Local Marketing Archives - Page 4 of 4

3 Ways to Increase Sales on Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Andrew

So Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, which means millions of couples around the U.S. will be purchasing traditional Valentine’s Day things such as flowers, jewelry, candy, and clothes. So how can you use this to your advantage? The answer is with digital marketing and advertising.

Even if you don’t sell any of the traditional Valentine’s Day gifts, use this holiday as a chance to offer a special promotion, and perhaps even persuade your customers that a new car or hot tub is a better alternative to blowing money on an expensive dinner and diamond bracelet. Sending these kinds of updates through email gives you an easy way to tell all your customers that you’re offering a special.

Follow these three tips to make your Valentine’s email blast successful.

1. Target men

Segment your email list to your male customers. The reason you do this is simple: men spend more than twice as much as women on Valentine’s Day. That means you need to use language targeted to males. Stress the importance of coming up with a gift for their special someone, and highlight the idea of giving a unique gift, depending on what it is that you’re selling.

2. Timing is everything

Depending on how much your product costs, you might want to send the email out a couple of weeks in advance. If your product is a little cheaper, a few days before – or even on – Valentine’s Day will work because it will be fresh in their mind about buying a gift for their significant other.

3. Promote it via social channels

Social Media is a great way to promote your Valentine’s Day offer. Provided that you have a fair amount of followers, sending out timely updates leading up to Valentine’s Day can give your fans and followers a reason to check out your store.

There you have it. Follow these three tips, and you could capitalize on thousands of local Valentine’s Day shoppers. For more tips on local marketing and advertising, check out the rest of our blog or go to our website.

Facebook Ad Impressions Increasing

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Andrew

Have you tried doing Facebook ads in your latest display advertising campaign? Facebook is getting huge, and they own about a third of the U.S. display ad market. If you want to get the most out of your display campaign, forgetting about Facebook would be a huge oversight.

Online Listings Bring New Opportunities to Local Businesses

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Andrew

I consult a search engine about local businesses almost every day. You probably do, too. If I’m looking for the nearest bank branch, gas station or restaurant, I type it into Google Maps on my iPhone and away we go.

Research from eMarketer confirms my personal anecdote. They found that more than 70% of consumers check an online source before going to a local business or restaurant.

That’s a huge number. If you don’t put a lot of stock in your online presence, then you should.

Out of that 70% of people, 43% said they visited Google to find out information about a business. By far and away that was the most popular way of discovering new business. In a distant second place, with 30% of the vote, was yellowpages.com.

This tells us that the majority of consumers look for local businesses in the same spots, meaning it’s fairly easy to get noticed.

One of the easiest ways to appear prominently to searchers is to optimize your Google Places listing, and appear in hundreds of online directories with Local AdsUpNow. These two things alone will get you exposure to 73% of the consumers who search online for local businesses.

If you have any questions, sound off in the comments, or contact us for a free digital marketing consultation.

An infographic On the History of Google Places

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Andrew

Fellow Local Search Marketer David Mihm put together an infographic showing the history of Google Places changes over the last few years.

If nothing else, this graph shows the importance of diligence when creating a Google Places listing. It’s not something that you can just set up and forget about – it requires maintenance.

Get a Better Google Places Rank with Local AdsUpNow

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Andrew

More than 3 billion searches for local goods or services take place every month. That’s a huge number, and it’s only getting bigger.

We’ve talked on this blog before about Google Places optimization and some of the ways to get your business listing higher in Google. One of the things we mentioned was using business directories to get what are called “citations.”

Citations are mentions of your business name on the Internet. So why is it important to have so many citations? Well search engines think it’s important, that’s why.

Get the Most Out of Google Places and Business Directories

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Andrew

When users search in Google, the Google Places listings are becoming more and more prevalent. With more and more businesses expanding their online presence, it’s becoming increasingly important to appear in the first page of listings. How do you do that? Just follow these quick, easy steps.

1. Fill out your Google Places listing
We know, we know, this seems like a no brainer, but we mean you have to fill it out completely. Google will rank your business higher if you have more complete business information.

