By Internet Marketing Experts
Geographic Marketing is an important tool not only for local businesses looking to attract consumers through local business listings, but also for the large online companies who host such listings. Have you noticed the number of commercials being run by high-profile tier one companies and websites that are in the local business listing industry? These companies are all trying to capitalize on the local business marketing industry, and are consistently fighting for top recognition and use.
For example, you may have seen TV commercials for Angie’s List, Super Media, Yellow Book. If you add Internet advertising that includes but not limited to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Merchant Circle, Yelp, Citysearch and 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 marketing information at all the local business listings websites.
History of Geographic Marketing and Local Business Listings
As a business, if you have not kept up with the evolution of geographic marketing you will need a quick primer to know where things started and where things are today.
- The origins of local business listings 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 business marketing information.
- While this evolution was taking place, yellow page (411) websites were also emerging on the web.
- Business directories eventually gave way to the idea of rating a business with companies like Angie’s List and Yelp in social communities.
- In 2007 business listings began showing up in search engines and customer ratings and reviews also were available.
In summary, geographic marketing is essentially based on an online business listing which consists of yellow pages information, business description, and local business marketing information, consumer ratings and consumer reviews.
Geographic Marketing is Interactive in Nature
Calling these listings a business directory does not do them justice considering all the local business marketing content, customer information and mapping information.
However, geographic marketing is not just about getting your business marketing information into these listings. It is also about essentially creating mini-websites for your business, and more importantly allowing customers 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. 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.
A smart geographic marketing strategy will require a business to ask satisfied customers to post commentary and manage those postings that are negative…..at multiple local listing websites, of course.
Manage Your Geographic Marketing Process Everywhere!
Unlike the traditional yellow pages, where business information was located in a single source, the Internet lets local business marketing information be found everywhere. With so many sources, it becomes imperative for a business to stay on top of its information, description, business marketing materials and consumer reviews at multiple local listing websites.
Local Business Listing websites is defined to include search engines, social communities, 411 websites, GPS websites and business directories.
If you wonder why the management needs to take place at multiple local listing websites, 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.
Every time a consumer or customer enters a search term, the search engine or mobile app will return local business listings that are relevant to that search based on its proximity to the user’s location (latitude and longitude, city, or state). 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 optimization, local business listings, mobile marketing, social marketing, or geographic marketing, a business needs proper support to succeed in this new era of store level marketing.
You need a partner with experience and expertise in multiple digital marketing fields who 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 geographic marketing services include:
- Claiming your local business listing at multiple local listing websites.
- Providing both data services and business marketing services (you need both data and marketing, not just data services).
- Updating your basic business data information monthly.
- Updating and managing your business marketing information to include photos, videos, coupons, offers, discounts, and events monthly.
- Monitoring and Managing Consumer ratings and reviews monthly.
- Reviewing analytics of local business listings and making the appropriate changes to your local business listings monthly.
- Offering expertise in Mapping Technologies and GPS that offer mapping and navigation services based on latitude and longitude, or city and state geography.
Certainly your time resources are limited and Geographic Marketing Solutions for multi-location companies are provided by Smartfinds Internet Marketing. Let the experts of over 17 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly through monthly management marketing services and broadcast data services for mass business data distribution.
Smartfinds Internet Marketing
330 East Maple Road #503, Birmingham, MI 48009
Toll-Free: (866) 501-5758
Fax: (866) 501-5758
http://www.smartfindsgeographicmarketing.com
By Internet Marketing Experts
Marketing Solution for National Businesses includes Mobile Locations Finder Application for customers to find the nearest store, follow Facebook and store coupons.
October 10, 2011 (Birmingham, MI): Smartfinds Internet Marketing (http://www.smartfindsmarketing.com ), an Internet Marketing pioneer for more than 20 years and leader in web marketing including geographic marketing has announced a new website property (http://www.smartfindsgeographicmarketing.com ) dedicated to their Geographic Marketing group. The website provides information about the solution designed specifically for national companies with multiple stores to take advantage of store level web marketing, customer ratings and reviews management, hyperlocal advertising and other geographic marketing elements needed in today’s web marketing and mobile marketing.
“As our Geographic Marketing Solution and Services has expanded since 2009, we have had to engage in helping national multi-location businesses and franchises take advantage of store level web marketing that extends beyond local business listing management services,” said Melih Oztalay, Smartfinds CEO. “Geographic web marketing is a fast growing industry making it easy for local customers to find businesses not only through web searches, but also mobile searches. Having a mobile application that is customized to a business’s brand will aid in having an upper edge over competition and our Customer Ratings and Reviews Management will insure higher average star ratings.”
