In Bellingham, WA, most businesses don’t become profitable after a few months – but don’t tell that to Evergreen Team Concepts, a consulting and training company. Armed with four employees and a $1,000 a month marketing budget, Evergreen tried it all, including: going door-to-door, direct mail marketing, cold-calling, issuing press releases and everything they could find on the internet. Only one thing brought customers in the door with consistency.
“We tried a number of advertising methods. Newspapers were probably the biggest waste of money, whereas, MerchantCircle was getting about 10-15 customers a week through our doors as a result of the blogs we were writing on our MerchantCircle page. We were showing up at the top of search engines in our area,” said Mike Ridpath, who handles marketing for Evergreen.
After launching the business in September of 2007, Evergreen grew from four employees to 11 by April of 2008. By then, they were one the biggest training provider in all of Washington and nominated as a Start-Up of the Year finalist for Whatcom County in Washington. The company has plans for future expansion outside of Washington, and MerchantCircle will be an integral part of marketing.
“The key to generating more visitors to your listing and driving up your search engine results come from blogs,” says Jennifer Roberts, MerchantCircle Customer Support. “There’s a consistent theme amongst our merchants who get several hundred hits to their listings a month – they all stay active writing and posting blogs. The search engines love the fresh content, and Evergreen Team Concepts is an excellent example of that.”
EventPros can help you get started on business blogging. Give us a shout here to learn more.
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