All small businesses catering to the real world ought to get started by focusing within a local area on a small niche market. There is a continuous demand around the world for effective strategies for marketing local business to the community. Regardless of this large number of businesses searching for ways to market within their local area, most end up failing. Why is this happening? How is it that so many well intentioned business people fail marketing their local business?
Are these indications that local business marketing is not effective? Is it because business people, although qualified professionals, are not capable of carrying out local marketing tasks successfully? Local marketing is really about establishing your business presence within a specific area, getting eager buyers shopping for what you offer to recognize and respect your brand. Traditionally, there have been numerous ways to market locally, such as radio and TV advertising, telemarketing and print advertising including magazines, newspapers and Yellow Pages. With the advent of the Internet, however, traditional marketing is waning in effectiveness because consumers no longer respond to intrusive advertising.
Even though all of these methods continue to be effective to a smaller degree, we have found it much more affordable and effective to advertise our local business online. Marketing local business online is a broad topic comprised of different strategies. Yes, everybody today has a website. Regardless how pretty your website looks, the true tests of effectiveness are the number and quality of the leads your website produces. How many eager buyers shopping for what you offer contacted you last month because of your website?
Start Marketing Local Business To Nurture Prospects
For starters, not every visitor to your website is immediately prepared to buy. Email marketing targeted at local businesses is a good way for people to continue learning about your business. Social media marketing is also powerful at promoting your brand in your community. Individuals more closely relate to businesses within their community than from dissimilar geographical locations. Additionally, we are a very visual culture and video is a fantastic way to tell your local business story to a local audience. Becoming familiar with these facts helps you to take advantage of and use the strength of marketing local business online.
Search engine marketing is also readily directed at specific geographic areas and regions. Considering the simplicity of this strategy, in addition to effectiveness and affordability, it is the first I recommend that you consider implementing these days. Pay-Per-Click advertising is also readily directed geographically, but due to cost you need to allocate additional marketing budget. Last but not least, increase your website traffic with effective search engine optimization and basic back-linking techniques. SEO is really about publishing the rich, relevant and rewarding content search engine users seek. Back links are testimonials elsewhere on the Internet endorsing your local business by putting a link to your website on their website.
Many people question the effectiveness of search engine optimization for local business marketing. Basically, anticipating the key words and phrases that eager buyers type into the search engines allows you to be found wherever they look. Google facilitates this through Local Business Results and Google Places. Yahoo! and Bing are also eager to provide local business results because all search engines recognize that millions of eager buyers are searching to buy locally.
Marketing Local Business Speaks To Your Community
Marketing your local business is essential if you want any new business from your community. When you fully understand and implement some of these techniques, then your local business will profit from local customers. Every business is different and one size never fits all. Try these techniques marketing local business online and determine which combination best profits your business. Besides that, understanding the strategies and options available enable you to plan effective local marketing that best benefits your local business.
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Of Excuses …
Truth be told, all of the excuses listed below I have used myself. Yes, I’m as guilty — perhaps, more guilty because of my vocation — of irregular blog writing as many of you dear readers perusing this post. Writing my Blog is Social Media. For my Blog to be found I must publish. Search Engine Marketing assumes that my online marketing words can be found; therefore, blog writing is essential to my business success.
Knowing that it is human nature to avoid the unknown, those things in life and business that we do not understand, I, too, have procrastinated and equivocated. Today, Labor Day here in the USA, I want to take a few precious minutes to explore the very best, World Class excuses for not sitting down once or twice each week and scribbling to the world why, O why, are we in business?
Without Further Ado, Here Is My Top Ten List Of Blog Writing Excuses:
I don’t have anything to say.
Really? How do you sell anything? What do you want to say to your Best Customer when she’s sitting eyeball-to-eyeball with you? I know that you are passionate about what you offer; and I know that you will have a great deal to say to every eager Prospect ready to buy what you do best. Suppose you said some of this online. Furthermore, suppose somebody new reads your online words. Is it beyond reason that some of them will be influenced by your words, and ask to buy from you? Blog writing is nurturing your relationship with your marketplace.
Nobody wants to read my blog.
