Garrow Media, LLC recently donated $5,000 to the Burke Center. This beneficial community asset is located in Dripping Springs, TX near Austin. It's a home for boys in need. Also, Garrow Media, LLC provides all web-related services to the Burke Center at no charge in order to promote the welfare of the center and their good work.

The Burke Center for Youth is a multi-faceted group in Texas which offers support and hope to children in crisis. They help abused and abandoned boys and girls of nearly every age. They also offer treatment services for troubled teenage boys from stable homes whose mothers and fathers have tried just about everything.

The Burke Center is responsible for providing the following exceptional youth-related programs to the Dripping Springs/Austin, TX region:

Adoption Services - For children who're not able to be reunited with their birth families, they work to find families who're able to open their heart and their home to kids who need a family to call their very own. They do Matched Adoptions as well as Foster to Adopt.

Pathfinders Ranch Boys Treatment Program – This is an incredibly structured treatment program created to assist teenage boys who have significant behavioral and emotional difficulties. Typically, they have experienced disturbing events which have triggered their inability to manage their behaviors properly. Boys vary in age from 11 to 17. The Burke Center's treatment program is made for young individuals who require a really structured setting and continuous supervision. Their aim is to stabilize them and help them to learn their strengths.

Foster Care Services - The Burke Center offers on-call emergency placement families who are prepared to take children recently saved from abuse and/or neglect. They have homes with unique skills including the ability to help children with autism, mental retardation, emotional disorders, and also those with medically delicate needs. They also have families who concentrate on helping young people who need to get ready for independence as they age.

Garrow Media, LLC offers cost-effective website design, web development, and SEO services to over 300 clients around the U.S. They are responsible for supplying customized services to clients hoping to reach their target audience on a local, regional, and national scale. Their specialty is assisting clients to turn potential leads into active clients by making use of effective directional marketing techniques.

For more information, please feel free to contact Garrow Media, LLC at 800-886-6977.

Reposted from Steve Teneriello's article, "Service Magic’s Dirty Little Exact Match Lead Generation Secret"

(Steve Teneriello, Februrary 22, 2012, "Service Magic’s Dirty Little Exact Match Lead Generation Secret" http://blog.theservicecoach.com/blog-0/bid/51256/Service-Magic-s-Dirty-Little-Exact-Match-Lead-Generation-Secre)

"Just recently I was working with one of my clients who happens to be an exact match lead generation customer of Service Magic and found some disturbing information as I was reviewing his presence on the major local search directories.  One of the things we do to help our clients at The Service Coach is create, manage and publish enhanced business listings on over 250 local search directories.  These sites include Google Places, Yahoo Local, Superpages.com and more.  Placing your business profile on these sites will help you generate organic leads as well as increased authority back to your website – helping you rank above your competitors in the search engines.  Submitting your site to 250 local search directories can take a good 45-60 hours depending on how much content you place in your listing. I have a Free Resource – the Local Search Playsheet listing the top 50 search directories and we will also perform this directory submission for you as a service.   In my opinion it is worth the time investment  - I have clients who see 20+ calls per month just from local search directories.  So over the course of a year a typical client in a metro market can potentially see 240+ leads just from this one strategy.  

What was disturbing to me is that I learned Service Magic charges a premium on these leads.  Anywhere from $22 - $55 for a service contractor to be part of the “exact match” club.  If your generating 100 calls per year that can take a serious dent out of your marketing budget and can be applied to other executions like paid search.   And let me be clear I’m not bashing Service Magic here – I was once a customer when I owned a contracting business and was partial with their service. If you do take part in this service you will see leads – there is no doubt about it. (You’ll just pay a premium and share those leads with others :)  However there is a better way for you to get the same result at an enhanced ROI.  Here’s what I have identified their model to be:

1. You receive a call tracking number owned by Service Magic:  When your listing appears on major local search directories your prospective customer will call direct into a Service Magic call center where they will qualify your lead and send the live transfer to your office.  By the way – I tested this out and found that if you ask the call taker for a number of estimates from multiple contractors they will not hesitate to give your information to others and STILL charge you for the premium exact match lead.

