So as some of you long time readers know the family and I make our annual trek to Belvidere NJ to cut down our Xmas tree at Wycoff's tree farm (BTW - unlike the older post the tree farm is back better than ever). We stopped going to the GroRite farm because they still haven't reopened the beautiful Poinsettia farm, but we did go to our favorite hot dog stand Hot Dog Johnny's in Buttzville NJ or as I've been telling my wife, the place we will be mailing our holiday cards from this year. Side note - if you do go to Hot Dog Johnny's do not and I repeat DO NOT order your hot dogs with anything but mustard, onion, pickles, or relish. Anyway, we also went to Mackey's Orchard where we get their delicious apple cider, their awesome home made pies made by a little old lady every morning at 3AM, and their great tasting cider donuts.
When we pulled into Mackey's parking lot there was a man sitting under a tent with a nice
setup of roasted nuts. Since we've been going to Mackey's for like 13 years we were curious and walked up. The sign under his tent read Papa's Gone Nuts LLC and he allowed tasting of his roasted almonds, pecans, and walnuts. I have to tell you - they were awesome and we bought quite a number of bags. The nuts are coated - no wrapped by sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and other ingredients so you get your sugar fix as well as protein fix. Papa told me he lived across the street so I asked him if he had a website and he said '"no". So, in honor of Papa's nuts (hmmmm)
OLD SCHOOL FACELIFT #5 -Papa's Gone Nuts
- Papa you need a website. You can't rely on your customers to show up at Mackey's; that's fine to start but you are limiting yourself especially on repeat business.
Papa, you also need eCommerce and for that you need Google Checkout; but, more on that in a second. The website doesn't have to be flashy, heck the folks at Mackey's have a home grown one. You should too. - Go Google for Your Small Business Needs - As you can see from the Checkout link, you get the following benefits: If you're an AdWords advertiser, you will also be eligible for free credit card processing for some or all of your Google Checkout sales. You also get a cute little icon for your search campaigns - see this screen shot from a search in Google on roasted nuts, NJ. That little icon is golden for your search campaigns.
- Search ads - I know you are not selling expensive products but clearly there is some business for you in search, otherwise you wouldn't have all of those ads. I'd recommend something small like $5 per day for Google and then the same amount for Yahoo. Think of that as advertising. You should also setup two identical groups - one for local NJ for in-person sales and one for national for internet sales.
- You, Mackey's, Wycoff's Tree Farm, and Hot Dog Johnny's ought to get together and provide links to each other's sites, including comments or articles. That way you can get some inbound links for each other to help with natural search results.
- Finally, I'd normally recommend some blogs, but you probably don't have time to blog and besides, not sure how much content you can generate on roasting nuts; however, the four of you together from #4 above could have a great blog to send traffic into each other. Anyway, besides that I'd turn to Facebook and Myspace to see if you can generate enough nutty friends. You could have a lot of fun in there and you might actually generate some sales. BTW - come to think of it, the blog idea from above isn't all that bad.
Well that's enough for Papa's Gone Nuts and besides I need to seal up this bag before I finish it. If you want a great treat this year for yourself or just a nutty lover, give Papa a call and order some nice stocking stuffers. You can call Papa at 908-475-8132 and send your order in. Trust me, you or your giftee won't regret those nuts.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
BTW - on a side note, as I make this post there are no search results for "Papa's Gone Nuts". I wonder how long till this post shows up in Google (11:31 PM my post showed up).
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