Introduction to Online Marketing For Local Area Businesses

posted on Apr 06 by Tim Conley in the Uncategorized category

Did your website make you any money today?  How ’bout yesterday?  Will it make you any money tomorrow or just stay an expensive time consumer?

I have met very few local area business owners/managers who actually earn anything from their websites (and of those, few get sales locally).  I’m not sure what your advertising budget entails, but I would guess it includes at least one yellow page directory ad, maybe a quater page ad in a local paper, some flyers and other miscellaneous attempts at customer generation.  I would also guess that you don’t track sales from those ads.

What I find interesting is that nearly every local business owner won’t take the time to learn about marketing, online or off, to make sure that his/her business continues to grow.  You may even be doing this now–throwing money at this or that advertising sales rep without knowing who will see the ad, how many will see it or have any mechanism in place to determine if it worked.

Dan Kennedy, a marketing genius, says that business owners like to not think about their advertising.  They advertise where they do because it is easy–a sales rep shows up every so often to get their order.  Doing marketing and advertising the “easy” way is a sure way to waste thousands of dollars.  Doing marketing the “hard” way (creating offers that are trackable and then actually tracking) is the best way to grow your business.

I have a client who spends $400 per month on a local newspaper ad (marketing the “easy” way) and has no idea if any customers actually come in because of it.  He says he keeps spending the money because “it keeps my name out there.”  My advice to him was to create an ad that could be tracked.  His name would still be “out there” (by the way, no one cares about your name) and he could know whether it brought him business or not.

Back to websites, his website had 11 unique visitors in the month of March.  I know I was one of those 11 since I did research on his site before taking him as a client.  Out of the remaining 10, he has no idea whether they came to his business or not.  He pays $75 per month for this website–so that means he spent $7.50 per website visitor and no way of knowing if that expenditure turned into clients.  For $75 in online advertising, I could bring 750 targeted visitors to his website.  However, I wouldn’t do it because he first needs to have his site altered to be able to track those visitors to find out if they become customers or not.

Right now we are in the process of creating an “irresistable offer” that will get those future visitors to raise their hands to be communicated with to make sure they will come in, if not immediately, then in the future.  The best part is we won’t have to redesign his website or do anything that’s costly.  It’s better to design your site according to your marketing plan than to just throw something online.  However, if you have something online now, you don’t have to spend a bunch of money to make a huge difference in the success of your website.

Local Business Website Tips

1. Learn what keywords and phrases your market is using when searching online.
2. Create an irresistable offer to get permission to communicate with your website visitors.
3. Use an email list management software to get their names and email addresses.
4. Give them some great free content that educates them and makes them want to come to your business.
5. If you have physical products, let them buy online.  If you provide a service, sell them package deals or give them an application to submit.
6. Keep communicating with them.

In future articles, I will spend more time on creating offers, tracking your advertising and list building.

To your success,

Tim

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