By Internet Marketing Experts
Focusing on creativity and innovation as the primary drivers of entrepreneurial success, current and aspiring entrepreneurs will gather at TiECon Midwest 2010, where Melih Oztalay will discuss Local Business Marketing on the Internet using Local Business Listings.
Birmingham, Michigan – October 29, 2010 (SMARTFINDS INTERNET MARKETING) – Organized by Detroit Chapter of TiE (Talents, Ideas, Enterprise) at The Henry in Dearborn, Mich. on Oct. 28 and 29, 2010, the theme of the conference is Business Karma 3.0 – Create. Connect. Collaborate.
Amongst the speakers for the event will be Melih Oztalay, CEO of Birmingham-based SmartFinds Internet Marketing, who will be speaking on the topic of local business marketing using local business listings on the Internet. Additional top notch speakers from all over the world will discuss both technical and general business, including:
- Dr. Desh Deshpande, chairman of Sparta Group LLC, A123 Systems and other firms
- P.K. Agarwal, TiE Global Chief Executive Officer
- David O. Egner, New Economy Initiative executive director; president and CEO, Hudson-Webber Foundation
- Sandy K. Baruah, president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber
- Bill Birdsall, president and chairman of MicroMed Cardiovascular
- Shawne Duperon, Six-time EMMY Award winning producer and networking expert
- Kanwal Rekhi, managing director, Inventus Capital Partners and
- Michigan Lt. Governor John D. Cherry Jr.
The Internet has created marketing tools since 2007 for businesses that are dependent upon the local market for their revenue. It does not make a difference if the business is a large national company with stores in local markets or a small florist. As the traditional marketing channels suffer various levels of decline, local business listings are experiencing growth as the preferred interactive yellow pages of the 21st century. Mr. Oztalay’s presentation on Local Business Marketing with Local Business Listings will help businesses capitalize on this growth by providing more effective ways of using the technology to improve local marketing results.
Melih Oztalay states, “The benefits to local business is incredible by being available to their local customers when the customer is looking for them through web searches, mobile searches while driving around town with their mobile device, or through mobile applications. The fact that the business can also update their offers anytime gives a local business the ability to adapt to market changes. I’m excited to be able to make this information available to the attendees of TieCon Midwest 2010.”
Melih Oztalay has over fifteen years experience with Internet and digital services in developing strategies that utilize all facets of the World Wide Web. As a Internet marketing agency, SmartFinds Internet Marketing’s major focus is to develop multi-directional marketing campaigns and use all aspects of the Internet.
Anyone interested in learning more about the ways in which businesses can use Internet local business marketing to be more easily located by local consumers may visit http://www.smartfindslocallisting.com.
About SmartFinds Internet Marketing
The most critical element of SmartFinds Internet Marketing services is the creativity and imagination to apply the technological aspects of the digital marketplace to the marketing objectives of a particular business. Initial research provides SmartFinds the ability to develop a digital strategy that can be measured every step of the way to insure business growth and revenue generation. Some of SmartFinds’ clients have included Delphi, Flagstar Bank, Guardian Industries, Soave Enterprises, Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau, McCann Erickson, Wendy’s, Ziebart and others. You can learn more about SmartFinds at http://www.smartfindsmarketing.com.
About TiECON Midwest
TiE (The Global Network of Entrepreneurs) is a global, nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurs internationally and is sponsored by top Venture Capital Firms, and Fortune 500 corporations; extending across 12 countries with 53 chapters, 1,800 experienced entrepreneurs and business executives as charter members, 12,000 aspiring entrepreneurs and professionals as members. TiE has grown to become the world’s largest nonprofit organization for entrepreneurs. Learn more about the TiE Detroit chapter at http://www.tieconmidwest.org
Contact: Melih Oztalay, 330 E. Maple Road, Suite 503, Birmingham MI 48009, 866.501.5758, melih@smartfindsmarketing.com.
By Internet Marketing Experts
Have you noticed the number of commercials being run by high-profile tier one companies and websites that are in the local listing industry?
For example you may have seen TV commercials for Angie’s List, SuperMedia, Yellow Book, and of course AT&T. If you add Internet advertising that includes but not limited to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Merchant Circle, Yelp and Citysearch many others, you have to start wondering how all these websites can attract a finite number of businesses and visitors to use their website. The other more significant question is how a business will manage their local business listing at all the local listing websites?
History of Local Business Listings
As a business, if you have not kept up with the evolution of local business listings you will need a quick primer to know where things started and where things are today.
The origins go back to the early 1990s when search engines had directories listing businesses by categories in addition to their basic search results. These basic business listings gave way to business directories giving the business the opportunity to add more information to their business. Of course, while this evolution was taking place so did having the yellow pages on the web. Business directories then gave way to the idea of rating a business with companies like Angie’s List, Merchant Circle and Yelp in social communities. In 2007 business listings began showing up in search engines and consumer reviews were already showing up in these local business listings.
So, in summary, a local business listing is a combination of yellow pages information, business description, business marketing information, consumer ratings and consumer reviews.
Local Business Listings as Interactive Yellow Pages
Calling these listings a business directory does not do them justice considering all the content that is available. Not only is this about getting your business marketing information into these listings, but they also become mini-websites for your business and more importantly allow consumers to quantitatively rate and subjectively provide commentary about their experience with the business, products and services.
