Internet Search, Like Politics, Is Local
Local search is all the rage. At the 2007 Search Engine Strategies event in New York City there were presentations and exhibitors touting the importance of local search strategies and tactics.
It’s like the presenters and exhibitors just discovered that people are really mostly interested in finding products and services nearby.
I guess what’s really going on is that finally technology, or its application, has caught up with what people really want Internet search to do for them.
I use Internet search for everything – especially local! We haven’t had a copy of the Yellow Pages (or white pages) in our apartment since we got high-speed access.
We Google directions to the Gap across town. If a movie is playing in Brooklyn we Google directions to the theater and buy the tickets online – so we can get in after we make the trek.
As a user we know all we need to know about local search. We type in what we want and where we want to get it and bingo – here it is and a map’s included. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
So, what’s the big deal for business owners when it comes to local search in 2007?
It’s leveling the field – putting the Main Street Companies we love doing business with right up there with their big box rivals.
How’s that possible you ask? Well, here are three simple ways to maximize your over all search results using a local search focus.
Differentiation:
What makes your company different? What are the local aspects of your business? That’s how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Local search ads and placement provide the opportunity.
Would you rather eat spaghetti at a local franchise of a national chain or a locally owned Italian restaurant that’s supported the community since 1963 – who supplies pizza for the area football team parents night and whose grand daughter won the state’s citizenship award competition?
We do business with our friends. Local search provides us with the information we need to do so.
Reach Buyers When They’re Ready To Buy:
Let’s say I was looking for a health club membership to begin addressing my 2004 New Year’s resolution. OK, so I’ve put it off a bit – but now I may be ready, so what’s my number one criterion?
Location. It has to be as close to me as possible – so I’ll be more likely to show up.
I may have been introduced to a certain company via their TV commercials. In our many walks around the various communities in New York I may have passed dozens of their health clubs. I may even know people who have a membership at one of them and swear by it.
But if I’m going to join one – it has to be in my neighborhood.
So I go online, do a local search, and find that they have a brand new heath club only a few blocks away. They even have printable coupons for various membership types. I’m doomed – my last really good excuse is gone.
Leverage All Your Touch Points
If your online goal is to simply drive people physically into your place of business you can provide them with directions to your place, a map, when you’re open, etc. with your local search strategy.
Perhaps more importantly you can offer your customers additional options for doing business with you – which they did not know about.
Let’s say you sell cement to contractors and homeowners. Your customers get it delivered to the job site or in their driveway – most of the time. No one ever comes by, even though you have people working there twelve hours a day seven days a week.
Local search can be used to tell people that you’re open in case they need to pick up a few extra bags of Quickrete over the weekend. Or they can place an order online or on your 24 hour a day voicemail for next day delivery.
Effective local search tactics reaches local searchers when they are ready to buy – with every way that it is possible for them to buy from you.
At the Search Engine Strategies event the experts told us to adopt a search marketing strategy that has global reach (hey, you never know), regional implications, and connects with our local buying audience.
How is that possible? Let’s take a top down look.
National Campaign:
For most companies this is best left to their manufacturers. Let General Motors create the buzz, show the new models, pitch the extraordinary value, and the environmental friendliness of their vehicles.
Let them do national TV and spend a bazillion dollars on search engine optimization, just push them to link to your company while they’re at it. Hey, it’s their brand; so let them do the branding.
You spend your money and energy with actions that result in sales for you.
Expanded regional Area Keyword Search:
There is an Auto Mall on I71 North of Cincinnati. I bet the dealers there sell most of their vehicles to folks who live north of downtown all the way up maybe 25 to 40 miles north of where the Mall is located.
People living a little farther north of that line may turn right when they get on I71 and head toward Columbus. People south of downtown Cincinnati cross the bridge into Northern Kentucky. On the east side of Cincinnati there is at least one huge Auto Mall siphoning off potential business as well.
Out of area local search can target these buyers telling them to come by your dealership for a comparison before they buy. If they do you guarantee to make it worth their time.
Tell them how long it will take on I275 from different parts of the metro area. And if they buy a new vehicle you’ll give them an extra $500 off if they live more than so many miles away. You get the idea.
What’s it worth to your business to increase your traditional marketing area by another 25 miles in every direction?
Local Relevance Promotions:
Don’t forget the importance of dominating the market you’re already in. A local search marketing strategy will help you solidify your base with a reminder that you’re still there.
As a local business owner you are sought out by every community endeavor for your support. Local search provides an opportunity improve on your local relevance – why people should support your business. Local search gives you a chance to remind people of your commitment to them.
