Local Business Internet Marketing

Some business owners skeptical if the long-term payoffs are worth the cost

You’ve seen the emails and heard the radio ads. Internet-based “daily deal” coupons are becoming a large part of the online advertising industry. But are such offers worth the cost for an auto repair shop or other small to medium-sized business? Some say no, while other business owners report they are gaining new customers–and profits–from the venture.

A June 2011 survey of small businesses by MerchantCircle finds that the leading reason companies like daily deals is customer acquisition (58%). At the same time, the top reason for not offering a daily deal again (42.4%) was their failure to attract new customers. Hmmm, perhaps more data will help answer our question.

Two surveys back up the belief that daily deals attract new customers. The first, a survey conducted by Utpal M. Dholakia at Rice University, found that new customers made up more than 77% of deal buyers. All of them spent over the value of the deal offer and, on average, about 20% became repeat customers. The second study, done by ConsumerSearch.com and The About Group, discovered that an overwhelming majority of those who had used a daily deal returned– even without another discount. Fifty-three percent of redeemers went on to become regular customers.

Businesses who were skeptical about the value of daily deals expressed concern about giving discounts to consumers who would have patronized the establishment anyway. According to a ForeSee Results survey, there is some basis for this concern. The largest share of daily deal users – thirty-eight percent—said they were already loyal to the business offering a deal. However, nearly a third of those taking advantage of a daily deal special were new customers, and the same percentage were customers who had either visited only occasionally or had stopped patronizing the establishment altogether.

So what’s the answer? Are daily deals worth it? Looks like the jury is still out. But one thing is certain. As this graphic demonstrates, an on-going search engine advertising campaign will put in front of people who are ready to buy, when they’re ready to buy – not when your “daily deal” happens to hit their email box. This is especially important in the auto industry, where people who need services or products typically need them right now.

WebVisible has more than 10 years of experience helping local businesses establish an effective online marketing presence through fully-managed online search advertising programs that generate predictable results. Contact WebVisible today for more information on how search advertising can help grow your auto-related business.

According to a recent Affinity Express survey of small to medium businesses (SMB), it appears the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often overlooked. As shown in the following chart from the survey, 77% of SMBs are using websites and landing pages to market their businesses, but only 31% are using SEO to assure customers will easily find them online.

There are probably many reasons as to why the use of SEO is rather low in comparison to website and landing page usage (ie. limited resources, lack of knowledge, or perhaps businesses feel their products or services will speak for themselves). Whatever the reasons, SMBs need to realize that in today’s market, SEO is an integral part of any online marketing effort. It is not an option, it is a necessity.  Since most consumers today are searching online to find potential products and services available, a business must optimize the chances of their website being found on major search engines by using SEO.

SEO can be challenging for any business, especially smaller ones with limited resources since keeping up with the competition, popular search terms, and the ever-changing algorithms search engines like Google and Bing use is a continuous process. To meet this challenge, many businesses find out-sourcing this task more efficient. WebVisible is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company and leading name in local online advertising, known for being a true expert in bringing the Internet as an advertising and customer acquisition medium to small businesses around the world. WebVisible’s award winning Geneva software platform (named 2008 Internet Product of the Year by the American Electronics Association) contains a powerful optimizer – a rules-based campaign management algorithm that continuously learns and improves the placement and results of our clients’ advertisements. With over ten years of experience, WebVisible offers proven SEO results.

To learn more about how WebVisible can provide SEO solutions and other Internet marketing services, please feel free to contact us.

I’m an expert at navigating my way through a new city. I’ve slept in just about every hotel in the nation. I know airports like the back of my hand. I’m a travel warrior, and collect frequent flyer miles like some people collect change. My name is Ambre Merendino, and I am the Director of Partner Sales Support working on WebVisible’s Partner Development team.

Unlike many people, I’m one of the lucky ones that can honestly say I love my job. I collaborate with exceptional co-workers, who all educate our partners and their sales teams about WebVisible’s local online advertising solutions.  We have great synergy with our partners; they bring their world-class branding and traditional advertising expertise to the table, WebVisible steps in with our online advertising expertise, and together we provide Small Business Owners a fully-managed marketing solution. 

As a member of the Partner Sales Support team, one of the questions that I get most often is, “What makes WebVisible different from competitors?”  With the technology enhancements we continue to roll out, and the close collaboration with our partners, this question gets easier and easier to answer.
      
