Dominate Your Local Market!

We’re getting down to the last days of this holiday shopping season. I sincerely hope you are experiencing a good year, business-wise.

I also want to be sure you are setting the stage for a better year in 2010.

This post has just one message… get their name and email address!

Get them from everyone who walks in the door – no exceptions.

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“A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.” – Henry Ford

According to some of the latest economic figures, we are in the beginning stages of economic recovery. I’m sure this is a relief to all of us even if unemployment figures are still way too high. Employment always lags behind in a recovery.

It may be a slow road back, but at least we are moving in a positive direction. Sadly some businesses have not been able to survive the downturn, but those that have will have an unprecedented opportunity for growth in the coming years.

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Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your local business online.

SEO is what will determine your placement in search engine results pages (SERPs) for certain keywords or keyphrases. And the higher your placement on those pages, the better your chances of sending traffic to your website.

Your SEO strategy will be different depending on your particular product(s) or services. A retailer’s SEO needs will be greatly different from a service’s, which in turn will greatly differ from a restaurant’s.

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In 2009, 46% of Internet users conducting a local search then visited the place of business, up from 34% in 2008. A flat 38% contacted the business via the telephone. Those are some whopping numbers.

If you haven’t as yet seen the value of having a solid local search strategy, remember that one or more of your competitors will. Having a local search strategy may mean life or death for your business over the next several years, regardless of what type of business you are in. Have one and prosper or don’t have one and wish you did later.

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26% of those using local search to find a business are seeking the name and address of the business and 21% are seeking driving directions. An additional 21% were seeking a business that has the product or service that they needed – at that moment.

This highlights the importance of having a local search strategy. Being able to put your name, address and driving directions in front of persons searching for the exact product or service you offer at the very time they need it is a golden opportunity.

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One of the best ways to increase your business’s visibility on Google is to list your business at the Google Local Business Center.

Make sure to include all important keywords/phrases to your listing and use your and surrounding town names, too.

This video will show you why listing at Google LBC is important to your businesses growth.

In our last post, we stated that to begin a successful email marketing campaign, you need to do two things:

1. Build a quality list of prospects or customers.
2. Email to that list in a way that achieves maximum deliverability.

In that last post, we covered #1, building a quality list. Today, we’ll cover #2 – emailing to that list in a way that achieves maximum deliverability.

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No one knows for sure what this holiday season is going to hold in store for local businesses. It may be a good year, it may be a another off year. One thing we can be reasonably sure of is that it won’t be a banner year – the economy is still too fragile for that.

How does a local business make the best of the situation? By laying the groundwork to take best advantage of recovery as it comes. Those that gain the most momentum during recovery will maintain their lead in the following years.

One of the most basic ways to gain that momentum is to build and properly use a mailing list. It’s an old axiom in Internet Marketing that the money is in the list. The same can be said for local business marketing. With a list, email or snail mail, you can economically and efficiently stay in contact with your customers or prospects.

In today’s world, EVERY business has to excel at direct marketing and an email list is the most efficient and cost-effective way.

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So what’s been happening during the dog days of August (and just when are cat days, anyway)? While I’ve been working on a bunch of projects and taking a little vacation time to attend my nephew’s wedding in DC, the world has moved on.

Cash for clunkers, a health care debate that sometimes seems to be about everything BUT health care and the passing of an American icon. Wow, what a month!

And against that backdrop, the American economy seems to have stopped shrinking. That’s a good sign, but how long will we have to wait for more solid news of recovery?

Depressing? Not if you’ve had your online marketing ducks in a row. According to the Forrester Research folks, online sales grew over past year at a rate of 11%. Let me repeat that… online sales grew by 11% in the worst economic slump since the Great Depression.

Looking for some positive news? There it is… now what are you going to do about it?

If you are maximizing your online marketing potential, good for you… you are probably one of the chosen few saying “Recession? What recession?” If you’ve got a toe in the online marketing water, now is the time to jump in. Done nothing online yet? Better get a move on… recovery’s coming!

I heard an interview with Netscape founder and entrepreneur Marc Andreesen. In it, he stated “Innovation doesn’t stop during a bust.” Marc was 100% right. Things have changed while the economy floundered. Old solutions are just that… old solutions.

I don’t know how to say this in a more genteel, politically correct way, so I’ll just say it. As we approach the second decade of the 21st Century, if you don’t have a solid online marketing strategy in place, you are yesterday’s news.

If you’ve survived the economic downturn, you are in an ideal position to solidify your place in your market now and in the future. But you have to take action now. This holiday season will be “make or break” for many businesses.

Taking steps now to leverage holiday traffic into permanent business is one one of the smartest moves you can make. We’re going to be showing you how to do just that so if you aren’t a subscriber yet, be sure to sign on so you won’t miss out on some really important information.

You all know how powerful a well-conceived email marketing program can be. Forgot? I sometimes forget the details, too. According to the Direct Marketing Association, in 2008, email marketing returned and average $45.65 on each dollar spent. That’s an ROI (Return on Investment) of 4,565%! Can you think of any other marketing strategy for local businesses that offers that kind of return?

That is why you hear Internet Marketers repeat themselves over and over and over again – “The money is in the list.”

But here’s a little secret about that astonishing figure. It takes into account an average of ALL email marketing campaigns (except spamming, which has an historically abysmal rate of return). So it is a average of both good and bad campaigns. That means some folks are doing a lot better than the $45.65 average – and of course, some are doing worse.

How can you make sure that your email campaign is in the “doing better” group?

There are a few factors that come into play that can make your email marketing perform at it’s best. Here are a few:

1. Quality of the list – Do they want it?
2. Deliverability – Do they receive it?
3. Relevance – Do they read it?
4. Actionability – Do they respond to it?

Obviously, none of these questions have a simple “yes” or “no” answer. But the higher the percentage of “yesses” to each one, the higher the return on your investment will be.

PHPList is one application you may use to send emails to your prospects and customers. AutoResponse Plus is another. And aWeber is an online application service provider (ASP) that can host your email campaigns. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, which we will go over in depth in another post.

PHPList posts a PreFlight Checklist on some things you should do before sending emails that can help increase the deliverability rate of your messages (the percentage that actually make it to your customer’s email box).

Whether you are using PHPList or not, these tips apply to your email marketing program. So have a look at them and then check and be sure you are in compliance with them.

It could make the difference between being in the “above average” group or the “below average” one. And that difference can be measured in dollars and cents – YOUR dollars and cents.