Local Search Marketing provides you, the business owner, with the most targeted and cost effective customer acquisition opportunity.

Your customers are more and more often searching for businesses like yours on the Internet. Studies show that these customers have a serious buying intent.

As a local business you need to figure out how to cost effectively reach out to these customers and start the business relationship. You need to do this even if you don’t have a web site and don’t want one!

The Internet has changed the way that customers are looking for your business. The days of pulling out 2 kilos of two or more volumes of phone books are coming to an end. People are still letting their fingers do the walking but it’s on a computer keyboard. The Kelsey research group published these statistics and trends.

q 74% of households use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally.
q Approximately 45% of local searches had a buying intent.
q The percentage of respondents who used yellow page directories decreased from 75% to 62%. (If you have a yellow page ad, it is time to consider buying a smaller ad and shifting your marketing dollars to the Internet.)

As local business owners you need to take action now. You need to keep your existing customers, and gain new customers, so you need to be found where they are searching. Local Search Marketing is where your future clients and customers will come from.

So where do you start?

Most likely your customers will have a default setting on their computers and this will be set to one of these sites for search; Google, Yahoo, MSN or AOL. These search engines all index web pages and have some form of paid advertising referred to as Pay Per Click. This is fine if you have a web site but what about many small and local businesses that have little or no web presence at all? And even if you do have a web site, does it show up in the search engines above?

Okay, so what other choices have you got?

Well, for example, in Australia things are pretty limited. There are those folks, you know whom I am talking about, who will place you not only in a hard copy directory but also have services on line. The challenge is in what the financial cost is, BIG, but hey, they have been around a long time and have deep pockets. The other issue is that they often advertise in the search engines and you will find them there BUT if you follow the link to them, you need to do your search all over again! What a pain.

There are other commercial “local search engines” and some of these are good value but many are not comprehensive. If there are only a few thousand businesses in a local directory most users will leave given the limited amount of content.

So what you need to do is use a search engine like Google and search for “local search directory”, make sure you limit your search to the country you are in. For this article I am using Australia. The results include Yahoo local search and a number of local directories. You should check these out and see what it takes to participate in the directories that make the first page of the Google search.

Many on-line marketeers forget the key point to being found on the Internet. What is the “Action” that you want to happen once someone finds your web page or directory listing? If you can’t or don’t sell products from your web site there are only two actions you want. First, that they call you, or second, that they email you.

That’s it!

You want a call or an email. These are the only two outcomes that can lead to interaction, a relationship and the potential to do business.

Many small businesses already know, and the current research is proving them right, that a “call” is worth 15 times a click.

Why is this?

Email is to often being viewed as spam, sometimes it never even gets through “filters” and it lacks the emotional and personal “touch” of voice. So what we really want is a phone call. We want that phone to start ringing. But ………

Why people don’t call as much any more.

It is getting harder and harder to get people to ring these days. They “hide” behind email or resist picking up the phone with fear that one of these things will occur:
1. Please press 1 for …. and 2 for …. or 3 for ……, or
2. We value your business and you are number 17 in the queue, or
3. This call maybe recorded for training and quality purposes!

No one wants this response to picking up the phone and making a call.

So what is the alternative?

It’s called Pay Per Call, but all it is, is a “push to talk” button. Someone presses a button on a web page, puts in their phone number and they are connected to the company that put up the button. It’s simple, easy and direct.

Not a click, it’s a call!

This is what we see as the future of local search. People finding companies that are in their area and pressing a button to talk with them. Could be a local cleaner, carpet layer, pool builder, alarm installer, baby sitter. You name it. These are the local people you want to attract and do business with. To do this, you need them to find you and talk with you. If they can find you through an Internet search and know that they won’t be placed on hold, since you are calling them, you win. Now it’s business as usual and your back in control of the sales process – not the Internet!

The year 2020 has been a roller coaster ride for most small business due to the Corona Pandemic. The event has caused a lot of dynamics in the business world and will continue to do so in the near future. But the Pandemic doesn’t not quite stop from the industry from getting more innovative. In this article, we’ll be discussing the trends in digital marketing that 2020 is looking forward to.

Below are the trends in Digital Marketing that you have to familiarise yourself as a small business owner with to be up to date with the industry changes in 2020.

Social Media Marketing and Video Marketing

People are using more social media than ever in the history of mankind. This is partly due to the lockdown caused due to Coronavirus crisis. As people are stuck in their homes, they are using social media to kill their boredom. It is at this time that people are starting to try out new social media platforms that they had not tried in the past. Twitter, which was facing a dip in its user engagement is now at its peak due to the Coronavirus chaos.

 You can expect businesses to use Twitter Marketing in their digital marketing efforts in 2020. This is especially good for small businesses to take advantage as they would have lower competition, which means lower advertising cost. 

So you can expect a boom in social beat usage in the post corona time as many people are signing up into new social media platforms which they will continue to use even after the lockdown is lifted. In Social Media, the users are consuming videos more than text and image-based posts. This is because of the advancement in internet speed and mobile technology. So video marketing is going to boom in the coming months of 2020.