National multi-store businesses and franchises have been focusing their attention on technology based data services when it comes to local business listings, however, the true value comes in the marketing solutions that effect marketing processes and strategic activities that go beyond local business listings and include reputation management along with interpretation and analysis of analytics and marketing data.
The additional difficulty for national multi-store businesses and franchises has been their focus on national marketing and not necessarily on store level reputation management, marketing or advertising.
Lastly, many national multi-store businesses and franchises are hoping their customers will visit their website, when infact there are over 200+ websites (search engines, social communities, 411 websites, GPS websites, and Business Directories) that are visited by consumers. The mere fact that these listings show in the search results before a corporate website’s store page, is indicative of the need for a geographic marketing solution at the store level and beyond the corporate website.
Geographic Web Marketing takes us down the path of not only web searches showing store level information from Local Business Listings, but the ability to promote marketing information (photos, images, coupons, discounts, offers, social media) along with managing the store’s customer ratings and reviews to insure positive experiences by consumers. A recently released study shows how 6 in 10 consumers make their decision based on the ratings and reviews they find at any website.
Geographic web marketing as a solution for national multi-location stores and franchises from Smartfinds Internet Marketing expands not only beyond Google, but also encompasses other elements that include Geo Tagging, Citation Marketing, QR Code Marketing, Consumer Rating and Reviews Management along with a Mobile Locations Finder mobile application. Geographic web marketing is a way to attract local customers online through strategies that leverage a business’ physical location. When fully leveraged with the company’s marketing content, pictures, logos, videos, events, coupons, promotions, customer reviews and more, it helps to insure customers will find your local business based on web searches or mobile searches.
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 ComForcare Home Care, Delphi, Flagstar Bank, Guardian Industries, Soave Enterprises, McCann Erickson, Penske Automotive Group, Wendy’s, Ziebart and others. You can learn more about SmartFinds at http://www.smartfindsmarketing.com and their Geographic Marketing website at http://www.smartfindsgeographicmarketing.com.
New Release Contact
Melih Oztalay, CEO
Smartfinds Internet Marketing
Direct: (248) 568.2241
melih@smartfindsmarketing.com
330 East Maple Road #503, Birmingham, MI 48009
Toll-Free: (866) 501-5758
http://www.smartfindsgeographicmarketing.com
By Internet Marketing Experts
Consumer ratings and reviews have become an integral part of every business’ public relations program, requiring many companies to develop a standard operating procedure to manage this process. Consumer ratings and reviews are posted on multiple local listing websites (search engines, communities, directories, etc.) and shared amongst these websites as well. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that this should be an ongoing process that occurs over many different online listing websites.
Understanding Ratings vs. Reviews
To help you get started managing this process, it is useful to have some background on the program. Consumers can rate a business from 1 to 5 stars quantitatively which will soon be used to rank relevant websites to a search. This numerical value can also be averaged over many ratings; therefore, it becomes important to seek out positive ratings in volume.
Consumers can also post a subjective review about a business. This is positive or negative text copy about their experience with a business’ products or services. This subjective review is kept for years and is available for future prospects to view.
Tips To Manage Customer Ratings and Reviews
For every business, there are many parts to successfully managing these rating and reviews. These include:
- Encouraging positive ratings and reviews from satisfied customers
- Responding to positive ratings and reviews from satisfied customers
- Monitoring listings for negative reviews
- Responding appropriately to negative reviews to build a positive reputation
Managing Positive Consumer Ratings and Reviews
It is important to implement a campaign to secure positive ratings and reviews from satisfied customers. These positive ratings will in fact increase the average rating higher and effectively drown out negative reviews and minimize the need to manage negative reviews as urgently.
It is also important to engage and respond to positive ratings and reviews from loyal customers. This type of interaction will reinforce customer loyalty and helps build a positive brand reputation.
Managing Negative Consumer Ratings and Reviews
Because these ratings and reviews have permanence, it is imperative for a business to at the very last respond to a negative review explaining the situation. This will at least show prospects that you care about your customers.
You have three options when it comes to negative ratings and reviews:
- Dispute the Rating and Review and wait to see if it will be removed.
- Respond with an apology if the business was indeed at fault and explain the resolution to the situation.
- Respond with an explanation and course of action if the business has a differing opinion from the consumer.
By effectively managing both positive and negative customer ratings and reviews, you can build your company’s reputation and effectively address customer experiences on a local and individual level, which customers and prospective customers will appreciate.