    1. Merchant Center: This is WebVisible's interactive campaign manager for our customers.  It allows them to see exactly what is going on in their online advertising campaigns at all times, as well as being able to measure results and control the types of calls they get.  Other vendors provide reporting, but no other provider gives as much control, visibility and flexibility to customers as we do with Merchant Center.  The combination of Merchant Center and our highly-targeted ad management in Geneva (the underlying platform) lets our customers identify and focus on their highest value opportunities to maximize their ROI.

    2. Landing Pages: While other companies focus on driving leads to a Web site, we’ve found that highly optimized Landing Pages (LPs) convert searches into leads almost twice as often as Web sites do.  Our LPs are built to turn researchers into active buyers by answering all of the key questions within 4-6 seconds (location, phone number, special offers, video, email, map, etc.).  LPs also allow our customers to feature different promotions with different ads, and track results, without constant maintenance to their Web sites.

    3. Customer Service and Expertise – Direct or Indirect: We pride ourselves on being experts in our field, but customers can choose from a long list of well-known partners to provide our online advertising solutions as well.  When combining print, directories and search advertising, customers can have a one-stop-shopping experience with our partners, whose traditional marketing brand is one they know and trust. They get the added value of WebVisible’s innovative technology with a team of advertising experts to fully manage their marketing campaign across several media. Other search marketing companies can’t offer the network we’ve built, and can’t scale to support the tens of thousands of customers served by our partners.  We planned for this type of network right from the beginning!

WebVisible has nearly a decade of experience helping small and mid-size businesses advertise on the Internet. When you combine our expertise and technology with our expansive partnerships, our clients can be sure that they are receiving the benefits of a win-win-win situation!

- Contributed by Ambre Merendino, Director, Partner Sales Support

In a recent conversation with a local real estate agent about her business, I heard her utter a familiar line... "It's all about location! Location! Location!" She wasn't talking about my future housing needs.  Rather, she was commenting on all the changes within digital marketing that are affecting her business.  And, how consumers are increasingly using their mobile phones for Internet information - whether to find a new Thai restaurant, a local plumber, or, in her case, checking the listing information and mobile web pages of local real estate agents!

Location Based Services is the fancy term used to describe a host of new online services that aim to bring more information to consumers on their handheld devices and smart phones.  FourSquare, Twitter, Yelp, even Facebook Mobile, are all very popular applications that consumers (and, even your B2B customers) are increasingly turning to while on the road, to find the services and products they need.

The challenge this poses to many small business owners - and also, of course, the opportunity - is to make sure YOUR company, or product, is positioned in these new location specific marketing channels.  To make things a bit more complicated, many of these new channels do not support traditional advertising or have yet to make it easy to get your business listed.  Instead, small business owners must often earn their way in, usually by spending time communicating with their customers within each application.  This can be very time consuming -- not to mention frustrating -- accommodating all the differences within each channel: using short 140 character snippets on Twitter, posting 3 minute "How to" videos on YouTube, cultivating fans on Facebook!  While difficult and certainly not free when you think of your hourly worth, all of this social activity CAN build your business an asset for the future - a loyal, mobile-empowered audience of potential prospects and customers. But, often times, it can also lead to a confusing array of sites, applications, and services that need to be updated. 

My advice to my realtor friend was to think of her business as a hub of information - advice, tips, promotions or offers, (perhaps a little humor or personality to give it a personal touch!) - and to view the various Location Based Services as spokes with which to push this information out to her customers or prospects.  A few tools can help simplify this process (And here at WebVisible we are furiously building additional ones!) so you don't have to spend all your time updating one service after another.  One of my favorites is a company called Posterous (http://www.posterous.com), because you can use regular old email to send social updates (perhaps a coupon mention or update on your business) and it will automatically post to all of the other Location services.  This can be a first step in taking a 360° approach to your online marketing - and something I will discuss much more in upcoming postings!

- Alan Edgett, Sr. Director, Product

 

As a small business owner, wouldn't you love to win 3 months of free online advertising?

Read on to discover how you can win!

 

After spending significant time with many small business owners WebVisible is proud to present The Great Divide, a video series depicting the trials and tribulations those small business proprietors experience in their quest for new customers. Recognizing the importance of having an online presence, our featured proprietors reflect on the need for exposure on search engines like Bing, Google, Yahoo; on social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn; and by using interactive/internet yellow pages (IYP) to connect with prospective clients. See how customers and business owners are working to bridge the divide that separates customers and businesses from each other!

