Working With Local City Officials To Increase Brand Awareness

One of the great things about the seminar plan that we have used here at Localtek and Missouri.me is that it allows us to get direct reaction from customers, consumers, and local government officials. This can really work to your benefit if you are developing a geo domain as a vote of confidence from local government officials can really strengthen your companies standing in a community.

I have noticed that across the state of Missouri links from local libraries, city websites, etc have increased as we have went on even without our requesting, that is great news and I expect to see it continue as we start phase 2 of feature development for the site.

Well, we have taken it one step further with one of the most progressive business communities in the state which is Farmington, MO. The area is growing fast and has continued to do well even in the down economy. We were fortunate to have the economic development director attend one of our seminars last year and he could immediately see the value of the education received from the seminar could be of real value to the businesses in the community.

One thing he could see, as well as many others, is that many business owners knew they needed to care about being online, needed to care about things like Facebook, but most did not even know where to start or had seen a good example of use. Our seminar had shown that, after speaking to him we decided to work together to put together another  seminar in the area promoted by the city and to be given at city hall.

Well, this week it was confirmed and an email went out to all subscribers of the city newsletter. I think this s a great example of what having real feet on the street people to promote your online services can do. Education is key, I tell people all the time as much as I want them to buy from us at the end of the day the more people that are educated on how marketing is changing the more we all benefit long term. You can only educate if you are out there with the business owners and city officials.

And also, for those that think online marketing is just about advertising online, our seminar shows it is not. There is a holistic plan you must use to market online, things are changing everyday as people use their mobile phones and social networks to get the info they need.

So, I wanted to say thanks to the city of Farmington for their support of what we are doing.

We have some other very interesting joint promotion concepts that we will be announcing soon as well. Lets just say sometimes your competition can actually be your best friend....

Get Out There And Make It Happen!

A laid back Saturday for me but thought I would quickly relate a story from this past week that led to a larger post here than I planned. Several weeks back when I did the seminar in Cape Girardeau, MO discussing topics such as local search, social media, domain names, and other online business topics I had met a gentleman who had a business that had been running out of the same small shop for many years.

Well, when I say many years I should define further, more years than I had even been alive (I am 36, so this business has been running successfully for many decades). The owner was in his late 70s and explained that although he did not have Internet access in the office or at his home, after listening to this seminar he understood that he was likely missing customers that were looking for his products online and finding his competitors.

What he had learned was that he needed to start thinking like his customers, after many years the way business was being done had shifted and there was an opportunity to grow, even if just incrementally, by having a presence online.

The next week my account manager for the area sat down with the customer and defined a plan to help him get online, it was more than a website, more than an ad, it was a solution to a problem and not just a product (that is a post for another day).

What is exciting about this is before we could even turn his website over to him he had already started getting calls and emails. Let me repeat, his products were in such demand before we could even hand it over to him he was getting business from it.

What does this mean, well first off it means that a person does not have to spend 20 thousand dollars to find value in doing business online. But even more so I think it shows that even people that have never had a presence online, businesses that have been around for decades, can still find value in doing something, even if it is small, online.

As I have said before, sometimes those of us that spend our life online like to talk about how others just do not get it. I look at things a lot differently these days, I say "What can I do to help educate the people who need it most?"

Everyone continues to sit back behind their computer screens and type away but the large (I would venture more than 99 percent) never get out with the majority to make things happen. They like to talk about end users, customers, etc but who is taking the initiative to connect with the larger populace?

And I am not talking other tech focused crowds (although when it comes to domain names in general there is much value in that and kudos to Chef Patrick for starting down that path this week.) I am more talking about connecting with local Chambers of Commerce, local business organizations. In other words, groups that are outside your comfort zone of tech friends?

It benefits us all the more the general populace is educated on the value of doing business online, heck I do not even mind when I see competitors out doing the same. Sure they will get some business but it also makes my life easy when I go in to talk to the same business later.

Once again, what are you doing to grow your business outside of the online community? Are you sitting back and waiting for it to come or are you making it happen?