Certainly your time resources are limited and Geographic Marketing Solutions for multi-location companies are provided by Smartfinds Internet Marketing. Let the experts of over 17 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly through monthly management marketing services and broadcast data services for mass business data distribution.
Smartfinds Internet Marketing
330 East Maple Road, Suite 503
Birmingham, MI 48009
Tel: (866) 501-5758
Fax: (866) 501-5758
By Internet Marketing Experts
Geographic marketing is a new method of marketing a business and its website through web searches, mobile searches and social media. Geographic marketing incorporates digital tools like local business listings, hyperlocal advertising, managing customer ratings and reviews in order to promote a local store through web searches or mobile searches.
In the traditional sense, the definition of geographic marketing is the association of data and maps, but the added convergence of local business listings, mobile business marketing, and social media makes this method of local business marketing more powerful than ever before. This local business marketing tool may come across as something for local business, but we have to remember that all business is local. National companies with multiple store locations also have to consider managing the marketing for individual stores at the store level now-a-days and not just at the national level.
We should define what we mean by local business. A local business is any sized business dependent on the local consumer for its revenue. This means you could be a national company like Home Depot, U-Haul, Best Buy, Sherwin-Williams, Discount Tire or you could be a local florist or independent store only known to your local geography within a certain city, state, or near a specific latitude and longitude on the map.
From a technical standpoint, an Internet user’s IP address is tied to GPS data (like its longitude and latitude) which are mapped to geographies around the world down to the city and street level. While all this data may seem overwhelming, the good news is that most businesses do not need to concern themselves with this part of geographic marketing. Many of the tools already have all of this information built into their software or hardware technology, so we can stay focused on how to put these geographic marketing tools to work.
The difficulty with any new business marketing tool is a business’ inability to adopt the methodology early. When it comes to technologies and the Internet, in the past, by the time most businesses are ready to adopt a marketing tool, the industry has already moved on to something new. Being an early or at least an earlier adopter of business marketing methods on the Internet and through digital devices can only benefit the business.
We have seen many signs over the past two years regarding the evolution and growing importance of geographic marketing. When companies like Google, Apple, and the investment community of Wall Street start to put $100+ million and more behind a technology, it will become part of our daily lives whether a business wants it or not. Consumers have and will be using more of these geographic marketing tools to find businesses, services or products near them, therefore, national businesses should be planning to incorporate local store marketing tools early on.
Let’s take a look at the three main tools that consumers are using to find businesses, products or services close to their geography.
1. Web searches are the first and most obvious. These are generally web searches in which a map displays nearby businesses that match the search criteria. Unlike the traditional yellow pages, these geo-listings (a.k.a. Local Business Listings) can be claimed (a requirement to use the local listing as a local business marketing tool) and updated with your business marketing information in order to meet these search criteria.
While this may sound relatively easy, managing local business listings also includes: monitoring consumer reviews; cleaning up duplicate listings; posting coupons and offers; sharing discounts; posting videos and photos; including citations; posting QR bar codes; and incorporating hyper local websites. Understanding what to start with and how to strategically use these components can be done by a professional marketing firm that specializes in this area.
2. Mobile Marketing is the next most significant geographic marketing tool in which SMS Texting, Mobile Applications, Mobile version of your website, and Mobile advertising are your key components. The starting point in this process will be with SMS Texting to get your alerts out to customers that subscribe to your short bursts of information. The reason why this is your starting point is that it will take time to build your list of subscribers.
3. Social Media Marketing continues to evolve and is also geographic in its targeting ability. Consumers are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Wiki sites, Four Square, Instant Messaging and other social community tools on their mobile devices. While they use it mostly to find businesses, products and services, in the social communities they are seeking recommendations from their friends (near and far). They are also using these social communities to post their experiences with a business, product or service. For this reason you have to monitor the social communities in order to embrace any potential problem situations and work with them.
These three geographic marketing components are important to any business size – large or small – and each have their own sub-components that need to be well understood in order to succeed. Understanding the local business marketing strategy amongst them; accepting and embracing them early; and, finally planning on a 3-year return will put you on the right path of geographic marketing.
Certainly your time resources are limited and Geographic Marketing Solutions for multi-location companies are provided by Smartfinds Internet Marketing. Let the experts of over 17 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly through monthly management marketing services and broadcast data services for mass business data distribution.
Smartfinds Internet Marketing
330 East Maple Road, Suite 503
Birmingham, MI 48009
Tel: (866) 501-5758
Fax: (866) 501-5758
