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Local Business Online Marketing: Increase Your Exposure Today

Are you searching for local business online marketing tips? You’re in luck.

In the business world, your exposure means everything. It’s actually a pretty simple concept to understand. The more people that are aware of what your business has to offer, the better.

Assuming your business offers a quality product line or service, marketing is essentially a numbers game. What is your current marketing strategy?

If you haven’t yet implemented internet marketing into your strategy, now is the time.

Can the Internet Help?

You’re here today because you’re interested in learning a few local business online marketing strategies. First of all, congratulations on your entrepreneurial drive. This rare trait will assuredly help you build your business efficiently.

Billionaire Microsoft mogul Bill Gates recently made an interesting comment regarding internet marketing. And considering this man’s success, his remarks may be worth listening to.

Bill Gates said, if your business is not on the internet, your business will be out of business. This is an incredibly interesting quote that will continue to ring true. So how do you go about implementing local business online marketing strategy?

Setting up Shop

When looking to jump into the internet marketing realm, first thing is first; set up shop. Like your office or store in the real world, a website/blog on the internet is your home base and work shop.

This is where you will house all of the necessary information regarding your company. Efficiently maintaining a website or blog will allow your business to establish an online presence and garner a following.

But how?

When the modern consumer, locally or globally, is interested in making a purchase of some kind, they consult the internet. Through the power of search engines, such as Google or Bing, these consumers locate the products/services they need.

This a major reason as to why the internet is so incredibly useful. When an internet surfer types in a given search query, Google’s predetermined algorithm does its best to produce the most appropriate results. Because of this, you can do some local business online marketing by creating web content that targets popular search terms in your industry.

As an example, let’s say I own a local Pizza shop and I live in San Diego. A popular search term in your area might be ‘San Diego Pizza Delivery’.

If I write a blog post using that search term, the odds of my website ranking on the first page of Google increase dramatically. This strategy is referred to as SEO; or search engine optimization.

Expedite the Process

While running a website/blog and SEO can be efficient local business online marketing strategies, getting started can take some time. In order to rank on the first page of Google, you have to post your content on an authority website.

A new domain name is not aged enough to be considered an authority. As you can see, starting from scratch can be tough.

Luckily for local business owners, there are some programs allows you to promote your business on their aged domain/authority blog for a relatively low price. Alternatively, if you’re looking to implement a local business online marketing strategy fast you can purchase an aged domain. This will cost you more than buying a new one but you’ll have the advantage of being able to rank in the search engine more quickly.

Social Media for Business: Why Social Media Marketing for Local Small Business?

Wondering why social media for business is hot news in the media right now? Here’s a balanced view of social networking and social media marketing.

Fortunately, whether social networking will work for your business starts with a decision that many small businesses have made in the past few years. There’s lots of information to help you decide how social media marketing could work for your business and whether it’s worth it.

Who Is Using Social Media? Have You Already Launched?

Are you using social media marketing strategies and tools to build your local business, to market your products, programs and services, to serve your customers? Your competitors are.

They are making sure their customers (and potential customers) are served 24/7 with:

Location details, maps, links to web sites and service or product details at Google.
Customer reviews and recommendations at Yelp.
Event announcements, contests and coupons at Facebook.
Valuable information and education at their web site.

Tough Economic Times for Small and Local Businesses

These are tough economic times for small local businesses. If you are a small business owner, you may be wondering what to do to find new customers, keep customers coming back and still have profit left over for the wallet in YOUR pocket. Are you spending money on yellow pages ads, newspaper ads and doing more Discounts or Sales Events than ever?

More than half of the US economy is fueled by small and local businesses. Your business is one of many that spend money on advertising – or you are simply surviving with word of mouth marketing, some foot traffic and the occasional customer who comes your way because they saw your ad in “old school” advertising?

“Old School Marketing” VS. New Media Strategies

But while you are waiting for your “old school” advertising to attract more customers, hundreds of thousands of potential customers have switched to searching for most of their information online. Their fingers aren’t doing the walking in the yellow pages anymore.

More and more, your potential customers buy products and services only after they have been reassured by the recommendations of others, something that social networking online and recommendations presented online offer the discerning shopper.

Small Local Businesses Adopt Social Media Marketing Strategies

According to a report released this week from the Small Business Success Index (SBSI), small businesses are increasing their use of social media. Over the last year, the adoption rate has gone from 12 to 24 percent, which doubles the usage.

The report was sponsored by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business. It found that small businesses have turned to social media as a result of the economic downturn and are using social to identify and attract new customers, build brand awareness, and stay engaged with customers.

So, now that we’ve gotten this far, what’s next? As Abby Johnson explains, up to this point social media has been more about fun than business. Now that the newness has somewhat settled, Chris Brogan, the President of New Marketing Labs, believes it is time that social media is taken more seriously.

Why Participate in Social Media? What Are The Benefits?

There are many ways your small business can benefit from participating on one or more social networking sites. As a business owner you can:

Increase awareness
Maximize exposure
Boost credibility
Build community and brand loyalty
Multiply profits
Learn more about your customers

What Are The Drawbacks?

