“By The Time Your Local Business Gets On the Internet…Will It Be Too Late?” “Your Customers Are Online…And So Is Your Competition. How Much Longer Can YOU Afford To Wait?”
As a small business owner, you should be doing local internet marketing by now, if not, your business is not going to survive! 80% of people first search online before making a purchase. According to National Retail Federation and BizRate , consumers who visited a retailer’s website first, then bought from the bricks-and-mortar store spent an average of 33% more compared with the store’s other customers.
Did you know that 75% of your potential visitors live within 50 miles, and most people spend 80% of their income within 20 miles from home?
Trying to do it yourself without a professional’s guidance could take you months to figure out what to do, how to do it, and where to list your site so your local prospects can find you. And more importantly, you need to know what not to do! As a local business owner, you need specific and targeted strategies to make the Internet work for you.
For this year, think about how are you going to step up your game, how are you going to position yourself as an expert, and how are you going to:
- Expand Your Customer Base
- Attract Your Ideal Clients Online
- Maximize Your Advertising Results
- Decrease Your Advertising Expenses
- Position Yourself As An Expert In Your Market
- Create A Call To Action On Your Website That Will Convert Leads To Buyers
- Avoid Mistakes Most Small Business Owners Make With Their Local Internet Marketing Strategy
Hi, I’m Rose Antonio and I am here to simplify the local business marketing online for you and help you identify the strategies that have proven to work and stay away from those that consistently fail. Yes, you can find information on the internet or find businesses that will help you create an online presence but the question is what information works, what doesn’t and who can really help you. Most information you can find online are not for the local business and 90% of internet marketing companies think they know what they’re doing. This is probably the same exact reason why you’re feeling hesitant right now.
The strategies of even the top internet marketers will simply not work when applying it to local business without local internet marketing knowledge. Before we go further, I’d like to share with you my 80/20 success principle. What that means is that 80% of your efforts are going to give you 20% of your results. The most common mistake that I see a lot of people are making online is that they’re going after the 80% of customers who aren’t going to buy from them anyway. Instead, concentrate on the 20% of customers who are going to love you, who are going to buy from you, who are going to give you less stress, less headaches, and less customer support issues. That’s what I want to impose upon you.
If you feel hesitant with local internet marketing, there could be three reasons why:
- You may have had a bad experience before with your webmaster
- You already have a website but it’s just sitting out in cyberspace doing nothing for your business
- You’re one of those business owners who are asking this question: “How’s the internet going to help me? All my customers are local!”.
Yes, everybody’s not on the internet yet, but plenty of your customers are, and should I mention your competitors? Before you keep reading on, remember that putting up a website is only 10% of the equation, the other 90% is marketing, building trust, and building a relationship! Building relationships is what the local internet marketing is all about. Focus on the customer and you’ll never have to worry about selling. Win their loyalty and trust, and they’ll buy from you over and over again with a bonus: refer you to their friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, neighbors, you get my point!
Let me tell you this, if you’re not communicating with your customers, you can bet other companies are, on a regular basis. Let’s face it, a majority of local business owners have no way to reach their customers other than traditional ways such as yellow pages, newspaper ads and snail mail. If you’re a retail merchant or a service provider, this site is for you!
Did you know that there is over 1 Billion local searches performed online every month and it’s growing every year looking for local businesses just like YOURS? Would YOU like to know how to turn these hungry consumers into YOUR customers? This means in your local business marketing, you should include the internet because that’s where your customers are looking for you.
Listen, you don’t have to love the internet but I want you to realize that the Internet can:
- Increase your Revenue
- Decrease Your Expenses
- Expand Your Customer Base.
And if you haven’t noticed it yet, the internet may help your competitors put you out of business altogether!
I’m here to help you get your web presence known and take your local business marketing to the next level. With me by your side, I’ll show you exactly how to improve your current business and generate more revenue by using the power of local internet marketing. I know that there are a lot of you right now that are looking to change the way they do their business and I want to help you get there.
I’m going to show you how to get more customers for your local business. Customers who will like, trust and buy from you. Once you know how to do this, your sales revenue will skyrocket.
While an ad on yellowpages.com may bring traffic to your website, 81% of internet users find the website they’re looking for through search engines and that number is growing. It is evident that search engines have been helping small business owners bring more traffic to their website than other forms of offline marketing combined such as radio, television, newspapers, etc. Trying to do the internet marketing yourself is not only overwhelming but could also cost you tons of headaches, heartaches, not to mention your precious time and your hard-earned money because there are a lot of wrong information out there about internet marketing especially for small business because local internet marketing is a totally new ballgame compared to internet marketing in general.