2. Use appropriate keywords throughout the Google Places listing
Making sure to use keywords appropriate to your business throughout your Google Places listing will ensure that you appear in the most relevant searches. Don’t pack your listing too full of keywords, however, as Google might become suspicious and lower your ranking.

3. Verify your listing
In Google Places, you have the option to verify your listing. This is a must, because it lets Google know that you actually own the business that you’re updating. You can either verify through a postcard or phone call.

4. Make your listing stand out
Put in photos and videos of your business so users can see exactly what your storefront looks like, and give them a reason to choose you over the other guys.

5. Put your listing in as many directories as possible
Google checks to see where else your business is listed, so be sure to include your business in as many directories as possible. However, this can be extremely time-consuming, so I would suggest using a service such as Local AdsUpNow that automatically submits your business to thousands of directories, which gives your listing a higher rank.

Just follow these easy steps and you’ll be on your way to a better Google Places rank. For more information about directory submission services, check out Local AdsUpNow and sign-up to request more information.

Commitment

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Dave Pavlu

Napolean Hill Said it like this:

The moment you commit and quit holding back, all sorts of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance will rise up to help you. The simple act of commitment is a powerful magnet for help.

He couldn’t be more right. There are a lot of doors that could open for you. All you need to do is commit and make sure that you are there when the door does open.

Internet marketing is a door that has opened for many businesses. It can open for you as well. You need to choose a company that will to serve your interests. Then let that company go to work for you and make it happen.

Whatever it Takes

Posted on March 3, 2009 by Dave Pavlu

Indecision and second-guessing are the mortal enemies of spontaneous brilliance and planning. Without action, your dream, goal, or plan has little meaning in the world. Living and risking are close companions. If you sense that you have made a good decision, have faith. Move forward.

These words are from a book called “Whatever It Takes” written by the late great Bob Moawad Senior.

Make it Happen!

Power of Email Marketing

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Dave Pavlu

Here is a story about how a local client used email to ask their customers to vote for them in a local TV station’s “Best of” contest. Now don’t think for one second that email made them the best. What makes them the best is the absolute dedication to looking out for the best interest of their customers and employees for the last 75 years. That being said this client was able to mobilize their customer base to earn the well-publicized distinction of “Best of” title with a rapid use of their email list

This contest ended on October 13, 2008. The television station had given the people of Western Washington the previous month to vote for who they thought was the best in the state. The only problem was that my client and their loyal customers didn’t even know the there was a contest. The morning of October 10th, my client had exactly zero votes. Many competing businesses had links on their websites and were asking their customers to go to the TV station’s website and vote. They had a full month to “get out the vote” we had 3 days.

That is where email comes in. Now it would be nice to tell you that my client had done things perfectly over the years and had collected all of their customers’ email addresses. The truth is they hadn’t, in fact, they had email addresses for less than 20% of the names in their database. The whole truth is that like most businesses, they had struggled over the years to collect email addresses. In fact, at one point they used a company like Ascendance Digital Media to append their list with known email addresses from a national database. That append plus frequent efforts to ask customers for their email address was enough to get the job done.

The morning of October 13, 2008, just 3 days after they had launched their email campaign they had more than twice as many votes of the second place company in their category. They had succeeded in encouraging more than 1 percent of their database to go and sign up at the voting site and leave a testimonial about their experiences with the company.

All of these testimonials have since been picked up by Google on their local business tool and my client has literally 10 to 20 times as many positive comments as their competitors. That’s a story for a different day.
Here are a few key points to take away from this:

Get ready now so that you can contact your database on a moment’s notice.
Don’t underestimate the length’s a customer will go to share their experience with others. (this cuts both ways)
You don’t have to be perfect at collection but you do need to have a plan.

Having an email list and the ability to broadcast your email list on short notice is an absolute business essential today. Email is the preferred mode of communication for an increasing number of people. What’s more is that if they don’t want to hear from you, they simply don’t read the email or they remove themselves from the list. You don’t have to be an expert to get the job done. A basic understanding of the Internet and word processing is enough to get started. If you want a more professional look and some awesome tracking tools you may want to consider having your email campaigns managed by a professional (we do that). You can try it for free with our tool.