SEO Diva

If you’re an entrepreneur, you most likely had a lemonade stand for at least one summer during your childhood. It may have been your very first business venture, and you probably learned a lot about marketing during that time.

Some things don’t change all that much - are you applying what you learned then to your current business? Below are snippets from a wikiHow article and some suggestions on applying that wisdom to your web site marketing efforts.

Here’s how to do your best in the sometimes highly-competitive lemonade market.

1. Perform market research. Find out what customers want and when and where they want it. Talk to the kids who run other lemonade stands around your town and find out how much they sell their lemonade for and what kind of lemonade seems to sell the best. Find out what keywords searchers are using when they’re looking for your product. Reverse engineer your competitors’ sites to see what they’re doing to get business. Emulate them.

2. Choose the best location. People don’t look up lemonade stands in the phone book, so you have to make sure they can see you. Find a place with a lot of traffic. Google PPC ads are a good way to bridge the gap while you’re waiting to get out of the sandbox or for your link building efforts to take effect organically.

3. Set the right price. You can find out what people are willing to pay by experimenting with the price you charge for a cup of lemonade. If you can offer the same quality at a lower price, you’ll get more customers. That said, you want to make sure you’re making a profit. It’s okay to experiment with your site, until you learn what works best for you. Try out Google’s Website Optimizer.

4. Offer the customer a choice. You can entice more customers with different flavors of lemonade, such as pink lemonade or strawberry lemonade. Also consider offering a choice of sizes as well as other products. If somebody buys a cup of lemonade ask them if they’d like a cookie as well. Give customers options and show them that what you have to offer them is better or different from your competitors.

5. Find your niche. So you’ve got the best lemonade in town, but what if other stands have lemonade that’s just as tasty? Set your stand apart from the crowd by providing something a little different. Research long tail keywords that will bring in traffic that’s considered “low hanging fruit.” This may mean adding content specific to these keywords to draw in those searchers.

6. Set up an attractive shop. Your stand will probably rely almost entirely on people who stop in while driving or walking by, so you want your stand to look as clean and attractive as possible or they won’t stop. Create a great looking web site that’s easy to use.

7. Advertise your stand. Be sure to have a big, neatly written sign in front of your stand. You can also ask a friend to stick a couple brightly colored signs on himself or herself and have him or her ride a bicycle around the neighborhood, advertising your lemonade stand. Make sure your title and meta tags are in place and contain keywords that reflect what your site is about. Place social media “chicklets” on your site that visitors can click on to recommend your site to others.

8. Provide exceptional customer service. Repeat customers will probably be your stands main source of income. You can get people to come back to your stand by treating them right. Thank your customers for their purchases, reach out to them occasionally with email offers, respond to their comments on your blog.

9. Pay attention to quality. If you make great lemonade, people will come back for it and choose your stand over others. Listen to your customers’ comments or complaints once you start selling. Address negative input immediately and make an honest effort to make your customers happy. It’s easier to head off a bad reputation than to fix it later.

10. Keep track of your sales and experiment a bit. You can learn a lot from running a lemonade stand, and the more you learn the more money your stand will make. Use some trial-and-error to make your stand the best it can be, and learn from your mistakes. Use Google Analytics to learn who is visiting your site, what they’re looking for, and where they’re coming from, and use these metrics to make your marketing efforts more productive.

When life gives you lemons make lemonade.

Excerpts from How to Compete with Other Lemonade Stands.

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