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

When thinking about search engine marketing there is a subtle, but important differentiating factor local advertisers should consider. While national advertisers with e-commerce sites can afford to be more general in their keyword selection and targeting, smaller advertisers or localized businesses need to understand the different types of searches and the role of location as both an intent and physical component.

In other words, as business owners think about their local online marketing, they need to consider both the WHAT and the WHERE.

This concept is evidenced in the “one box” versus “two box” search approach. A consumer can enter what they are looking for and where they want to find it in a single box at Yahoo!, MSN, Google, etc.

In the two box method, used on online directory or local search-specific sites such as Superpages.com or Yellowpages.com, the searcher enters what they are looking for in one box, and where they want to find it in another.



Some things people look for are inherently local, such as a carpet cleaner. Someone searching for a carpet cleaner in Huntington Beach is most likely looking in the immediate area. A search on “carpet cleaner” returns local businesses because the engine checks the user’s IP address. It determines the user is in Huntington Beach and returns advertisements targeted to that area.

The same person could have a rental property in Palm Springs. To get results local to where one wants the service, the ‘where’ needs to be included. The geographic term in the search query “Palm Springs carpet cleaner” returns advertisers who want to show their ad to someone looking for a carpet cleaner there.

This simple, but important distinction has direct relevance to the way in which local advertisers design PPC (pay-per-click) search engine marketing strategy. Approximately half of searchers use geographic terms when they have local intent. The other half use generic terms (“carpet cleaner” vs. “Palm Springs carpet cleaner”).

So there are essentially three classes of local search:

• Searching in the market where I’m located, using generic language (carpet cleaner)
• Searching in the market where I’m located, using location-specific language (Huntington Beach carpet cleaner)
• Located out of a market, but looking into a local market (in Huntington Beach looking for “Palm Springs carpet cleaner”)

With this in mind, a hotel in Chicago should consider using different search advertisements tailored to the each audience. For keyword “hotel” the copy of the ad should seek to incentivize a local audience. In this case, highlighting free valet service or special rates for Chicago residents, for example. For key words “Chicago hotel,” the advertisement could feature free shuttle service to and from the airport, or first time Chicago area visitor specials.

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

Guy Kawaski gives some sage advice and easy to implement tips for small businesses on the eve of 2009.  Many of his items relate to core business operations - sales, support, customer experience, etc.  When you're in the middle of these items and experience them yourself, you can better understand both what your customer's needs are, as well as how effectively you address those needs (and where improvements can be made).

The Internet has forced companies to continuously improve their capabilities and customer experiences.  If one doesn't get what they expect, they can tell thousands of their friends about it, and it can stay online.  When we have a great experience, we can do the same, with a site like Angie's List that has raving users and much of what they do is recommend things to each other.  Be aware of what people are saying about you - good and bad.

Here are a few more thoughts to ponder for 2009:

• Reflect on what you do that provides unique, compelling experiences. 
• Ask your customers why they prefer you, and what you could do better.  In many cases, they will tell you, and appreciate being asked for input. 
• Identify the people in your community who have a voice and can influence local consumers.  Find ways to work together with these people.
• Use this economy to find interesting barter opportunities.  What can you do/provide cheaply that can benefit others in your local market.  If you are an expert on something, offer to host an educational seminar.  Maybe a friend with a restaurant will host, on the chance that you can bring people to the restaurant.  Get creative.
• If you are worrying about something, there is a good chance that others are as well.  Find people to discuss and solve problems, and share solutions with others who can benefit.
• Experiment with new online sites and tools - many of them can drive inexpensive local online marketing opportunities, new connections and new insights.  There are a lot of interesting people online - meet some new ones!

Some good reminders from our local Chamber, the Irvine Chamber of Commerce, about why membership in the Chamber is a good investment.  This list describes any good Chamber of Commerce, and how being an active member is a strong local marketing opportunity for any business.  Below is their top 10 list, and my comments under each relating to how online advertising, social media and adopting Internet marketing approaches relate.