No matter how it’s hyped right now, social networking is not a perfect marketing or business building vehicle. There are some significant drawbacks, including:

It can be incredibly time consuming.

It can take quite a lot of time each day to participate on social networking sites. The key to success is often the amount of interaction you have with other members of the network. Small business owners generally don’t have hours every day to participate on social networking sites. To post and comment on other people’s posts can suck valuable time out of a business day.

It can be slow to generate results.

Depending on your goals, the social networking route may take a lot of time, effort and patience. It takes time to build a network online. And, if you’re short on time, the small amount of time you have may mean taking the tortoise approach to building a following and boosting your business.

It’s just another marketing tactic to learn and master.

Each marketing tactic you add to your marketing plan is another method you have to learn and practice. This learning takes time, energy and sometimes some money. The learning process can feel overwhelming, especially if you are short on time, energy and money.

There are so many options.

With literally hundreds of social networking sites attracting all different kinds of participants, you’ll want to focus on the networks where your efforts will pay off with contact with your target audience for your products or services.

There’s good news.

With the right plan and approach many of these drawbacks can be overcome or eliminated.

Out with the Old – In with the New

You have focused your time, money on being a business owner, or a specialist in your field of practice. Small business failure statistics illustrate that you may not have a handle on your marketing. Even in this economy, 60% of small businesses are spending the same amount on advertising, primarily “old school” marketing (like print media, business brochures and cards) and 26% want to spend more. Sixty-nine percent of businesses want to spend their money on online marketing.

The Value of Google Places for Local Business and Map Ranking Factors

So as search engine marketers, we all know the value of Google’s local 10 pack, 7 pack, 3 pack, whatever you want to call it. But just how valuable is it and what are the factors that search engines use to determine local ranking? This is all what we will talk about in today’s entry.

For those of you who may not know me yet, my name is Matt Parks. I’m an online marketing consultant who helps small, medium and even global companies build appropriate online marketing strategies and enhance their brand awareness through competitive traditional and non-traditional advertising techniques.

Now for what you’ve been waiting for… the good stuff…

So, you may ask… Just how valuable are the local map results for my company? Well there is no simple answer to that question. Each company should have a custom built strategy. For instance, if you own a local Thai restaurant and want to increase your daily foot traffic, local listings will greatly help your efforts. On the other hand, you own a specialty shoe store that does 100% of your business online, local listings are just not for you. Google and other search engines developed their local results pages to assist users in finding small business owners with brick and mortar shops, retail stores or restaurants, and get quick information about them – such as hours, short reviews and even menu items and sale dates.

So, we’ve whittled a few of you out of the mix now. What’s next? How do I get premium ranking with these listings?

Ahhhhh. So you want to know the magic trick huh? Well, first you need to have a listing. You can create one by logging into your Google account if you have one, and selecting the local business center icon under your settings. If you don’t have one there, just type into Google: “local business center” and follow the easy to use, step by step listing creation wizard. When creating your listing, it is very important to make sure all the information you provide is correct, including phone number and address as before you finish, you will be required to verify by telephone or snail mail that in fact the listing is yours. Now on to the pot of gold. Lets go over the top ten ranking factors for local listings…

1: GENERAL IMPORTANCE OF CLAIMING LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING – You have to have a listing first.

2: LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING ADDRESS IN CITY OF SEARCH – The closer you are to the IP, the better.

3: ASSOCIATING LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING WITH PROPER CATEGORIES – This is a must, create new categories if you need to, just don’t try and keyword stuff.

4: PRODUCT / SERVICE KEYWORD IN LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING TITLE – Use your correct full name, but add a keyword if it fits right. ie: Garden Palace – Chinese Restaurant

5: PROXIMITY OF ADDRESS TO CITY CENTROID – Don’t use a fake address, but if you are corporate, a UPS box (no P.O. box, only physical address) near the middle of town couldn’t hurt

6: PRODUCT/SERVICE KEYWORDS IN LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING DESCRIPTION – Keep it short and sweet.. Remember, you are trying to appeal to the user/searcher.

7: LOCATION KEYWORD IN LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING TITLE/DESCRIPTION – Garden Palace of Nashville – Chinese Restaurant

8: ASSOCIATING PHOTOS/VIDEOS WITH THE LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING – Not as important, but try and at least upload a logo.

9: PRODUCT / SERVICE IN LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING CUSTOM FIELDS – Undetermined how much this helps, but they are provided, so use them… But don’t OVERUSE them and stuff em’ full of keywords.

10: ASSOCIATING LOCAL AREA CODE AS PRIMARY LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING NUMBER – Local numbers perform much better, may not help with ranking, but it does with consumer trust.

An extra bonus: Make sure information in your listing is consistent across the board.. ie: YellowPages.com, CitySearch.com, etc. as Google uses these Data Sources to add trustworthiness to your listing and gives you ranking bonuses due to it being more “relevant”.

Well that’s about it.