 

How you can win:

 

Just watch The Great Divide and send us the answer to this question by June 30, 2010:

 

“What is the biggest challenge in growing your business?”

 

Answers can be submitted online at WebVisible.com/the-great-divide or on WebVisible’s

 

Twitter page http://twitter.com/webvisible

 

Two winners will be selected by WebVisible to receive our full service package, including search engine advertising on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, a call tracking number, and a multi-function landing page that includes video, form fill, and SMS text lead delivery.

 

 

Episode 1 of The Great Divide presents the perspective of both business owners and the "consumer on the street" to illustrate the gap between how some proprietors view marketing methods vs. the sources employed by typical consumers to locate local businesses. If most prospective customers are using the internet to find the product or service they need, shouldn't those small businesses be using the internet to market their business? Some business owners "get it" and some are "a work in progress" as noted by the florist who refers to Facebook as "happy face!" She is working to connect with prospective customers on Facebook, but hasn't quite nailed the lingo just yet!

 

Don't miss your chance to gain valuable exposure for your business! Enter the WebVisible contest today!!

WebVisible creates great landing pages. But did you know that getting a visitor to your landing page is only half the battle? What happens after the click makes all the difference in turning a casual visitor into a repeat customer.

Internet advertising, and especially local online advertising, aims to accomplish 3 goals. The first is getting your business ad to show when a person is searching for the products or services you offer. The second is getting that visitor to click on your ad by using ad copy that is relevant to the keyword and offering a compelling promotion. And finally, using a relevant landing page to entice the prospect to engage with your business. Then the second half of the conversion process starts: generating more business by securing this customer and encouraging repeat buying.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself regarding your landing page:

• Does my landing page present a clear identity of my business to the prospect? Make sure your company logo is visible as one of the first and best graphics that the visitor sees.
• Does my landing page copy and graphics relate to my ad - and ultimately, the keyword -  that the visitor originally typed into the search engine? The more relevant your landing page is to the original query, the better chance you have of converting that prospect into a customer.
• Does my landing page include a clear call to action? There are a plethora of ways a visitor can connect with you. The top two ways to connect to most small businesses is through a phone call or a form fill. Regardless, is it clear to the visitor what you wish their action to be? Make sure the phone number is large and near the top of the page. Make sure the form is above the fold and can be seen at first glance.
• Does my landing page present a compelling offer to my prospect? The generic 10% off is fine, but it's just that - generic. Offer something that addresses a core need of your audience. For instance, a cosmetic dentist might offer a free electric toothbrush or whitening procedure. A plumber might offer free slab leak detection when they perform requested repairs. These offers are more tangibly related to the service than simply 10% off.

Finally, the last item that will help your Internet advertising succeed is your response to prospect engagement. It is of the utmost importance that someone at your business is available to answer the phone when a prospect calls and that the prospect's form fill and email are answered promptly.  The quicker you're able to connect with a prospect, the more likely they'll find value in your business.  So remember, getting a click is good. Engaging a prospect with a relevant landing page is better. And converting a prospect into a customer is best.

-Contributed by Robert Voccola, Marketing Manager, WebVisible Inc

As we start this new year and embark on a new decade, it’s great to reflect a little at just how far we have come. Just think back for a brief moment…what comes to mind? It’s not like we are picturing mail being delivered on a horse and telegrams being the fastest form of communication… now it’s more like… remember when I got the newspaper delivered to my doorstep daily vs. my mobile device. Technology is advancing at a mind blowing pace and the speed of improvements that are being made seem to be growing at an exponential rate!

One area where we see this taking place is in the world of internet marketing. Some of you might have heard of it but don’t know quite what it means, while others are already utilizing this form of advertising and seeing huge results in the boost to your business.

WebVisible is an amazing company that is an absolute expert when it comes to local online advertising and I want to give you all a quick look at what I do here since I’ve joined the Account Management Team.

Ah, the life of an account manager…Here at WebVisible I make sure that accounts are performing and business owners are happy! It’s a perfect fit for me as what I enjoy doing is simply helping people do what they like to do best and be a part of ensuring their success. As an account manager I get to take the customer (Business Owner) and really focus on what their business goals are. The cool thing is I get to be a part of directly helping them achieve those goals. From the background setup work such as getting them logged in to the Merchant Center, our proprietary online customer service center, to keeping them posted on how well their online advertising campaign is performing, through connecting customers to them, my objective is to monitor the success of a campaign through the amount of “connections” that we provide for a client through phone calls, emails, and other methods the client uses to be contacted. Every day I keep a close eye on how well the campaign is doing and constantly work to improve it to generate the best results possible. I’ve got to admit that our Geneva Technology Platform is award winning for a reason. It really makes my job pretty easy, but all in all, as an account manager here at WebVisible, as long as customers are happy and able to focus on doing what they do best, then it’s a winning relationship that will continue to grow and achieve success!

