In case you have just become a business owner, you should know that it is vitally important to find the best opportunities available for marketing local business. Doing all that it takes to get and keep consumers interested in spending money to benefit from your service will be your key to generate a lucrative profit.
Marketing Local Business Appeals To Eager Buyers
Local advertising campaigns have proven to be crucial for every business, whether you are a professional doctor or lawyer with some years in your field, or a roofing contractor starting out. It is always best to advertise locally even if your business is already established, because local buyers will be the first to invest their money in your products and services. Marketing local business is the best way to appeal to buyers in your neighborhood and for you to cultivate a successful business.
In many cases this exposure can expand from local to international with simple, positive word of mouth reviews. By using a marketing strategy that leverages testimonials, this will enable your business to thrive. When you are prepared with the best way to market your local business, you will not spend an enormous sum of money — not even in the beginning.
Marketing Local Business Requires Expertise
The most effective way to market local business and boost revenue is to enlist the expertise of a local marketing company. Once the majority of your community knows about you and also what you have to offer, then you should move on to other effective advertising strategies. Advertisements in the local newspapers, tabloids and magazines in order attract more customers used to be the only way. Those traditional methods may not be as effective today. All of your advertising must prominently display your business logo. It is a major visual component to your brand and can be seen everywhere. Your logo can look great on signs and billboards in close proximity to your business.
Marketing Local Business Exceeds Expectations
After you capitalize on these basic marketing techniques and your profit looks good, then you can continue to the next phase. Going beyond the traditional approach of creating brochures, pamphlets, leaflets and flyers to be distributed all over your local area, continue promoting your local business wherever eager buyers are shopping for what you offer. At all times you want to ensure that you are using all advertising options to your advantage. Striving to make earnings exceed expectations, you will find nothing more essential than effective marketing. You will discover that this is one of the best decisions you will ever make for your business.
Marketing Local Business Fulfills Dreams
Now is really the time to get aggressive with local marketing. Ensure that your local business continues to grow to the level you desire. Dream big! Always remember that the opportunities for marketing local business were never this easy. The sky is the limit if you are serious about success and you keep your finger on the pulse of your best customers. Marketing local business brings results.
Connecting with others regardless of proximity is one of the strongest values Social Media brings to the table. My blog may be read in earnest around the world and I appreciate that. LinkedIn has brought business to table with people I’ve not met nor am I likely to meet (e.g., China, India.) Exchanging tweets across the universe is fun and rewarding. So, what is all of this hoopla about Location Based Social Media?
That being said, I do in fact live here, in this specific place, and not only to I reside here, but I shop here, I eat here and I come face-to-face with hundreds of people every week — right here in Minneapolis, MN USA. Most businesses I see do not benefit from ecommerce and shopping carts. Somebody in Afghanistan on the Internet can go to target.com and order a 4-slice toaster; Target will do the currency exchange and ship the toaster to them the next day — everybody wins. On the other hand, my dentist in Plymouth, MN is not likely to benefit from that Afghani shopper. My dentist has a service area outside of which he’s not likely to profit.
Location Based Social Media are the darlings of 2010. New social media platforms, known as Location Based Services, add a contextual layer of movement and proximity to our relationships online and offline. Location Based Services are smartphone applications utilizing GPS to provide information and social networking relevant to our current location. Location Based Social Media are our interfaces to these applications. We are exploring our community online, tracking our friends whereabouts, recent activities, opinions and we shout out to our world where we are and how we want to be found.
What does Location Based Social Media mean to you? ABI Research estimates, “By 2014 global LBS revenues will have surpassed $14 billion.” The more detailed information we have on prospect behavior patterns and social context, the better we find something truly valuable to offer them. We can also provide more specific, directed information based on the location of our best audiences. Location Based Social Media is particularly valuable for brick and mortar store front business who need to drive local traffic to their store, and for anyone promoting an event at a physical venue.
Social Check-in sites enable users to access information about businesses in the local area. At the same time, Social check-in sites encourage users to develop location based relationships with other users, with their other social networks and with local businesses.
Offer incentives to users to check-in and frequent your establishment. Compelling offers bring new customers to your location and build loyalty with your existing customers. Encourage users to check-in on any and all Location Based Social Media. Honor incentives you offer across any Location Based Social Media a user may use.
Listen to your guests! Review sentiment. Comment on posts. Acknowledge Testimonials and Referrals. Most Location Based Social Media have Facebook and Twitter connections that allow your guests to promote your business to their entire social network.
