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 teamsf
The Internet has turned into a great local business marketing tool in the past couple of years. While local businesses have not yet adopted these tools into their marketing strategies, the technologies are moving forward with or without them. The convergence of Search, Social Media and Mobile Marketing is bringing business information with products and services into the hands of the local consumers.
Having had Internet business experience for the past 16 years, I can tell you this is probably one of the few times where we can put all the local business marketing puzzle pieces together and see what marketing tools we have available over the next 2 – 3 years. Let’s review each one so we can see how they come together.
Local Business Listings
In short these are the interactive yellow pages of the Internet. Interactive because as a business owner you can update and manage these listings at search engines, social communities, 411 web sites, GPS/Mapping websites and basic business directories. They are also interactive because consumers can post their experience they had with your business, products or services. In order to get started you need to claim, update, monitor and manage these listings at multiple local listing websites. Don’t have the time resources? Don’t worry, there are companies that provide local business listing management services.
Local Business Listing Marketing vs. Data Services
As a business you will want to seek out companies that provide the marketing services. The companies provide basic data services only push your information out, but they do not help you protect your listing from being hijacked or for that matter manage your listings for marketing purposes with various types of content like coupons, events, QR codes, consumer reviews, coupons and citations. The marketing services have a higher cost to them than the data services, because the marketing services are more effective and do more for your business.
Consumer Reviews
This will be the first time that most local businesses dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue will need to manage their public relations. Consumer Reviews are not just about other consumers seeing the information, but too many negative reviews will adversely impact your website ranking position in search results. This is no longer about just consumers posting their frustrations to a website or blog, but directly into your local listing. As a business you will need to closely monitor these reviews and also begin to engage customers that have positive experiences to post their information as well.
Local Listing Coupons and Mobile Coupons
The Local business listing gives the business the opportunity of posting their coupons, offers, and discounts. They are then available for consumers to find through web searches and through their mobile devices. While this is not available through all local listing websites or available for free, this is in no uncertain terms the demise of the traditional coupons.
Events and Promotions
If you promote your business then you will want to use the Events promotion tool within Local Business Listings. You can include Specials, Events, New Products, General News, pretty much any alert you wish to make the local consumers aware of so they can find it through a web search or a mobile search.
QR Codes
These small square bar codes will allow you to program them for consumers to scan using their mobile devices. The code will then do whatever is programmed to them. For example, a coupon, discount, offer, event, website link. You can also use them on business cards, websites, traditional ads, store window, and much more.
Citations
This tends to add a level of complication for most businesses. If you’re familiar with the idea of inbound links, this is very similar only this time is not necessarily just about a link, but your company name, address, city, state, zip, phone and many other aspects that are related to what is known as HCards to include your longitude and latitude of your business address. Because this is a combination of marketing and technical expertise you may wish to get someone to help you with this item.
Hyperlocal
Websites that are hyperlocal give a local business the opportunity to highly target advertising and marketing geographically and demographically. While these websites are not as prominent for this purpose yet, this will change and needs to be planned for in 2011 and beyond.
Having had Internet business experience for the past 16 years, I can tell you that that geographic marketing is the direction of our immediate future. Hopefully I was able to portray to you some of the known components of local business marketing and how this local business marketing tool can be used to reach the local consumers.
Certainly your time resources are limited and Local Business Listing Management 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 teamsf
If your business is dependent upon the local consumer for revenue then you will need to start paying attention to your local business listing. You, also, need to know that paying attention to your local business listing is not about one location. There are over 60 different local listing websites and search engines in four different categories. Most allow the local consumer to post their experience about your business, products and services without your knowledge or involvement. While this has more importance for B2C companies, it does indeed apply to B2B companies as well.
One way of describing local business listings is to call them the interactive internet yellow pages. I say “interactive” because it is a two way street. Local business listings are a convergence of search, social media and mobile marketing. More importantly they have evolved to be an excellent marketing tool for the local business. Local business listings show up in search results on the first page and on mobile searches when the local consumer is around town.
Local businesses are defined as large local businesses, franchises, restaurants, banks, professional services, and small business. Pretty much any business that is dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue.
