Small Business Landing Page Tips

What do your visitors first see when they are online? Is it a good impression? Does it give them the information they are seeking quickly? Could they make a purchase decision from the landing page alone? The easier your customers can access your information the greater the chance of them choosing you for their service. I have a lot to say on landing pages and the daily updates below are only a small portion on what is ahead.

Daily Updates:

• Landing page tip. Keep it simple & let them convert from the page you are sending them to. Example: e-mail form, registration, or newsletter.
• Local businesses should include everything they sell or do in PPC landing pages. If a mechanic, what kind of cars, & maintenance, etc.
• Be sure to include all important contact info on your landing page. Address, phone #, business hours, days open, email, contact person, etc.
• Make yourself really local to customers on your landing page, by embedding a Google map to your location, & include driving directions. (Here is an example of embedding a map into a contact page)
  

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How The Internet Can Stretch Your Local Advertising Dollars

Space and time is limited in most local advertising methods such as television and print. Space and time can also cost you a lot of money. But, extending your advertising online can help you stretch the dollars that you are spending offline. You do this by including your website or a custom page set up for ad referrals to your site in all of your advertising pieces. There are some great ways to do this that can be pretty creative.

This could include having the advertising posing a question while the website holds the answer. Doing a give away in your ad where the only way to win or get a prize is by going online.This can be a great to build traffic to your website, especially if you have great content on your site that would keep the visitor coming back more and more.

If you are holding a local event, after the event post pictures and videos that event goers can watch. This will allow you to extend the relationship people are having with your brand.

What other ideas do you have for extending your advertising online?

Daily Updates:

• With radio stations creating better websites to interact with listeners, they are also creating prime spots for local advertising.
• There are many great ways to integrate your radio campaigns with your Internet efforts. Create custom pages for special events, for example.
• By advertising both on a “good” radio station website and on the radio, you create a solution that will not be missed by their listeners.
  
• Give the listener something online they wouldn’t get anywhere else. Like a promotion, or an interactive quiz. Online you control the message.
• Are you sending offline media consumers online? TV, radio, newspaper, movie screens, etc. Greet these customers in custom ways.

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Anybody Know A Farmer? New Advertising Method For Small Business.

the latest in advertising technology…. Originally uploaded by seeinside

Talk about a new way to advertise your company and website. This might just work if a large portion of your target market lives in a rural area. This would sure get the locals talking and would fall under the category of creative small business marketing. I don’t say that these local business marketing ideas, tips, and tricks are for nothing.

Posted in Creative Local Advertising | 1 Comment »

Finding Your Most Effective Marketing Media

photo by:awnisALAN

Over the next few days I am wanting to take a look at how to find the most effective marketing mediums for your business. I also want to look at what is and isn’t working in local business marketing. And, I might push the thought of effective Internet marketing, as that is what I know best, and I have seen its fruits for many companies. Check out my thoughts below on a few of the media out there today.

Daily Updates:

• How do people find your service or goods? Is it the yellow pages, the Internet, or the newspaper? Are you optimized for all of them?
• What marketing medium is giving you the greatest ROI? How are you determining ROI? Important questions. Important answers.
• Are you still spending too much on yellow page listings? More & more of your customers are moving online to find you. http://snurl.com/2err5
• What about my newspaper ad? It’s good advertising for now. But don’t be surprised if you see fewer customers and higher ad costs from it.
• Now & in the future, you will need to be in your newspapers online edition, with a link to your biz. This gives you huge Local SEO boosts.

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Geotargeting Inbound Links

Could Google be geotargeting inbound links? What this would mean is that, if you are a local business and you get a link from a website that is close to your site geographically. This link is more important than a link that is from another country or another state. So having your local chamber of commerce, local newspaper, or local blogger link to you is more valuable to local search than having your sister’s blog from across the country link to you. This would likely be true even if your sister’s blog had more inbound link popularity than your newspaper. This could be big for local business.

Tweets:

• Do links on locally based sites help out local SEO efforts? http://snurl.com/2e7vg Time to start getting links from local bloggers and more.
• Geotargeting inbound links gives local business an advantage, since it is easier for them to get local links than it is for big business.
• I love small business Internet success stories. And Matt McGee found a great one! http://snurl.com/2e7bl

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Small Business Can Help The Community

photo by: The Udall Legacy Bus Tour: Views from the Road

It is important to help out in your community. As local businesses it is important to lend a helping hand to make your community a better place to live and work. And, I just love the smiles on peoples faces as you help out. Helping out will not only make you a better person and feel better, but it will help your business as well.

Tweets:

• How are you involved in your local community? One of the best things about being a local biz is that you can get involved and lend a hand.
• Local businesses know what help their community needs. Use that strength. It is great PR, but more importantly it gives you a chance to help.
• Volunteering & sponsoring gives you a chance to get a link or citation online. You will often be put on a list of sponsors on their site.

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