First Page Of Google Costs More Than $100

As a company that works with local businesses on bringing them online and helping them with online advertising and local SEO we spend quite a bit of our effort on educating the customers.

This is quite rewarding and our team enjoys showing customers how taking advantage of how the customer uses the web everyday actually helps them bring customers to their door that use the web in the same way they do.

We like to talk to our customers about more than their website and when building the website we like to start with some level of basic SEO. With most of our customers being local businesses and local search on the rise, most of our customers understand right away how important it is to show up when people search for local services.

Although many customers are still learning how to understand that just because they are found online does not mean people are buying from them online, they are understanding that they need to be there.

We have another set of customers that start to see the benefits of SEO and see that they can increase their market presence and expand their product reach nationally, if not globally. It is great once this realization sets in. But there is one issue.

Many customers have a look of disbelief once it is explained that it takes more than $100 in extra services to make the first page of Google for a one word term. One way that it is easy to explain this is by showing the number of results shown for a search term and the companies that are on the first page and showing some simple results of why they are there.

Another way of showing the value is equating it to something that customers are familiar with, things like paying more for higher eyeball having TV shows, larger reach radio stations, etc. If a term has 500 searches a month it is likely to be much less competitive than a term that has hundreds of thousands of searches a month.

If organic SEO cost is a concern it is typically a good plan to offer PPC help up front but as we all know it makes much more sense over the long term to have a solid organic SEO plan in place.

Large companies understand this and as time progresses smaller businesses will start to understand this as well. It is great when a prospective customer starts to see the potential, they start to think about how they use the internet. For those customers that realize that but do not have the budget in place for a larger marketing plan it is important to start them from a base they can build from in the future for a larger reach SEO plan. Sooner or later they will want, or NEED it.

What Next For Your New Website

Earlier this week I had a few things come up that made me think about some of the failures of small businesses after they receive a new website or start a new social media presence on Facebook or Twitter. I got sidetracked and could not write the post but a very timely post by Mark Fulton at DotSauce.com fit nicely with my thoughts as well. The post also reminded me of my post I did awhile back concerning offline marketing tips for promoting a website.

When presenting to small businesses we online marketers tend to focus on talking about driving traffic through SEO, PPC, Social Media, and other methods that drive targeted web traffic to the customers, hopefully, quality domain name.

Although businesses like Amazon.com can focus the majority of their marketing online local businesses have different needs and in many cases a good portion of the traffic to their website will come from offline marketing methods.

Many of these local businesses are new to promoting on the web and have a perception that they need not do anything to promote their website once it has been turned over to them. I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed customers pay real money for a new website but visit the business month after month and never see their domain name on their business cards, menus, t-shirts, or billboards.

What a missed opportunity. Most consumers will NOT remember a phone number or address. A phone number is really 10 words, a website can be as short as one word. Which are you going to have a better chance of remembering?

It is important that small business owners remember that, yes their web development partner should make sure their site is properly optimized for the search engines, but unless they are paying a marketing company to handle all their marketing promotions, that they treat their domain name as they previously treated their phone number or address. They can provide more information on that domain name than they could possibly provide on a business card or an ad in a newspaper or billboard. Use those methods to drive people to your prime real estate on the web, your website.

We at LocalTek make it a point to help our customers understand holistic marketing and making sure customers promote. As much as we do our best to help our customers it is typically less than a 50 percent ratio that take advantage of the FREE ways to promote their website in the places they are already paying for.

With more people using mobile phones and search everyday it is important to keep your online brand in front of them, let them search for your website and cut your competitors off at the pass. Your online marketing does not stop once the website is handed over, no matter what web development company you are working with, the ability to attract customers only starts with the website hand off. Making sure your website continues to work for you is part of a holistic marketing approach that continues like any other marketing that you may be doing.

Facebook Deals Coupon Simple To Launch

Although our LocalTek team has spent much time taking a look at various ways our local business customers could use Facebook Places and Deals it was not until today that we decided what promotion we would offer once we claimed our Facebook Places page.

If you are a local business owner Facebook now makes it easier to claim your Places page by adding an email associated with your domain name to your Facebook personal account, submitting your information, and then they review it and approve (or not). Once this is setup you can submit Facebook Deals for review and inclusion in your page.

