Online Marketing For Local Businesses

Online marketing for local businesses has become challenging for most small business owners. The main reason most local businesses refuse to market and advertise online is simply lack of basic internet marketing skills.

Who can blame them? Your local plumber wasn’t told he’d also have to learn local online marketing along with pipe fittings, so it’s easy to understand why most local business owners settle for what’s familiar.

In this case, what’s familiar is also very expensive for most people. The average newspaper ad in Austin, Texas ranges anywhere from $89 - $260 per month and advertising in the local yellow pages can be even more expensive.

However, there is an alternative to what most people have once seen as impossible to learn. As the economy tightens and consumers investigate before they consider purchasing, local business owners are trading what’s familiar for what’s working and in this case it’s local online marketing using free and paid ad networks.

This new type of online marketing has raised a few questions for local business owners, especially those used to traditional ways of marketing. First of all, what skills do you need to learn, how much money does it cost compared to what their currently doing, all of which are great questions.

I’ve worked with many small business owners in the past and marketing hundreds of products online for many of them and over time I’ve come across a few techniques that work really well for marketing local businesses online.

For business owners new to online marketing this may seem like nuclear physics, but rest assure marketing online locally isn’t as tough as it appears.  To sum it up the main goal of your ads online are to get your customers to take action. This action can be anything from filling out a contact form, or even calling your business to schedule a free estimate. This is very similar to traditional advertising in the newspaper and Yellow Book.

However, online you can add videos, photos and target customers by their zip code and city. You usually have the ability to add longer descriptions about your business as well instead of those tiny 4 line ads in the newspaper or 3x5 inch ads in the Yellow Book.

It’s been said that over 63% of people who make a purchase first review the product or service online. If customers are online searching for more information the best place to advertise is the exact same place. You want to expose your ads to as many people as possible with the intent of getting them to take action.

Where are your customers looking to get more information online about your business? Websites such as Yelp.com, Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com and Google’s Local Business Search are ranked among the highest for giving reviews and showing local business ads. This means a local business owner looking to market a business online locally can obtain a substantial amount of customers from using these sites.

While as a business owner you cannot control the reviews and comments left about your business you do have control over the quality of service and product quality you product that lead to customers leaving reviews.

If you’re looking to get started online and marketing your business locally follow this simple blueprint:

First, visit Google’s Local Business Site and create your free ads. This will be your biggest source of free customers visiting your site. While having an ad will not ensure you get consistent customers you can rest assured if a customer types in a keyword that describes your business it will get shown on Google. This is a very powerful online marketing tool for local businesses.

Setup a simple website with a contact form. The only goal of your website should be to get your customers to take action and fill out the contact form. You could offer them a coupon, or a special rate or discount for filling out the contact form. It’s really up to you what you decide to offer your customers for completing the form.

Then setup a simple auto-responder to send your customers valuable information until they visit your physical location or take action again and make a purchase from your sales website. An auto-responder is a system that automatically sends pre-written emails to customers on pre-set dates that you control.

This is a great way to stay in contact with customers and provide them with additional information before they make a purchase. You have to remember people love to buy things but hate to be sold.

To really understand how to create a Free Google Ad I highly suggest visiting http://www.austinlocalcadlink.com  There you can get a custom designed Google Ad made for by professionals in as little as 24-48 hours. It's the best offer I've seen online for local business owners looking to market there business online.

 Jamaul Finley is an online marketer and advertiser for many local businesses in the Austin, Texas area. He specializes in making things simple and easy to understand and works closely with local business owners to create an online ad that fits their business, their budget and their bottom line.

Austin Local Ad Link P. O. Box 5206 Round Rock, Texas 78664 Ph: 512 751-0177