The business can do more with local listings then they ever could with the traditional yellow pages. Aside from the basic business information, you can add photos, videos, coupons, and events to showcase your business, your products and services. More importantly you can update them 24x7x365.
The consumer also is interactive in this case. They get to post their review of your business, their experience with you, your products and services. What is interesting is that the business does not have to be engaged in local business listings in order for consumers to post their reviews. Websites like Angie’s List, Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Bing, City Search and more are a good example how consumers have been very engaged in posting their commentary about a business (good or bad).
If you think that “getting listed” inexpensively is the solution then you need to reconsider what you know about local business listings. The trick is to claim your listing at multiple local listing websites in order to update them with your marketing material and manage them on a regular basis. It is estimated that less than 15% of all local business listings are claimed, therefore there is large number of local businesses that neglect this as a marketing tool and their reputation.
These local business listings represent your company’s brand and your customers feel about their experience with you. Isolated negative reviews are not to be taken lightly because your prospective customers that don’t know you and can only make a decision based on what they read. Any negative review will reduce the perception about your brand and consumers will think twice where to spend their money. These online reviews of your business are a powerful first impression of your brand credibility as well as a sense of security for new customers. They need to know they can trust you.
Consumers are tuning out the commercial messages that bombard them everywhere at all the times. Any opinion coming from another customer gives confidence with prospective customers. The opinion given from an existing customer with no economic interest helps to facilitate a foundation of trust.
If you’re wondering how a business utilizes this marketing tool effectively at all these locations with limited time resources, then the answer lies in local business listing management services that support the business to take care of this at multiple local listing websites. The only thing you have to be careful here is that most of the companies out there are about “getting listed”, which is not really what the business needs since most businesses, unless they are new, are already listed. What you need is someone who will help you setup an account, claim your listings, update, manage and maintain them for you.
Local business listing management 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 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly.
By teamsf
(above pictures shows yellow box in the map and next to view website as action items for
local consumers in enhanced listings)
Local business listings have been around for some time and based on the direction the industry is going, this will be the next major wave on the Internet. If you’re wondering what Local Business Listings are, please take a look at some of our other blog posts on Local Business Listings. One thing we can tell you is the last thing you need is to “get listed”. If you have a phone number for your business you are already listed with the major search engines and the major websites that focus their attention on the local market.
Let’s talk more about new developments at Google regarding the local business listings. Google has made some changes to the local business listing with Google Maps by adding enhanced business listings. These enhanced listings will identify what you would like local customers to see. This may include a video, coupon, a link or anything else you find important.
Google has continually added new beta features in the last few months. They started off with local business listing adwords in the San Francisco area. That was then followed with QR Codes to a limited number of businesses nationally (100,000 to be exact). Now Google Enhanced listings are being offered in limited areas. Google will of course assess the results of these tests and then using feedback along with their measurements make decisions to implement the program to everyone.
Benefits of the enhanced listings include:
- You can easily and inexpensively highlight your listing on Google Maps and Google.com from the Local Business Center.
- Potential customers in your local area will see what you think is most important or unique about your business.
- You can track the effectiveness of your enhancement with your Local Business Center dashboard.
- You will be charged a low $25 flat monthly fee, with no bids and no keywords required.
If you’re wondering what type of information you can use to enhance your local business listing, then this may help:
- Website
- Photos
- Videos
- Coupons
- Menu
- Reservations
- Driving directions
Many of these options are already available as part of your standard listing, but they are not emphasized or highlighted in any way. Google’s enhanced listing will help to insure you promote what is most important to you to the local consumer.
Overall, this enhanced local marketing tool will continue to show up in all the same places it does today. The primary difference is what you see in the listings next to the map. You will be able to drop your enhanced listing fee with Google at anytime, which does give this service an inexpensive option to trial for a short period. Using Google’s Local Business Listing Center you can also monitor the search and click activity giving you a good idea how your enhanced listing is performing.
If you’re thinking that enhanced listings will change if you are ranked at the top of the list next to the maps or the bottom, then think again. You will still need to insure you are following all the Google policies and procedures, which a professional Internet marketing firm can help you with.
