by Laurie Griffith
When a small company operating out of St. Louis’ T-Rex technology incubator lands more than a few global accounts, people begin to take notice. More important, people begin to ask how it was able to crack the corporate nut. Ed Spinaio, founder and CEO of Time To Cater, talks about how his company landed Google, Tumblr, Pfizer, Gymboree, Vera Bradley and Ketchum, one of the largest global public relations agencies. “In a word, ‘SEO,’” says Ed. “My partner, Chris Gorrell, has a background in digital marketing and targeted search strategies. Chris has created an SEO (search engine optimization) strategy that effectively attracts large corporate clients from all over the nation to the Time To Cater website. We’ve spoken to several of our competitors who tell us that they have been in the online catering business for over 10 years and have not been successful landing a large corporate account, or any corporate account really. They want to know our secret sauce. I tell them that SEO drives customers to our site and our business model and service level keeps them coming back.”
Gorrell, CMO at Time To Cater, is also the managing director at Strategy STL, a digital marketing agency based in St. Louis. He notes that “from a best practices standpoint, it’s reasonable to say that companies who don’t have a strong SEO strategy are potentially missing opportunities to land customers.”
According to Gorrell, here are the top three things to consider when building an SEO strategy for your business:
1. Clearly identify your target audience and determine its online search patterns.
“At Time To Cater, we want to reach corporate customers who are searching for a national catering company that has the ability to cater multiple events in multiple cities on the same day or spread out over time,” Gorrell says. “Determining their online search patterns is a matter of creating metrics in a well-designed SEO strategy and then analyzing the data.”
2. Search engine rankings are great, but conversion rates are better.
“As a nationwide catering company, when executing our SEO plan we do not focus on driving lots of traffic to our website. Instead we focus on attracting specific companies that will most likely purchase from us based on a number of characteristics, such as size, industry, revenue, and location,” he says. “Instead of casting a wide net, we attract potential customers with extreme precision.”
3. Get in the front door and then evaluate the next step.
Time To Cater just landed a yearlong contract with Tumblr. Gorrell outlined his comprehensive digital strategy with Tumblr and its parent company, Yahoo. “Once we land a customer like Tumblr, who searched for a national catering company, we secure a place in their vendor network. Then we target other divisions of the company through additional SEO strategies and marketing campaigns. Tumblr is a division of Yahoo, which opens up the opportunity to go after any Yahoo company.”
Time To Cater’s approach to using SEO is simple and straightforward. According to Gorrell, the key is to create a custom SEO strategy that is tailored to a company’s target audience. He will be talking more about SEO strategy and how it can directly impact your business at the next Sharp & On Point Speaker Series from 7:30 to 9 a.m. April 21 at the Lodge Des Peres. For more information, visit www.sharpandonpoint.com or www.timetocater.com.
Laurie Griffith is a principal at Lopata, Flegel & Co. Accountants and Management Consultants. Join us at the free monthly Sharp and On Point Business Advisory Speaker Series from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. the third Tuesday of every month at the Lodge Des Peres. Learn business strategies you can immediately put in place in your office. For more information, visit www.sharpandonpoint.com.
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