This is the second 30 days of being officially in business as a mobile notary, loan signing agent, Spanish/ESL tutor and Spanish/English translator. The main question that I have been asked is how are you getting customers to find you? When I decided to go down this path, I did market research and found that the BEST and EASIEST entry into the market, was to focus on the basics like a clean, friendly website, a Google presence and printed/online business cards.
The website hosting company I chose is GoDaddy. GoDaddy is one the Top Ten rated website hosting sites. I purchased the Website & Marketing Standard. They have the easiest templates and also purchased the domain from them. I selected a template that was rounded and red like my ladybug theme. It also has the ability to grow with my business with a powerful commerce section. I added the appointment scheduler too which has made it easier to turn people who visit my site into customers. The Marketing section was the most powerful reason for selecting GoDaddy. Furthermore, they have Social/Content, SEO and Blog Creator sections which are exciting areas to focus on in the future! There are also many, many features that I do not quite need yet but looking forward to the business growing enough to need them.
Google Business has been my saving grace!! Google for Business is the number ONE ranking factor business searches and it is completely FREE. Its Category and Description has been really helpful to build the notary public side of my business. Its Review section is also critical to your business growth! They also have a ‘Photo’ section this allows you to add picture of your products/services and of your location. The ‘Attributes’ section also allows for you to define your business; a side note here, I found this to be a little disconcerting because the options were either yes or no but still it gives you the ability to define yourself and your company within some niche areas. The ‘Posts’ section is a great way to introduce your products or services. The most important advantage of Google for Business is ‘Insights’! This allows you to view how your customers are finding you (i.e. through listings or maps).
The last option reviewed in this blog episode is to get business cards. I chose both traditional and virtual business cards. The company I used was VistaPrint for the traditional business cards. I have used them previously in other businesses and found their products to be of high quality. Aesthetically, I chose to add a QR code and a square, rounded linen type paper. I get a lot of compliments on them and am very proud to distribute them. I also chose Instagram’s LinkTree for the virtual business cards. It has some wonderful features like they are FREE and other features like a bio link, it’s quick and easy to use, easy to share content in other sites and you get to see some statistics on the link usage.
In the next episode, I will review the social media channels I am using! Thanks for reading my LadyBLOG!
Ladyblog is a blog focused on providing small business owners tips so that they can achieve “great strides, with small steps.” Ladyblog is owned by Ladybug Mobile Services, a small, minority owned traveling service that offers general notary work, remote online notary work, loan signing, estate planning, digital marketing, wedding officiant/services, English/Spanish certified translations, English/Spanish tutoring, ink fingerprinting, virtual administrative best practices and much more. They serve the Central Florida region and surrounding counties. Their focus is to provide support to the small business community and spotlight small businesses.
