![Local Marketing]()
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
What is local marketing, and why do smaller businesses need to engage in it? This means targeting people in your area.
Obviously many businesses can go after people around the country. However, others can only do business with local customers.
Restaurants and financial planners are prime examples of smaller companies that do business with only local people. There’s only so far people are going to drive to do business with you if you have a physical location.
However, if you have a business that lends itself to national customers, you can also target local customers separately. There are some people that would simply rather do business with local companies. Therefore, you might want to do some local advertising apart from your national efforts.
So how do you get more local customers? There are a number of ways that work. Here are four you can start with:
#1) Newspaper advertising
This is one of the cheapest ways to target people in your area. When done right, it can be effective.
The problem with it is that it’s very untargeted. The majority of people reading the paper will not be interested in your product. However, if even a small percentage respond, it can be effective.
#2) Yellow pages
This is another one of the “traditional methods” of local advertising. It’s been around a long time, and when done right it can again be effective.
#3) Direct mail
This is hands down one of the top local advertising methods. This is where you buy a list of people in your area based on certain characteristics. You can choose based on age, gender, income level, etc. then you would send out an advertising campaign to them.
This way, you can choose exactly who you want to focus on. Therefore, it’s more targeted than the previous two.
#4) Internet
Online advertising is another effective strategy to get local customers.
So how do you convert traffic into sales? Now that you know how to drive traffic to your offer, you have to focus on making sales.
Get their contact information.
This should be your main goal, so you can keep marketing to them. The average customer requires at least four to seven touches before they do business with you. Therefore, if you give up after the first contact you are probably missing out on the majority of your sales.
Track each advertising source separately.
You might want to track each advertising method, so you can tell what’s working and what isn’t. For this reason, you might want to send the traffic from each source to a different place so you can tell what’s working and what isn’t.
The bottom line is, local advertising can be effective when done right. Implement these tips, and you will get your marketing efforts on track.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
There are millions of websites. This is both an opportunity and a challenge. If you’re a website owner, you want to stand out from the crowd. When you achieve website prominence the competition no longer matters. Here’s how to stand out from the crowd:
#1 Easy navigation
It sounds so simple, yet many websites are a navigational disaster. When a visitor cannot find what they need quickly and easily, they leave. Ideally your website will be designed to facilitate a visitor’s experience. Not only should they be able to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for, you also want to guide them to achieve your goals.
For example, if you’re an affiliate marketer you want to guide your prospects to the second and third tier pages where your affiliate links and ads are placed.
#2 Keyword research
Keyword research supports easy navigation. Your visitors and prospects find your site with keywords. That means those same keywords need to be present on your site and easy to find. They not only need to be part of the content, they should also be part of the navigation. Research your keywords to support your customers and prospects. Include them in the navigation flow.
Additionally, keyword research helps you provide the most valuable and beneficial content possible. When you know what your customers and prospects are looking for, you can provide it. Providing top quality content will set you apart from the majority of your competition.
#3 Analytics
Analytics provide valuable inside information. They help you track where your customers go on your website. They also tell you:
* How long people stay on a single web page
* How long they stay on your site
* How they found your website
* What keywords they use to find your website
* How many visitors return to your website
This information is invaluable. Create a practice where you analyze your website analytics regularly. Create content and navigation systems that support your findings. And take the initiative to test and track your results. For example, if you add a new feature on your website like a survey, test and track where on your site it receives the most attention.
Standing out from the crowd isn’t difficult. However, it does require a solid plan. Know your audience. Research your keywords. Create a navigation structure that supports your customers and your business goals. And pay attention to the data. Your website analytics are the key to helping you achieve website prominence.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
An online business that ignores keywords and search phrases will surely struggle. The internet is based on information. That information is sorted and organized based on the topic or keywords that best describe the information. When you embrace keywords and search phrases, you’re better able to position your website competitively. Here’s why your keywords and search phrases matter.
#1 Search phrases help you achieve good page rankings. When your website shows up on the first page or two of search results, you will get more website visitors. Each website visitor is a potential customer. That means search phrases are directly related to your profits.
#2 They help you target specific customers. Appealing to a broad audience can be difficult. There’s a lot of competition. However, when you narrow your focus and target specific keywords and search phrases, you can focus on appealing to a smaller audience. You can be the big fish in a little pond. That often results in more financial success than competing for the other high demand high supply keywords.