-Contributed by Jacob Gardner

If the future is local and hyper-local, then the future is search

By Kevin Ryan, CMO WebVisible

New research from Unisfair finds that for 2010, 60 percent of online marketers will be focused on new customer acquisition. The same study found that toward this goal, 75 percent of marketers will be increasing spending in social media, while 51 percent will be increasing spending in SEM and SEO. A 75 percent increase in social media marketing? Really?

Search engines are the first place consumers and business owners turn to when looking for any product or service, including those that are local—and local is the fastest growing segment of online. Marketers know this. And despite this fact, it appears for 2010, there will continue to be a large disparity between consumer purchase decisions and how marketers think they should reach consumers. Which is too bad because I think social media marketing so far is unproven.

Is social media the best way to reach local consumers? While there are lots of new technologies out there, search isn’t going anywhere. Certainly not for local and hyper-local advertising—search is the cornerstone for both—regardless of what you are reading about social media. Nobody’s Facebook page or Yelp review, or Tweet is going to trump a quick Bing or Google search for local products and services.

Every year, consumers become more reliant on search engines—we’ve all seen the research. Close to 90 percent of consumers turn to the Internet first when researching local products or services. Local and hyper-local are the future of online. However, with all the hype about social media marketing, I am seeing a clear disconnect.

For example . . .

In the last year, Scott A. Bates, Co-Owner of Christopher Scott Homes, a WebVisible client, ran a 30-day Internet advertising campaign. During the course of his campaign, Bates received 569 local visitors to the website and eight calls regarding new business. These are outstanding results for the first month with any kind of advertising campaign, far exceeding Bates’ expectations.

In 30 days, during the worst housing and new-construction-start economy since the great depression, Christopher Scott Homes (CHS) received several new leads and closed a new custom home contract. CHS spent a total of $510. This means the average cost for each person who saw the CHS ad and went to the website totaled less than $1. With that one sale, Bates paid for his search engine marketing for the next 20 years.

For local advertising, reach, operational cost, and lead generation are everything. Local may be the fasting growing, untapped, interactive advertising vertical—spending on interactive advertising beat spending on traditional advertising in August 2009. However, the businesses that make up Local aren’t interested in funding a social media widget campaign—they want results. They want a search campaign that works.

Location, location, location

If the rise of Internet search has taught us anything—like all good real estate, location means almost everything. Search has become the digital equivalent of the local market place. If your store is not located on Main Street where the buyers are actively looking, no one will come inside to buy. Sixty-five percent of online searchers expect local business results to be within 20 miles of them. The key to growth in any business is marketing where consumers are looking. While that also means local businesses should not ignore new media marketing—search is still king.

The benefits of search marketing

From my perspective, it is marketing malpractice not to advise your local media clients to spend on search engine marketing; here are three reasons why:

SEM is measurable

In this economy when every local business is closely tracking operating costs like marketing, SEM is a must. With newspaper readership dropping an average of three to four percent every six months, we know that print ads are losing value because fewer consumers see them. With SEM you can track exactly how many people saw an ad, how many visited a website, and how many called that business.

SEM can be geographically, locally targeted

If you work with hyper-local clients, they need to know that consumers like to research online and buy local. SEM allows local businesses to run inexpensive seasonal and geographically relevant advertising campaigns. Consumers searching locally for specific goods and services are predisposed buyers—they are already looking, all your hyper-local clients need to do is make it easier for consumers to find them.

SEM is flexible and predictable

SEM allows local businesses to budget advertising costs on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. With search, businesses receive a steady flow of leads, enabling them to predict sales over the course of the campaign. When local businesses have a better idea of how many consumers are purchasing their goods or services, they can think about other things—like expanding their business.

As the Internet has evolved, the popularity of using search engines to help make purchase decisions has skyrocketed. Search marketing is now more powerful than ever and by far the most efficient way to get your message in front of consumers. Take it from Scott Bates—when search campaigns pay for themselves in one or two months, there is no reason why any business should fail to have Search as a primary component of their marketing budget.

