Reason #1: Local Search Engine Marketing is a PROVEN Method
of Marketing
Businesses have been experiencing
the frustration of diminishing returns from print advertising. It seems as though when people are looking
for a new product or service, especially something local, they are turning to
their computers rather than their phone books or newspapers. A look at numerous studies shows us that:
73% of activity online is in one
way or another “related to local content” (Google 5/07)
New Research by The Kelsey Group
and ConStat Indicates 70% of U.S. Households Now Use the Internet When Shopping
Locally for Products and Services. Findings also suggest the Internet is poised
to surpass newspapers as a local shopping information resource.
70 percent of online searchers will use local search to find offline
businesses. The TMPDM-com Score study shows 86 percent of online users will be
searching for a local business at some point in time. (Research by Kelsey
Group)
Appearing
in the local search results is more important than ever. When someone sits down at their computer and
does a search for:
Name
of Town + Type of Business
I
would like to encourage you to take a moment and go to Google.com. Type in the name of your local town and type
of business (example: Chicago lawyer).
Does your business appear near the top of this front page?
If
it doesn’t, I want to encourage you to take action on this. Consumers in your area are doing these types
of searches on a daily basis. They are
looking for a business RIGHT then and there.
If your business isn’t appearing in those results, it is like they are
knocking on your door and you aren’t there to answer!
Fortunately
the way to get your business to the top of this page isn’t a mystery. It is done through a careful and calculated
search engine optimization campaign that includes elements such as the on-page
optimization of your website, backlink building throughout the internet, the
incorporation of social media, studying the success of your competition, and
more.
We
would love to sit down with you and explore how we could help your company
increase its business today.
Reason #2: Online Marketing allows
you to Track Everything
One
of the biggest challenges of running an advertising campaign is being able to
gauge how much it helps your business.
Take a newspaper ad for example, there is no way to know how many people
will physically see your ad, let alone take action from it. Wouldn’t it be nice if the newspaper company
sent you a monthly summary that broke down:
1)
How
many people saw your ad
2)
How
many people read your ad, and decided to look for more information about your
business
3)
How
many people saw your ad, and came through your door as a paying customer
This
is one of the reasons I LOVE online marketing.
Virtually everything can be tracked.
Did you know that it is quite easy to take a look at every single person
that comes to your website? One of the
first things my company does is setup a method of tracking everything on your
website. This allows you to see all
kinds of valuable things including:
1)
The
amount of visitors your website is receiving each day.
2)
WHERE
the visitors are coming from
3)
How
long they are staying on your website.
It even shows how long they stay on each page!
4)
What
pages they are leaving your website from
5)
What
keywords they typed in to find your website
6)
If
they were on your website before, or if this is their first visit
It
is crucial that an internet marketing firm understand exactly where your
business is before search engine marketing services begin, so the success of
the campaign can be tracked.
Tracking
the success of your business’s website closely even allows us to experiment
with things like ad copy. This is a
great way to fine tune your advertising campaign and find out quickly what ads
your potential customers find more interesting.
We
would love to sit down with you and share in more detail how we can help you
track your website statistics and measure success today.
Reason #3: Social Media Marketing is
a MUST for Today’s Marketing
Simply
put, social media marketing has changed the way businesses market themselves
online. A solid social media campaign
can help your business tremendously. It
seems as though just about everyone participates in a social media in some way
or another (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc.). Here are a few reasons why you should
seriously consider becoming involved:
1) Everyone is using it. Facebook
has over 500 million members, with over half of them logging in daily! This is where people like to spend their
time, and it is easy for you to put your business information in front of them.
2) Social Media Campaigns have Proven
to be VERY Successful. President Obama’s
social media campaign was a central component to his popular campaign. He even continues to use it as a way to
communicate with the American public.
3) Social Media is seen as a credible
source. Social media is one of the top
sources of news and important updates.
People view it as a place they can trust.
4) Social Media is FAST. Want to post something about a promo your
business is running? Just throw a few
sentences together and get it out there.
You don’t need an ultra-polished campaign, much social media is just
text, believe it or not. And it still
works!
5) Social Media allows you to build
upon your strengths. When your customers
start posting positive reviews on your social media account, the benefits are
tremendous. Nothing helps potential
customers gain confidence in a business than seeing that they have hundreds of
happy fans.
Social media marketing is an
incredible marketing tool, we would be happy to sit down and talk to you in
more detail about how it can help you more specifically.
Reason
#4: Internet Marketing Brings Highly
Targeted Traffic
A phrase that I hear
mentioned quite a bit in the marketing world is that running a campaign is
often times quite similar to throwing a bunch of mud at the wall, and watching
what sticks. Doesn’t sound very
scientific does it?
