For small businesses, especially those that are home based and working with small operating budgets, low cost internet marketing via Goolge Maps, the Bing and Yahoo equivalents, and several dozen local/regional business directories has been the primary option to gain online visibility.

A primary concern for home based businesses was the requirement on Google’s Local Business Center to enter their home addresses  in the profile if they wanted to be included in Google Maps.  Well, just last week, Google took this problem off the table by adding a new feature that allows businesses to define what service locations and areas they cater to instead of providing their address.

When logged in to the LBC to create or edit their business profile, users will see a new tab called “Service Areas and Location Settings”. This tab will allow small businesses to tell Google if customers come to their business location or if they serve customers at their locations (eg plumbers, electricians, etc). By selecting the latter, small business owners will see the addition of a new Service Areas and Location Settings box that looks like this

As you can see, small business owners can nowchoose not to have their business address appear in Google Maps. Business owners will also have the ability to specify whether they want their business to be listed by distance from a location or by the cities/zip codes locations they serve.  This should put to rest the real fears of home based business owners about displaying their home address in the profile and on Google SERPs.    

This feature is still running in a limited test mode and will become more broadly available shortly.  With this new functionality, any home-based businesses afraid of making their address public should now confidently claim and complete their Google LBC profile.

The major search engines continue to focus on providing first page SERP (Search Engine Results Page) visibility to local businesses.  This section of the SERPs is called the Local Business Center or the Maps section.  This commitment to local merchants means that small businesses can now get first page SERP visibility while at the same time not having to compete with much larger and even national companies.  Google’s Local Business section looks like this:

And use of search engines to find local merchants, whether by computer or mobile device, is becoming so pervasive it should be no surprise that we will see the end of traditional sources of this information like Yellow Page books in the not too distant future.   

You can start by claiming and completing your Google Maps Profile—it’s not hard.  But don’t be surprised if you end up several pages back in the list and can’t break onto the first page.  There are a number of factors that contribute to your ranking, including profile completeness and selected categories.  There are also off-page influencing factors, such as customer reviews and citations from other directories and sites.  This is where a professional experienced in local business visibility and optimization can dramatically improve your rankings.

With more people searching the internet to find local merchants, this should be a fundamental part of your marketing strategy.  Having an optimized profile and surrounding it with other local/regional profiles can create a local visibility framework that can drive quality leads to your website and grow your business.  Localization on the search engines is still in its nascent stages, so establishing yourself early will enable you to capture a high position on Google Maps, and hold it when other firms create their own LBC profiles later.  This isn’t going away.  Don’t miss this opportunity!

When most businesses make a commitment to Internet Marketing, their first step is to create a website.  Unfortunately, many business owners believe this is where their work ends.  They think “if you build it, they will come”.  In reality, “they” may come, but only if a business owner takes the necessary steps to make their website easy to find and visible.  And even then, considering how many websites there are competing for high ranking and visibility, it can be a time consuming, expensive, and sometimes frustrating effort.

While there are myriad tools and techniques available to drive awareness and visibility online for today’s businesses, small and medium-sized companies can get started by focusing on a few core techniques that will move them down the path to visibility, and driving more, qualified visitors to their website:  

SEO – Of all the techniques, SEO may still be the most effective, highest volume source of gaining visibility on the search engines, and the lowest cost of long term online customer acquisition.  SEO continues to deliver the highest visibility by ranking you at or near the top of the organic search rankings for phrases your target market uses to find your goods and services.  For developing long term brand awareness for your website, for being visible to searchers as they start their online purchasing process and for being there when they are ready to take the next step, SEO continues to be worth the investment in time and money.

Paid Search (PPC) – Many people think that they need to make a choice between SEO and PPC when deciding how to increase their visibility online.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The two are complimentary and work well together to provide maximum visibility.  Using both together in an integrated plan will provide a synergistic jump in online traffic to your site.  PPC provides companies the ability to appear prominently on the search engine results pages (SERPs), with a tailored offer to a target geography and demographic.  It is very sales focused and enables companies to exploit unique opportunities, react quickly to changing market dynamics, and engage with a targeted audience at the time they are ready to buy.  While SEO benefits take time to manifest, benefits of a PPC campaign can be felt immediately, and can begin the inflow of online leads while you are waiting for the results of your SEO project to be felt.

Local Search – The third of three sections on a SERP, Local Search is an incredible opportunity for small businesses serving a local community to get first page SERP visibility.  While it may technically be considered part of SEO, Local Search is the fastest and lowest cost technique to achieving first page SERP ranking.  And with the growing mobile internet phenomena in full swing, getting your local business on the first page of the SERPS is more important than ever.