I saw the yellow pages delivery outside our building a while back and it got me thinking... when was the last time I used one?

Small business owners: Pop quiz - when was the last time you used the print yellow pages as a consumer? Research shows that the Internet is the first choice of people looking for local products and services.

Merchants should go through the exercise of thinking like consumers when contemplating small business advertising solutions, and incorporate that thinking into their marketing plan. Want to learn more? A recent study on consumer behavior, with marketing recommendations is available here.


For a balanced marketing approach, there is also a really cool new tool called Compass which provides expert guidance on how much to spend, and what types of advertising to use to achieve specific revenue goals or maximize profit. A free version of called “Compass Lite” is available here.
 
  -- Contributed by Jeff Werner

If you didn’t believe me that SEM can be a more valuable endeavor for small business marketing online than SEO, there is new data that shows visitors arriving on a site via search engine PPC advertising are more likely to purchase.

According to according to a new study by Engine Ready based on traffic to e-retail sites, visitors who arrive from paid search ads are more likely to buy than those who come from clicking on a natural search link. The conversion rate from paid search is 2.03% versus 1.26% from organic search, according to the study as reported by Internet Retailer.

And, as reported in the New York Times, the study found that paid listings had an edge over organic traffic in terms of customer value, spending an average of $11 more per purchase. In spending, traffic from paid online advertising even outperformed those visitors that arrived from a bookmark or direct entry of a URL.

Although this study concentrates on e-commerce sites, I’m inclined to believe the same principal applies to consumers looking for local products or services like yours!

  -- Contributed by Jeff Werner

A lot of things can go right when launching a new small business Internet marketing campaign. And some can go wrong. Here are two simple, but easily overlooked, mistakes that when avoided can help your local online advertising campaign take off.

In a nutshell: Your site content should reflect your business, and your ads should reflect your site.

Mistake #1: Not matching online ads to the content of your site
Sometimes a new advertiser will write ad words that do not necessarily closely match the content on the Landing Page. This can confuse visitors. And search engines will place your ad higher if it has direct relevance to the content of the destination URL. If the landing page is text-heavy, prior to embarking on an online advertising effort, you can analyze your Web site’s text with a free online tool like the Keyword Density Analyzer to show the most frequently used words on any single Web page. Multiple landing pages can even be used to draw different customer groups to different pages based on their searches. (Study word choices on competitive ads also!)

Mistake #2: Web presence that doesn’t play into the consumer sales cycle
New advertisers often focus solely on getting clicks to their site, but forget the importance of the customer experience and guiding them through the sales cycle. A slow economy and the increased usage of the Internet as a comparative shopping tool are increasing the length of sales cycles. Smart advertisers will design their Web sites to fit.

Web sites that seek to educate consumers and assist them through the sales process. Your Web site is an ideal place to tell potential customers compelling stories, educate them on products and/or the field in general, entertain them and engage them in a two-way dialog – all building loyalty and firmly establishing the advertiser’s brand in the process.

Does your site seek to educate the consumer on your products/services in order to help them through the sales cycle? User reviews, customer testimonials and competitive reviews, product videos all can be valuable resources to establish credibility and a rapport with visitors that will bring them back and provide the best opportunity to turn them into customers.
 
  -- Contributed by Jeff Werner

As a small business owner trying to balance your options for marketing on the Internet with your time (and budget), eventually you'll ponder the question of whether you should dive into the task of optimizing your Web site for better placement on the search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be valuable, but can take considerable time and work. And, for most small business Web sites, a full SEO effort may not help improve 'organic' rankings simply because the site is too small.

When competing on the engines for keyword dominance there are many of factors that come into play, but content is ultimately king. Your plumbing business site may have a few pages of copy, but is probably competing with the likes of George Brazil, Adee, RotoRooter, etc. (with pages and pages of content on plumbing, water conservation, seasonal tips, videos, tutorials, educational forums, and so on).

You want to compete and get your share of the local online marketplace searching for your services, but you don't want to make SEO a second career either. Luckily for most small business Internet marketing, a simple but effective formula can:
   - help boost your search engine visibility
   - help convert visitors to leads (and paying customers)
   - increase your Internet presence
   - improve your SEO rankings

Step 1: Get a targeted Landing Page
A 'mini Web site,' the landing page is a targeted snapshot of your business. The simple and intuitive template design layout guides interested consumers to the information they are looking for and provides a focused call to action to drive actions and maximize the potential of turning visitors into customers. And it provides mechanisms to track just about everything that happens when someone is interested (calls, emails, page/map prints, coupon downloads, etc.)