Rest assured, everybody is an authority in something — even you. Regardless online or offline, marketing your business requires you to build a relationship with each Prospect, nurture those relationships, and to service those relationships throughout your business life. Every relationship begins with a single conversation. Some will listen, some are not interested — that is the way of business. When you speak to a larger audience, what happens to the number of your listeners? What larger audience opportunity do you have than blog writing?
I don’t like to write.
Do you like to write sales orders? Will you write a proposal for me? How do you feel when you endorse a check? Writing is an extension of what you have to say. When you are comfortable with speaking with great Prospects, the words drip easily from your tongue. Record your best sales presentation. Listen to yourself. How does that story you tell your Customers affect you? Put it down in writing a few hundred words at a time. Tell your story. Your Customers love your story and they’ll read your blog writing.
I don’t have time to write a blog.
OK — time is of the essence. Do you have time to write orders? Do you have time to cash checks? If you find a simple method of attracting eager buyers who come to you to buy what you offer — will you find time to sell to them? Would you rather cold call or be found? I’m betting that when you sharpen your sales tools by honing the persuasive story you tell … I’m betting that blog writing will be well worth your time.
My industry/company does not allow self promotion.
Actually, this can be one of the most challenging hurdles. For example, Financial Services professionals are subject to stringent regulations from the SEC and FINRA, and their broker/dealers and compliance departments may choose to restrict rather than interpret rules. Nonetheless, I find no shortage of commercials advertising one Financial Services provider over another. Find a way to express your personality, your trustworthiness apart from your limited business persona. When was the last time you bought from somebody you didn’t like? Blog writing is telling your story.
I’m afraid I’ll lose my privacy.
Yes, it’s true. Those words you publish online are likely to live forever — and I do mean longer than your human life. You are a professional, and I’m asking you to keep professionalism in mind while writing your blog. Professionalism with personality … this is what makes your business better. This online universe is forcing us to be better businesses. Step up and be the personality for your business. Make your Customers so excited about you that they advocate for you in public, too!
My customers don’t read blogs.
Really? Are you willing to bet your business on this assumption? Yes, it’s true, some people aren’t online often or ever. However, it’s very easy to demonstrate that millions of people are searching online for what your business offers. Google measures over One Billion online searches each month for products and services that the searchers can find locally. When was the last time you sold to a prospect from the Yellow Pages? One person reading your blog might tell ten people about you — but, only after your blog writing …
My business cannot benefit from a blog.
Are you sure? If you want to be successful in this Online Age, you must step up and be a thought leader. The easier it is for Prospects to choose among competitors the better those competitors have to get to keep playing. Practice makes perfect — we’ve been told this forever. Your Blog is a tool. Blogging gives voice to the marketer inside of you. The more stories you tell, the better and more persuasive they become. Your blog writing shall become an influential book about you and your business.
I’m afraid of bad blog comments.
Blog writing is a subset of Social Media, which, by definition, is social and public. Blogs are most effective as discussions. When readers actively participate, you have engendered a conversation — so much more than a one dimensional monologue. As in real life, you will disagree with some, and some will disagree with you. Focus more on gathering Testimonials, and less on trading widgets and widget services for money, utilizing widgets and widget services as a means to Testimonials. Won’t business be more fulfilling and everybody win?
Blogging Return On Investment is too low.
Granted, measuring Blogging ROI is problematic. Measurement is your salvation. If you do not measure, how can you calculate ROI? If you do not know your ROI, how can you evaluate the value proposition? In this online universe, eager Prospects are already searching for what you offer. If they don’t find you, they will buy from somebody else. When you place your story everywhere they are looking for you, qualified Prospects will come to you. What will it take for you to be found everywhere they are looking for you? Writing your blog ensures your visibility.
Whether you agree with items in this list — or you find this all hogwash — I implore you to comment below. Tell us what you do — or don’t — get from blog writing. We want to understand what it is about blogging that does not work for you or your business. Furthermore, we want you to understand what you do not understand. Share with us — we will listen.
… Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
“Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.”
