What Do We Mean by Internet Marketing for Small Business?

When you see us at the Network After Work events, our weekly Business Networking International (BNI) meetings, the local Chamber of Commerce and other in-person and web-based networking opportunities you’ll likely hear us refer to Burning River Marketing as a Cleveland-based Internet Marketing Firm specializing in small business, or location-based business.  But what do we mean by that and is there a need for specializing in location-based businesses?

Small Business to Us Means Location-Based

“Small Business” can be classified in a number of different ways – revenue, number of employees, etc.  Determine if we’re a match for your business by going through the questions to the right.  If you answered “yes” to most of the questions, we’re a match!  If you didn’t, feel free to call us and we can point you in the right direction – it could be a larger marketing agency that specializes in bigger business and more in-depth content marketing and marketing automation tools and techniques, or maybe you’re more the DIY size business and could use some best practices and industry resources.  Either way, reach out to us and we can steer you in the right direction.

Are We a Fit for Your Cleveland Area Small Business?
Will being on the 1st page of Google for targeted keywords increase your business?

When you talk to your customers, do you know they’re searching online? Are they using mobile devices?  If your targeted audience is using the internet to find service providers and you’re not on the 1st page of search results for targeted phrases now, your business is likely to increase substantially with a better online presence.

Are you prepared for 10-20% growth in inbound leads or more?

If your customers are making consumer decisions based on online search results, once you appear on the first page for your targeted keywords (i.e. Cleveland Roofer, Cleveland Furniture Store, Local Barber, Tax Preparation Cleveland Area, etc.) you will get more online web conversions from your website. Do you have the capacity for this growth?  We hate it when clients have to shut us down because they’re getting more business from their website than they were ready for.

Are you a location-based business?

If you’re a roofer, a painter, a builder, a dentist, physician, lawyer or other professional services, trades or retailer, than your clients, patients and customers are likely to be in  one general geographic area that we can target with local search efforts including local SEO, search engine optimization and local directory management.

Do you currently spend money on various marketing activities that leave you unsatisfied with their ROI or lack of effectiveness? ($12-25K/year)

Most of our ideal clients started out with us after being less than satisfied with the marketing dollars they were budgeting for Angie’s List, Yellow Pages, ValPak, Gold Clipper, Groupon, local cable, etc.

Do you NOT have the budget for a full-time Marketing Manager (+$50k/yr)?

If you are in a position to interview, hire and train an on-site full-time marketing manager with the skills to build a website, manage your website, optimize your website in accordance with the search engines most recent guidelines (SEO), set-up and manage directory listings, create compelling content for blog posts, social media, email marketing and marketing campaigns (+$50K/year with taxes, insurance and other overhead associated with taking on an additional employee), then you probably don’t need to outsource your internet marketing to us.  Keeping it in-house has many advantages – authenticity, responsiveness, etc. Outsourcing typically costs less.

Are you NOT getting at least 20% of new business from your website and online marketing activity?

If your business isn’t getting at least 20% of new business from online searches i.e. someone used their desktop or smartphone to search (Google) the services you provide and quickly found your website, then you are NOT maximizing your online presence.

Meet The Team

Burning River Marketing was started by two Cleveland area website design and SEO professionals completely passionate about helping local small businesses.  If you knew Bob and Kim you would know why.  They both came from a small business background – Kim brought up in the family-owned automotive repair and tire dealer business and Bob coming from the east side with a majority of his friends and family in the manufacturing and machinist industry of Cleveland.  Together they have spent decades seeing small businesses get taken advantage of by larger marketing firms with higher prices and fewer deliverables – as well as national resources (YP, Yellow Pages, Wix, Yodel, etc.) that cost small businesses time and money with very little results.

Together they have created Burning River Marketing, a Cleveland-based internet marketing firm specializing in helping small business owners and location-based businesses to get found online.