Local Search Directory Hijacking:  From what I have identified Service Magic places you in a limited number of major local search directories.  They will create a profile, use your business address, the call tracking number and your service magic landing page – so if you ever terminate service your listings would be inaccurate and you will never get the calls that you are optimized to receive.  In addition it will be extremely difficult to go back and modify or request that these pages be taken down.  Here is a partial list of local search directories where we have seen them place submissions:

• Yellowpages.com
• Superpages.com
• Whitepages.com
• Switchboard.com
• Merchantcirlce.com
• Insiderpages.com
• Mojopages.com
• Judysbook.com
• Aol.com

3. Reviews:  You will notice, if you are an established Service Magic customer your landing page will contain customer reviews.  These reviews are indexed on the search engines and drive traffic to your Service Magic landing page – so you would be paying for leads that come in through people searching for customer review keywords or local search modifiers.  Service Magic aggregates reviews from like contractors and creates optimized landing pages where your profile is combined with others competing for the same business. 

A better strategy is to collect and publish your OWN reviews on your website so you own the content and are able to collect the organic traffic and leads that come from these reviews.

If you need some help or would like to get a local competitive assessment feel free to reach out and register for a 20-minute business development session where we will identify local search and lead generation opportunities along with outlining together a number of strategies that can help you push the lead generation needle for your service business."

We all get busy, really busy. One of the most common errors I see happen far too often is how, or if, businesses answer their business phone properly. Below are a few points that I feel need to be reviewed by everyone in business.

First, answer the phone LIVE. Far too many businesses either allow a caller to drop into a voice message, keep a client in a prompt system too long or have answering services that don't really understand your business or fail to answer a caller's concerns. In a perfect world we would all have 24/7 live, well trained operators doing the intake on every call. That just isn't a practical solution so here are some ideas on how to best address this concern.

Glendale, Calif. & Dallas, Texas– Dec. 12, 2011 – AT&T Interactive and SuperMedia announced today an agreement for SuperMedia media consultants to offer YP subscriptionbased advertising products nationwide to small businesses beginning in the first quarter of 2012.

SuperMedia is the first premier channel partner to join the new YP Authorized Reseller Program from AT&T Interactive. The reseller program will also be available to other premium resellers in the near future, who will supplement the coverage of AT&T’s local advertising sales force – which is the largest in the industry.

“Teaming up with a world-class team of local media consultants at SuperMedia supports our commitment to put the reach and effectiveness of YP advertising products in the hands of every small business,” said David Krantz, President and CEO of AT&T Interactive. “This relationship moves us closer to achieving that goal by enabling SuperMedia to provide our premier portfolio of YP digital advertising products to its clients across the United States.”

“We are pleased to join AT&T Interactive as its initial premier channel partner,” said Peter J. McDonald, CEO of SuperMedia. “This agreement supports our strategy to be the trusted advisor to help small and medium-sized businesses grow through effective marketing solutions. AT&T Interactive’s subscription-based products complement our existing local media presence and promotion solutions, and will enhance our ability to combine the best solutions in the marketplace to help businesses achieve their growth objectives.”

Broader Coverage Will Benefit Small Businesses Nationwide

The YPSM Authorized Reseller Program expands the availability of AT&T Interactive’s local advertising platform, a comprehensive set of YPSM ad products supported by a proprietary ad- serving technology that meets the evolving needs of local businesses. A single YP.com ad buy creates the potential for advertisers to connect with consumers wherever and whenever they search for local businesses. YP.com listings are distributed across AT&T Interactive’s flagship owned and operated properties, including Top 35-ranked YP.com1 and leading YPmobile® application. YP.com listings also have the opportunity to be distributed across the industry leading YPSM Local Ad Network, which has a potential reach of over 77M monthly online unique visitors2 and includes over 300 third party publishers across online, mobile, IPTV, and directory assistance.