Marketing Local Business online demands a rigorous understanding of how best to be found when people search the Internet for what you offer. To best understand HOW people search for what you offer, it is necessary to understand the tools they are using. As I write this, Web Search Engines stand head-and-shoulders above other search tools; and Google dominates all Search Engines with more than 80% Search Engine marketshare.
Before we can understand Search Engine Marketing (SEM,) we must have a working relationship with Search Engine mechanics. Effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is predicated on creating content that people want to find in a way that the Search Engines will notice and catalog and make readily findable by those hungry seekers.
What is a Search Engine?
A search engine is a tool used to find interesting information in a database. In recent times, such search tools are computerized. In its simplest form, the electronic card catalog at your public library is a search engine.
Although search engine is a general class of computer programs, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Yahoo! and Bing that enable users to search online media, the World Wide Web and Usenet newsgroups.
What is a Web Search Engine?
A Web Search Engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. Web Search Engines work by storing information from billions of web pages, which they gather from the web page code.
Web page contents are gathered by a Web crawler, or spider — an automated Web browser that reads every line of code in every web page, and follows every link on each page. Contents of each page are analyzed to determine how to index it for later retrieval. The index allows information to be found quickly.
Three essential features of Search Engines are:
crawling,
indexing, and
searching.
Search Engines evolved from Internet Directories
Archie [1990], “archive” without the “v,” was the first tool searching the Internet. Archie downloaded directory listings, not contents, of all files located on public FTP sites.
Gopher [1991] combined document hierarchies with collections of services and gateways to other information systems.
W3Catalog [1993] was the first primitive Search Engine, periodically mirroring numerous specialized catalogues.
World Wide Web Wanderer [1993] was the first web robot and generated an index called ‘Wandex’.
Aliweb [1993] was manually notified by web site administrators of an index file at each site.
JumpStation [1993] used a web robot to find and index web pages, and used a web form interface as its query program.
WebCrawler [1994] allowed users to search for any word in any web page, which is now the Search Engine standard.
Lycos [1994] was one of the first Search Engines with a for-profit business model, followed closely by: Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light and AltaVista.
Yahoo! [1994] founders David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates at Stanford University, started their guide as a way to track their personal interests on the Internet.
Google [1996] began as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, at Stanford working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP). Google’s first funding was secured in August 1998 in the form of a $100,000 USD contribution given to a corporation which did not yet exist.
Microsoft [2004] began a transition to its own search technology, powered by its own web crawler (called msnbot). Microsoft’s rebranded search engine, Bing, was launched on June 1, 2009.
On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft finalized a deal in which Yahoo! Search would be powered by Microsoft Bing technology.
How do Search Engines make money?
In 1996, Netscape sought a single featured search engine for their innovative web browser. Five Search Engines paid $5 million each to be in a rotation on the Netscape search engine page: Yahoo!, Magellan, Lycos, Infoseek, and Excite. Today, most Search Engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue.
Some Search Engines allow advertisers to pay money to have their listings ranked higher in search results.
Other Search Engines seek to categorize and prioritize web pages by measures of intrinsic value and make money by running search related ads alongside regular search engine results. Such Search Engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these ads (Pay-Per-Click.)
How do Search Engines differ from Directories?
Historically, Yahoo! was among the most popular ways for people to find web pages of interest, but it operated on its web directory, contents of which were submitted by web site administrators. Web directories are databases of human-compiled results, also known as human-powered search engines.
Unlike web directories maintained by human editors, Search Engines operate on algorithms, or are a mixture of algorithmic and human input. Search Engines automatically create web page listings by using spiders that “crawl” web pages, index their information, and follow each page’s links to other web pages.
Spiders return to previously crawled sites on a regular basis to update web page changes. Everything that these spiders gather is entered into the Search Engine database.
How do I use a Search Engine?
Major Search Engines include a simple dialog box into which you type a word or phrase, and a Search submit button to begin the search.
A Keyword is this word or phrase of words in this simplest sense.