1) INCREASE YOUR VISIBILITY IN THE COMMUNITY
Make sure people know you're a local business - when they are on a local website or searching locally, they should find you!

2) RELATIONSHIP BUILDING OPPORTUNITIES
Make friends online (and offline) with other local businesses and share ideas and business opportunities with each other. 

3) REFERRALS FROM THE CHAMBER AND THE CHAMBER WEB SITE
If local customers are using local sites like a Chamber Web site, make sure you are there.  Chamber of Commerce sites provide high quality links for SEO as well!

4) ACCESS TO MEMBERSHIP DATABASE OF MORE THAN 1,000 BUSINESSES
If your potential customers are other local businesses, then the Chamber provides you a list of companies that are willing to invest in their businesses as Chamber members.

5) ACCESS TO COMMUNITY LEADERS AND ELECTED OFFICIALS
If you want to grow, try new things or need help, having the best network (online and offline) always helps.  It's not what you know, it's who you know, and who they know.

6) DEVELOPMENT, WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS
Find ways to get exposed to new ideas for your business.  Use the new year to learn about something new and decide whether to do it yourself or hire an expert.  As an example, we provide online advertising seminars to educate business owners about the power of Internet marketing, and give them the tools to decide how involved they want to be in their advertising.

7) DIRECTORY AND SPECIALTY GUIDE LISTINGS
Find the niches and seasonal opportunities for your business.  When can you be most relevant to potential local consumers, and launch specific marketing campaigns during those periods.

8) COST EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING
Focus your advertising dollars on the most accountable and transparent marketing channels.  In most cases, local search engine marketing is the highest performing and most measurable investment you can make.

9) MEMBERS ONLY SERVICES
You only get the benefits if you participate.  If you want to drive more performance from your advertising in 2009, join up with the experts who can provide that service.

10) MEMBER ADVOCACY
When you're a member, you'll find that there are people there to help you, and many who want to help you.  Join the community, network, Chamber and be an active participant, and you'll find positive word of mouth marketing results, which the Internet continues to drive through sites like Facebook, Twitter and others.

Once considered a social network for teens and tweens, Facebook has quickly become a viable tool for businesses to connect with customers, network and generate awareness of their products or services. Today, more than half of the visitors to social networking sites are 35 and older, according to a recent industry report issued by comScore. Facebook reports 140 million active users, with 25 and older as the fastest growing demographic.

So other than that, why should a plumber, or any other small business, add Facebook to their local Internet marketing effort?

People Buy from People
It’s not just about sharing with your friends or following your favorite singer or athlete anymore. Social media sites offer innovative ways to engage in a dialog with new and prospective customers. You can build connections and loyalty among your customer base and support your marketing efforts using content such as photos, testimonials and feeds.

Be Where your Customers Are
Social networks are one of fastest growing online trends. According to Forrester Research, 75% of Internet users now participate in some form of social networking – up 56% over 2007. And eMarketer reports that nearly six out of 10 Americans who use social media interact with companies on social media sites (Opinion Research Corporation September 2008 study). 85% of social media users thought companies should interact with their consumers through social media, at least when needed.

Give your Company a ‘Personality’
60 of the top 100 retailers are on Facebook according to eMarketer. In addition to their branding and image building efforts, these leading companies are using social networking to create a ‘personality’ for their organization – something consumers can identify and interact with. A few more cutting edge examples are Red Bull and Papa John’s.

Be in the “Now”
For certain professions that require laws, regulations, techniques or best practices, having a ‘new media’ presence conveys staying current with technology, popular culture and trends. Would you want to buy consulting services or purchase legal council from someone with a modern Internet presence, or from the old school codger described here?