You can use local business listings as a local marketing tool to reach the local consumer and a professional service will have a progressive plan to help you manage these local listings and multiple local listing websites. This progressive plan includes setting up accounts, claiming your listing, updating your listing, and maintaining your listing. This will then be followed by consumer review management, citations, and QR codes and other technologies as they are made available to the business community.
Your time resources are limited and your expertise is with your business. This does not necessarily include the management of Internet marketing of your business. Local business listing management 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 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly.
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By teamsf
Search Engines certainly are not able to make things too easy for the local business. I don’t blame them entirely, because spammers can get advantage of search engines very quickly and easily. Spammers and other fraudulent websites tend to be the terrorist of the Internet. Needless to say, the actions of a few tend to make it difficult for everyone else.
You would think that all you need to do is claim, update and manage your local listing with the search engine and other local listing websites. That certainly would be the easy thing to do, however, whether your local business listing will be ranked on search results or within other local business listing search results is dependent upon a few other factors.
The good news is that it is not as complicated as search engine optimization (SEO) and understanding the technical and non-technical intricacies of getting your website ranked organically within the top ten search results. There are five items on the to do list.
1. Claim your local business listing at the various local listing websites.
2. Update your local business listing with information about your business, product and services. Include photos, videos, coupons, discounts, offers, promotions.
3. Maintain and manage your local business listing regularly with changes within your business, products and services (If anyone thinks that this is not an issue today, they may be right, but you can bet this will be added soon enough).
4. Get customers to post reviews about your business, products and services on your local business listing. You can suggest they post their review at one or multiple local listing websites, however, the local consumer will ultimately be the one to decide which and how many of the local listing websites they are will to submit their reviews.
5. Get citations about your business around the web, outside of your local business listing.
The first four items I’m sure are easy enough to understand, however, the last one introduces a new terminology to “optimizing” your local business listing.
If you are familiar with the concept of link popularity and inbound links, then you will understand citations. The only difference is that there isn’t an actual link coming back to your local listing. Citations (may also be called “web references”) are publicly available “mentions” of your business name and address on other websites. This information helps search engines validate your business.
For example, Google will seek out a citation about your business on InfoUSA, Localeze, and Yelp to mention a few. You local chamber of commerce directory that they make available on their website with your business information would also count.
Citations help validate your business is part of a local community. It’s difficult to fake membership in a chamber of commerce, or a business index, or be written about in a local online newspaper or popular blog. Citations help your local business listing become ranked among other local listings in a search result.
Part of this process is to be sure your business name and address information is consistent from one website to another. After all we are talking about computers and computers need data to be exactly alike in order to identify the information to be the same. The consistency would need to include your business description, name, address, phone number, website, and email address. Get into the habit of keeping this information handy so that you can copy and paste easily enough from one website to another or from one directory to another.
If you feel that maintaining your local business listing is time consuming or outside of your expertise to manage at all the various local listing websites, there is help out there. As with most local and small businesses, your time resources are limited and your expertise does not lie in the management of Internet marketing of your business. For this reason low cost local listing management services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing through their SmartFinds Local Listing service is your choice. You will find this to be of great benefit and the low cost will help you potentially eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of 15 years Internet marketing experience help you.
By teamsf
“I have tried several times to edit my business local listing and it tells me Status Pending Review.”
“I’ve been trying to get my current address, phone number and website address updated in my local listing for months.”
“Recently, I have submitted my local business and had been waiting for my verification PIN. After 20 days I have received that PIN number, but my listing has been already verified by someone else.”
The above quotes are excerpts from postings at search engine local listing forums. Business owners are having difficulty updating their local business listings on their own. These are only a few examples of the problems business owners run into. Reviewing the forums of the major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing, you will find many more questions and frustrations.
Certainly the search engines have tried very hard to make this process as easy as possible, however, the individual tasks can appear to raise more questions to someone who is not familiar with the information or the process.
The issue tends to go beyond the obvious request to answer questions on the computer screen. Each question may raise further questions in the mind of the business owner. These silent questions begin to focus on the business brand, the message, the marketing strategy. Question like “Am I entering the right information?”, “Am I entering the information correctly?” are only a couple of the higher level questions that come to mind when someone starts to ask you questions about your local business.