It is a frustrating thing to
pay for an ad to be circulated in thousands of newspapers, and know that only a
small amount will actually be a possible fit for your service. Let’s take a look at two examples to help
illustrate this principle. Let’s assume
that you run a law practice:
1)
You run an ad in the local newspaper, that
reaches about 50,000 people. Many will
see your ad, but how many are in need of a lawyer at this point in time? Your strategy is to make an impression on as
many people as possible, in hopes that when they do need a lawyer, they will
remember your ad. You are also hoping to
grab people that are in need of a laywer at that specific time in their life.
2)
You optimize your website and get it ranking
at the top of Google. Someone is in need
of a lawyer and they go to their computer and type in “your town lawyer”. Your firm comes up at the top and the prospect
finds your website and clicks on your website, being further exposed to your
marketing.
Do you see how different
these two situations are? In order to
succeed with situation #1, you need to run ads in the newspaper constantly,
hoping to make an impression on the audience and grabbing people at the perfect
time of opportunity. Situation #2
however, relies on getting yourself to the top of the search engines, and
whenever people look for a law service online, you are right there at the
top. Pretty powerful eh?
The point I am trying to
make is that when people search for a local service online, they are looking
for that service right then and there.
These are the types of people you need to be targeting!
Reason
#5: Internet Marketing for Your Business
is Very Affordable
Marketing in general as I’m
sure you are aware, can be incredibly expensive. Fortunately internet marketing is
considerably less expensive than other traditional forms of advertising. It is
a shame that many small business owners are under the false impression that it
takes hundreds if not thousands of dollars for seo services. The truth is that, especially in smaller
areas, search engine optimization is far less expensive than advertising in the
newspapers and television.
A solid internet marketing
campaign for a local business involves a careful combination of backlinking,
on-page search engine optimization, social media, article distribution, and
more.
When choosing an seo firm to
do your marketing, though you do not need to pay top dollar, you will need to
make sure you take care to ensure you are working with professionals. It is smart to gain an understanding of what
the company will do to market your business online.
Another option is to do the
marketing work yourself. This can be
quite challenging as there is quite a bit you would need to learn. You need to remember that a seo firm does
this type of work day in and day out, and will most likely be able to draft a
plan quickly specific to your business and your needs.
We would be happy to sit
down with you and take a closer look at the needs of your company, and the type
of work that would be required to help you increase your presence online.
Reason
#6: Control Over How Your Brand is Represented
One of the most challenging
aspects of running an ad in the newspaper or phone book is deciding what you
are going to squeeze in that tiny amount of space you are paying thousands of
dollars for. I’m sure you have many
great selling points you would like to convey to your potential customers, but
only enough room for one or two thoughts.
Fortunately with internet
marketing, this isn’t a real problem.
When you are marketing your website, once your prospects enter your
website, you will have the opportunity to show them all kinds of incredible
things about your business. Great
selling points that you can display on your website include:
1)
Testimonials or reviews from other
customers. This is a fantastic way to
show your audience that your company has a history, is reliable, and does
quality work.
2)
Pictures and even videos of your business.
3)
Information that can be as general or
specific as you like. Many companies
like to summarize everything first, and then give people the option to dive
deeper into the website to learn more about the company.
Are you getting excited yet?
Think of it like this, a
newspaper ad is a piece of paper that doesn’t have the ability to include more
information than what is already there.
For the prospect to explore further, they will need to take action such
as calling a phone number or going to your place of business. A website, on the other hand, is more like a
living breathing thing. It has the
ability to show the prospect all kinds of exciting information, that can even
be tailored to meet the interest of the person at hand.
We would love to sit down
with you and explore how we can help turn your website into a powerful selling
tool.
Reason
#7: Internet Marketing Builds Upon What Your Competition has Already Proven
Successful
One of the hardest parts of
marketing is coming up with a game plan.
In more traditional forms of advertising, it is difficult to gauge how
successful your competition is when they are, for example, sending out flyers
to their prospective customers.
Fortunately, with internet marketing, a good search engine analyst can
tell a great deal by studying your competition.
You would be surprised how much information is publicly available, and
how little work it often is to simply duplicate the work of your competition
and jump ahead of them in the rankings.
A good search engine
marketer is able to easily see:
1)
The current positioning of your competition
2)
The amount of promotion your competition has
done to get to the top of the search engines
3)
The “keywords” that your competition is
targeting (this is very important!)