As with the Italian restaurant – I’ll pay more money for new tires if given the chance to buy them from the nice people who sent the local high school band to New Orleans to play in the Sugar Bowl parade – even if it was a decade ago.
Compare that to saving a few bucks from a giant store where I am just a number and actually had to be there before 10am to qualify for the special price anyway.
Here are three things to keep in mind when considering your local search marketing strategy.
What do you really want?
How far can you haul gravel and still make money? How far can your service technicians travel and still at least break even? Do you simply want to dominate your traditional selling area or do you see local search as a way to gradually and systematically expand you company into a wider and wider area? Knowing this will help you when it comes to budgeting the resources required.
Who’s willing to help you?
Will you highly respected manufacturer link to you in a way that helps raise your status with the search engines? Or will other companies join you in an effort to build your presence online collectively? Consider the Auto Mall – there must be a dozen of more dealerships all in one place. Working together with ad buys and pooling resources to hire SEO experts will benefit them all.
What’s your budget?
Where’s the money going to come from – your major distributors, your manufacturer, our your wallet? What’s your stomach for online advertising? Do you have the people and the interest to do pay for performance ads? Or do you feel more comfortable with the idea of doing whatever SEO you can do easily, buy ads on a fixed rate basis like in the Yellow pages – and move on?
What it all boils down to is what’s important to you.
For some maybe reading this article is enough. When they do whatever marketing and/or advertising they do in the future they’ll factor some of these thoughts into their decisions.
Others will want to know more, this will have opened their eyes to some real possibilities they are missing – stuff they want to be doing before their competitors start doing them.
If that’s you, visit our directory of over 300 search engine marketing and optimization articles at http://www.ibizresources.com/seo_articles/index.html Wayne Messick’s web site http://www.iBizResources.com offers business owners a wealth of free information and business insights.
What Does Your Business Card Say?
A good business card means a well structured marketing plan, not only it has to pass the trash test but it also has to say a lot of things about the person and the company it represents.
When you choose a business card you must have in mind the fact that it must say something about the company or contain something that defines it. So in order to impress your clients you must carefully choose your business card; of course not everything suits for example you can’t have a pink business card with little ponies and work for a well respected company but on the other hand you can’t have a black business card and have a company that organizes kids parties.
Let’s talk a little about the size of your business card: in the US the common size is 3.4 x2 in (89 x 51 mm) but for example in other countries the common size is 85x 55 mm (3.346 x 2.165). If your card will travel distant lands or your company is international I recommend using the international standard size which is 85.60 x 53.98 mm (3.370 x 2.125 in) to eliminate any further problems about the size of your card.
You can choose to print a picture of your face or a drawing to help people remember you better but this is not recommended in all situations because many of these cards may be considered kitsch by a lot of people.
Another catchy thing that can be added to your business card to improve its originality is maybe an unusual shape or fold. This is usually very appealing to many people and will help you get noticed. Although these cards are more expensive than average cards they sure worth all the money especially if you care about your business and how it’s represented.
Of course when it comes to originality people can make business cards out of chocolate or marzipan but nowadays the elegant and trendy type of card is the simple two colors card. You can also try to have a card with another purpose, for example if you are a doctor you can place your schedule on the back of the card and so on.
Remember when ordering your business card that you will need to choose something that matches your style and the company style; also, don’t mess with the size, choose the standard size no matter how unusual your tastes are.
Keith Londrie II is the and publisher of http://www.business-card-info.info/ A website that specializes in providing tips on business cards that you can research on the internet. Visit http://www.business-card-info.info/ now!
Make the Most of Low Cost Ads Online
Advertising had long since been a major determinant of a business’ success. This would include the presentation of the product / service to the consumers. What really matters is how it is presented to the target market to be able to capture it.
Whatever the package, the ad media also plays a great role in determining the success of the product or service awareness.
What may be its advantages over other proven medium like the best-selling TV ads?
Advantages
1. Low Cost
Eventhough the Internet ad might be viewed as “classy” or far-reaching, as compared to other medium, this is far cheaper than most. Internet Ad Packages are offered for as low as $29.99 for a one-month run-time period.
2. Capture market
Should your product / service aim to cater to the younger generation or the corporate-oriented ones, Internet ad would be best since they would always be “hooked-up” into the net surfing sites that might have a link to your very own. Result, a great number of “hits” on your site!
2. Hassle free
All you would ever really need is a PC (and some knowledge and bright ideas in forming your site) wherein you could open your site, search for the best Internet Ad package, and check / update the status of your ad. You may actually never have to leave your home to advertise!
3. Updated ads
Unlike the TV ads that need to be updated on a regular basis, Internet ads may run for quite some time without the need for change. If so, change in the site is very minimal and may be done easily at home.