As Facebook Deals usage is free it was a no brainer to offer our potential customers a special if they checked into the LocalTek office, since much of the talk with customers these days is around mobile and social we decided to offer something that combined both as a special, we offer a free mobile website with the purchase of a new small business website if the customer checks-in to our Facebook Places page on their mobile phone.

After your submit your listing you have to wait for approval, but it took less than 4 hours for us to be approved for our deal after a quick setup.

Although there are mixed opinions on merging your Facebook business page with your Places page (one of the main things you lose when doing this is any landing page you may of built separate from your business page wall) for our local business we have determined that we would like to merge our Facebook page with our Places page. We have over 660 "likes" on our page and having those combined with our Places page makes sense for us as we would like to have our Deals available to see for all of our fans.

Whether you need a company like LocalTek to help you setup your Facebook Places  and Facebook Deals or if you have someone in house to do this it only makes sense to take advantage of this free service Facebook is offering. With more than 500 million users spending an average of 55 minutes a day on the site take advantage of this marketing opportunity instead of delaying.

Go like our Facebook page now to see what deals we offer in the future, you can see our Facebook page here, feel free to Like it : Facebook.com/LocalTek

You can see our Places page here: LocalTek Places Page

As mentioned, soon they will be one and the same, the Facebook Deal we setup is on the Places page for those looking.

Social Media Is About More Than A Facebook Page

Even though Facebook and Twitter have been around for a few to several years it has really been this past year that main street small businesses have really started to take notice. As people realize more and more that their customers are not consuming information in the same way they have in the past it becomes obvious that billboards and newspapers are not the only way they have to market their business these days.

Although some business owners and consumers still look at Facebook and say, what a waste of time, why would I use that? One thing to keep in mind is that we as business owners need to realize it is not about how we used the social media and in particular Facebook, it really has everything to do with our customers. And they ARE using it, more and more everyday. 55 minutes per user average per day.

Let me make one more reference, the other thing people say is a complete waste of time is TV. Most businesses WANT to advertise on TV but cannot afford it, yet social media is a very targeted medium that is a "time waster" yet people resist because they do not understand. Once again, people need to step outside of how they use the internet and think about how their CUSTOMERS use the internet.

Social media is the ultimate "word of mouth" marketing, if you need away to think of Facebook or Twitter, look at it like this, it is a friend telling another friend what they like. Sometimes seemingly meaningless posts about what store someone just bought something in is the ultimate advertising for your business.

All that said, many people, once they understand they have to take the leap and open a free Facebook page for their business, make the mistake of not moving the page forward and thinking about a true plan of how to engage their customers.

Although a Facebook page or Facebook Places page is free, in many cases it is worth it to pay a small fee for a local company to help you get your page setup properly. Although you may not be ready to do everything that is possible on Facebook at this time it may be worth it to take the advice of someone that has taken the time to understand the possibilities of how it can be used to engage customers of your business.

In some businesses, such as a coffee shop, it may be important to send specials, events, or other things out on a daily basis but also you can use it as an educational tool to teach your customers about the various coffees and types of coffee drinks. Your customers will pay attention and spend more time on your page or website if you try to educate them rather than sell to them everyday.

Also, sometimes it takes thinking outside the box, some businesses that seem "legacy" still have a need to get a message out. Large corporations have figured this out but many of the local marketing companies that people work with daily are really just now getting their minds around social media and are having a hard time articulating a plan to their customers about how to use online marketing and social tools as a solid marketing mechanism. Once again, ask for ideas outside of just creating a Facebook page. It takes more than that.

A few examples of what your business should be prepared for is proper pay per click advertising on Facebook, understanding how to use it in a manner that is effective and targets customers in your target demographic and area is very important. Once again it is about more than just buying keywords and paying per click, if it is not targeted and driving people to your Facebook page or website that actually matter to your business the clicks are of little use. As I said before, it is about more than being able to create a Facebook business page.

Another great example of create Facebook use is creating a visually appealing landing page or tab for your Facebook page. A couple examples are:

Coca Cola

Crane Coffee

As you can see it is a page within your Facebook presence that allows for you to give people a way to interact in a way they are used to with common websites.  Although these webpage like interfaces are by no means required it is becoming more important to have a professional appearance for your business when people find you on Facebook. This is a great way to do that. The cost to have a professional create these types of pages is minimal compared to what the cost of creating marketing materials or logos costs in many cases.

Once you have your page setup you need to make sure you keep it active. What does this mean?

It can be as simple as taking 30 seconds to a minute to post a link to a specials page on your website. Or maybe ask your customers a question about what they would like to see added to your store. Little things to connect with people that have shown interest in your business in the past but may of lost top of mind awareness of what you offer.

The key though is working with someone that can see the bigger marketing picture, although you may start with just having a Facebook page, if you are taking advice from someone, make sure they have a history or working online and understand how people are engaging with businesses on the internet. If they cannot help you come up with a real plan that makes sense for how your customers are using social media tools it may be time to switch the marketing company you are working with.

Also, for further reading, here are a few Facebook How-To's and Tips.

Foursquare.com and Why Local Business Should Pay Attention

I have been using Foursquare for sometime now and have recently started to see quite a few more people start to join the fast growing social/location based game/app/service. With most of my attention being focused on local search for local businesses and local online advertising on Missouri.me, apps like Foursquare pique my interest and I like to watch their evolution and the way people use them as they evolve.

It is important to not necessarily watch how the early adopters use them since they tend to be power users and their day to day usage will be much different than the mass of users that come in later and are less techie. When I see my wife using Foursquare everyday I start to see how people will really use the service and the power that small businesses will have if they use the service to help draw people into their doors.

The past month (with one of the examples happening today) I have witnessed a couple examples of what will start to happen as the general consumer starts to come online with apps such as this. There is no need to go through all the hype around Foursquare and all the huge projections since all of that has been reported on virtually every tech site in existence so I would prefer to talk real world examples of how it draws people in.

First example is a restaurant in the town Localtek is based in, Spokes is the name of the restaurant, this is a place that I visit on occasion when friends are there. Recently while I was checking into locations on Foursquare I noticed there was a "Special Here" banner at the top of the Foursquare iPhone app. If you click it you could see that Spokes was offering half price burgers to the person that is the Foursquare mayor of Spokes (Foursquare has the concept of Mayor for the person who checks into a location most frequently plus a few other requirements).

So what happens? I start to go to Spokes now because it is a competition to try to get the mayorship, it should be noted I do not even necassarily eat burgers when I go there but based on the competitive factor I start to go so I can check-in. I am sure the special will change at times so why not go for the mayorship so I get future specials.

A little special like that and I show up, and I am sure others have as well. And when people show up to eat at a restaurant they typically bring more people. It all starts to add up. This is a simple example, but this is in a town of less than 20 thousand people. This is not a large city with a huge base of technology focused people. This is rural Missouri and people are taking advantage of this. There is a base of right around 2 million users on Foursquare and I am already having to fight for mayorships.

Now you start to think about local coffee shops offering half price coffees or other specials for mayors, or maybe a restaurant offering something to people who are mayors elsewhere to try to get them to come to their restaurant instead of the other and you start to see some of the power.

Another example is something that happened just today, my wife, daughter and I were in a mall and they were running into "chick" stores so I was browsing a bit. I happened to notice another "Special" banner and it was for a small watch kiosk. You could unlock the special by checking in.

So what happens, I go check out the watch kiosk and since I checked in I got a free watch cleaning. Small stuff but now my wife and daughter start browsing. As you can imagine other consumers will do this same thing and this will drive additional purchases since people show up for the free watch cleaning. What an easy and great way to drive people to stop at a kiosk most people would just walk on by.

These are just a couple examples but as you can see this is something local businesses will have to watch and pay attention too. With apps on both the iPhone and Google Android based phones based on location launching everyday and those with disposable income being the ones most likely to have them it is no longer possible for a business that has been around for dozens of years to ignore the shift happening to local online and in the mobile world.

Foursquare is just one example. Watch as many more come to market as people figure out new and unique ways to tap this new technology. For those of us in the tech world it may not seem new but until recently there was not a true way for local businesses to be able to tap into this marketing channel.

Small Business vs. Corporate Sales Approach

A little over a year ago I quit my what could only be described as a corporate sales job in the telecommunications and mobile space and entered the world of marketing and selling to local businesses in rural Missouri.

In the beginning I was a little concerned about being able to translate the approaches that I had used in the past to generating new business and putting together proposals that were valuable for my customers.

There are many differences that you have to keep in mind when dealing with small businesses as compared to dealing with large or medium sized companies, here are 5 that I have found very useful to keep in mind when my sales team or myself is planning on meeting with a local business:

• Let's start with an obvious one, in most cases you will be dealing directly with the owner meaning if this person is spending money it is coming directly from their own pocket. This causes a completely different mentality than someone spending someone else's money like in a corporate environment.
• Education is key but do not overwhelm, unlike in corporate business environments where there are typically teams of people to work on individual projects or even people dedicated to just one specific topic in a small business people are much less specialized and resources are much tighter. Keep your "pitch" on topic and show the value points. Examples of how it relates to their business is key to making the point fast.
• Expect to be more flexible with appointment times even when the customer is interested. One of the things that I had the hardest time with when first moving into the small business sales world was the fact that things were not as structured when it came to meetings and appointments. Even with your best clients things can get busy and they have to cancel at the last minute. Be respectful that they are running a business and do not have a large team to do so.
• Do not be a salesman. Everyone is trying to sell something to them everyday. If you are coming into to their business and are trying to be the slick sales guy in a suit, their automatic "no" response will prevail. If you are trying to be a local person and dealing with the local community, let your personality and friendship with these potential customers be one of the selling factors in your product.
• One major difference I found between the corporate sales world and the local business world is that you cannot expect the customer to make themselves available for you after hours. In my past life much time was spent on customer calls at all hours of the night, it was expected that employees on both sides put the hours in to get projects engineered and sold. Local businesses have a different focus and have more structured business hours. Many have no interest in the "wine and dine" of the corporate world and would prefer that time with their family. Make sure you factor this in when you are pushing for time on their schedule.

For those of you that may be making the leap from selling to large businesses as compared to the core of American business, which is the small business, some of the above items may help when you think about your approach.

KTJJ and KREI Radio Working For LocalTek

I spend a lot of time explaining to people that they need to change the way they have been promoting their small business, typically this starts with choosing the right domain name and ends with a marketing model that pulls all the various advertising mediums together.

As you can imagine there are times that we explain that certain media types are not as effective as others but we never tell any customer to spend all their money online. In most cases local businesses need to market in more than one place but we try to help them understand that it is much more effective to wrap all the promotional efforts together into a holistic marketing model.

Radio is type of advertising I have always had a hard time grasping how it would be effective for certain types of businesses but I wanted to  give a big thank you to the team at KTJJ and KREI who also happen to run MyMoInfo.com for proving that it can work for virtually types of businesses if done right. They are based in Farmington MO and cover Farmington, MO news as well as the entire region of Missouri they are based in through their network of stations (KJFF, KREI, and KTJJ).

Dick Womack and Kim Long had attended a couple of our local online marketing seminars and had found that the information provided could also be useful for their local news site. We had some great discussions about the future of marketing for small businesses and decided that it would be useful to have both a technology radio show and technical tip spots on their network of stations.

As I admitted to them at the time I was a bit skeptical that this type of promotion would be useful for a business such as ours but have been pleasantly surprised. Based on the methods we used we have been receiving customer calls and emails asking for follow ups every week and virtually everywhere my sales team goes they get feedback that they have heard the radio technical tip spots

In the spots and radio show we spend a lot of time driving people to both our Facebook page and our website. One thing I have noticed is a uptick in traffic to our website from the ad spots and specifically on days we have the radio show (twice a month).

What does this mean? Use a model of marketing for your local business that ties legacy methods such as radio together with both your website and social media to get the most from your marketing campaign.

Want Free Small Business Promotion?

Spending time with local small business owners over the past couple years there is one theme that is constant no matter what type of business. How do I get the most bang for my buck?

Most of the businesses want to find away to start working online and promoting awareness of their brand online but typically do not have the time or the ability to change their marketing spending on the fly as it is planned out in advance.