The local business owner wants to maximize the limited time resources they have. If they spend time to work on this information, they will want to be sure it benefits them and they probably don’t want to come back to do this again. The anxiety of insuring the information they enter helps their business far outweighs the questions being asked by the search engine local listing.
An additional burden comes from having to perform this task on all the major search engines along with many non-search engine websites like Local.com and Yelp. By the time you look through the process you will find at least six major locations to update and maintain. We have identified 60 websites for which business will want to have their local listing managed. As you can see, the local business with limited time resources will not be able to keep up.
If you’re wondering why you want to have your local listing updated with six or more websites you’re not alone. The answer lies with iPhone, Blackberry and Palm. The mobile application developers for these phones will be the ones to decide which database of local listing they will use. Since any of these databases can be used, it only makes sense to have the local business listing information updated in as many locations as possible.
The strategy of how the information is entered is certainly an additional challenge. Knowing the keywords to use and how they should be entered is only the beginning. If you add coupons, offers, discounts, videos, photos, products and services, it will be necessary to know how to title, describe and tag the individual items. After all, you want your listing to show up at the top of the list of local listings for various search terms related to your business and also on mobile devices.
As part of the local search marketing strategy you will want to maintain your listings and manage them regularly. Our recommendation is once a week. Local listings that are not maintained will not be of any benefit to the local consumer and therefore they have no reason to click on your listing. You may have a new menu or products, an event at your business or store, or other news worthy items that will require the listing to be updated at all locations.
Lastly, we have to be concerned about customer reviews. Consumers have the ability to write their positive thoughts and negative emotions. This raises the notion that we want to encourage customers to write their positive thoughts and also insure we have a process in place to handle customers that are not satisfied to avoid having them post their negative emotions. Of course this is also a second reason why so many local listing websites need to be maintain. Ultimately, the consumer will be the one to decide where they post their positive or negative reviews.
Utilizing a professional service to manage your local listings is no different than retaining a professional service to manage the search engine optimization of your website. Because the process is simpler than website search engine optimization, the fee structure is significantly lower.
Let us close out with two questions:
1. Do you know about your local listing?
2. Have you considered updating your local listing?
Contact SmartFinds Internet Marketing’s Local Business Listing Management Service and let our team help you with your local search marketing.
By teamsf
If you do a search on “local business listing hijacking” you will find information related to situations in which a competitor hijacked another businesses local listing to their benefit. As of December 7, 2009, Smart Company wrote an article about hijacking prevention. In New Zealand a florist is facing 7 years for hijacking local listings of competitors.
This is a real situation that can and does have an impact upon a business that is not paying attention to their local business listings. If your business relies on the local consumer market for its primary revenue and you are not clear about local business listings, then you need to get caught up real quick.
For one thing local business listings are the demise of the traditional yellow pages. If the traditional yellow pages have not already seen their coffin and at minimum a door stop, then free local business listings are the nails in the coffin. Certainly you will find that you can save money in this space.
Local business listings give a local business the ability to not only have their general information available, but photos, videos, coupons, offers, discounts, promotions to name a few items. Additionally these can be updated 24x7x365. Certainly none of these are features of the traditional yellow pages.
The process gets even better. Not only do these listings show up on the first page of Google for a search result in which a local listing is appropriate, but they show up on mobile devices while local consumers are driving around town. Studies have shown that there is an increase in local search and local search via mobile applications on mobile devices. We won’t get into all that detail here, but you can certainly read one of our previous articles about the statistics.
As you can imagine local listings have been evolving in the past few years and so have mobile devices and mobile applications. Starting in 2010 the two industries are merging even closer.
Just in case you’re still not convinced that you need to pay attention to your local business listing, think about the consumers walking through your store and writing reviews about their experience, products or services. If they don’t like something they can twitter or write a review in any local listing website before they even make it back to the car.
These consumer reviews are very important because in part they determine your ranking amongst other local listing websites for a web search (vs. mobile search). They also have a tremendous value to the search engines, which is one of the reasons Google wanted to acquire Yelp recently.
So, let’s get back to the issue of local business listing hijackings. To prevent this process the first action is to claim your business listing at multiple local listing websites. Certainly Google Local Business Listing will be your first stop, followed by Yahoo, Bing, Local.com, Ask.com and Yelp. You will find that there are many more locations, this is only a start.
