local Advertising On the Internet
If you're a small business exclusively serving a local market,
you probably think the Internet has little to offer for your
local advertising needs.
While search engine advertising has been a great advertising
medium for businesses capable of or interested in marketing
their products and services to a national or international
audience, the effectiveness of this type of advertising was
limited for businesses interested in advertising to a local
market until very recently. For example, a realtor with a web
site in Minneapolis is likely interested in advertising on
search terms such as "homes for sale" and "sell my home." The
only problem was the realtor would have to advertise to everyone
in the country who happened to type those terms into search
engines. This was wasteful and ineffective because the vast
majority of visitors clicking through to the site would not be
qualified visitors since they lived outside the realtor's
regional market.
Targeting a known geographic location of searchers became a
reality earlier this spring when Google launched their local
targeting program. So now the realtor in Minneapolis can
advertise on the more general terms, then specifying a
geographic area they'd like the ads to appear within.
Local Advertising works very well. There are very few types of
advertising online or offline where you have such detailed
control over who you are advertising to. Basically it's pretty
hard to beat advertising to people who are searching for what
you sell and happen to live close to your business.
Local Advertising Tips:
Promote Your Location - You'll definitely see better conversion
rates for your local advertising if you include your physical
address on your web site. We recommend including this in the
footer of every page of your site to reinforce that you're local
to the prospects.
Track Performance - When you use local advertising you will
still have to compete against businesses willing to advertise
nationally on the same search phrases. This means search terms
can get expensive but your conversion rates should support this.
However, as with any form of advertising, it's important to
track what's working.
Create informal alliances with other locally-oriented,
non-competitive businesses in your industry. The two best
sources for such alliances are first, your customer list, and
second, your supplier list. What form could these alliances
take? Here are some suggestions: Joint sponsorship of online (or
offline) contests, joint sponsorship of golf tournaments, joint
participation in local trade shows.
Offer sponsorships or special discounts for products or services
to high visibility local organizations such as the Chamber of
Commerce, service clubs, community sports associations -- where
you are likely to get exposure for your locally-oriented
services. Be sure to insist that your LFI is prominently (and
tactfully) displayed. Register your new site with
locally-oriented and industry-specific directories or link
exchanges that are likely to send traffic your way. The point of
these links is different from link exchanges where you want to
get higher SE ranking. These links are for generating traffic.
You must build your pages and your site(s) in certain ways to
maximize your chances of "scoring" well with the SEs. This is
the only way you can get good ranking when people search local
businesses.
Conclusion
Local advertising makes sense only because CONVENIENCE has
changed ALL of our Buying Habits forever. You Must now play the
game by the new rules or lose by the new Rules!
I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.