How to Get Started
Facebook is about personal relationships, or “friends.” People may want to befriend you, but probably don’t to be friends with your company. (Did you ever have a chat with “General Electric?”) So, first:

Create your Personal Profile
•    Upload personal information (you can set privacy levels), interests, photos, etc. You can also add daily messages or RSS feeds from your Web site.

•    Connect with friends and acquaintances. Upload your contact database and ask those you want to “friend” to start building out your network.

Create a “Page” for your business
•    Pages can be populated with company description, photos, videos, events, discussion forums and links.

•    Facebook users can become “Fans” of your company. Like a subscriber base, a fan base is a great way to stay in touch with them and share information and advice. Ask your friends to become fans and tell their friends about your company.

•    Pages are publicly available so search engines can find and index them!

-- Submitted by Jeff Werner

According to a survey of 400 small business owners by Microsoft, 73% would rather do their taxes than start a search engine marketing campaign! And I can’t say I blame them. It’s tedious and time-consuming. And one quarter of those surveyed admitted it was too complex. Maybe the rest lied! :) But seriously, the reality is that the small business owner is stressed for time and likely cannot dedicate the proper attention to a good local Internet marketing campaign. 35% agree, citing they would need an Internet advertising company to help set up a search marketing campaign.

Ninety percent also feared that keywords would become too expensive. That’s the beauty of budget-based programs offered at WebVisible. You specify your budget and we deliver maximum, results-driven performance within that budget!

Finally, eighty-one percent questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets. But, the small-business owners who use paid search marketing are very satisfied, as 72 percent reported an increase in sales inquiries and 68 percent consider their paid search marketing efforts successful.

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

The search engine optimization side of your site is a favorite subject of mine for several reasons. In this important part of your overall local Internet marketing strategy, you are being graded by the search engines whether or not you really pay attention to your site content.

You have content on your site anyways, so it should be the most useful content you can make – it will do the most work in your benefit. And the results you get are yours to keep, free forever, as long as you host the site on the same domain name. You even get more credit for having a site that’s been around longer, so get started NOW to make your site what you want it to be for you.

Clean up your site regularly by deleting all obsolete or outdated information. This extends to every page of your site – it’s a good idea to scan each page, perhaps monthly, replacing any old events, expired offers, outdated content references, broken links, or tired information with updated current content.

Search engines reevaluate pages that are edited regularly, giving them higher relevancy than stale old pages. Search engines will visit changed pages more frequently than unchanging pages.

Your customers and potential customers must feel like your site has new content, since there is so much stale undated content on the Web which is hard to separate or validate. Nothing makes me close a search faster than wasting five minutes reading an article that I discover to be outdated and obsolete by years only after I’ve started to really dig in to the content.

Having a line that says “This page was last verified or updated on <date>” at the bottom of your content pages would not be unwise, to show your customers when the content was made. Unlike magazine ads with dates all over the magazine, your Web page will usually stand alone. It’s good to give readers a firm point of reference as to when the content was made since there may not be any other way for them to know. It can also serve to remind you when it’s getting to be time to refresh dates, change out ads, and so on. Let your repeat customers know that your site is pruned and maintained regularly.

-- Contributed by Dan Lozano

As a Project Manager here at WebVisible, I help manage reseller implementations of Geneva (our advertising software platform) and other internal projects to help streamline our business processes and grow our business. So my work does not involve setting up local Internet marketing campaigns for our customers - at least not directly. But if it did - if I had a chance to work with small businesses and be their SEM consultant - I would follow a traditional project management approach, and guide them through the following phases:

1. Scope
A small business will need to determine the scope of its search engine marketing (SEM) campaign. What is it that we're trying to accomplish; what is the objective? Are we looking to market our entire product/service line, or just a select few? Do we want to target customers locally, regionally, and/or nationally? Are we looking to increase sales and profit, or is that second to getting our name out and promoting our brand?

2. Resources
After defining the scope, the small business will need to allocate the necessary people, funding, and any other resources needed to create, drive, and manage the local online marketing campaign. How much are we going to spend? Do we have resident experts in-house, or should we hire consultants?