#3 Keywords and search phrases help you learn about your audience and prospects. Keyword research helps you learn what your audience is looking for. Entering your keywords or keyword phrase into a keyword research tool will generate other relevant keyword phrases. You can use the supply and demand data to learn what your prospects are searching for.
#4 Keywords and search phrases help you organize content in an effective and meaningful way. They help you organize your website navigation by tier one, two and three pages. You can use them to create a streamlined navigation system.
#5 They help you create content and provide value. Keywords can give you content topics and topic ideas. Simple keyword research will generate potentially hundreds of content ideas.
#6 Keywords help you profit through PPC ads. You can target specific keyword phrases and profit from placing PPC ads on your website. They can also help you attract traffic and other advertising or affiliate profits.
#7 Keywords help you market and advertise. Finally, keywords and search phrases help you create targeted advertisements. They help you market to your audience. When a PPC ad, for example, contains the keywords it’s targeting, it’s been shown to be more effective than an ad that doesn’t contain keywords.
Finding keyword search phrases is a matter of research. Utilize keyword research tools. Install and review analytics. Pay attention to trends. Participate on social networking sites and other blogs and websites. The more you integrate keywords into your overall business strategies, the more success you’ll achieve.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
To become a successful affiliate marketer it is imperative that you have a content strategy and implementation plan. Content is what makes your blog or website attract visitors. It works in two ways. First, the keywords within the content help the search engines know where to find your article. Secondly, once the reader finds your blog or article via the search engines the content engages the reader.
Without dynamic content your blog or website is no better than a paper brochure which no one sees unless someone puts it in their hands. There is no doubt that brochures are useful, but if no one sees it, then it’s worthless. This is what makes blogs and websites so exciting. Due to search engines, people can actually find you and your information as long as you regularly add quality, relevant, original, keyword-rich content to your blog and website. The problem is, without a plan, you can get overwhelmed.
Create a plan for your content. Consider what products you want to promote, as well as what type of information you want to provide to your readers. With each product you promote you can create several pieces of content. First, inform your readers about a problem they have. Then educate them about the solution to their problem. Next, give them a way learn more about the product or a way to purchase the product.
Ideas for content:
A discussion about a problem
A product review that solves the problem
A product overview that solves the problem
Case studies that show how the product solves the problem
The content can be in the form of print, audio, video or a combination of all three. Organize your publication calendar so that you update your blog and website with this content on a regular basis. Shoot for updating your website or blog three to five times a week with your original content.
Next, work on putting your content on other sites, blogs, and article marketing websites. You can do this via a blog tour, offering to blog on other people’s blogs in exchange for your byline. Another way is to send out press releases to online press release sites, and to put general articles on article marketing websites such as Ezine Articles. This strategy will provide relevant backlinks to your website and hopefully lead people to sign up for your email list, where you can market your affiliate products to them.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
If you’re new to affiliate marketing you might be wondering if it’s really possible for a normal person like yourself to succeed. If you’re willing to do the work necessary to succeed, you absolutely can succeed at affiliate marketing. There are some good points to think about when getting involved in affiliate marketing such as:
Know the rules and laws — Keep yourself informed about the laws in your country, state or province so that you can always make sure you are following the law. This is a relatively new form of business in terms of laws being made therefore it’s important to keep up to date with the news of the day regarding the laws being created.
Is the niche profitable? — Just because you have a passion for something doesn’t make it automatically a good niche. Do your due diligence and study the niche that you want to become involved in so that you can determine if it is profitable or not. Learn about how to research a niche for profitability before moving forward.
Know your niche — Study your niche, which is the market segment you will market products to. Know what they like, know their ages, their sex, how many children they have. Know what they like to do during their free time. If you know your niche inside and out you will also know what types of products to market to them because you’ll know what problems they have and what solutions they need.
Less is more — Don’t allow “shiny object syndrome” to affect you and ruin your business. Promote one or two products at a time and don’t go crazy buying domain after domain. Get one domain up and profitable before moving on to another one. The rule less is more applies so well to the business of affiliate marketing because if you look at who is successful they usually have one or two products they actively promote strenuously and the niche is very well defined
Would you buy it? — If you’re trying to promote a product that you won’t buy, why do you think anyone else will want to buy it. It’s really important to get a review copy, or at buy products and try them out before you promote them to others. Skipping this step can make your job really hard because your cluelessness will come through when you’re trying to promote a product you’ve never used and would never use.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Recent Comments