Social Media – Search engines are not the only vehicle for being found online anymore.  This newer and dramatically growing dimension of online marketing continues to offer fresh and exciting ways to engage your target market, build your brand and interest in it, and generate both buzz and new customers.  Whether it is Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the hundreds of other sites, Social Media enable businesses to create a community of like minded people around their brand, directly interact with their customer and fan base with dynamic content and a two way conversation, and bring a more human element to their business online.

Blogging – Blogging enables you to establish a recurring conversation with your target market.  You can use this tool to establish yourself as a domain expert in your field, to communicate trends, the latest news, case studies, and any  number of different themes.  This will bring attention to you, your business, and your website, and build a following that will translate into more visitors to your site.  Blogging is also a significant component of “off page” SEO, important in it’s own right.  And when you combine blogging with a strong Social Media presence, you begin to establish a more visible and authoritative presence online, and lay the foundation for long term brand building and website traffic.

Creating an attractive website and driving new visitors to it are critical to your the success of your Internet Marketing efforts.  But you can’t stop there. Once visitors start arriving, is your website designed to make it easy for them to find what they are looking for?  Have you eliminated friction in your conversion paths to make it easy for your visitors to take the action you want them to take?  Is your business ready to accept this inflow of new visitors and engage them attentively, professionally, and courteously?  There are many dimensions to growing your business via the Internet, and you need to pay attention to them all if you want to maximize your ROI and maximize your success.

 

 

As I work with small and medium business on a daily basis, I am often asked the following questions:
 
• How can I use the Internet to generate more leads and revenue for my business?
• I have always relied on “word of mouth” and traditional marketing methods. How can Internet Marketing help?
• We’ve always done it this way—why should I change now?
• What is Social Media and how can I use it to promote my business?

All companies, regardless of size or industry, especially in this difficult economy, want to know how they can better utilize their shrinking marketing budget to grow their company.

One challenge is that most companies don’t have a good understanding of how marketing is changing, and how many people are using the Internet today to support some, if not all of their buying process. Combined with the large and growing variety of online channels available on the Internet that prospective customers are using when looking for information and it’s no wonder many small and medium business owners are uncertain how to proceed. 

Download this whitepaper now by Francois Muscat, one of our Online Marketing Experts, to learn more about how to get found on the Internet in the new decade. It covers:

• The challenge of getting found on search engines.
• Market drivers that we should be aware of with regards to what b=people do on the Internet.
• Push vs, Pull Marketing
• Key steps to developing a “Content Marketing” plan to get found online.
• Publishing content that increases customer conversions.
• Combining content and social media marketing as a way to build trust and credibility to increase your online leads and profitability.

When a company is ready to start marketing via the Internet, Paid Search Marketing (Pay Per Click or PPC) is the fastest and easiest way to to get page one visibility on the major search engines and attract qualified prospects to their site.  It can be launched in a few hours, and it can produce dramatic results rapidly.  It is a great way for a company to start using Internet Marketing techniques to grow their business and increase their top line.  There are a number of benefits to PPC campaigns, including:
 
Precision:  PPC enables you to be very precise in putting a targeted offer in front of a specific segment of the market.  By identifying specific key words, creating unique offers, and writing tailored ads, you have a tremendous amount of control over who sees your ad, what offer they see, and where they land on your website.

Targeting:  Another aspect of precision is the ability to target your market geographically, demographically, and by time of day and day of the week.  When combined with keyword specificity, unique offers and well written ads, you can focus very tightly on the target market you are trying to reach.  This ensures that the majority of people viewing your ads are qualified prospects.

Speed and Simplicity:  This can be looked at two ways.  First, while doing PPC right can be somewhat complex and time consuming, planning and executing a campaign can be accomplished in hours.  Also, this refers to how quickly and easily a prospect can move through the buying process, a matter of a few minutes, when clicking through to a well designed landing page and taking the desired action.

Financial Control: PPC provides the advertiser with complete control over how much money is being spent.  A daily budget can be allocated, then changed depending on results of the campaign, and to take advantage of changing business conditions as they occur.

Length and Scope of Campaign: A PPC campaign can run for any length of time and can be very narrowly or broadly targeted.  This enables the advertiser to use a campaign to accomplish different things, from delivering targeted offers to a narrow market segment for a short period of time, to more broad based branding and awareness.

Monitor and Measure: With the excellent analytics tools available today, PPC campaigns provide complete transparency and make it easy to monitor the progress of a campaign as well as the results to date and ROI.
 
So, when you are ready to start marketing via the Internet, a great place to start is with paid search marketing.  You can start up a campaign in a matter of hours, deliver a tailored offer to a precisely targeted market segment bringing them to your website, you can have complete visibility into the results of the campaign, control your budget, and you can start or stop at any time.  What are you waiting for?