Most Search Engines support using Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to further refine search queries. Boolean searching on the Internet may manifest in three ways:
Full Boolean logic with the use of the logical operators (rare)
Implied Boolean logic with keyword searching (typed symbols)
Boolean logic using search form terminology (multiple form entries)
When a user submits a query, the Search Engine compares it to its index and returns a listing of web page information, usually with a short summary containing page title and part of its content. Some Search Engines support natural language queries that allow the user to type a question in the same form you would ask it of a human.
What is a Search Engine Result Page?
A Search Engine results page (SERP), is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The SERP typically lists web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page.
SERP’s of the major Search Engines may include different types of listings: contextual, algorithmic or organic search listings, sponsored listings (PPC,) images, maps, definitions, videos and suggested search refinements. Major Search Engines visually differentiate specific content types, such as images, news, blogs and sponsored links.
Each SERP also includes navigation to subsequent and/or previous SERP’s, possible search suggestions or refinements, suggested similar searches, and back to begin a new search.
How do Search Engines sequence results?
Initially, web site administrators manually submitted their web site information to be included in Web directories, often for a fee. Often as part of their business model, these “search engines” featured these sponsoring web sites according to the amount of fees collected.
By 2000, the Google Search Engine was gaining popularity among searchers because it achieved more relevant results with an innovation called PageRank. Google developed an algorithm to rank web pages based on the number, trust and authority of other web pages that link back to them. Google’s premise is that good and desirable web pages are linked back to more than less desirable web pages.
Now, major Search Engines operate similarly.
How each Search Engine decides which pages match best and in what order varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve.
What is an algorithm?
An ‘algorithm’ is an effective method for solving a problem expressed as a finite sequence of instructions. Each algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task. In computer science, a search algorithm is an algorithm for finding an item with specified properties among a collection of items.
There are also many algorithms designed specifically for retrieval in very large databases, such as bank account records, electronic documents, product catalogs, fingerprint and image databases, and so on.
Each Search Engine uses a proprietary algorithm to index and return only meaningful results for each search query. The index is built from the information stored with the data and the method by which the information is indexed.
While millions of web pages may include a particular keyword, some pages are more relevant, popular, and authoritative than others. Search Engine usefulness depends on the relevance of the results it returns on each search query.
Who are Search Engine customers?
Major Search Engine business models are for-profit.
Each SERP has a clearly defined topic and targeted theme. Money comes from paid advertisements strategically placed on each SERP. Each ad includes a Web link to the advertiser’s web page. Advertisers pay for these ads to attract people searching for particular keywords.
No search engine has control over the content of the universe of web pages. The better a Search Engine responds to each search, the more money that Search Engine is likely to make.
These Web searchers are becoming more sophisticated everyday. Everyday, more and more people search the Internet to find and buy more and more.
It stands to reason that Search Engines will continuously hone their search algorithms to continuously improve profitability.
What is a Search Engine? Perhaps, it is the key to your Local Business prosperity …
It’s no longer enough to sit back and wait for new customers to come to your Local Business. Fact is, in these times, your customers are more sophisticated than ever. Barraged with thousands of Buy-Me messages everyday, they are determined to find for themselves true value. They are not waiting around for your message; but, they are seeking what they want to buy on the Internet.
Therefore, Marketing Local Business online is your new imperative. Now that you understand Search Engines, how they work and who uses them for what, it is time for you to seize the day. Use the Search Engines to market your Local Business. Put yourself in front of your customers. Take the initiative.
Be found!
Eager customers are looking for you in the Search Engine …
“… a Marketing Relationship is a specific conversation between Business and a market. Therefore, Internet and Online Marketing are relationships between Business and customers and prospects that take place in the New Media of today, and New Media of the future.”
How have new customers found you in recent months?
Today, people find out about your Local Business in two main ways:
Word-of-Mouth depends on the good will of existing customers. How would you like people publishing Word-of-Mouth recommendations online? Why not spend zero dollars marketing your Local Business?
What is Outbound Marketing?
In traditional outbound marketing companies focus on finding customers through:
Building brand awareness,
Advertising, and
Promotion
Outbound Marketing includes:
Focus on your product / service (advertising & promotions),
Focus on your transaction (sales),
Focus on your business (public & media relations),
Focus on your post-sales support (customer service), and
Focus on your customer after-the-fact (customer satisfaction)
Everyday, a typical consumer is overwhelmed with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions!