3. Planning&Execution
The scope has been defined and our resources have been procured - everything is ready to go. But wait - not without a plan! We need to outline the steps for creating our campaign - complete with target completion dates, assigned resources, and all the appropriate task dependencies defined. The list of action items would include (but is certainly not limited to) the following: compile a list of keywords and geo-modifiers, evaluate and select what types of ads to use (text, image, video), develop landing page content, etc. Once the plan is in place, then we can go for it.

4. Monitoring
The beauty of SEM is that you can measure the effectiveness of your campaign through the many reporting tools that are available, such as Google Analytics or WebVisible's Merchant Center. So a small business can set up a campaign very quickly - then view and analyze the results after a couple months, and tweak as necessary.

5. Completion
A "project" is defined as having finite beginning and ending points. But one can argue that SEM campaigns are never truly finished - that they require constant updating. So the project of setting up the SEM campaign may be done, but managing it becomes an ongoing task.

I don't know the statistics on how many small businesses have embraced online advertising, only to give it up because of the daunting task of managing SEM campaigns. Ahhh....I guess that is why we (WebVisible) are in business - so we can take on the task of managing these "projects" to completion - while local businesses can focus on minding their own stores.

-- Contributed by Jonathan Danao

MediaPost notes a recent Forrester research report that only 16% of consumers trust corporate blogs, and compares company blogs to the used car salesmen of media.
We re-launched our company blog a couple months ago with 1 primary goal - harness the collective knowledge and energy that is WebVisible, and share it with the marketplace.  I've been so impressed and encouraged by the intelligence of our team around search engine marketing, and the candid suggestions, tips and ideas they've shared.  Whether a local business wants to pursue their own local search engine advertising, or wants to hire someone to do it for them, our team is encouraging and educating you!

As an Internet advertising agency, who harnesses technology to deliver the most effective online marketing campaigns for local businesses, we sometimes take for granted how much experience and knowledge exists here.  Our blog has begun to unlock this energy, and we're just beginning. 

We are passionate about local businesses.  We have pictures of them up in our offices.  Many of us grew up in local businesses, and our parents, grandparents and friends are the proprietors we strive to help every day.  Some of those entrepreneurs who need local Internet marketing services are used car companies.  Especially in this current economic downturn, more consumers are looking for used and certified cars.  We're here to help those matches occur between local consumers and local businesses.  We'll continue to share our knowledge and ideas, so you know the foundation of our organization.  I hope more of you will join our ongoing conversations.  We're happy to help used car salesmen, too.

For new sites especially, it's imperative to follow some good search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to help the search engines index your Web site efficiently and give it a good rank for the keywords you care about. It takes the search engines time to locate and index a new site, and you should make sure to cover the bases of optimizing your site in terms of meta tags, periodic updates of fresh content, and other basics of site design.

Add meta tags to your site -- this will help you get your pages properly indexed in the search engines for the most possible related traffic. Each page should have its meta tags changed so the title, meta keywords, and meta description all reflect the exact content of the page.

Meta tagging won't affect your PPC ads, but will influence your organic visits, meaning people who find you through the non-paid results section of the search engines. You should be able to learn how to do this from the control panel of your web hosting account or in their documentation. Definitely a required step for improving the site's overall clickthrough rate.

Adding fresh original content to your site regularly shows your customers and the search engines that you’re a going concern. The search engines will pay more attention to a site that is growing than a site that hasn’t changed in months. They’ll be back more often to index your new content if you have new content more often, and your customers will be more interested if they have more to check out on your site. Use affiliate content if you must, don’t copy someone else’s site to avoid penalties from the search engines, and remember that original content is what makes your site unique and profitable. All will ultimately help your local Internet marketing efforts.

