Local Internet Marketing - Local Search

Understanding what people are doing on your site is critical (as mentioned in previous posts) but as I’ve used CrazyEgg more and more I’m starting to realize the power in seeing what people do on your site.  Now I don’t mean, what pages they visit or how long they stay but what they actually do on my sites.

Are they interested in all the links that say free or coupon?  Are they clicking on the “contact us” page from the homepage more than I thought and are they using the top or bottom of the page to get there?  The features available by simply copying and pasting a snippet of java code (just like analytics) from www.CrazyEgg.com are amazing.  See below:

When looking at the above heatmap you can’t help but know where people are looking.  All of their tools are helpful and visual which means you don’t have to understand “web analytics” to know that your contact us page is getting lots of attention and you should move it or make it more of a priority.  Same goes for your coupon page or hot items or realizing that people love to see that you have a blog.

We all love free tools and this is just another oldie (a few months) but a goodie to add a little insight to your website overview.  Here’s a helpful CrazyEgg review if you don’t believe me:)  You can also create a free account at www.CrazyEgg.com.  If there are other helpful tools you’ve come to love and enjoy please share them with me via the comments section.

What is the point of your site?  What is your goal in marketing online?  Do you have any tracking on your site?  How many small business owners don’t have answers to these questions?  The answer is always surprising and scary, most of them.

The point of local search is to allow me as a consumer the ability to find the business I am looking for, when I’m looking for it.  Lately I’ve become addicted to 1-800-GOOG411 and have nothing bad to say about the project.  It’s been quick, easy and I can name of 5 businesses that have had additional sales because of it:

Local Papa Johns (Family Pizza deal), Local GameCrazy (Wii Fit), GameCrazy (another Wii for a friend), Local Costco (hours of operation to go buy stuff at night), Local GreatClips (hair cut)

Do any of these businesses know that if it weren’t for GOOG411 I wouldn’t have bought from them?  It’s true! Before my addiction to GOOG411 I used my phone to locate local businesses and call them.  Some had websites and others didn’t.  It was usually more frustrating than helpful BUT when the time comes that all local businesses have a simple website (ideally their business name .com) that I can access anywhere, it’s going to be difficult for them to see success.

Free site builders (www.weebly.com or www.synthasite.com) are so easy to use and a typical small business would do fine creating their own site.  www.networksolutions.com or www.register.com have small business offerings as well, that don’t take much time or energy from a business owner. However, there are still millions of small businesses that should be online but are not.

The point of local search is to let consumers find their local businesses.  Attention business owners without a site, please get one.  Attention business owners thinking about online marketing, do it!  You can easily get creative with words (domains are only $6.95 with coupon code OYH3 at www.godaddy.com).  Have some fun and help future customers find you when they need you.

So if you ask any successful local business owner where they spend marketing dollars you are bound to hear that they currently use or have used one of the Money Mailer, Coupon Pak or other business coupon mailers in their area.  Why are coupons so great?  Because almost everyone that is offered a discount on a service, product or food they usually use, will go buy more!

So what do Coupon Mailers and Web 2.0 have in common?  Simple, I like to save online and in stores!  Coupon sites like FatWallet and CouponCabin are still popular with online shoppers because you can insert coupon codes, get special savings, or just feel like you did:).  Local Businesses need to pay attention to what has worked in the past and apply it to the future.  By adding coupon offers to your site (printable, usable etc.) you can track the effectiveness of your site, remind customers to frequent your site (and you can sell them more stuff) AND encourage customers to join your mailing list etc. for the special savings.

Creating a coupon can be as easy as providing a link, inserting code or the ol’ copy and paste. Sites like OneMinuteCoupon.com offer free coupon building tools to make it easy for anyone with website access to add a coupon to your business.   Using the ancient practices of coupon mailers and yellow pages you can now help your business meet Web 2.0, by adding coupons to your local business marketing toolbelt. 

The other important piece to the coupon offerings is that coupon usage increases with income (at least it does online).  In June of last year, PriceRunner did a survey of it’s users and guess what: Coupon Usage Increased with Income.  To really make your small business succeed you need customers that have money.  Online coupons are used by people with money and the assumption is that those same people will look for local deals as well.  With the push to go local, go green and save the world, why not appeal to online coupon users, with money, and entice them to shop with you?  Just a suggestion.

Local internet marketing can work and does work.  An example of this is Papa John’s pizza place.  The point in highlighting this article about $1 Billion in online pizza sales is that we as customers love simplicity and we have to buy certain products and use certain services LOCALLY.  The fact that a lot of pizza is selling online should open the minds of a business owner to say, I bet my local customers would love to do (insert your business or service here) online.

Ordering online, scheduling appointments online, asking questions online, it’s all possible.  Now the interesting piece to this article is that Papa John’s has invested over $15 million in web technology to make this ordering process work.  Here’s what that means to a small business owner, invest in your web presence and your customers will reward you.  Ask your mom to use your site and listen to her pain points, send it to your most loyal clients and ask them to share their insight.  Just because they don’t like or do like something doesn’t mean you have to do it but if there are any common themes, address them!

It’s free and easy to have family and friends use your site and their feedback is usually the closest example to a real customer.  Remove pain points, simplify your site, put your contact information everywhere and create your own billion dollars.

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.