Local Internet Marketing - Local Search

There were two great, and I mean great, conversion focused blog posts that went out today and they are focused on improving a small businesses online marketing conversion rates.  Alex Cleanthous at Search Engine Journal shared 7 proven strategies for improving conversion rate and made a very great numbers statement. 

As business owners it’s important to only spend marketing money when we know we are making it and more money back.  Branding, Direct, Pull and Push marketing all need to quantified to be of value and one of the great things about internet marketing is the ability to make small changes and see great results.  Thus the post above and the follow up by myself.

Alex points out that:

“For example, let’s say you are spending $1,000 per month on search engine optimization and $5,000 per month on paid advertising (making a total monthly online marketing investment of $6,000). You’re receiving 10,000 visitors per month to your website and you’re converting 1% of those visitors, generating $15,000 in revenue.”

“If you just increased your website’s conversion rate to 2%, you would be generating $30,000 in revenue for no additional advertising cost. And because your advertising costs have already been covered by the original $15,000 revenue, your profitability has just skyrocketed!”

The way this applies to a local business is highlighted by another post by David Reeve at DMNews.  He shared a 2006 study that showed how customers used the web to find local businesses and how they contacted those business owners.  Some highlights include How do customers use the website to contact the business:

and the offline marketing follow up detail that 35 percent saved the phone number after visiting the site.  By implementing any of the suggestions above your conversion rate WILL increase and you don’t have to increase your marketing budget to do it.  If you’ve already implemented the above changes try moving the location of each “conversion” point and watch for increases.  Moving the phone number to a more prominent position could increase calls, customers and sales. 

Internet Marketing has to be about conversions and the two posts highlighted above share some great insight into how and why to improve conversions.  Enjoy and let me know how it works for you.