-- Contributed by Dan Lozano

In my 2 prior posts, I discussed data as an important part of the sales planning and sales process, as well as during the advertiser "health check" discussions.  Data is also critical to recommend additional local Internet marketing investments by a business owner, based on the success the advertiser is having with a current online advertising campaign. 

The primary metrics that can produce and effective up-sell discussion:

• How is the campaign pacing? As example, if the budget is exhausting early every day, then the ad spend vs. market demand could be too little, and the local advertiser may want to increase the budget
• What is the effective cost per call, lead or action?  How does the number compare to other media, other similar businesses' costs per?
• How are the leads helping with new customers and lifetime value? Is the merchant getting the type of customers that are the highest value to the business?
• What is the competitive position and performance of the campaign vs. others? How does this Internet marketer compare to his/her biggest competitors?
• Are the number of leads/customers meeting with the numbers the business wants? Is there capacity to accept and manage more leads?

Here is the second half of a short list of what the small/medium size businesses need to consider when investing in a local Internet marketing campaign.

Pacing
How often will my ad appear? If I sign a 6 month contract, when will my “clicks” be used up? All SEM companies handle this differently. Some will commit you to a dollar amount. When that money is used up, you are taken off the engine. WebVisible uses an in-house, award-winning platform called “Geneva” that paces serving your ads in the Sponsored Links during your contract period. This is a very important element of SEM because a business needs to know leads are coming in at a fairly steady stream during their contract period.

Analytics
How do I know who is clicking on my ads? How many clicks am I getting? Most Internet advertising companies offer analytics that, at the very least, tell a business how many clicks they have received. But how cool would it be to know WHO is clicking? What is their phone number, name, email address? WebVisible superior analytics offer this type of comprehensive data. This is very important information for a business using SEM to attract new leads. What a great ROI!

Management Fee/Cost
So what’s the Cost Per Click? Other fees? Ask! Every company charges differently. Most important for any size business is ‘no surprises!’ You can pay by the click. A business might choose to set a Budget Campaign which focuses on spending a set dollar amount a month on your campaign over a period of time.

Another option is a Guaranteed Click program. In this campaign, the business is guaranteed a set amount of clicks in a given contract period. Look out for companies that charge management fees. Do not fear! Ask! WebVisible offers Budget based and Guaranteed Click programs based on the customers’ needs. The key is you choose the amount to spend from our list of campaigns and we don’t go over!

So Why WebVisible?
You set the budget you want to spend. We serve up your business ads on the Tier 1 Engines like Google, Yahoo! and some on the Tier 2’s like Dogpile. You choose the keywords that make sense for your business. We pace out your ads over your contract period and we NEVER spend more than your budget! Oh, and we provide you 24 hour access to your analytics!

How awesome is that?

-- Contributed by Carol Gerrard

Increasing your campaign size is sometimes your best option, especially when your campaign is performing strongly. If you can handle the new business, you should make sure you are getting it.

Converting web searchers into buyers is your Web site’s job; our advertising brings them to your site and phone, sending you as many readers as possible to convert. Make sure you are not wasting a single opportunity!

WebVisible offers different local Internet marketing packages, depending on your need. Our Guaranteed Clicks packages give an exact number of clicks at an exact budget. It will meet its click goal quite reliably by the end of its full term, with a better than 95% success rate. If not, we’ll run the campaign for free until we meet the goal.

More aggressive competition in a customer-rich business segment generally indicates a move to our Guaranteed Budget campaigns – more expensive, more focused clicks at a higher volume. This package focuses tightly on a shorter list of specific keywords. There’s no goal number of clicks, just as many clicks as possible. We offer different price points, including flexible budgets.

For overall stability that you would expect from an expert Internet advertising company, we don’t allow any of our campaigns to work in ‘burst mode’, driving through your budget at top speed. It’s better to let our system build a sustainable bidding strategy and pursue that strategy, making the best possible use of your budget across all search engines, all ads, and all keywords, building for as long as you run it.