Aside from getting involved in local business listings around the web here are a couple of other items to consider. Always be sure to have consistent and as much detailed information about your business as possible, particularly your address. Be sure your information is consistent amongst all locations on the web including your website.
Claiming, updating and managing the ongoing updates and reviews to your local business listing can become a time consuming process. It may at some point require more time than your website. Certainly the local business listings can become your website too.
Because there are multiple locations that have to be updated you may need to consider a service that will help you maintain and manage your local listing at multiple local listing websites. When it comes to the web, Google may be the 800lb gorilla, but in the mobile marketing space, the mobile application developer will ultimately decide what database they will use. Furthermore, the local consumer will be the one to decide which local listing they will use to write their reviews. Therefore, for both of these reasons, you will want to manage your local listing at multiple local listing websites.
Waiting to consider your local business listing is not really an option. You will want to be an early adopter as quickly as possible.
SmartFinds Internet Marketing provides Local Business Listing Management Services and can not only help you claim your local business listing, but also, manage the ongoing maintenance at multiple local listing websites. Not only to help you update the listings with your information, but also with promotions, coupons, QR-Codes, offers, videos and photos.
By teamsf
Global small businesses can use local business listings on the Internet as a yellow page alternative and to be more easily located by mobile local consumers.
BIRMINGHAM, MI – January 4, 2010 (SMARTFINDS INTERNET MARKETING) – An affordable local business listing package, offered by SmartFinds Internet Marketing, is allowing small businesses to reduce the cost of yellow page ads. Internet based Local business listings are free through the major search engines and display in search results, as well as on mobile devices. The additional benefits include adding coupons, offers, discounts, photos, videos while changing them anytime. – something you cannot do with your yellow page ad.
SmartFinds Internet Marketing launched the SmartFinds Local Listing website as an additional service offering which can be found at www.smartfindslocallisting.com
SmartFinds Internet Marketing CEO, Melih Oztalay, stated “this has been a long time coming to finally eliminate the yellow pages that we use as a door stop now-a-days. The benefits to small business are incredible to be available to their local customers when the customer is looking for them while being around town with their mobile device. The fact that the business can also update their offers anytime gives the local business the possibility to adapt to market changes.”
SmartFinds Internet Marketing offers a low priced one-time fee of $395 to update your local business listing with their 15 year Internet expertise. This includes the six primary websites that include Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, Local.com and Yelp. Additional local listing locations can be added with their optional low $12.95/month fee. SmartFinds will help navigate the landscape and make it easy for you to update your local listing at all these local listing websites.
Oztalay, indicated that in 2010 the mobile device industry will grow exponentially. “We will have not only the iPhone, but also Blackberry and Palm are coming to market with new products and mobile applications. The wireless carriers, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint are upgrading the cell tower to allow for 4G capabilities thereby increasing the bandwidth to the mobile devices. Since all of these platforms will not all use Google Maps, it will be necessary to have your local business listing updated in all possible locations”.
CEO Melih Oztalay has fifteen years experience with Internet and digital services in developing strategies that utilize all facets of the World Wide Web. As a digital marketing agency, SmartFinds Internet Marketing’s major focus is to develop multi-directional marketing campaigns to drive traffic to client web sites from more than just search engines.
SmartFinds Internet Marketing provides businesses with Internet marketing services and solutions that include all or a combination of the following to meet the business growth and revenue objectives: Research, Strategy and Planning; Creative and Technical Development; Website Development; Search Engine Optimization services; Content Marketing; Social Media Marketing; Internet advertising solutions; Local Business Listing Management Services; Management, Measurement and Analysis.
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 Compuware, Delphi, Flagstar Bank, Guardian Industries, Soave Enterprises, Detroit Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, McCann Erickson, Wendy’s and others. You can learn more about SmartFinds at www.smartfindsmarketing.com.
Contact: Esther Lastacy, 330 E. Maple Road, Suite 503, Birmingham MI 48009, 866.501.5758, esther@smartfindsmarketing.com
By melih
What if you could be on the major search engines without a website? Yes, it is possible with Local Business Listings!
