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Local Business Advertising

"I don't need the Internet to advertise - I'm a local business!"

Okay...

If you could spend £0.04 (or $0.05 in the US) and have a new customer - what would you do with your local business advertising budget?

I hope you would spend that money again and again!

Granted this is the ideal example and you are likely to pay much more then £0.04 per customer you acquire, BUT - herein lies the rub for local businesses:

An internet presence announces your business to the world.

When you are online, you have little control about where traffic is coming to you from (if you are not actively driving traffic that is), but what if you could make sure that people who lived in your area, who buy your goods and would make ideal customers could be targeted!

Google Adwords can help you target local people, not people from New Zealand if you live in the UK - but people close to you.

Pinpoint geographic targeting of prospects is an optimum use of your local business advertising budget.

Is it 100% foolproof?

Alas no, but it's a good start.

How do I do it?

Well the easiest way to do this is as follows:

Create a national campaign with your search terms and your location terms - eg: If you're a plumber in Poole then "plumber poole" would be a good keyword.

Create a geo-targeted campaign (this can be done in a couple of ways - I'll leave the nitty gritty details out for now) which means your ads are served to local people when they search for your keywords.

So in the plumber example if a local person types in "plumber" and doesn't mention anything else, your advert will be shown.

So goes the theory anyway.

Does it work all the time?

Like I said - Not always very well.

This is because Google uses IP addresses to determine location and this method is somewhat of a cleaver when a scalpel is required.

It all depends how diligent ISP's are when allocating IP addresses to their customers, the only way you can know is through empirical means.

What if the regional targeting is producing no results?

If this is the case then a national campaign with location terms included (as mentioned above) is your best bet.

If you were to run a national campaign on the same keywords without the location terms, you will be competing with other players who have a national presence for your particular product/service which could prove very expensive.

Your local business advertising budget spend should at the very least give Adwords and PPC advertising in general a tryout. Remember there are an infinite number of keywords in any target market.

Just because the big boys may have a stranglehold on the 'obvious' terms does not mean your market is saturated

Online marketing has become the most successful method of advertising for any kind of business on the planet during the last decade. It is lightning fast and can promote your business to thousands of potential customers daily. As marketing is a primary factor for a long and successful business, the internet facilitates this process in a way that will ensure the maximum exposure to what you are offering.

Traditional marketing is becoming more expensive and slower to produce results. It also requires much more time and effort. It often has to be done by many employees and is restricted by many barriers and regulations which make it hard to get the most beneficial results. Then along comes the internet as it makes the entire globe seem like a short alley rather than a large city where you can reach customers overseas in a matter of seconds. Online marketing is superior to traditional ways of marketing in almost every aspect, and here we list the top 10 reasons online marketing dominates traditional advertising.

1. SPEED

Email marketing campaigns are fast, targeted, cost-effective, highly efficient method of marketing your business. They reach a lot of customers in the shortest time. Traditional mail marketing can take months and a lot of money and effort to generate results.

2. GEOGRAPHICAL RESTRICTIONS

The whole globe can be your customer base when you are marketing your business online, as the internet reaches almost every house on the planet. On the other hand, you are often restricted to local customers from a smaller geographical area when you market offline.

3. MARKETING EFFECTS

Online marketing is based on pull marketing effects, which means that online customers come across your website when they are looking for similar products of yours. While offline marketing is based on push marketing effects, which means you have to introduce your business to every single customer that come into your location.

4. SALES PROCESS

When your business is marketing online, you can make a sale in a matter of seconds; where the customer chooses what product or services they wise to buy, they move to the check out page, pays for the product or services on a secure page, and then receives their purchase. Offline advertising is very different as the selling process is very complex and requires a lot of effort and persuasion and sometimes can't be completed after all.

5. HOURS OF OPERATION

Your website is self-managed and requires you only to make few changes, and after that it can operate non-stop and can be selling products or services while you are sleeping. Offline stores are restricted to the human active times, this means you open in the morning and close in the evening and you can't make a sale while you are closed. In other words, the offline selling process has a shorter sales life than the online one.

6. COST OF MEDIA

If you want to make a commercial on TV or radio or a newspaper, you will pay a fortune. While online marketing allows you to make a short video or audio commercial and submit it thousands of media communities and it will cost you next to nothing.

7. LIMITED ADVERTISING LIFE SPAN

When you post an ad online about your business or website, with an article for example, it can be online forever and the place where the ad occupies will be untouched for a long time. On the other hand, offline ads can be only active for an agreed-upon period of time and then it will be replaced.

8. COST PER CUSTOMER

These costs are reasonably low with online marketing but relatively high with offline forms of advertising. They are simply the costs incurred to generate potential customers for the business.

9. CUSTOMER SUPPORT

With one email you can solve all your customer problems and concerns. This process is much more time consuming and require more effort offline.

