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Newsletter -
April 28, 2006
Local Internet Marketing Using Local Search
Greetings,
Are you taking advantage of the growing
internet marketing trend
toward search engine local search?
Local Search is vital because of the high trust factor
it brings to your website, prospective buyers like to
know who they are doing business with and where you are
located. Many prefer to do business locally. Read the
page in my web about
website credibility.
The use of local search is getting really hot while at
the same time being a greatly misunderstood concept.
Local advertising online has gone past the experimental
stage. Only 18 months ago, less than 6% of sponsored
links were local businesses. Today, that number is more
than one-third. Each year, more and more customers are
turning to the web to find local businesses. Last year,
more than 70% of customers found local businesses
online. Yellow Pages, word-of-mouth and newspaper
advertising (including classified) are still effective,
but the online market is reaching new heights. Often, a
customer will hit the Yellow Pages and then turn online
to verify what they found or find additional places to
buy that may not be in the Yellow Pages.
What are we seeing? The birth of a new savvy consumer.
Local search is not yet being met with the aggressive
strategies that organic marketing is, and missing this
opportunity is one of the biggest mistakes that online
marketers can make. Using Local Search to capture a
person deep in the buying cycle is one of the biggest
reasons for high conversions. For example, a person can
do a product search for weeks, find the exact model that
they want, and then do a search for it locally and
purchase it. Catching the customer deep in the buying
cycle allows conversions to skyrocket.
Key Point: Approximately 50% of local businesses do not
have websites. Web designers should be smiling?
Most of us forget about targeting localized traffic for
keyword research: neighborhoods, area codes, counties,
other non-obvious geographic targets, airport codes,
metro areas, etc.
The conversion ratio for local search is seven times
that of national or worldwide searches, and the click
through rate is 30% plus, which is huge. With numbers
like that, if you aren't taking advantage of Local
Search, you are missing a large segment of your
potential customer base.
40% of web searchers will call and buy over the phone
instead of using your online buying system. There are
many local businesses who have stopped advertising
online because sales do not appear to be strong, only to
suffer a further drop in sales because the online
searchers were calling in and the local merchant did not
know what was generating the call ins. If you do not
have a way of tracking web to phone sale conversions,
you really don't know where your sales are coming from,
do you?
What You Should Do:
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Offer incentives to local searchers
- helps with tracking
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Buy or get links on local sites and
directories
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Get listed on
www.truelocal.com
- the cost is minimal
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Expand your keyword list to include
local geographics and retarget your web pages
accordingly
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Make sure you have your company
name, address, area code and phone number on every
page in your web
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Think outside the box for other ways
to make local connections
Think globally - market locally.
Cheers, yell if you need help,
Ron Castle |