My purpose is to help local small business owners like you have a successful online presence using proven local internet marketing strategies that will help you attract targeted visitors to your site and rank your site higher in the local search results and organic results so your website would be in front of those potential clients who are looking for your service or your product.
Remember, it’s not how pretty your website looks, it’s how your website can capture those leads that would mean potential sales and revenue to your business.
One misconception is that you can hire a website designer or developer to do the local internet marketing for you. You wouldn’t hire your carpenter to sell your house, would you? An IT person is not even the best person to hire for local business internet marketing just because he knows about website development. IT person may or may not know about sales nor is it their role to keep up on internet marketing trends. I want you to understand that marketing a website is completely different than creating a website. You could have the most stylish website and maybe paid thousands for it but if your site is nowhere to be found, what good would it do for your business?
By now, you should realize that if you’d like to have a sustainable business, handing out a business card with your website address on it is not enough. YOUR BUSINESS needs to be on page ONE of Google, period!
According to Google, 42% of online searches are related to local products and services. Your website does not stop marketing for you even while you’re sleeping or playing.
Your Local Business Needs A Website!
I strongly believe that if you want to do local business marketing online, you need to have your own website and not just have a single page in the business directory. You need to have your own site before you do any internet marketing. But before you call your kid neighbor, your nephew, your grandson, or even ask your IT person to do a website for you, you must know that your site needs to be able to convert leads into buying customers. Conversion is often overlooked and frequently disregarded when creating a website. This is one of the powerful tactics in internet marketing. Conversion is something that needs to be consistently monitored and tested. Otherwise, what’s the point of working hard to get those leads if your site can’t convert them into buyers? Chances are your prospects are visiting your website and your competitor’s so you’d better deliver to them what they want to find or they will go to your competitors.
Your Website Needs A Call To Action!
Another major mistake that I see a lot of small business owners are doing is that their websites don’t have a call to action. If visitors are going to your website and leaving without taking an action, chances are you’ll never see that visitor again. Call to action means your prospect will do one of the following: submit a form, join your mailing list, send an email to you, or simply pick up a phone and talk to you. Your website should be designed in a manner that ensures a maximum number of visitors will not leave your site without some sort of responding to your call to action. A call to action is an action taken by a visitor so you can establish a relationship with a potential customer. You need to build relationships, period. It’s actually not about selling your products or services, it’s about building a relationship that will last for a long time. People buy products or use services from people they like. In marketing a small business, you need to build credibility and personal branding.
Your Website Needs A Staying Power!
If you’re already on page one of Google, the game is not over yet. One savvy local business owner can show up anytime and knock your position down. You need to have a solid local business internet marketing strategy to keep your website on the first page of Google. I can’t tell you how many websites I’ve seen that ranked on page one of Google and then nowhere in the top 1000 after a few weeks because they really have no clue how they got there meaning they don’t have a solid internet marketing strategy to keep their position. Search engine algorithms change so quickly, you have to stay informed of internet changes to stay in the game. What was working six months ago may not work a week from now. Google, the granddaddy of all search engines, change their algorithms “all the time”. So, when Google robots go back to your site and find out that your site is not really what they’re looking for, they will remove your site from the first page faster than you can say “help”! You need to know what Google is really looking for on a website to keep your website on the first page of Google.
Your Business Does Not Need A Fly-By-Night Service Company
This is one major reason why you should stay away from those sleazy companies that offer a one-time fee to rank your website on the first page of Google. Have you encountered one of those? If you have, I’m sure you were tempted and why would you not be? But I strongly advise you not to fall for it. You see, how that works is that they will apply all the black hat (illegal) strategies they can think of and put bunch of junk links to your site to get it listed on page one of Google. Yeah, your site will rank where you want it, all right but these companies will leave you after taking your hard-earned money and say bye-bye. What they don’t tell you is that Google will go back and visit your website again after a few weeks and if they find out that there’s something illegal going on (and they will find out for sure), Bam! Google will know exactly what you or that company did to your site and will de-list and penalize your site, the result is not pretty that you might as well get a new website and start over. It is that bad. Google is so darn smart, they would know what you’re up to, it’s just a matter of time. So, why not start your local business internet marketing strategy the right way from the get go? This way you’ll be in good terms with Google and Google would love your website.
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