a marketing program. Now they have become a normal way of doing business; providing relevant information and interacting with customers in a way that helps develop relationships that builds brand recognition and customer loyalty. All leading to one thing; long term profitability.