Local Business Marketing Part 2: Location is Everything

Posted on Oct 27, 2010 by Rick to Web Marketing

Location, location, location!

As the old saying goes, location is everything. When it comes to local business marketing, this is especially relevant to your customers! What is their location right now? More importantly, which of your potential customers are near you, at this moment? And how can you target them and promote to them without standing out front of your business twirling a ridiculous sign!? In the past, we’ve talked about geo-targeting your Google PPC ads. Now, let’s look a few different channels which allow for geo-targeting.

Local Facebook Ads

Facebook has long offered pay-per-click or CPM advertising opportunities to suite any budget. I think many local businesses don’t take advantage of facebook because they don’t know the ad filtering possibilities. That is, they don’t realize how targeted a business can get with their ad.

Let’s use a small restaurant called Joe’s Pub as an example. Joe’s Pub could utilize facebook’s ad network to show their ads to all people  within their city. This allows them show ads only to individuals who could possibly be customers within reach. If businesses like Joe’s Pub wanted to get even more targeted, they could utilize some of the other facebook ad filters in conjunction with location to target people who:

• Live locally and are also celebrating a birthday today – This is a great demographic to target prospects with an ad which offers a free birthday drink or meal with the purchase of… anything.
• Live locally and are also interest in [insert your niche] – Own a local bike shop? Simply run an ad to locals interested in cycling and triathlon to promote this weekend’s clearance sale.
• Live locally and are engaged – Use these filters to promote this weekend’s bridal show to all engaged females.
• Live locally and are fans of your business on facebook – What better group to advertise to than the one who already knows who you are?

And the list goes on. The point- Just knowing that a person is local will make your advertising much more effective, with the right application. Facebook is just one of many social networks offering this type of targeting.

Mobile Advertising Opportunities

Smart phones have paved the path for improving the consumer’s ability to stay connected in many new ways. At the same time, a variety of smart phone applications continue to make it possible for businesses to target users based on their locations. for the consumer, the tradeoff to using a free application is that they will be periodically shown ads.

Foursquare

Foursquare is an example of a mobile application that seems to be catching on. Simply put, foursquare is an application which allows users to tell their friends where they are at all times. For example, a foursquare user sends a notification to his/her friends that he/she has arrived at a particular location such a park, restaurant or sporting event. While checking-in to a location, users also share tips and advice with other users about that location

From a marketing standpoint, foursquare gives businesses the opportunity to promote a special offer to individuals who are in the immediate area by offering a special of some type. For example, if you just arrived downtown and checked-in to foursquare, you’d be able to easily see all nearby business information, including any specials.  For business, adding a special offer is fairly simple to do and currently doesn’t cost anything which is what makes this a good tactic for almost any local business.

Down the road, we can definitely imagine foursquare offering a variety of other advertising opportunities which can be targeted to users based on their locations. In the meantime, offering a special foursqaure coupon is pretty much the only thing that most local businesses will benefit from.

Please stay tuned for Part 3 of our local marketing series!

Tags: Local Business Marketing, local search, SEO

Local Business Marketing Part 1: The Trickle-Down Effect

Posted on Oct 12, 2010 by Rick to Web Marketing

Have you ever tried to add your business to Google Places, YellowPages.com or other online business directories and noticed that your business was already listed? More importantly, did you ever wonder exactly how your listing got there?  Today, we’re going to look a little deeper into where this information comes from and how it can be applied to increased your local business exposure.

The Trickle-Down Affect

Companies like Google, Bing, Facebook, Foursquare, TomTom, YellowPages and others all, in one way or another, utilize business information within their applications. Search engines like Bing and Google display business listings within their search results. Foursquare is a mobile ‘game’ of sorts which allows users to ‘check-in’ to various businesses and locations to let their friends know where they are and what they are doing. TomTom is one of many GPS providers which also helps users find nearby businesses upon request.

The aforementioned services are only a few of a growing many which reply on various data sources in an effort to get the most accurate business data which is then used for various purposes. By comparing and combining multiple data sources, each of these websites and services are able to create fairly accurate and detailed business profiles, without relying on business owners to claim and update their own listings.

It  makes sense, then, that the most efficient strategy for a local business to improve its visibility across all these channels would be to find out where this initial data comes from and to ensure that their business is not only listed, but also listed accurately. As business data is created or corrected at the top of this data pyramid, it can then trickle down to all of the services which rely on it. While this is especially critical for new businesses, it is also critical for existing businesses who have recently changed locations, phone numbers, websites, etc.

Simplified Data Flow Chart

So Where is the Top of the Information Pyramid?

Several different data aggregating services exist, each of which provides business data to one or many lower level sources. Each user-facing service in turn, accepts data from one or more of these data sources. So, Google, TomTom, etc. could potentially purchase data from several aggregator services, compare the data found, and create listings based on the similarities of each data source. The more similarities that can be found, the more “sure” that these services are about the data and thus, the more practical it would be to use that data. Put simply, if Google finds the same information about your businesses across all its data sources, it may mean more exposure for your business simply because Google is more confident about the data.