10. ONGOING MARKETING INFORMATION

It is very easy and only takes a few seconds to collect all the information and data about every aspect of your business when you market online. Offline information and data are stored within piles of documents, where it requires a squad of employees to collect the required information.

As you can clearly see, online marketing is far superior to traditional forms of marketing. Online marketing is all about saving you money, time, and effort; yet brings you the required results you seek and most of the time exceeds your expectations.

As small business owners and entrepreneurs it's easy to fall into the habit of believing you're too busy to market. However, this is like saying that you're too busy to invest in your ongoing success.

I think it's human nature to forget about our marketing when we've got clients coming in but as soon as the flow slows down a bit (which it will), we panic and start looking frantically around for ways to get more clients coming in.

By making time regularly and consistently to market, you ensure that you continue to find and keep your most profitable clients. This is what will give you long-term success and growth in your business.

So, how exactly do you make marketing a top priority?

Here are 4 suggestions to try...

1. Make sure you have a marketing action plan

When you have a roadmap that tells you where you're going and how to get there, then actually doing something becomes much easier. When you have a plan of action, you don't have to waste time scrambling around every time you try a new marketing activity.

A marketing action plan allows you to spend less time with your marketing and be more focused at the same time.

2. Create a marketing action calendar

Having a calendar that plots out each marketing action acts as a great visual roadmap. You can see at a glance any "holes" or overlaps of strategies and timing. I plot everything on my marketing action calendar - from newsletter submission dates, blog posting schedule, special email reminders, networking events, teleseminars and so on.

Having a marketing action calendar lets you stay on top of the marketing you've committed to.

3. Schedule marketing appointments with yourself

Set aside at least a day a week to work on marketing your business. Schedule this into your day-timer, PDA or calendar and don't break it! Consider it as important as appointments you schedule with your clients. Take this time to evaluate and track your marketing activities, research new opportunities, tweak your sales goals, write an article or blog post, conduct a client survey, and so on.

By scheduling appointments with yourself, you MAKE your marketing a priority.

4. Do bite-sized marketing chunks throughout the day

You can deal with the bigger chunks (planning, writing, tracking, etc.) of marketing during your weekly scheduled marketing appointment with yourself. However, there are lots of little bite-sized marketing tasks that you can do between appointments or when you need a break from working on a large project.

Here are some bite-sized marketing tasks that can be done in 5 - 10 minutes:

* call up a client and ask for a testimonial

* sign up for your next networking event

* call a program chairperson about setting up a speaking engagement at an organization you're interested in

* email a potential referral source to set up a meeting

* jot down an outline for your newsletter content

* call a new client to find out if they have any questions on their recent purchase

* send an article, with a note, to a client you know is interested in the topic

* order a thank you gift, on the web or by phone, to be sent to someone who just referred a client to you

* submit an article you've written to an article directory website

* send a handwritten note to someone you met at a meeting recently

* write up something for your blog and post it

* check out a company's website that you are interested in possibly doing a joint venture with

Incorporate these 4 tips into your everyday work schedule and you'll soon find it easy and profitable to make marketing a priority.

With the development of the Internet, the way in which network marketing companies do business has changed dramatically. The causes of this change are many, so what we will do here is examine some of these enhancements, and see how a home based business network marketing is now a real alternative to a regular job.

In the past network marketing businesses were done primarily outside the home. You made your money retailing products and delivering them to your customers.

You could also build a network of distributors and you did that sitting around kitchen tables, and conducting group meetings in front of people in their living rooms. Is there any wonder that this industry had a 95% failure rate?

You were always asking people to do things that they were not comfortable with. Despite starting out with hopes of a high income, pretty soon it became hard work and the reality of what was needed became obvious.

In today's world, home based business network marketing really means having a home based business. You can build a worldwide network marketing business on the Internet and never leave your home to do it.

This does not mean that you will not be connecting with people, but it does mean the way you do it will be different. You will again find great assistance available online.

Communication has been made so much simpler lately, with the advent of webinars, Skype telephone on the internet, email and instant chat, and this all makes it far easier to deal with your distributors. You can be building a business halfway around the world and never leave your home office.

The other thing is that retailing products is very easy to do thanks to the Internet. You can refer people directly to your network marketing website where the whole process is automated.

Your customer can order their product, pay for it online, and the network marketing company will ship the products directly for you. Automating the whole process is one of the great things about a home based network marketing business today.

Another key point is that anyone can make money with network marketing online today, regardless of their current situation. The key to your long-term success with a network marketing business online is to get substantial numbers of visitors to your site, and then use the system built into the site do the rest of the work.

The thing that separates people who make money online in network marketing, and those who don't, is traffic to their website. To do this you will need to learn Internet marketing skills, and put those skills to use getting visitors to your site.

If you will do this there is no end to the amount of money that you can make with your own home based network marketing business!