Local business listing websites that are social communities allow customers and consumers to collaborate. We are distinguishing between customers being B2B and consumers being B2C. We will discuss B2B customer comments in a future article.
Live social communities that provide location based services like Four Square, Twitter and Facebook create instantaneous feedback to friends, family and followers alike. This collaboration not only allows for ratings and comments, but the information is posted permanently. This will require a business to ask satisfied customers to post commentary and manage those postings that are negative…..at multiple local listing websites.
Manage Your Local Business Listings Everywhere!
Unlike the traditional yellow pages where business information was located in a single source, the Internet lets business information be found everywhere. With so many sources, it becomes imperative for a business to stay on top of its information, description, marketing materials and consumer reviews at various local listing websites.
If you wonder why, the answer is simple. Your business information shows up in search engine results, mobile search results and is available to mobile application developers for mobile apps. Since you don’t know what source your local customers or mobile application developers are using, you need a way to manage many sources simultaneously.
Select a Company to Help
Whether we are talking about website local optimization, local business listings, mobile marketing or geo-social marketing, a business needs proper support to succeed in this new era of local business marketing. You need a partner with experience and expertise in multiple digital marketing fields and can adapt to the progression of new technologies that will become available over the next few years.
Some key elements for a company to provide local business listing marketing services include:
- Claim your local listing at multiple local listing websites
- Providing both data and marketing services
- Update your basic business data information monthly
- Update and manage your business marketing information that include photos, videos, coupons, offers, discounts, and events monthly
- Consumer review monitoring and management monthly
- Analytics review of local business listings analytics and the appropriate changes to your local business listings monthly
- Expertise in Mapping Technologies and GPS
Certainly your time resources are limited and Local Marketing Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find this to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 16 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.
By Internet Marketing Experts
Many businesses have gone down the path of claiming their local business listing, but we have seen two distinct problems. The first is that while the local business listings have been claimed, they are only claimed at Google. That doesn’t necessarily benefit the overall marketing process on the web, which we will discuss further. The other is that the local business listing has been claimed only at Google and nothing further has been done. No coupons updated, no customer reviews disputed, no events, no videos, and no photos. Essentially the local business listing has been claimed, but they are not being used for marketing purposes or to avoid public relation problems.
Undoubtedly, businesses that have claimed their local business listing have found that their time resources are limited in order to manage the local listings at Google let alone managing the local listings at many other websites, searches engines, social communities, 411 websites, GPS websites and general business directories. This doesn’t include the frustration they may have encountered in the claiming process that could have led to an anxiety to do anything further with these listings.
Here are a few items to consider for local business listings with multiple local business listing websites, search engines, social communities, 411 websites, and GPS websites:
- Claiming your local business listing
- Updating your local business listing with your marketing materials (coupons, offers, events, discounts, promotions, events, photos, videos, map marker location, business information, and much more)
- Removing or Claiming duplicate listings
- Responding to existing customer reviews (particularly negative ones)
- Securing positive customer reviews from satisfied customers.
- Monitoring your local listing for new duplicates and customer reviews.
- Managing your local listing through local listing analytics and tweaking your local listing monthly with new marketing information.
You see, local business listings are the interactive yellow pages of the 21st century. Unlike the traditional yellow pages, these listings give you the ability to add any digital marketing information including coupons, videos, events and photos. Besides you have the ability to updating these local business listings 24x7x365. I think you will find that you can eliminate or greatly reduce your traditional yellow page costs.
Keep in mind that when we say the listings are “interactive” that means customers can post their reviews about their experience with your business, staff, products or services. These reviews need to be managed to avoid public relations problems and there are three options for your response. You can rebut the issue, you can apologize or you can provide your perspective. Doing nothing is not really an option if you plan on having new customers come to do to business with you.
There is also a debate in the Internet marketing industry if the customer reviews will affect your website’s ranking position with search engines. For example, if your search engine optimization was 100% perfect and you are ranked #1 for a variety of search terms, but your consumer reviews are 100% negative (e.g. 1 start our of 5) you may find that you are no longer ranked in the search engines. While this algorithm is not in place yet, it is possible that it could become activity since customer reviews do have a quantitative component to them.
Let’s discuss briefly why there is more to this than Google. You will find that there this is a closed loop circle that begins with customer using Google to search for a business, product or service. Once they have experienced doing business with you, they go to other websites to post their review about your business, product or service. The other websites then push these reviews into your Google local listing for future customers to see. You can see this requires that you manage your local listing at other websites.
There is of course another reason besides the consumer reviews. Local business listings show up not only in web searches, but also in mobile searches and mobile applications. Thus, mobile application developers decide which database they will use for their mobile application. If a business only concentrates on Google, but the mobile application developer uses another website, then you would be missing out on potential business.
As a business who has claimed your local business listing you are heading down the right path, but time resources, expertise and experience will prevent you from using this interactive marketing tool to truly benefit your business and reach the local consumers. Local business listing management services for marketing purposes can support your business for as low as $1.50 per day. Do not be fooled by the lower cost data only services as you will get what you pay for.
Certainly your time resources are limited and Local Marketing Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find this to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 16 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.
