Online
Search: Small Businesses Level The Playing Field
Seventy percent of US households use the web when shopping locally,
and about 25 percent of all searches are looking for local information.
As more and more households make the switch to broadband connections,
this trend will continue to escalate.
Search engines have eclipsed print and TV ads as the primary way
consumers find local products and services. But until now large
national and international brands had a stranglehold on Internet
search marketing. Only they had the manpower or outside resources
to plan and implement a multiple site, online search marketing program.
Why should your business get into the online search pay-per-click
(PPC) arena? Let’s do the math. A recent US Bancorp Piper
Jaffray study indicates that the average lead from a search engine
costs $0.29. Yellow pages and direct mail leads cost $1.18 and $9.94
respectively. So, a search engine delivers four leads for the price
of one Yellow Page lead and 34 for the cost of a single direct mail
lead.
But that is not all. PPC advertising:
- expands your market
- targets more, higher income consumers
- is measurable
Some businesses will look for ways NOT to take advantage of this
opportunity. I don’t have a website, they whine. How will
I figure out which sites I should advertise on? How will I manage
all those keywords across multiple sites?
Google and Yahoo! answer some of those questions. If you do online
PPC with either, they will distribute your ads across multiple sites.
However, you’ll still have to manage much of the program yourself.
New services are now available that allow small local and regional
companies to effectively and efficiently hook customers online and
only in the geographic areas where the businesses operate.
ReachLocal is my favorite of the new services. It is the one I’m
using for my own business and for that of my clients. It selects
the sites on which your ads appear, manages keywords across publishers,
optimizes your keywords on a daily basis and even provides a free
website for those businesses without a web presence. Additionally,
it makes all of your leads measurable. You get daily reports on
web visits, emails and telephone calls generated by your program.
PPC is perfect for high cost local transactions such as home purchases,
mortgages, or medical services. So, no more excuses. You now have
the ability to level the playing field with national competitors.
Go local.
About
the Author Harry Hoover is managing principal of
Hoover
ink PR, He has 26 years of experience in crafting and delivering
bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses
like Brent Dees Financial Planning, Levolor, New World Mortgage,
North Carolina Tourism, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX
and Verbatim.
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