Artificial Intelligence

Advertising platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads and many major marketing platforms have already started testing products that use artificial intelligence to deliver the ads for their clients. The long term plan for most marketing platforms is to create a standalone product that can deliver advertisements depending on the audience targets purely based on artificial intelligence.

Google Ads Express is one of such products by Google that allows small business owners to enter their budget and target geography, then the platform delivers the ads in the best possible settings to provide the best return on investment using artificial intelligence. You can expect more artificial based products to enter into the digital advertising space.

Programmatic Advertisement

Previously if you wanted to show ads in properties that are associated with Google, like Google search, Youtube and more, you had to use Google Ads and if you wanted to advertise in BBC website, then you had to get in touch with the BBC advertisement department. But now with Programmatic advertisement platforms using on Ad delivery programmatic network, you can advertise in literally all of the digital ad spaces in the Internet.

Programmatic advertisements have started gaining momentum since the start of 2019, but it is expected to mature in the year 2020 opening up an ocean of opportunities.

Chat Bot Marketing

As a small business owner, it might be hard to invest in additional human capital. ChatBots can help you replace a human customer support representative. Chatbots are getting more complicated and responsive thanks to machine learning and deep learning.

Many companies have started building their own custom bot using Python programing language. In fact with a chatbot, your website visitors stay in your website for longer and interact with your chatbot more than a static contact us form. This greatly helps with the search engine optimization of your website as the average time on the website is increased and the bounce rate is reduced.

Finding social media jobs is easy, there are many opportunities that people could consider searching for.

You can even go out there and find online jobs, there are usually many on Craigslist and many on Facebook, especially local businesses.

Social media jobs are good. If you are dealing with companies to help market their company's products or services then make sure you bring some social power. Social Power adds valuable experience to everyone involved so they also get to know their market better and they can start getting better leads thanks to you.

A pure social media job would be an actual social media manager who responds to comments and posts in a thread on a social media network or a forum.

This sort of job would also require the ability to strategize on how to use the platform to generate leads and be known.

A social media manager/citizen journalist role should be seen as a complement to what a traditional social media manager would do but it shouldn't be seen as an alternative.

Social media jobs are often cheaper than a community college, and many thousands of social media workers who've never graduated now are buying houses and cars, members of social media companies say.
But in many communities, the job market has been sluggish for a decade, making it hard for new graduates to get a high-paying state job. And with less people living in sprawling homes, where they can move closer to work, this makes it harder for people to find employment.

This is what makes social media jobs so great because they are often a great alternative to going to college. It's often more fun, and at least some people make enough money to pay back their student loans.

Studies have shown that people who socialize as much as they can on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram make more money than they would working in a typical career.

Paid Social Media Jobs will help you to apply for and connect with many companies and more as shown below:

How to Find a Social Media Job

Companies such as Indeed and LinkedIn, among others, have directories of technical jobs for social media professionals listed. You could also go to a few of the top digital marketing agencies, that recently launched their own in-house career sites seeking Social Media Experts.
And you can always connect with local business owners, especially those who need a social media presence and see if they'll hire you.

Social media jobs in general will rise, according to recent surveys of thousands of American workers, which found that work on social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram did generated more than $50,000 in salary.

With huge opportunities to improve one's skills, a digital marketer that I know, applied for a job on social media and was successful. "I lucked out from a chance interview for a for a medium sized company that wanted a Facebook presence" he said.

A handful of social media employers have tailored their social media adverts to a particular demographic. American food companies decided to target its youth with tailored messages on Snapchat to see if they wanted to work with them. In the US, some tech companies has even started to pay their employees for their social media help.

To succeed at a trade show you need to have a plan!

Know your goal.

What are you trying to accomplish? Sales, brand recognition, or finding business partners?

Have a plan to get it done.

Most of your goals are in turn working towards the primary goal of making a profit.

You want journalists to write about your product so it reaches more customers, you want to sell the idea of your product so the visitors go out and encourage their friends to buy it, you want to create connections with talented and important people so you can help each other be more successful.

It is important to know who you are trying to reach. Is it a journalist? is it a business partner? or is it a customer? It is Important to know, because you will not reach them in the same way.

99% of marketers said they found unique value from trade shows they did not get from other marketing mediums

• Their 3 most valued aspects of trade shows were:  60% of exhibitors said they value the ability to see lots of prospects and customers at the same time, and 47% said they value the ability to meet with a variety of players face to face, such as customers, suppliers, resellers, etc.   Source:  CEIR: The Changing Environment of Exhibitions
  
  
  

  • Even if digital marketing is growing along our continued use of technology and the internet, exhibitions without a doubt provide something that customers can´t get from the internet.

Most tech entrepeneurs know there is value in exhibiting at conventions and trade shows, but achieving the desired results is more elusive.

Our team of marketing professionals, ex-journalists, and designers will take care of your entire exhibition experience. From designing and building a custom booth, to networking and sales.

Get in touch with us and we'll give you an exhibition that you and your customers will never forget