Some Location Based Social Media have search options facilitating keyword and brand term searches. Look for opportunities to promote special offers to users checking in to a nearby locations. Some Location Based Social Media have advertising platforms that enables marketers to purchase advertisements based either on category or location.
Social Review Sites
Social Review sites encourage users to publish online reviews, referrals and Testimonials based on their experiences at restaurants, hotels, shops and wherever you and your business are found in Location Based Social Media. Quality scores can be assigned to each comment based on this user-generated content.
Not all Social Review sites are Location Based Social Media.
Social Review sites are critical for brick-and-mortar business — do not skip your strategy here. Utilize Social Review sites for the free market research they offer — make the changes your customers ask for as appropriate.
Social Review sites enable businesses to publish local business content. Many Social Review sites facilitate offering coupons and discount offers to loyal customers.
Make absolutely certain that your guests remember that you exist on Social Review sites. Ask them for their Testimonial. Acknowledge customers that take time to post the positive reviews. Respond to your negative reviews with tact and consummate professionalism.
Local businesses need to listen closely to what their customers say about you, and respond to their suggestions and complaints.
There is no more effective marketing than Testimonials. Every review, every referral, every comment is a Testimonial to the quality of your business. The more positive Testimonials you accumulate, the greater your authority and credibility in your community.
In real life you cannot please everybody. Everybody cannot be your best customer. Some customers cannot be satisfied. The minority negative review is real life. Occasional dissatisfaction is more believable than saccharin drivel, and builds your online personality.
Social Scheduling Sites
Social Scheduling sites facilitate sharing your “social calendar” with your social networks. Individuals can find out about upcoming events. Networks of people can plan anything from birthday parties to movie dates.
Rather than publishing to the world where you are at at this moment, Social Scheduling sites facilitate sharing where you will be. Like a public calendar, you publish where you’re going, which events you will attend and with whom you are going.
Social Scheduling sites often include comment and review functionality. Other users comment, share information, and they can publish their own intent with a “count-me-in” button.
Social Scheduling sites can facilitate keyword searching, so customers and Location Based Social Media can find out about your events. Any marketing involving conferences, meetups, parties, or other get-togethers will benefit.
Conclusions About Location Based Social Media
Carefully examine the list of Location Based Social Media. Explore the pros and cons. Determine which platforms will best help you communicate with your customers. Marketing Local Business Online demands that you go where your customers are. Be found everywhere they are looking for you.
Listen carefully and learn from your guests. Self-reporting your location has a value in itself. Declaring your current location is more than just a piece of information — your intention is behind it. Suppose you’re in a bar and the name of the place is broadcast to your colleagues. That’s both a statement about where you are and an invitation to others. They can infer about your availability or your willingness to interact socially.
Engage with your guests — communicate — bring something of value to the conversation.
Remember that Location Based Social Media is very new. You are marketing to early adopters with voyeuristic tendencies and enormous digital mouths.
Be genuine. Engage your guests with open arms, a big smile and kind words. Offer them the right incentives at the right time. Your Location Based Social Media community will become your most loyal customers and loudest evangelists. Location Based Social Media is where we’re at.
Inbound marketing is the surest and simplest means to filling your sales funnel. Marketing local business online works precisely because it puts local business directly in front of eager buyers. A full sales funnel keeps you busy — profitably busy.
Thirty (30) years ago, we had to be told when a new widget or widget service was available. We blithely went about our daily lives mostly unaware of great new things to come. Inbound marketing wasn’t an option, because consumers had woefully less information easily available to them.
Newspapers, billboards, commercials, telemarketers … they intruded into our lives, then we knew what was available for purchase. We allowed these intrusions because, without them, we remained unaware how honest they had been with us. Many companies took advantage of us in many ways, telling us no more than they wanted us to know.
As we learn to search and find what we want on the Internet — when we want it — we respond less and less to offline media. Tivo is popular, especially allowing us to skip those commercials. Caller ID is ubiquitous, allowing us to skip those telemarketers interrupting dinner. Have you checked out the Sunday Tribune Classifieds recently? I see fewer billboards, and read fewer still. When was the last time you flipped through the yellow pages?
Somebody’s Sales Funnel Is Full
Right this minute … Right here in the Twin Cities … Somebody is on the Internet searching for what you offer. If they don’t find you, they will buy from somebody else.
What will it take for you to be found everywhere they are looking for you? Google reports that billions of people every month are filling sales funnels. How many are in your sales funnel?