4)
The type of sales approach they are employing
to convert their current website visitors into paying clients
In some situations such as
smaller towns, there might not be much to study in terms of local companies
that are excelling online. That’s okay
though, because there is so much to gain from examining the search engine
campaigns of similar companies in larger cities. When you are able to study from someone in an
ultra-competitive area and apply it locally, domination will come easy!
Search engine marketing may
be something new to you, but it isn’t to us.
We know what it takes to get companies traffic from the internet. We would love to show you what we can do to
help you.
Reason
#8: Whether you like it or not, People Online are Talking about your Business
I don’t know if you are
aware of this, but even if your business doesn’t have a website, you most
likely already have a presence online.
Hopefully it’s a good one!
Reviews are very very
popular online. Nowadays, when your
typical internet consumer is looking to make a purchase or try out a service,
they are likely to go to one of the many review websites to find out what other
people are saying about the business.
Popular review websites
include places like Yelp, Citysearch, even Google has their own review
website! What makes these websites even
more popular is the fact that often times reviews come up in the search engines
when people are trying to find a service.
The point I’m trying to make is that there are most likely several
reviews floating around out there about your business. Are you aware what they are saying about you?
A good internet marketer is
well aware of the most important review websites in your area, and can help you
quickly identify the reviews currently in circulation about your business. They will be able to advise you the best course
of action for dealing with the reviews already out there, such as how to
encourage and even circulate new reviews, and how to respond to the negative
ones.
Often times business owners
feel powerless and quite deflated after reading a negative review about their
business. It is understandable that an
owner would take a criticism to heart, but the truth is no matter what there
will always be bad reviews. It is just a
fact of life and unavoidable. It is
crucial though, that you be aware of everything that is being said about your
business, and have a way to manage it.
We would be happy to sit
down with you and examine the current reviews circulating on the internet about
your business.
Reason
#9: Internet Marketing Adds Value to your other Marketing Methods
One of my most favorite
benefits of a good internet marketing
service is that it really adds value to your other marketing methods. That might sound kind of strange, how about if
I explain it by comparing two different examples.
1)
Joe the plumber is running a fairly expensive
marketing campaign in the local newspaper, having his ad featured
everyday. He doesn’t have a website, so
his ad suggests that people call him on the phone.
2)
Fred the plumber is also running a fairly
expensive marketing campaign in the same newspaper, but he also has a
website. In the ad, he directs people to
check out his website. Now people have
an additional way to easily find out more about this service. At the website, they can see reviews left by
other customers, pictures of his work, even download and print a coupon that
will give them a discount off of their first service!
Do you see the difference
here? You’ve probably noticed that most
commercials and ads direct people towards a website. This is because a website is a very powerful
marketing tool. Simply having a website
isn’t enough though. An internet
marketing expert can help you transform your website into a sales and direct
marketing machine.
We would love to get
together with you and explore how we could help you build/enhance your current
website. Not only would this create an
additional stream of traffic for you from the internet, but it would help to
enhance the marketing plan you already have in place.
Reason
#10: The Long Term Benefits of Internet Marketing for your Business
There is a company that has
been using internet marketing to promote their business and website online for
some time. It is a comforting thought
for them when one of their clients comes in and says “I just had to try your
service, you are all over the internet”.
We have already talked about
how internet marketing for your local business can help put you in front of the
multitude of people searching online, but now I would like to talk about the
long term benefits of such promotion.
1)
The internet is currently “the” place to be,
and it is still gathering steam. Over
half of all searches online are connected to local services and events. The demand for appearing at the top of the
search engines will only continue to grow.
Setting the foundation now will help you gain early footing in the
upcoming fight for the top.
2)
In some cases, a company might be ranking at
or near the top of the search engines even though they didn’t do much work to
get there. This is a great situation to
be in, though it is concerning. This
often means that it will not be hard at all for any other company to come along
and knock them from the top. After all,
they didn’t do much to get there!
3)
An important element of any marketing
campaign is repetition. When your
business is promoted online, people are going to find it multiple places. Facebook, Yelp, Youtube, Google, and so
forth. The more your company is seen,
the more credible and popular you will appear.
That’s a good thing!
There are so many benefits
to marketing yourself online. We would
love to sit down with you and explore what we can do to help you start seeing
results as quickly as possible.
For more information on how to engage Digital Marketing strategies and tools listed above, please contact us
Tony C. Nwokolo,
Founder/CEO.,
S. STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS
4, Anike Akpena Street,
Off
Mobolaji Bank-Anthony Way,
Unity B/Stop, Ikeja, Lagos
+234 -909-454-0396,
0802-2303428
www.
strategicsolutions.com.ng
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