They have become quite creative in blocking these interruptions, including:
Caller id,
Spam filtering,
Tivo, and
Satellite radio
Customers need to find a very good reason to visit your Local Business.
Marketing Local Business online is quite a challenge!
What is Permission Marketing?
Alternatives to intrusive and increasingly ineffective outbound marketing are based on what Seth Godin calls Permission Marketing:
“Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them …”
“It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.”
For the business to engage the prospect, the prospective customer must grant either:
Explicit Permission (e.g., request email or catalog), or
Implicit Permission (e.g., follow a search engine result link)
Furthermore, Godin says:
“In order to get permission, you make a promise. You say, ‘I will do x, y and z, I hope you will give me permission by listening.’ And then, this is the hard part, that’s all you do. You don’t assume you can do more.”
What is Inbound Marketing?
Google reports more than 1 Billion searches each month for local products and local services.
Fully qualified prospects are already looking for products and services in your industry. Inbound Marketing is when customers call you to:
Make appointments,
Purchase products, or
Gain information
When customers find you and like you, you can get business from them, from their friends and from their family.
“Home delivery is the milkman’s revenge… it’s the essence of permission,”
Godin says.
Online Marketing is starting to make more sense …
What comprises Inbound Marketing?
Rick Burnes suggested an intertwined relationship between three main components of Inbound Marketing:
Inbound Marketing Content
Content is the substance of Inbound Marketing.
Content is the information that attracts prospects to your Local Business.
Content includes the Call To Action that converts prospects into customers.
If people don’t know you exist, how are you going to do business?
SEO makes it possible for potential customers to find your content.
Marketing Local Business online must include both Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and SEO if you want your Local Business found.
Inbound Marketing Social Media
Social Media amplifies the impact of your content.
Widely distributed content will be discussed.
Socialized content taken seriously becomes authentic.
There is more trust when a person has a choice.
Social Media have two sides:
What you say about your business
What others say about your business
Why Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing has high Value
Cost less than buying ads, PPC, mailing lists, print, etc.
Blogs and Twitter accounts are free to start
Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
Inbound Marketing is Effective
Targeting specific markets is easier
Prospects qualify themselves
Pre-sold customers search, find you and ask to buy
Inbound Marketing has great Timing
Prospects search for you
Searching prospects are considering a purchase now
Prospects considering a purchase are more receptive to your message
Godin remarks,
“One of the key drivers of permission marketing, in addition to the scarcity of attention, is the extraordinarily low cost of dripping to people who want to hear from you.”
What are Prerequisites to Inbound Marketing?
You need to do your homework and fully understand those looking to buy what your Local Business offers.
Your Market analysis includes:
What groups of customers exist? (markets)
Which customer groups do you prefer to serve? (target markets)
What do they need?
How do their needs change? (market trends)
How do they use these products and services?
What price are they willing to pay?
How do they want to receive what they buy? (distribution)
What do you offer that meets those needs?
Who are your competitors?
What are your competitors doing about your target market?
Exactly how are your customers searching for what you offer? It’s not enough to know how you describe your offering. What matters most are the exact words prospects use to search for it.
Simply make it easy for potential customers to find your Local Business.
“The Internet means you can treat different people differently, and it demands that you figure out how to let your permission base choose what they hear and in what format,”
instructs Godin.
How is Inbound Marketing Done?
Setup your web site to attract visitors naturally through:
Search Engines,
the Blogosphere, and
Social Media sites
Don’t forget your Call To Action to convert visitors once they arrive on your web page!
The Inbound Marketing process is straightforward:
You provide content of interest to people wanting to learn or know something.
You share similar content from other people who do the same.
Interested readers come to see you as an authority in your field.
When somebody considers a purchase related to your expertise, they will come to you.
Inbound Marketing is like Word-of-Mouth with people passing recommendations online.
Seth Godin sums it up like this:
“Real permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, they ask where you went.”
Marketing Local Business Online Is Inbound Marketing