Admit it. You, too, tune out intrusive outbound marketing. You have at your fingertips the miracle of searching the Internet Universe for whatever you want, whenever you want it. How do you shop? Do you shop before you are ready to buy? Neither do your customers.
Like you, my 80 year old parents go to the Internet when they are curious. They search the Internet to see if what they imagine is available for purchase. When they find it — surprise! — they may also find that it is available for purchase scant miles away. Have you seen the map? The Local Business Results list local businesses immediately adjacent to that map, showing you exactly how to get to what you want to buy.
How Full Do You Want Your Sales Funnel?
What difference will it make in your life when new customers come to you and they ask to buy from your business? When your best customers shop exactly as you shop, they will search for what you offer, go to one of the businesses listed next to that map in the Local Business Results and buy what they want from a local business.
Would you rather cold call or be found?
Inbound marketing is putting your business directly in the line of fire. Learn your customers well, very well. Anticipate what your best customers type into Google and Bing, and you can place a link to your web page on the Search Engine results page that they will read. Marketing local business online requires you place your link right next to that map. Go to where your best customers are looking for you and your best customers will ask to buy from you.
Millions Now Find Local Business On The Internet Even Though The Yellow Pages Lie On A Shelf In The Closet
Is Your Local Business Getting Enough Phone Calls?
MDS Resource Is Marketing Local Business Online
What keeps you awake at night, indigestion boiling up your esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling? What do you secretly, ardently most desire? Is your business growing to satisfy all of your Needs?
With the radical changes in the economy and people moving away from Yellow Pages, newspaper Ads and other old school advertising media, your customers are looking on the Internet for you. They search the Internet, and then they go down the street and buy what they want and need. If they don’t find your Local Business in their search, they are not buying from you. When are you going to be marketing your local business online?
Times have changed, indeed. The Internet is still new; but, it is everywhere, and it is not going away anytime soon. The Internet has transformed our world, shrunk the whole world into a computer you hold in your hand, heretofore known as a cell phone. If you don’t get your business in position to be seen on that small screen, your customers are going someplace else.
Marketing Local Business Online is what you need to do to be found.
If Your Local Business Is Found On The Internet, You Can Sell
WARNING: Your Customers Are Looking For You Online Right Now!
Perhaps, a few statistics will shed light on this mystery:
Over 1 Billion Local Searches performed every month — growing over 50% a year
80% American consumers are using the Internet [2009]
80% of people first search online before making a purchase
97% Internet users use the Internet to shop [NPD Group]
90% Internet searches result in offline brick & mortar purchases [Comscore]
82% Internet searches result in calls & contact with businesses [Comscore]
74% Internet users perform Local searches [Kelsey Group]
73% Internet searches are related to Local content [Google]
66% Internet users use Internet for Local searches [Comscore / TMP]
25% Internet searches have purely Local commercial focus [ Kelsey / Bizrate]
Pepsi, FedEx pass on 2010 Super Bowl Ads … shift Ad dollars to new marketing efforts mostly online.
Marketing Local Business Online Is A Brilliant Idea
What Are Your Customers Looking For?
Old school marketing is still King. Times have changed, and media change, too. None of us alive today remember the King’s herald announcing news from the official scroll. Some of us recall barkers calling out theater or carnival sideshow attractions to passers-by. Most of us have bought something from a newspaper advertisement, or called to order something prompted by a Yellow Page spread.
The Internet and computing devices are new media. Applying old school marketing principles to new media is a wise idea. That’s exactly what we are about to show you here. Marketing Local Business Online simply makes sense.
Can Your Customers Find Your Local Business On The Internet?
Local Business Search Results
Don’t worry — if you’re a Fortune Multi-National Conglomerate, you don’t need to appear in the Local Business Results.
One of the best kept Local Internet Marketing secrets is Google Places. Until your business is registered here, it cannot be found in the search results map. Google implemented this feature in early 2009, and it’s been evolving ever since. For those buying locally, however, this is the First thing most searchers see … and probably the First links on which they will click. Once here, not only are you at the Top of Page One — look at that Map! They now know where you are and how to Get To You …
If you’ve seen maps and GPS on cell phones, this is how your Local Business shows up on mobile devices. The Mobile Market is enormous and truly the Wave of the future. Marketing Local Business Online puts you on the Map.
