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....