In the past, Internet marketing was out of reach for most small business owners. Until recently, our consulting firm was only able to assist our clients, local business owners, in the effective use of more expensive ‘industrial age’ small business marketing techniques. These techniques included: the yellow pages, direct mail letters, postcards, business cards, and trade magazines to promote their products and services.
These were the only effective means of promoting your local business on a reasonable budget. As beneficial as they were, these ‘industrial age’ marketing techniques also required substantially large investments to get started. And therefore, a large portion of local businesses suffered when they lacked funds for their marketing materials. Therefore, they were unable to move their companies toward consistent growth and profit. And because of this, many small and medium-sized local businesses continued to perish.
As you begin to read the rest of this article, you find yourself mesmerized by the endless opportunities that online marketing offers. The opportunity is endless. The fact is that local business owners now have a great opportunity to market their businesses cheaply, and even at no cost, online and offline.
Local online directory submissions are your first priority. The fact is that local directory websites like YellowPages.com are considered authoritative sites. Therefore, they are often the first to be retrieved on search engines like Google.com. This means that your website and/or company information will be seen before your competitors. The end result is that you get a new prospect and maybe a customer. Cost of marketing overhead? Zero.
Social media is king on the internet today. And the statistics show that the human animal is programmed for these types of events. The fact is that we like to talk and buy from people we know. We are naturally social animals or humanity could not exist. Therefore, Facebook.com and other social networking sites will be with our entire planet for a long time in the distant future. The best part is that it has yet to be discovered and exploited by a large percentage of its competitors.
The time to get online is today before the competitive heat of your competition. It is extremely important as an effective marketing point for your local business. Therefore, social networks like Facebook.com contain the breeding ground for a great opportunity to spread your business message, locally and easily internationally if you wish. And do all this at practically zero cost. Especially compared to their ROI rates.
But be careful here. Remember, people like to “buy” and not be “sold” to them. Even your friends can avoid you if they perceive or accuse you of spamming or being “like a salesman” with all your posts on places like Facebook. The key is to consistently add “value” to your audience’s lives. Be personal and relate to people. Also, it’s called “Social Media,” so act like it’s a social event. In addition, it shows news related to your industry. Give them free deals that drive them to your store or post inspirational quotes.
And sending positive vibes, never criticizing, condemning or complaining is also a great policy. And in addition, Facebook allows local business owners to create an official company page. In this way, you can allow your social network of people to discover your business and sell to you and your company. That way they will sell themselves. However, studying some copywriting basics goes a long way in getting your message across persuasively with a covert sales message as well.
The next way to promote your business online would be through Google and Yahoo local business listings. These listings tell Google or Yahoo that your business exists. This way, when someone searches for your service or industry online, Google will display your business details, like in the example above with the Yellow Pages. However, this will give your business the appearance of more authority over your local competitors. Your prospects will see you as the “go-to person” for your service or product.
A word of caution, make sure all of your business information matches all of these techniques on the Internet. Say if your business changes location, then update everything at once in all areas of the web where your business appears. Why? Because this will surely cause confusion among potential customers. Also, you may be penalized by certain search engines like Yahoo or Google.
If you’ve come this far and still have some marketing capital to invest in your business, I highly recommend you consider “PPC campaigns”. “PPC” stands for “Pay Per Click”. They are called that because you only pay for the ad if your potential prospect clicks on it. And for that reason, they are profitable. And you can set them up on Google.com or other places like Facebook.com. When using PPC campaigns I would recommend going to a good source on how to use these campaigns for maximum effectiveness because you could lose money if you don’t know what you are doing.
However, the learning curve is quite simple for most internet users with intermediate skills. Or you can hire internet freelancers to do this type of work very profitably. Otherwise, you can persist and dominate online marketing for your local business. At that point, you’ll be ahead of most of your current competitors who are still resistant to change and failing to learn how to confidently evolve their businesses into the information age. Good luck.