Organic Search Results
Additionally, you need to be at the top of the normal, Organic Search Results, the traditional results area on the left, mostly below the Local Business Results. When your web page link is in the Top Six Organic Search Results — your Local Business has Another Clickable Link on this First Search Page.Multiple Clickable Links on the First Search Page increases your odds that your Customers will go to your Web Site … once there, we believe you can close them. This is the heart of Marketing Local Business Online.
Your Organic Search Results are a function of the Quality & Credibility of your Local Business presence on the Internet. You want all online roads leading back to you and your Web Site. There are virtually unlimited credible and respectable sources throughout the Internet, and from there nearly infinite routes back to your Local Business Web Site. Remember traditional Referrals and Testimonials from old school marketing? Referral Links back to your Web Pages from everywhere on the Internet are Testimonials to your Local Business relevance.
The Local Business with the Most Links Wins !!!
Content Search Results
Furthermore, your Online Content must also appear in the Top Search Results! All Content relevant to that search adds More Links back to your Local Business on the First Search Page. You and your Local Business are going to be viewed as the Top Authority on all matters regarding this Search. Google loves Rich, Relevant & Rewarding Online Content !!! If marketing is fundamentally the relationship between business and its marketplace; then, Marketing Local Business Online presents the opportunity to initiate conversations with your marketplace.
Online Videos (Youtube.com)
Online Press Releases (PRweb.com)
Online Articles (EzineArticles.com)
Social Content Sites (Squidoo.com)
Online Classifieds (Craigslist.org)
Online Business Directories (MerchantCircle.com)
Online Review Sites (Kudzu.com)
But, wait, there’s more!
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
You want to be in the Pay-Per-Click and/or Sponsored Results up there in the top yellow box and down along the right side. Pay-Per-Click is Pay-As-You-Go — your Ad Only shows up when somebody searches for your specific Key Words. Your Ad is Only shown to your Best Customers who are searching specifically for what you have to offer. You set how much you are willing to pay, and you Only pay when somebody clicks on your Ad — the Fully Qualified Buyer.
So, the question is, how much is each Fully Qualified Customer on your web site worth to you ??? Marketing Local Business Online is your opportunity to decide.
Geo-Targeting Your Ads
Furthermore, you can also target your Ads to Local Customers in your area. By focusing on Local Customers, your Ad is Only seen locally. Locally seen Ads are more likely to attract Local Customers, are cheaper for you, and you do not compete with companies on the other side of the World.
For example, a consumer searches, “I need a plumber.” Google knows where the Local Plumbers are. When you Only show your Ad to people in your city for these “generic” keywords, you get cheaper clicks, targeted traffic and less competition. Do you see how Marketing Local Business Online differs from the yellow pages?
What If Your Web Pages Sit Atop The Search Engine Results?
What If You Are The #1 Authority Online?
Imagine what Marketing Local Business Online means for your Local Business! How many more customers do you want coming to you every single day? every single week? every single month?
What will it do for your Local Business when you have your Online Market Domination Plan in place?
If Marketing Local Business Online interests you … If you’re just a little bit curious … If your Local Business wants more telephone calls …
Contact Us Today! 612-235-6060
Make an Appointment for an Absolutely FREE and NO Obligation Consultation.
MDS Resource will review your Local Business and your current situation on the Internet. MDS Resource will work with you; we will work out a plan that Best meets your Needs. MDS Resource will light your way to Marketing Local Business Online.
If you have a Yellow Pages Ad, you are already Spending Marketing Money. What is your Return On That Investment ???
WARNING: Only A Few Will Qualify To Work With Us
Every Search Engine Result Page can present only the Most Relevant Web Pages that fit into the limited space on one page. Only an Elite Few Local Businesses can possibly be seen there. Marketing Local Business Online is simple today because you will leap ahead of your competition; and once in the lead, you need only hold the lead to win.
Do your own homework. Look for yourself. Do a search using keywords that your Best Customers will use to find your Local Business.
Which Local Businesses are on the First Search Page? How many Local Businesses are on the First Search Page? Is that your Biggest Competitor there in A. or B. in the Local Business Results? Are your Best Customers going to your Competitors because they find them — NOT YOU — in the search results?
As you see, nobody can possibly do a credible job placing more than six Local Businesses in your Market on Google Page One. Furthermore, when you consider our goal is to have Multiple Links to your Local Business on that same Google Page One, even fewer Local Businesses qualify for our representation.
Will your toughest Competitor come to us first? Do your Competitors want more customers? Are your Competitors marketing local business online.
Act Now! 612-235-6060 Call Today!
Marketing Local Business Online May Be Your Salvation
