For those that are still debating about online advertising for their local business, they may have unanswered concerns that are holding them back.
Some common concerns are wasting money generating business in another state. Others worry about it costing too much. Another popular concern is that your business is too small to have a web site.
Lets take those concern one by one.
First of all, you can make sure that you advertising is location specific. Each computer has what is called an IP address. This address locates where the computer is. You can tailor your advertising so that your web page only shows up when a local person searches for your services, thus ensuring that only local people find you.
As far as the cost is concerned, a good marketer will cost about the same as advertising in the yellow pages, but with much better and also consistent results.
If you are concerned that your business is too small for a web page, then that’s exactly why you SHOULD be advertising online! Unless, of course, you have the type of business that you don’t want to grow for some reason. A web site positioned correctly will make a small business a thriving business very quickly.
OK, so after addressing the concerns, what are some basic things that you should know about advertising your business online?
First of all, not all web sites will generate new customers for you. If you already have a web site, you probably already know this. The only web site that is worth anything is the one that has consistent, new traffic on a daily basis. The only way that your site is going to manage this is by being on the front page of a very good search term.
If your current site can’t do this for you, trash it and hire a marketing specialist (not a web designer) to generate business for you.
Another thing to keep in mind when you are hiring a marketing professional is to steer clear of people that want you to do pay per click. This is a very expensive short term fix and in my opinion, it should be avoided. This kind of marketing is for the big boys, like drug companies that have a budget of a billion dollars for marketing. They don’t really care about new customers and conversion rates and you do.
You goal in advertising online should be to have a simple web site created with a great offer on the front page that will entice potential customers to call or email you.
You also want your new web site to show some pretty good positioning fairly fast, like within 3 to 4 weeks. Don’t buy into the propaganda that web sites take years to get on the front page. No, hire a internet advertising expert that can get your site there in under a month.