Step 2: Determine your best keywords
What words would someone use to find your business? If you could select only three words to describe the core of your business, product or service to a potential customer, what would they be? Now expand that to ten words; then a short paragraph. By the end of the exercise there should be a short list of the most likely candidates. 

Step 3: Start a search advertising campaign
Many books have been written about this form of business advertising on the Internet. Shortcut: it works; so find a great search marketing firm and save yourself 30+ hours a month. You'll also get lots of keywords that you never thought of, written in the way an actual Internet searcher would actuall use them, and the aforementioned Landing Page.

Step 4: Create a blog
Remember content is king? You know a lot about your business - start putting your thoughts down on paper (err, computer). There are lots of simple blog-building sites (blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc.). Link to your blog from your Landing Page. Put lots of you keywords in your blog posts and include links to your Landing Page. Over time you will create enough content that will help you rank well for those keywords.

Step 5: Get social
This is another book. But a good place to start is getting your business up on Facebook and driving traffic between your Landing Page and Company Profile. Some getting started tips here.
 
  -- Contributed by Jeff Werner

When using social media and blogs to conduct small business marketing online, its important to be careful not to cross that tempting line into posting shall we say 'embellished' reviews for your company.

Last week, the state of New York settled with a cosmetic surgery firm after the they allegedly published fake consumer reviews across the Web. It will cost them about $300,000!

According to DMNews, this case could raise questions about the FTC's investigation into word-of-mouth marketing. Back in April, the FTC released a proposal to revise its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which could make things more difficult for paid bloggers conducting business advertising on the Internet.

Under the proposal, bloggers and brands would be held accountable for false statements they make about products on blogs and social networks. “Those who are compensated to promote or review a product using these techniques are not exempt from the laws of governing truthful advertising,” said Richard Cleland, assistant director, division of advertising practices at the FTC.

  -- Contributed by Jeff Werner

Forrester Research just released an interactive marketing forecast. While overall budgets are predicted to decline, there is good news around Internet advertising for small businesses.

Search continues to lead the pack among online tactics. Spending on search in 2009 is expected to total 15.4 billion, or 59% of the overall interactive pie. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15% to $31.6 billion in 2014.

“Marketers can't get enough of search's direct response value,” said Shar VanBoskirk, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. She said search continues to be a cost-effective and targeted way to drive sales.

Social media and mobile are predicted to be the biggest growing sectors between now and 2014.

2014 is a ways off, and the dynamics of search will certainly change dramatically in the next five years. But a key takeaway for successful Internet advertising is that search remains the strongest tactic for local online marketing with tangible return-on-investment, and the leading analysts expect it stay that way for quite some time.

  -- Contributed by Jeff Werner

WebVisible provides excellent services for its local online advertising customers by providing visibility across the major search engines and their associated distribution networks. This brings more traffic to their Web sites and landing pages, and more phone calls that in turn help increase business.

Google recently launched the Local Business Center, which gives local business owners the ability to track impressions and actions on their Web sites and landing pages. You can see how people are searching for you and what keywords they are looking for to get to your business. You can also see exactly where the customers are coming from. This can give you the insight to open up a sister store in places where most of your customers are coming from, or you can update your services to meet the demands of the public.

Google Local Business Center is designed for local small businesses marketing on the Internet so they can better engage with their audience. It uses the power of Google Analytics and directs the technology toward focusing on small business advertising solutions.

For more information: “New for local business owners: the Google Maps LBC dashboard”

  -- Contributed by Junaid Ahmed

Once upon a time, in the cold, lonely, pre-post-historic days before everything important had two syllables (Google, Twitter, Facebook), and before the Internet itself was the ubiquitous mind-melding leviathan it has since become, I started a small business making surfboards in my parents’ garage.

I worked hard, had fun and relied mostly on word-of-mouth to sell my sleek creations of toxic foam and fiberglass. My target market consisted of high school friends and acquaintances. My business partnerships comprised my father, who grudgingly allowed me to use his shop vac, and my 13-year-old brother, who provided much unsolicited advice.