A stable campaign lets us build you a dependable service that can be paced, monitored, and modified to suit your business’s changing needs. But in a situation where we have a ‘deep well’ of potential business, like cosmetic alterations in The O.C., the problem is too often not spending enough to capture as much traffic as you can use.

-- Contributed by Dan Lozano

So you just started an ad campaign with us. You’re eager to see the kind of skyrocketing results you’ve heard of in web marketing: 24/7/365 global advertising powerhouse, whirlwind profits in record time for almost no work, unlimited residual riches, and so on. “Set it and forget it.”

It’s good to be excited about your local Internet marketing program with WebVisible! You can get superb results, but it takes some work. We’re your partner for that work. And as the expert of your own business you’ll have many chances to utilize your knowledge. This is definitely NOT traditional advertising, where you can only choose once and are then stuck.

Our system gives you feedback too -- you get statistics on your clickers, callers, and site visitors in (nearly) real time. Compare that to the limited tracking from postcards, radio, billboards, television ads, and other traditional media. We give you insight into your targeted online advertising results that you just can’t get elsewhere.

Call us today and we’ll show you how to use your Merchant Center. Many customers learn how their site performance is measurably improving their business after a few short minutes.

Our software performs better after it has had time to learn about the search engines' responses to your unique keyword set, the response from your customers and many other factors. It is crucial to the overall success of the campaign to give the software enough time to work. It may take two months to get stabilized, or it may take two weeks. But about 95% of the time the campaigns end on time, or a little early, with full clicks delivered, regardless of fluctuations. Wait it out, it does work!

So set it and DON’T forget it – keep an eye on your progress, ask us your questions and tell us your concerns as they arise, and learn a bit more about what you bought, straight from the people who make it work for you.

-- Contributed by Dan Lozano

For an amazing number of small business owners, online advertising agencies seem unapproachable.  Understanding local Internet marketing can be a difficult endeavor, and the typical Internet banner ads a business owner sees are big, recognizable brands.

The great thing about targeted online advertising is that a little investment can go a long, long way.  Is there $100/month in your budget to learn more about your business and your clients than you've ever known before?  Would you rather send out 100 letters to people who you don't know your business, nor have clear interest in your business OR get almost 10 phone calls per month from highly interested prospects?

Consider this real world example - a sign designer here in Costa Mesa, CA.  The client initially did not have a website, but smartly recognized that many consumers now use search engines to find sign makers and designers.  In fact, without a website, search engine marketing was the most immediate way that he could be found by potential customers on the Internet.

We built a customized profile landing page, and set up an initial campaign to determine what types of sign and graphics services were most compelling to potential customers in the Orange County area, all for an introductory budget of less than $100/month.  The results so far have been staggering.

• Over 300 targeted visitors to the company's landing page
• Nearly 40 connected phone calls from interested prospects
• Several people printing out the landing page and carrying it into the signmaker's office
• Search data showing that vehicle graphics and lettering are the most demanded and high performing services in his campaign

With the several new clients that he received in just the first couple weeks of the campaign, he paid for several years worth of online advertising.  As you think about local Internet advertising and whether it's for your business, think about this company's results, showing the incredible possibilities that an Internet advertising agency can bring to a local business.  Make sure they can provide the tracking, market research and results that your business deserves, even if you want to start with a $100/month initial investment.

Intuit, maker of popular small business tools including Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax, just completed a survey of 751 small business owners with less than 10 employees. "Small Business and the Economy" found that 82% of business owners still see opportunities for their business, compared to 91% percent in a similar survey conducted six months ago. In the most recent survey, 64% said they still expect to grow, compared to 77% six months ago.

While remaining fairly optimistic, small business owners are also realistic about the downturn in the economy. 67% percent say worrying about how to find new customers keeps them up at night, while 60% plan to focus on reducing costs and retaining current customers. More than 60% said they had previously survived a recession.

