Local Internet Marketing - Local Search

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.

Keywords are the corner stone of search engine marketing.  They are literally everything.  Search, no matter what, is all about words people use to describe what they want.  SEO revolves around key phrases (keywords) used to describe a product, service or business and the same keywords have prices associated with them via pay-per-click.

So with all the value and importance on the key words used to describe and successfully market a website, what tools are the best to help me as a new business owner understand how someone goes to Google and searches for what I have to offer? 

Remember the “IT” commercials that ebay had running last year, and even this year, I think.  Not only can you get “IT” on ebay but whatever words your customers use to describe “IT” should be your focus in search engine marketing.  I think the common response and creation process for keywords is to bid on the official name and variations of the official name and call it good.  I’m a dentist so I need to bid on city dentist.  Well what about dental, family dental, wisdom teeth, broken tooth, tooth doctor (yes some people still search for tooth doctor) or city state service type keyword phrases.

 Google has a great tool to help get you thinking but don’t let it be your only resource and don’t assume Broad match will cover everything you want to cover.  In fact, practice not using Broad match at all and see how you do.  Here are some other FREE and/or inexpensive outside tools to help you with your keyword creation process.

Keyword Discovery - Free search tool helps to get you started and should do for most small businesses.

Coolest Keyword Tool - Pulls a lot of data from Word Tracker and is another excellent, free tool from Mr. SEO - Adam Wall

Good Keywords - This is a useful windows software offering that I use to help me organize and create better groups.

Google Keyword Tool - Thank you Google for offering a keyword tool to everyone that is accessible outside of Adwords.  You can have them spider your site to make suggestions or use it like the other tools - enter keyword - get suggestions.

Excel Spreadsheet - Never underestimate the power of an excel spreadsheet and your own brain.  Sometimes this is the best way to get a quality keyword list.

I really do love Internet Marketing and have done (and do) affiliate marketing, blogging, seo, paid search, ecommerce, retail, local and lot’s of other fun pieces of the internet marketing umbrella.  I like to think I’ve learned a lot over the years but I am also honest in saying I’ve learned a lot from other resources.  Sometimes it’s about reading an article or story with a unique point of view and applying it to my business or website in a way that would probably surprise the article writer.  Other times it’s that “ah ha” moment of enlightenment that leads to a new top selling product or marketing idea.

 I’d like to start the new year with some recommendations on where to get ideas and how to learn the art of internet marketing….from print. Here comes my list, in no particular order, of magazines that you must subscribe to if you own a local business and you are interested enough in internet marketing to learn something.  The reason for talking print when I’m a big internet geek is because the print magazine forces me to read something other than a computer screen…and I like the magazines!   (no affiliate links if you do sign up so know that I am honestly recommending these).

Inc Magazine (www.inc.com)  It’s fantastic because it offers unique insights into the business minds of a variety of companies and has some fun suggestions.  The topic on the cover is compelling about 8 months of the year.

Revenue Magazine (www.revenuetoday.com) This is an affiliate focused magazine which is one of the best for offering insights and information for anyone interested in becoming an affiliate or figuring out what the term really means.

Entrepreneur Magazine (www.entrepreneur.com) You want the best magazine for any website owner or small business owner?  You need Entrepreneur magazine.  They do such a good job of really helping an entrepreneur with all areas of their business that I actually get excited and smile when it arrives at the office.  I do skip a few articles every issue but I learn something in every issue which means I’ll be subscribing until one of us disappears.

BusinessWeek (www.businessweek.com)  What a fun business magazine.  I love getting the information from outside of my industry because it helps me see the big picture. The greatest part about this magazine is the “week”.  There is always a great interview with someone in business and although I admit to letting it pile up once in a while, I still love taking it on any airplane trip.

Fortune (www.fortune.com) You know you are in a great industry when top level magazines like Fortune and Forbes start adding more stories about search marketing.  One day they’ll actually use the letters SEO to describe search engine optimization but until that day I still find Fortune one of the most motivating magazines I get.  It helps me realize how big the world is and the revenue opportunities for any business.

Fast Company (www.fastcompany.com) I only like it every other month but I know that it will get better.  I used to love Business 2.0 but now that it’s gone, Fast Company has replaced it as an every other month favorite.

 I’m sure I missed a few but these are the magazines I subscribe to and can confidently say, I’m glad I do!