NotaryBay.com Blog

This just in: Commissions are drowning by the dozens in local lakes and pools. Sources tell me that the culprit is a sub-prime lender and a severely injured bubble working together to kill the notary industry. How can you keep this from happening to you?

Since we can’t expect the housing market to recuperate anytime soon, what can we do to make sure we are still getting jobs? I talked with a notary yesterday who still does 30 jobs a month so the jobs are out there. There are a lot of ways notaries can advertise their business and be successful. This post provides 4 cost and time efficient ways to market yourself as a mobile notary and give you a much needed edge on the competition. NotaryBay is left out for the sake of bias remarks that may be made toward its superiority.

1) The Yellow Pages
With the invention of the internet, the Yellow Pages have become the old dinosaur of business directories and listings. However they have withstood the test of time and updated their website to compete with some of the larger search engine directories. Notaries should get listed in the book and on their website. Much like Google there are levels of Priority Placement, meaning different ad placements cost different amounts. As a notary you don’t need the front cover, but make sure your ad is noticeable. You can also get listed for free. The ad is much smaller but may generate some calls. Some advice: Don’t cram a lot of information into a yellow pages ad or it won’t attract people’s attention and look cluttered.

2) Pay-Per-Click
PPC ads are a great way for notaries to advertise locally using Google traffic. It is an affordable way to advertise online. The way PPC ads work is that you pay Google every time your ad is clicked on. It is inexpensive, as cheap as .01 cent per click, depending on the search term. In order for PPC ads to be effective you must have a website, MySpace, or a domain that has your information on it. It would be difficult to explain PPC in 5 pages let alone one blog, so I will lay out some of the important things you should remember.
a) Bidding on “the right” keywords is important. This determines how high you will rank when someone searches for “mobile notary” for example. So bid on good keywords. (Ex. find a notary, notary, notary public etc…)

b) Go to Google AdWords to create your ads. Stick with Google, the other Search Engines and tools for PPC ads are sub par. Google has a great walkthrough that will show you how to maximize the click through ratio to your site. When NotaryOne uses this method of marketing we have found we get a lot of personal calls for single docs. You will get more single docs then you will mortgage docs so be aware of the trade off.

3) Hey Neighbor!
Get out there are kick it with the locals. Very few sales ideas have worked as well as the face to face meeting. If you aren’t getting jobs you might as well go in and see what’s up. If you have done signings for this company, ask them how business is going and why they haven’t called you. New Title and Escrow companies can be approached this way as well. Bring cookies, donuts, or bagels to them to try and build a relationship. We have done this before and still communicate with our clients from years ago.

4) Online Listings
Last but certainly not least is online listings. At the beginning of this post I promised I would leave out NotaryBay. I will, but I am going to leave out everyone else as well. Tons of Escrow, Title, and Closing Companies are going online to find their notaries. Get listed with as many as you can because the more places you are online the more you are going to be contacted. Once listed it is smart to pay to be ranked higher. If the site is sketchy wait until you receive a job for free before you start paying. Some of them are cool too.

Keep your heads up notaries, the market will pick up and then we will be once again drowning in calls instead of eating our wallets. Mortgage companies are still filling orders and hiring notaries like you, there has to be more differentiation to separate yourself from the competition. These are ways you can do that. Good Luck Notaries!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.