Disadvantages
1. Scope
Limited market may be captured if one would solely use the Internet Ad for advertising. Although most people now are into the use of technology, i.e. surfing the Internet, still, majority of the average consumers still relies on the old form of advertising as a means of gathering information about certain products / service.
2. Additional cost
If one would enlist the help of another professional or establishment to produce the site for their product or service, this would entail additional costs on the part of the entrepreneur.
Given the stated list of advantages and disadvantages about low-coast Internet Ad, an entrepreneur may now weigh in its applicability to his / her product or service.
The aim of Internet ad is to offer the widest range or “Maximum Exposure” of the brand at the least possible cost. Now, does that not sound good or what?
Tyler Ellison is a successful entrepreneur who teaches automated marketing strategies at his site http://www.youcanworkthenet.com and encourages others to join the community at http://www.littleguyco-op.com .
Overture/Yahoo PPC Gets Targeted Website Visitors
Overture or now known as Yahoo because of Yahoo’s takeover, was the original inventor of the use of the P4P or Pay for Performance. Overture saw that the internet was fast becoming the easiest and most convenient way to shop, and advertising was going to hit at an all time high because of the many businesses in the arena.
To get a person to go to a site than others, it needs to be very visible. Providing ads that could direct potential consumers and costumers to their site would allow them to have an increase in traffic as well as sales. Yahoo provides a service that can put a site or company’s ad in their sites that can be shown when certain keywords are inputted.
Yahoo offers a chance for any company to increase their traffic by using their services. With more people being aware of your site, there would be more traffic and visitors to your site given the chance to view your pages as well as your products. With even a small percentage of successful sales, with a high traffic volume this could still be a substantial figure for your company.
Getting a consistent substantial flow of website visitors is every company’s goal. Many methods are devised and utilized to ensure that there would be more people to boost the sales and to be aware of the existence of such a product or service. Website visitors are potentially the life blood of your internet based business.
Yahoo/Overture utilizes the same principle as Google’s Adwords. In fact, they are very similar to each other that they use keyword and keyword phrase searches and to determine which ads to show per search. When a person types in a phrase to search for anything, the search engines gives out the results in a page. Then at the right side of the page, you will see selected ads that have paid for their ads to be viewed with certain keywords and keyword phrases searched.
For example, Let’s say you run a car parts retail/wholesale site. You choose keywords that can prompt or trigger your ads to be shown in the page when a keyword is searched. When a search engine user types in Honda Accord, your ad may come up if you have designated that as one of your keywords. You don’t need to fully optimize your site with SEO methods and techniques.
While some labor so hard to make their site one of the high ranking sites per keyword search, you get the chance to be on the top of the list or at least in the first page of a search result increasing your chance to be clicked on. With that, you drive traffic and website visitors to your site a lot faster.
You will have to pony up some cash when using this service though. There are different ways Yahoo/Overture will charge you. It may be in the number of keywords or keyword phrases your ad uses or in the many times your ad is clicked on. Others offer many other services like having your ad show up not only in the search engine pages but also with some third party sites.
Third party sites support ads that have the same theme or niche as them. With more areas your ad is shown, you increase the chances of people knowing about your site or product. With more website visitors you increase the sales of your site which makes your investment with your ads a wise one.
With so many competitors in the internet based businesses, it is necessary to take a huge leap forward from the pack by advertising. Pay-per-click will be a great place to start. Many have utilized their services and have reaped the rewards of this decision. It’s a marketing strategy that will increase your website visitors as well as increase your sales resulting to profit.
It takes money to make money, while there are some methods that are basically low cost or free, using a marketing service such as what Yahoo/Overture offers will provide results faster and on a larger scale. Many businesses have learned this the hard way, don’t be counted with them.
Tyler Ellison is a successful entrepreneur who teaches automated marketing strategies at his site http://www.youcanworkthenet.com and encourages others to join the community at http://www.littleguyco-op.com .
Viral Marketing For Beginners
Magnetism.
This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. With so many competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.
It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worse of all, you business could just get killed.
While there are so many methods and schemes used by so many e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.
While the term viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.
Viral Marketing Overview
Viral marketing, also known otherwise as viral advertising, is a technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.
In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.
Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.
Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with.
Using Viral Marketing to your advantage
The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.
Most every site and companies are catching on to the effectivity of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.
Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. They are also very low cost that not investing in it could be downright a business suicide. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them more popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”??
Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize the scheme online and it has worked wonders for them.
Now it’s your turn to use viral techniques to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.
Tyler Ellison is a successful entrepreneur who teaches automated marketing strategies at his site http://www.youcanworkthenet.com and encourages others to join the community at http://www.littleguyco-op.com .