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.
