All Things CRM

As a small business owner or local organization, you’re well aware that the Internet is a fantastic place to promote your group as well as manage your brand. It’s true that the web is a great place to reach potential customers as well as manage current clients. However, do you know what it takes to leverage yourself locally using the Internet?

The web is a giant network connecting people worldwide but what if you want to just be known in your region or city as the very best? With the increase usage of mobile devices and access to internet on the go, local search marketing is obviously more important.

Here is list of the top five local online marketing tips:

Local Community

Prepare your website to be friendlier to your local community. First, make sure you have your local, physical address on your website. This allows people to see that you are a local company as well as identifies your location for search engines. You will want your address on every single page of your site. This can be done in the header, footer or sidebar of the design. If this becomes too distracting, make sure at the very least that your physical address is in the “Contact Us” or “About Us” tab of your site. This section is essential for any business in order to help people better connect with you.

Get Listed

Just like a phone book several years ago, you’ll want to make sure that your company is listed in local, online directories. By doing this, search engines will pick up on your location and the fact that you are listed in many places. To do this, start by searching local directories in your area. Likely, they will have an online form to submit your business. If not, try to find an email address and contact the web administrator and see if they’d be willing to add your listings. Most online listings are free or extremely inexpensive.

Ask for Reviews

Typically local directories, or national directories with a local focus such as Yelp.com, will encourage customers to review your business. Whenever you serve a customer, let them know that you’d love for them to go online and write a review. Remember to look at each listing’s terms of service to make sure you are not violating the rules by incentivizing only positive reviews.

Link Local

Get local with your search engine optimization strategies. If you aren’t already, you should be looking at search engine optimization tactics either in-house or through a reputable SEO company. Make sure that the keywords you are targeting have your location in them. By adding a localized keyword or phrase to your SEO efforts, you let customers know where you are. Likewise, you’ll want to put these keywords in both the title tags and meta tags of your page. Additionally, make certain that you build up your Google Places and other search engine profiles to include your address. This will help tag you in search engine maps.

Geo-Target

Finally, think locally when targeting online advertisements. You may want to add geo-targeting to your advertisements or use pay per click for local search terms. Facebook ads will also allow you to geographically target your advertisements.

Thinking locally when it comes to your online marketing strategy will help improve sales of your products or services. This is because more and more people are trying to shop locally and more people than ever trust local businesses to help solve their problems. Does your business currently do online marketing? Are you interested in expanding your online presence through local search engine optimization?

When the World Wide Web emerged on the scene in the late 1990s, there was a rush to get one’s business online and in front of the ever-expanding number of potential customers all clamoring to see what was happening in this new world known as cyberspace. In less than two decades, simply having a website is no longer enough. Businesses that hope to compete across the widest spectrum have to consider if and how they are appearing to potential customers who access the Internet via handheld smart phone computing devices.

Setting aside the argument that some businesses simply don’t or won’t do well in an attempt to acquire customers via mobile devices, the vast majority of businesses with an online presence need to consider what they may be losing in the way of sales by not having mobile-friendly versions of their sites.

Statistics indicate that people on the move who perform searches to find businesses or products tend to be consumers ready to make purchases. Considering these facts, it makes sense to have one’s company website easily accessible for those mobile users to quickly get to the information they are looking for to answer their questions or fulfill their needs.

The formula is actually rather simple:

1. Create a Web Presence–if one doesn’t already exist
2. Choose a Mobile Web Presentation–this is where one has a number of choices depending upon the platform the company web site is built upon
3. Include Mobile Device Detection–today’s technologies provide web developers with the ability to code automatic detection of the type of device which a potential customer is accessing the website
4. Let the World Know–about the fact the company can now be accessed via mobile, wireless computing devices

The first two items on the list above are relatively cut and dry. A few decisions need be made in order to put things in place, but all of that exists and shouldn’t require wheel recreation in order to generate a high-quality mobile-friendly website.

But marketing the fact that users on the go can now have easy access to one’s site may be a bit more challenging. In order to get closer to securing more sales as a result of ones investment in an optimized mobile website, a marketing campaign should accompany the site’s development.

Effective use of social media can be an excellent channel to broadcast one’s mobile accessibility news for very little money. Services exist now which provide inexpensive or free ways to automate messages within social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Other effective marketing methods might include having employees add a link and short message about the new access capabilities to all of their outgoing email messages. This is another example of setting things up and the rest happens automatically.

Traditional broadcasting methods of company news would also be important here as well. Press releases, direct mail and even voice calls to parties who could spread the message further will all provide high quality dissemination of the company’s new mobile website.

Another important consideration one might want to undertake when working on the new site optimized for mobile access is making the company’s messages and access to products and services easy and intuitive. Too often, websites which provide plethora of knowledge and data on their desktop versions attempt to do the same with the mobile version.

If this is applicable to mobile users–they are coming to one’s site specifically to access this type of content–by all means make that the focus of the mobile site. If, on the other hand, the mobile users are more interested in aspects like physical locations of the business or being able to quickly order a product, make their journey to answers and purchases easy, quick and as hassle free as possible.

Chances are mobile online sales will increase with good attention paid to the right details.