I’ll soon be addressing an organization about social networking. Most everyone in the organization has small businesses that serve the local market. Many are in real estate, financial advisors, mortgage brokers, carpet cleaning, catering, and other truly local businesses. They don’t need a national audience and they don’t need to spend money or waste time with efforts that won’t bring them benefit. So what are some strategies they can use with their customers for marketing locally?
There are three areas that to considered for small local businesses and one commonly considered area not to considered.
Lets start with what not toconsider. What I’m about to tell you may come as a surprise. You may need to sit down before hearing this from a web guy. BUT DON”T waste your time with SEO. SEO – Search Engine Optimization is great if you are a web-based business that serves a national audience. SEO is great if you have lots of money to spend on it. However SEO just doesn’t provide the return on investment that is required if your business doesn’t serve a national audience. This being said does not mean you shouldn’t understand your marketing message or the Key words that are important for your web site.
So what should you focus on: Local Search, Paid Search and Social Networking/Web 2.0. Look for tomorrow’s post addressing Local search which is free and/or cheap to implement.