This was 1989. Bush 1 was president. Grunge loomed on the horizon like a flannel sunrise. Moviegoers eagerly awaited the release of Back to the Future, Part II. But I was 17 and ambitious. I was febrile with the idea of becoming a surfboard manufacturing magnate. By the time I was 25 (I surmised) I’d be so rich that I’d be able to hop on my private jet for impromptu surf sessions in Uluwatu or Kirra. But how to get there? “You need to advertise,” my younger brother quipped between Otter Pops.

Advertise? Sure, why not. But my marketing options seemed either ridiculously out of reach (TV commercials) or ridiculously small beer (flyers on car windows). After batting some ideas and cost estimates back and forth, I decided to rely instead on the Field of Dreams marketing strategy: if you build it, they will come. And they did come: a few more friends, my woodshop teacher Mr. Matsuyama, a couple of kids from other schools, and a second-cousin.

Then the price of materials began to go up. I was also close to failing a couple of classes. I was forced to hunker down and scale back my operation before it even got off the ground.

The old saw that “timing is everything” is, well, everything. A small business in 1989 and a small business in 2009 stand as far apart from one another in terms of targeted marketing as the catapult stands to the ICBM. The Internet, blogosphere and search engine marketing triumvirate are redefining what a small local business means, and how swiftly and accurately it can reach the customers who want and need exactly what it offers through online advertising.

Dark garages can be fertile ground for creativity; they gave us Grunge and Microsoft, after all, not to mention a few surfboards that still serve me well. But it’s a brave new world all over again, with tremendous Internet advertising for small business possibilities. Time to come out of the proverbial garage and into the light.

 -- Contributed by Derek Hoffmann

It’s tough out there in newspaper land. The Chicago Tribune… The Rocky Mountain News… The Seattle Post Intelligencer… and the list marches on. What’s happening here?

According to a Pew Research Center study, for the first time, more Americans got their news online for free than paid for it in magazines and newspapers!

Newspapers predominantly make their money through newsstand sales, subscriptions and advertising. With the first two of the legs being kicked out from under them, the business model begins to fall apart. And with declining readership comes declining advertising revenue and the stool collapses.

Selling online advertising has helped newspapers offset the steady decline in print, but it’s a supplement, not a meal. This leaves newspapers looking for alternate methods of generating revenue to continue publishing content created by professional writers. These days anyone can put up a blog. But paid editorial staffs are a good thing. It pays for trained journalists, their expenses and important little things like real editors and fact checking. "Ideally" this translates to quality.

And the decline in revenue leaves the papers weak and vulnerable to special interest pressures. Just ask the San Diego Union Tribune which was recently pressured by the Los Angeles police officers and fire fighters pension fund (which owns $30 million of Platinum Equity, Tribune’s parent company) to change its editorial stance or fire its writers. "Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced," said League President Paul M. Weber. Wow.

But getting people to pay for content and attracting advertisers is getting harder and harder. So what are the alternatives? Lots of ideas are being kicked around. Says Dallas Mavricks owner, Mark Cuban, “The quickest and easiest place to start would be by making sure that every time I went to DallasNews.com you knew that my credit card was on file and you offered me specials… If some local artist has a small or large hit, go to the label and try to license it and offer it for free to those of us who pay by card.”

Others have suggested offering section sponsorships: the Lakers or Raiders for example sponsor the LA Times sports section… or Staples the business section, or – well, you get the idea. Or what about partnering with an outfit like coupons.com? And there are dozens of others.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal announced a “sophisticated micro-payments service” to launch this fall. There have been quite a few failed Internet micro-payment systems. And this is the first time a major newspaper adopted one, so the other big papers will be watching closely.

But for now, local online advertising is, and search engine marketing services are, the shining star helping many papers stay afloat.

  -- Contributed by Jeff Werner

If we’re talking about running your local business, probably not much. But if we’re talking about how to promote your business, marketing and advertising agencies are generally pretty bright and on the cutting edge of techniques and vehicles that get their clients noticed and generate business opportunity.

So what are the agencies doing now?

eMarketer states, “In the wake of the global economic downturn, marketers worldwide are shifting more of their budgets into cheaper, more-measurable categories. In most cases, that means online.”

Agencies that want to stay afloat are advising their clients to move from print to online advertising because they know:

1.    Online advertising is more
       cost-effective.
2.    It produces more tangible
       results (i.e., business leads).
3.    Online is where consumers are.