Of course, there’s more to Google’s and other similar services ranking algorithm. This small part is an important one, especially if you’re not interested in claiming and updating your listings on hundreds of websites. Utilizing services such as Localeze is a good start. These types of services gather data about businesses and provide it to partner services and websites which include major search engines and location based application companies which can include:

• Search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.)
• Business directories (Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc.)
• GPS software companies (TomTom, Magellan, etc.)
• Mobile and Web Applications (foursqaure, GoWalla, etc.)

One last note is that it may also be a good idea to pick the biggest players in each of the above categories and claim your business listings there. This speeds up the process and ensures that your information and kept up to date, usually for free or at a low cost.

Tags: gps, Local Business Marketing, local search, SEO

Google Local SEO Quick Tips

Posted on Jun 10, 2009 by Rick to SEO

Google local search has been around for a while now and I’m still surprised by how few small business know how to take advantage of it. For many who are not experienced with it, organic SEO can seem confusing which may be why many may just ignore it. However, local search optimization is one of the easiest ways for local business to generate traffic to their websites. Since millions of searchers are using Google Maps to find businesses, Google can offer a steady stream of traffic to almost any business that optimizes for it.

Lately, I’ve also noticed Google Local results appearing in organic search more and more often. And as Google fine-tunes their search logic, it would make sense that local results continue to appear for a greater number of searches in the US and worldwide when they are relveant. This further argues the point that a local search strategy is worth the time.

First, lets look at an example:

In a recent search for Miami Movers, I get the following search results:

Click to Enlarge

You’ll see in the image that a map and several local business results appear in the first position. These results are being pulled from Google Maps listings. While it may not be reasonable for many companies to rank in the top position for specific keyword phrases in general search, a well-optimized local listing can still yield a good amount of traffic as the local results seem to trump the general search results.

Here’s how you can take advantage:

First, go to Google Maps and search for your business name. Chances are pretty good that you your business already has a listing if you’ve been around for a little while. If so, click more info next your listing. Then, look for a link that says edit and then on edit this listing. At this point, Google will take you through a number of steps to validate that you are in fact the business owner. Once you’ve confirmed ownership, you’ll have access to edit your listing.

What next?

Click to Enlarge

Now that you’ve validated your listing, it’s time to edit a few things. First, make sure that all your business information is correct. Check the phone numbers, email address, hours of operation, etc. Next, you’ll want to make sure that your business name and description are fairly keyword-rich. For example, a moving company in Miami might assign the business name Bob’s Moving Company – Miami. The business description should also have relevant, location specific keyword phrases such as miami movers, moving company in miami, etc. Lastly, make sure your business is assigned to the appropriate categories. You’re allowed to assign yourself to multiple categories so be sure to assign all categories that are relevant.

Once you updated and saved your listing, wait a couple weeks and log back into your Google Local Business center. You’ll then be able to view statistics regarding the number of times your listing has displayed and how searchers found it. As with any SEO strategy, this can take time. Following these steps and the other fundamentals of SEO will yield long term results for your company.

Click to Enlarge

Tags: local search

Geo-Targeting Your PPC Campaigns

Posted on Aug 13, 2008 by Rick to Pay Per Click

Google, MSN and Yahoo have offered location-targeted campaigns for as long as I can remember. This feature allows advertisers to select the zip codes, cities, states, countries and continents to show their ads in.

From the perspective of business that provide a good or service to the local population, the application of this feature is pretty straight forward. Local advertisers use geo-targeting to show ads to customers who are in their buying area. For example, a dry cleaning company in Miami would only show ads to users searching for dry cleaning from a computer in the Miami area.

Applications for national and international companies
The applications of geo-targeting for companies whose prospects span wider areas are often overlooked. Advertisers often think that, because they can service searchers in any area, they should run the same ads for all areas. Consider the following applications for geo-targeting:

* Manipulate ad copy based on location – Running ads personalized to a given location can increase click through rates, which will allow you to run your ad in lower positions at a lower cost. For years, marketers have found that personalizing ad copy increases response rate by grabbing the attention of potential customers. Why not spend a little more time setting up location-specific campaigns if it makes sense for your product? After all, it doesn’t hurt to test this strategy in a small area before applying it to all your campaigns.

* Test ads and promotions – There are many features that will allow you to test ads and geo-targeting is just one of them. Try different ads or promotions in different cities to see which tactics are most effective. This is especially effective for high-volume campaigns.

* Fool the competition – Ever have a competitor watching (and copying) your every online advertising move? Try running a dummy ad just so your competitor doesn’t know what you’re really up to. All you need to do is find out where your competitor is located and run a geo-targeted ad just for them. The rest of the country will still see your ‘real’ ads. This may be a good tactic for advertisers launching a large, national campaign who want to keep their competitors in the dark for a while. The con here is that potential customers in the same geographical region will see the same ad as your competitor.

Staying on top of your game requires creativity and lots of testing. Take a close look at your campaigns and see if you can think of new ways to run your campaigns more effectively and efficiently.

Tags: geo targeting, local search