Intuit offers 10 tips to help small business owners survive and thrive during tough economic times. Among them are online advertising campaigns powered by WebVisible. Intuit is offering businesses a full suite of local Internet marketing services to list their business on local Web sites, place Web ads next to search results related to their business, and drive sales using e-mail marketing with a free 60-day trial.

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

One of the best parts of my job is the opportunity to speak with and teach groups of local business owners about Internet advertising, especially local search engine marketing.  I've invested thousands of hours developing marketing strategies, understanding how search engines and the Internet provide opportunities for businesses to attract customers, and managing hundreds of my own online advertising campaigns, and I relish the opportunity to share my experiences and help others to maximize their time and not make my mistakes. 

Teaching is an especially important part of my life as I was raised by a mother who was a teacher, my sister is a teacher, and my wife is a teacher.  I've taught in both corporate and academic environments and love it.  As I tell my students in my current college class, "I'm here to facilitate some good discussion and help you learn, and I'll share any knowledge and experiences I've had to try to help you, but this class is about you, your goals and opening your mind to possibilities."  I think about teaching business owners about online Internet marketing in much the same way.

If you decide to sit in on one of my seminars or webinars, or you'd like me to speak to your group, please consider:

1. You have to have goals you are trying to achieve in your business.
2. You have to accept that huge shifts have occurred in the behavior of consumers, as well as what media they consume and where they consume it.
3. You have to be open-minded to new ideas and change with regard to investing in marketing for your local business.
4. You have to be prepared to handle the new success you can achieve, and focus on the opportunity.
5. You have to be ready to act - TODAY.

I'm always thrilled with the feedback I receive from workshop attendees about the content, energy and opportunities presented to them in a class session.  I always hope that I provide the compelling data, quick and easy ideas to implement, and longer term strategies to consider for a business owner, and something that triggers them to act.  Whether a local business hires our Internet advertising company to help them, hires someone else, or tries it herself, I'm hopeful that more local businesses will seize the opportunity to effectively advertise on the Internet.  With the targeting, transparency and accountability that is available, search engine marketing is the first place that any business should consider investing marketing dollars - the customers are there and the market research for your business is an added bonus.

If you want to discuss how we can help educate your business group, please let us know.  We have a number of sessions for different stages of understanding about online advertising, various categories of business, even how to manage multi-channel advertising campaigns.

We continue to read about the increased allocation of advertising budget from traditional media to more accountable and productive Internet advertising, specifically search.  There are a few very practical reasons why:
1. When the economy slows, people naturally move to cut costs, and advertising has historically been viewed as a cost, even a luxury.  If one cannot assess the effectiveness of his advertising, he's going to either hope it's working, or he's going to cut costs and stop it.
2. Media consumption is shifting online and the effectiveness of traditional media, both real and perceived, is declining.  Advertisers want to be where the audience is.
3. Search engine marketing has become the #1 direct response medium, and when times are tough, who better to market to than targeted online advertising consumers.  Historically, the best direct response media has been a "pay for placement" model, with the hope that the placement would be seen by ready-to-buy customers at their moment of need.  Search advertising is even better because you don't pay for placement, you pay for performance.

At a time when consumers are less open to advertising, less likely to be in a buying consumer mode, and more likely to extend their purchase cycles, the best potential place to advertise is where the most active and measurable consumers are - on the Internet, specifically in the search engines.  As an Internet Advertising Agency, we help local businesses recognize their first opportunity is online.  Everything else in the media world order arranges below search engine marketing, as it is less productive, less useful and lower return on investment.  If you are in a local market like Chicago, search engine marketing may be the place where you can spend your entire advertising budget.  In a market like Spokane, Washington, you may have to consider Internet banner advertising, billboards or radio, to stimulate some additional demand for your business.  However, search's rank in the media world order for most companies is now firmly at the top, and it is unlikely to be supplanted anytime soon.