Not All Online Advertising is
Created Equal
Since its beginning, marketing has evolved dramatically due to many factors such as technology advancements and social changes. But one thing has remained constant: advertising follows audience. That means successful advertisers place their message in front of the most relevant audience. Search engine marketing offers both a relevant and a pre-qualified audience – more effective than any other form in the history of the marketing discipline.

For example, a window contractor could place an ad in a home improvement publication. OK, good… likely a relevant readership with potentially thousands of exposures. But what if the local hardware store invited him over to meet with 100 people actively looking for a window contractor? Which do you think would generate more immediate business? This is what search engine advertising on the Internet offers; the ability to put your message in front of prospects who have expressed a specific interest. Very powerful.

Even online advertising based purely on impressions (the number of times an audience sees you ad) and measured in “cost per thousand” (CPM) is a dying breed. Eyeballs are nice. But action talks.

Your takeaways as a small business owner/marketer thinking of advertising on the Internet?
 
a)  Run from print.
b)  Look for more than relevance; get in front of a pre-qualified audience.
c)  Measure success by quantifiable standards (i.e., phone calls, leads, emails, etc.).

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

It’s important for small business advertisers to shift their marketing strategies from print to digital solutions. Let me tell you why.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released new statistics earlier this week. And once again, not good news for the printed newspaper industry: the average paid circulation for U.S. newspapers continues to drop.

Due to consolidation in some local markets, a few papers saw gains. The Denver Post, circulation increased by 160,000 copies after the Rocky Mountain News shut down. After the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed, The Seattle Times gained almost 100,000 readers.

However, ten of the top 25 U.S. newspapers reported double-digit percentage losses for the six-month period ending on March 31. Daily circulation declined by more than 7% while Sunday distribution dropped 5.4%. The Wall Street Journal was the only top 25 newspaper to see a modest gain of .61%.
•    New York Daily News: -14.26%
•    New York Post: -20.5%
•    Houston Chronicle: -13.96%
•    Cleveland Plain Dealer: -11.7%
•    Philadelphia Inquirer: -13.72%
•    Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. -16.82%
•    St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: -10.42%
•    Atlanta Journal-Constitution: -19.91%

Meanwhile, Web traffic to newspaper sites grew more than 10% in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 73.3 million monthly unique visitors on average, 43.6% of all Internet users. The study conducted by Nielsen Online for NAA also found that newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of more than 3.5 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, an increase of almost 13%.

So what does this mean for the small business advertiser (who may or may not already be marketing on the Internet)?

The above statistics are just another data point confirming what we all know: the print media is fading. There will always be a market for news and information. Americans are still reading print media, but seeking information from different sources – Internet sources that provide information quickly and efficiently. The paradigm is shifting rapidly, and there will be winners and losers as the transition takes place.

Your marketing strategies need to shift also, because there will be winning and losing advertisers as well. Check out the small business advertising solutions at WebVisible. They are geared to small business marketing online. They can help you conduct successful Internet advertising that will improve your bottom line.

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

Online display adverting is a good method to build you brand and gain mindshare. It can also significantly enhance the performance of a search engine Internet advertising campaign. According to one study, searchers exposed to display advertising were 22% more likely to produce a sale than those who were not exposed.
The lesson here? Exposure works. But if you’re a small business advertiser that can’t afford to plaster banners all over the Internet, can you still apply the same principal? Sure. Remember, although not as graphical, your search engine advertising placements are delivering your message to searchers looking for your products and services!

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) long ago did a study on paid search advertising and its effect on brand lift, affirming what firms have known for years ─ that top search engine visibility has a definite branding effect. So even if you can’t afford a comprehensive banner campaign, you can increase the effectiveness of your search online advertising by simply increasing the frequency in which your search ads appear. And you still only pay when interested parties click on your ad to learn more. That’s the beauty of business advertising on the Internet.

According to Dana Todd, a chairperson of SEMPO’s Education Committee, “Search marketing is still growing… and we’re very gratified to see its flexibility and to understand it as a medium that has equal value as both a branding mechanism and as a business acquisition mechanism.”

At any rate, marketers continue to see the value in both search engine marketing and display advertising. Both are expected to continue growing. eMarketer predicts that search and display ads will retain the highest share of online ad spending formats through 2013, and will be the only formats to maintain double-digit share through that period.

But ‘brand lift’ and ‘mindshare’ can be lofty concepts when you simply want more business. So think of it in these terms: when a local consumer has a need in your area of expertise, who do you want them to think of? And when consumers go online to search, who do you want them to find?

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner