Localtek Hires As Legacy Media Declines

March 26, 2010, Desloge, MO - LocalTek, LLC, an innovator in local search and advertising solutions for businesses across America, announces plans to aggressively hire more sales staff and web developers to meet the growing needs of their rapidly expanding client list.

Traditional legacy media has come under fire during these difficult economic times with massive layoffs and corporate downsizing. With a consistently shrinking market share, newspapers and other forms of print media are closing their doors and causing their unemployed workers to seek jobs in an increasingly smaller job market. LocalTek aims to hire these former legacy media employees to expand the company’s thriving online presence.

“We feel that people who have experience in selling media would be a terrific asset to our company,” said Bruce Marler, founder of LocalTek. “The unprecedented growth we’ve had has led to an immediate need to add more employees to our line up.”

The surge in local search has grown significantly over the past year and with the current economic downturn many people are looking to their own community for their needs and services. LocalTek has developed a strategic business plan catering to these needs and has provided their clients with websites that have substantially increased local traffic and customers to their client’s business.

LocalTek has discovered an economic solution in its business practice by reaching out to small businesses that were previously untapped by larger marketing companies. By providing cost-effective web development, local search & SEO, social media promotion, and targeted location based services that virtually any business can afford, LocalTek is providing a variety of small businesses the opportunity to compete competitively with the same resources used by large corporations.

LocalTek’s business model has met large success and the company has been featured in international news with its innovative community portal, Missouri.me, which serves over 1,000 communities in Missouri. Missouri.me offers visitors local information about news, businesses, weather, and classifieds in their community.

About LocalTek

LocalTek provides cost effective, locally targeted, online advertising, and website solutions for a variety of business types throughout the United States. LocalTek solutions are targeted at specific geographic areas, which allow businesses to focus on the customers they find most valuable.

Headquartered in Desloge, Missouri, LocalTek is rapidly expanding its service offering in over 20 markets nationwide. For additional information, please visit us at www.localtek.com.

Few Website Visitors To Rural Newspaper Websites

Tonight I decided to do some competitive analysis comparing traffic to certain towns and areas in Missouri to the competing newspaper website in the area.

I had done this for a few towns before but this time I did so on a larger scale, I cannot say I looked at every newspaper site but enough where I could spot trends in data enough where I felt comfortable making certain assumptions.

Well, a couple things were made real clear:

• Sites that had RSS feeds and were open to syndication had more traffic than those that did not, this makes sense to me but knowing how the media industry feels about that it does not surprise me that many do not offer RSS feeds.
• In the cases that it was evident they were doing other things to promote the site (i.e .promoting it in their own paper...) there was more traffic.

Without a doubt as rural broadband stimulus pushed broadband deeper into the rural areas these newspaper companies are going to falter fast, right now the rural papers are the only ones holding steady but from talking to small businesses the desperation is even starting to be felt in the small areas.

To give you an idea of how low the traffic stats are, a really large portion of the sites had Alexa rankings of 20 million to 10 million, the next larger amount was between 7 to 5 million. VERY few had Alexa rankings below 1 million. The ones that did were major cities.

To be honest I am not a fan of Alexa rankings since I have enough sites to see how the data can be skewed, but in a case like this where the user base is pretty non-tech savvy the rankings cannot be gamed, makes for a cleaner set of data, but still not perfect, but fine for this test.

Now, what may not be clear is that many of these newspapers cover more than one county, so it is not like the customer base is only 5 thousand people.

One thing I did find is the sites that have taken the time to form community/social interactions on the site are fairing much better.

If these sites cannot figure out how to bring more than a few visitors to their site a day they will not be able to keep advertisers, it is obvious they are fighting the battle to keep the status quo and if they do not figure something out quick they may be gone faster than we expected.

It may sound like I look forward to that, I do not, as much as I am building a business to take advantage of the shift it is actually a bit sad to see an industry fall apart because they refused to innovate and I do think their will be some quality journalism that suffers because of this.

One interesting note is I found one local newspaper in a town of less than 9000 that had an Alexa below 300K but then one in a town of over 30K that had an Alexa around 7 million. Seems if you have a plan and the community gets behind it you can get traction. Small town or not people are online and broadband is coming fast.

Do You Still Read Print Magazines and Newspapers?

Sunday afternoon I was spending a lazy day around the house (we all deserve one) when I realized I was holding the devil in my hands, I was actually reading a print media magazine. One of those old school things that we had before this Internet thingy.

Obviously there is a major shift happening in the news and print media world that everybody could see coming except for the people actually in the middle of it. That shift is the accelerating move of people reading news, opinions, and everything else online. As much as we that live in the online world would like to believe that everyone reads online the major move did not happen until the last couple years and it is accelerating every quarter, and this is not just due to the economy. The shift is here to stay.

Well, in reality I have only ever subscribed to the print newspaper for maybe a total of 6 months, this was around 1995 or so. Pretty much directly after that my news world started to come from media sites online. But I always continued to subscribe to several (ok probably 10) print magazines because for some reason I found them more useful than print newspapers. News is real time, much of the articles in magazines were more story and research based so real time did not matter as much.

Over the years though I have continued to shift until I got to the point where I subscribe to only 2 print publications, those are Wired and Fast Company.

Those 2 magazines are my 2 favorites and I think they still have very good, interesting, and forward thinking articles. I really wish Business 2.0 was still around since that was #2 only to Wired for me.

Anyway, I am sure over the next year or two I will likely quit subscribing to those as well and move completely online.

As the majority of my readers are from a pretty tech savvy online crowd, do you still subscribe to any print magazines or newspapers? How much longer and if you care to share what are they and why?

NOTE: After I wrote this Cate sent me a link to a great story that has about every link you would ever need to understand the shift and what it means. Thanks Cate!!!! I have reading material (online) for awhile.

Newspaper Circulation Continues To Fall

No surprise here, but it was reported today that newspaper circulations continue to decline and in the latest report they were shown to have accelerated their pace of eyeball loss even faster. The overall drop was 10.6 percent in the April to September period, even when the economy comes back full force these numbers will not be made up. Print is done.

As a geo domain owner and developer this is something I work with customers on and help them understand the marketing implications to them. Although in many cases there may still be a need to use the newspaper for a piece of their marketing, if small businesses does not start to make the move to a combined marketing strategy taking advantage of what they know and what they do not know (online advertising) then they will be left behind and talking about how the Internet is responsible for causing their failure when in reality it was their failure to change the way they market their business to match the times.

A bit of interesting news in the report was that the Wall Street Journal actually grew slightly and has surpassed USA Today as the widest circulated print newspaper in the USA.

For a list of the top 25 newspapers and the rate of their circulation drop check out Top 25 Daily Newspapers.

An Open Letter To Small Business Owners – Help With Online Advertising

Dear Small Business Owner,

This letter is being written to help you understand the changes that are occurring that will have an effect on how you run your business and specifically on how you promote your business. The Internet is here to stay, historically small business has relied on legacy media such as newspapers and radio to promote their business as well as advertising only mediums such as billboards.  These media types focus on one thing and one thing only, eyeballs. The question you have to ask yourself now is this: Are their better ways to promote my business on the Internet? Is there something other than eyeballs I, as a business owner, need to think about?

You are likely very comfortable advertising with your local newspaper, Yellowpages, and radio station, the same salesperson has been visiting you for many years and you purchase month after month and they talk about the number of houses delivered too, the number of listeners, etc. Have they mentioned anything about the 92  percent of newspapers that have reported a drop in readership or the major drop in print Yellowpage usage?

Now, before you think that you have a business that is immune to the shift or that since you do not sell a product online that promoting your business on the Internet is not for you I would like to give you an example case where a business has grown their business by promoting online effectively.

This specific small business,  a 3 person pet grooming salon in rural Missouri, had never had a website because they had never thought that a pet grooming shop would need online promotion, the Yellowpages and Newspaper seemed the obvious place to advertise, everyone has been doing it for years, right????

After someone came into their shop to discuss a small website and targeted promotion on the web they decided that having a website might be "neat" but the company working with them also explained the concept of building the site to allow for targeted traffic that allows for higher customer conversions. This was a new concept to them, advertising had always been about viewers not necessarily only getting visitors that actually convert to customers.

The pet grooming shop decided to move forward and purchased both advertising and a website. The advertising was targeted by community and also very important was the targeting of the website that was developed for them. It was developed specifically to receive traffic for pet grooming customers in their specific rural town.

The results, after just one month of being live the customer contacted their supplier and let them know that they had several new customers that let them know they found them on the web. What does this mean? It means in even small towns people are searching for offline businesses instead  of going to the newspaper or flipping through the Yellowpages. This is a group of customers that you, the small business owner, is missing.

For many years small businesses have complained about corporate America ruining community businesses. The same thing has the potential to happen on the Internet. How can you tell? First off you have to ask yourself how you use the Internet or think about how your potential customers use the Internet. If the first thing that you thought after reading that was that this does not matter since you do not use the Internet, the thing you actually need to think about is the second part of the sentence, "think about how your customers use the Internet". One of the major mistakes many long time small business owners make is thinking that since they are not users that their customers are not.

Anyway, back to corporate America, they have had budgets to do marketing online for years, in many cases if you search for a certain type of business online in small and large towns the large corporate companies show up in the search results. Why? Because they know how to play the "Internet game". They understood that people are using the web for finding services and products locally. As a small business owner you need to think about this as well. The topic that seems so technical is actually your marketing today. No longer can you think about your website as a technical item but it needs to be looked at as a marketing tool. It is about finding customers not just having a website because it is "neat".

The next thought many small business owners will have is my town is too small no one is searching for services here. That is also not true and will be changing rapidly. The US government has approved a 7.2 billion stimulus package to drive broadband Internet access into rural America. This means the way people access and use the Internet in these areas will change drastically and if your business is not prepared those "corporate guys" will take business away because they show up in Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Being small and rural does not matter any more. Whether you are in New York City or Kearney, Nebraska the Internet is the Internet and people can find your competitors without having to drive to their doorstep.

So, if you have read this far I want to give you items to think about as you realize that maybe having a presence online that actually draws targeted viewers looking for your service or product is important:

• Targeted Traffic - Here is the best analogy to explain this: Shotgun Vs. Rifle. Think of newspapers and radio as the shotgun approach and targeted web traffic as a rifle. How you get that targeted traffic is the more complicated part. But it has been proven many times that targeted traffic converts at a much higher rate than traffic received from the shotgun approach
• Search Engine Optimization - SEO is the typical way this is said. SEO is the process of building your website in a way that draws the targeted visitors to your business presence online. Think about this, if the front door to your business is locked no one can get in. If your site is not optimized the front door might as well be locked.
• Domain Name Selection - This is VERY important, it is not as simple as just going to Godaddy.com and picking a name. It is important to select something that describes your business and if possible be rich in words that describe that you are doing. This helps gain the targeted traffic that is discussed above. In many cases it is worth the effort and money to acquire this domain name from a third party who may own the name currently. You selected your physical office location based on location, shouldn't you also choose the best possible location for your online presence?
• Call To Action - Once they get to your website you need to make sure they take action to contact or buy your product. Your site needs to be developed in a way that urges them to do this. This is most often the piece that is overlooked when developing a site (right up there with SEO).

After spending time with small business owners in both large and small towns and cities I have found it very common to hear the comment "My (insert family member here) is building my website." In almost all cases the site has been done in a way that is not optimized and will never have a visitor because the site was not used as a marketing tool but simply as an item that was "neat". It is important that you understand that your website is as important to your business presence as the sales people you have working with customers or the office space you have. It is your face to the public, but if no one ever sees it because it is hidden in a crowd and is never seen then it does not matter if it is "pretty and nice looking". You must optimize your web presence starting at the selection of your domain name and ending at the call to action to act once they get there.

For more information feel free to use the contact me button at the top of this page to get more details on what can be done to help your business prepare.

Thanks,

Bruce Marler

Another Random Domaining Notes Post

Here goes another group of random domain investing and domain business development thoughts from the past week. It was a bit of a crazy week due to moving and the follow up meetings after last weeks seminar. Here we go:

Sometimes the newspapers figure it out pretty quick, Friday while heading out to the truck we used to move our office equipment a lady came up to ask us if we were launching a new business. I let her know that we had been in business but had been fortunate enough to outgrow our old space and were in the process of moving. After she asked what we did I gave her our elevator pitch. She looked at me and said, "I guess you would not be interested in an ad in the newspaper then?". I stated that the newspapers were not big fans of ours and then, knowing the answer, asked her if she was with the local paper. Obviously the answer was yes. I must say I missed the boat by not asking her if she would like to interview for one of our open sales positions....

We continue to be invited to new speaking opportunities, in the past week we have had two requests to come do the same seminar we did a couple weeks back to new groups of people and organizations. From a domaining standpoint it is really a pretty neat thing to have people actually start thinking about the proper name selection and send us questions and look for help in selecting the proper name for their move to promoting their business online.

While at the St. Louis Cardinals Vs. Los Angeles Dodgers playoff game (did the Cardinals ever show up) I met a nice couple who asked what kind of business I was in. After discussing it the first thing they asked about was consulting prices for Facebook and Twitter promotion. I am amazed on a daily basis on how many businesses we have asking us for support in those areas. These type of conversations happen everyday, at this point in the game if a business does not have a solid website and social marketing plan they are missing the boat.

Sometime back I did a post about the domain backorder and auction services needing a solid mobile interface (Snapnames and Namejet), this week with all time out of the office we had I yet again had issues with not being able to access the system properly, even on my iPhone. Top this off with ATT just totally lacking in stable Internet service in both my home and office this week and my week of drop catching was not good at all...

This is post #99 for me, it looks like, and I noticed this last week, my Alexa 3 month average ranking may break 100K on the same day I make my 100th post. I have been averaging around the 40 to 50K range daily lately but the 3 month ranking is the one they show by default so I been waiting to see it go below 100K. In reality it should drop rapidly based on the past month or two average this blog has had. Thanks to all for following this site, it is very much appreciated.

Geo Domains Locked and Loaded – Watch Your Keywords

One thing I have always found interesting is watching what people are searching for that landed them on my site. My minisites are very keyword targeted and usually are pretty predictable but many times I have found that my sites have been "selected" by google to rank high for certain terms I did not necassarily expect and by using this data I can sometimes find solid hand registered domains that I may not of found otherwise.

With the recent launch of this blog I have found a very interesting search that has started to send traffic my way. Recently I posted about Newspapers Closing. I have been a fan of Geo domains for sometime but with the recent fall of old school media I really think the time is now for Geo domain owners to fully develop and take advantage of the opportunity at hand. One thing that really drove this point home has been a term that has been driving many visitors a day to this blog.

That term is Newspapers Closing, at first I did not think much of it but then started thinking, the  public has changed mindset enough that they are searching online frequently enough that it would show up in my keyword results. A quick check of the google keyword tool shows small results for this term but in the past 3 days I have had more visitors for this term than the big G shows for average search volume on this term for a month.

As more and more newspapers close their doors people will be looking for alternatives online. If you own a Geo domain it would be a smart move to be that portal. I will be posting in the near future on content that is freely available to develop your Geo domain to provide the content that people are looking for each morning when they sip their coffee.

So, even though this post is focused on why I think a specific term is valuable for Geo domains, the point is to pay attention for trends in the data that you have in your keyword stats. It could be valuable....