This means that when working with them it is very important to help find cost effective ways for them to promote themselves, sometimes in ways that may not be obvious in the beginning but once recognized are easy to implement and take advantage of. Many of these companies have been working with legacy marketing companies for years who do a great job with creatives, brochures, and overall design but may not have worked in making sure they do the same level of branding online.

It is important as a small business starts making the move to taking advantage of the growth in local search to make sure they brand themselves and not someone else each step of the way. What do I mean by this? Consider this example of a way for any business that has a website to easily keep their business name in front of people they are communicating with daily.

Everyday I get emails from various types of businesses: customers, partners, competitors, etc. They may be the most professional, perfectly written emails with great logos, maybe even a really nicely designed brochure attached that was done by a marketing firm paid thousands of dollars, but then you see this:

Jane Doe

Business XYZ

jane@hotmail.com

It may not be obvious but there is a major issue here, especially if the company is paying people to help promote their company or working on branding campaigns. Business XYZ , in this case, is promoting Hotmail, not themselves. There is a very simple solution to this.

Use your website name as your email address as well, in other words use jane@businessxyz.com instead of the hotmail address. Although not every business has a website the cost of a domain name and email at most places these days is a very small percentage of the cost of advertising in most mediums these days. Why not take advantage of a free or low cost way to promote your business name?

These days setting up email and buying a domain name is almost as easy as setting up a free email account at most services. And if you are concerned about the technical nature there are more and more companies available to help local businesses with simple technology needs at reasonable costs compared to what companies may of charged in the past.

If you do have a website and the company that put it together for you did not offer the option to setup your own email make sure you talk to them, there is no reason you should not be offered email as part of your website package.

No longer can you look at your website as a technical, nice to have, item. It is an essential part of your marketing. Over 51 percent of searches are locally focused now (read this article at Frager Factor). This means people are not looking in the places they have in the past  like the Yellow pages. Make sure when you start your marketing online it is not just your website though, use every email as a chance to keep your website name in front of your partners and customers as well.

If you need help with understanding how to extend the marketing of your business online visit us at Localtek.com

Holistic Marketing Plans For Local Business

This was a very busy week for Missouri.me / Localtek. We had seminars in both Park Hills and Chamois, MO and had a great time meeting with members of the business leadership in Cuba, MO. I wanted to say thanks to all those who spent the time to listen to what it takes to succeed online today and how marketing is changing compared to years past.

No matter what size the community today people are looking for products and services online. This means that your competitor is not necessarily down the street but is more likely someone in another state, the Internet has leveled the playing field and customer retention becomes as important as business growth.

The way things are changing from a marketing point of view really requires an open mind from business leaders who typically have had purely legacy media to work with, newspapers, radio, yellow pages, and billboards. Although it is impossible to go strictly online as a local business it is important to think about how you work a holistic marketing plan to get the most bang for your buck as you move to having a web presence as well as market offline.

From the selection of your domain name to the ad you put on the radio you must think about how they all work together, even more so that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter start to play a daily role in many peoples lives (especially in the disposable income crowd).

For those business leaders from the communities listed at the top of this post, thanks for the time this week, we look forward to working with you.

Thanks To The Best Customers In The World

In the past two days I have had multiple deals come from multiple customer referrals. To me this is the best advertising you can possibly get, and I sell advertising. This also means as a business we continue to turn a corner into a phase of having both active feet on the street as well as having our base of customers doing selling for us as well.

One of the new customers is actually a website for a local community, always good to have the city governments or associations on board. To get the call that they have heard and seen our work and called us based on that helps a ton.

But the second story is even better, one of our customers actually had a long radio spot where he was being interviewed. During the interview the radio host actually made reference to the customers new website and ad. The customer, God bless him, actually said yes we have a new website and I want to say thanks to the team at Localtek for what they have done.

The announcer then asked for the website, instead of giving the address the customer said, well you can find us by searching for (insert several various related terms here) because after the work Localtek did we are number one on Google for all of them. Sure the radio host had said the businesses name so there is confidence that the audience will find the website anyway, but how is that for a customer that understands the value of local search.

On a side note there, I went and checked traffic to the customers site and it went up tonight and most of it was search traffic for the various terms he would want to be ranked for.

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to my great customers. I know many of them read this blog and this is a public thanks for all the references we have been getting.

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