Local Marketing Internet
Local small businesses who do not take advantage of the Internet are missing the boat when it comes to promoting their products and services. Applying a few Internet marketing techniques can turn your web site into a lead generation tool providing you new leads and customers daily. This does not have to take a large amount of time and often enough this work can be outsourced while you are out performing the actual estimates and service calls.
Many businesses have taken the very first step of building a web site. Unfortunately many business owners stop there. Often times I hear complaints about low web site traffic and very little new leads being generated from their site.
More and more people are using search engines and the Internet to find local businesses. In fact, recent surveys indicate that more people are searching for local products and services on the web than in the “yellow” page books. Social networking systems like Facebook have millions of users. Local small businesses need to do a few things to take advantage of this. Here are three to get you started.
1. Adjust your web site to the ways people are searching for their services. That means optimizing the site pages each to the keywords your potential customers are typing in Google and other search engines to find the services you offer. This is called SEO (search engine optimization).
2. Record related industry videos and upload them to YouTube. Video is a great way for potential clients to find out about your business, get to know you, and showcase some of the work you have done for past clients. Google now owns YouTube so these videos often will come up higher in the search engine results than pages for the same keywords.
3. Start a Fan Page on Facebook for your business. Facebook is about people and interacting with each other. I can’t think of a better way to get the word out about your company and having others recommend to their friends.
If you are a small business owner, you need to apply these tactics now. This can make the difference in beating your local competition.