Traditional businesses that are dependent upon the local economy can now we ranked on the search engines without a website! The search engine Local Business Listing is how you can use the Internet to generate sales. This is a service that is a part of Google Local Business Listing via Google Maps, Yahoo Local Listing and Bing Local Listing.
In summary this is your free yellow page listings by with many websites including the major search engines. You might ask yourself if you still need to advertise with the traditional yellow pages. Probably not as much as in the past. We know the upcoming generations are using the Internet and their mobile devices. This same generation is probably are not familiar with the hard copy yellow pages. Baby-Boomers are a growing group of mobile device users and they will be engaged with locating businesses while they are around town too.
There are many other services that can be added to this list of three, but in all cases your business can not only show up in the search engines for a search result, but your listing will show up on mobile devices (e.g. iPhone), when your customers are traveling around town. A website is not necessary and the local business listing can become your website. Certainly this has to be a part of your local marketing strategy and be found when people are looking for your business, products or services.
Chances are over 90% of the businesses are already listed. This would include restaurants, banks, malls, franchises, and much more. Any local business is included. What is most important is to have your listing updated, reviewed, and have all your business products and services identified. The local listings allow for photos, videos, product or service descriptions, coupons, offers, discounts and much more. This is the closest to interactive yellow pages as you can get. Your listings can be updated at any time and monitored for customer reviews. Certainly not something the yellow pages can provide.
Every local business listing website like Google, Yahoo and Bing, have their own requirements about how your listing is updated and how much they are will to provide you for your free listing. Google as of this writing has a complete free service and provides statistics as well. Yahoo and Bing have a free version along with different paid levels.
Can you update your listing at all of these websites yourself? Absolutely. Would it be beneficial to have professionals update these listings for you? Yes. Not too different from getting your website ranked in the top ten for a search result, this also has quirks that are best left to the professionals. Once the listing has been updated you can opt to maintain the listing or for a small monthly fee you can have the listing maintained for you.
With the changes underway in the mobile device industry it will be important for local businesses to engage the local business listings. Get your business listed, updated and tap into the growing number of people using local business listings to find businesses, services and products.
Visit our website SmartFinds Local Listing for more information about Local Business Listings.
By melih
There has been an ongoing difficulty for small local businesses to benefit from the Internet. Particularly if they are completely dependent upon the local market. Yes, those businesses still do exist and will continue to exist. As technology has been developing, there is an answer for the local business. It comes in the form of the major search engines having free local listings.
What Are Business Local Listings? In summary this is your free yellow page listings by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Do you still need to advertise with the Yellow Pages? This need is definitely dwindling. The upcoming generations are using the Internet and their mobile phones. Most probably are not familiar with the hard copy yellow pages. Baby-Boomers are a growing group of mobile device users…and certainly EVERYONE is using the Internet.
Why Use the Local Business Listings? There are a number of reasons why the Internet local business listings are important to the local business.
1. Listings can show up in search results
2. Helps advertise business for free
3. Helps promote any discounts, offers, promotions
4. Displays on Mobile maps (e.g. iPhone)
The benefits help to increase your exposure through the Internet with this free listing. It can help you reduce your yellow page costs and makes sure you can get in front of your customers when they need you through the Internet or their mobile devices as they are around town.
Additionally these local listings help give you the opportunity to get more information in front of your customers than the yellow pages can ever offer. This would include your menus, your products, services, photos, videos, coupons, offers, promotions to mention a few.
Did we mention this was a free listing? Did we also mention you can update this listing anytime you want? And, lastly, you get statistics about your statistics. Now we’re confident the yellow pages cannot provide statistics. The benefits far outweigh the costs from the hard copy yellow pages.
Do you need your own website? No. Would it benefit you? Possibly, but dependent upon your business. Your free local business listing could be your website. The reason for having your own website would be because the free local business listing is not allowing you to add everything a customer may wish to see.
Like everything else on the Internet, it is best to work with a professional firm that can help get this setup for you. You have to be sure to have the right keywords for your business, along with knowing how to get the listing up to date so it benefits with immediately. Once the local business listing has been updated you can either maintain the information yourself or continue having a low cost monthly fee to have it maintained and monitored for you.
Monitoring your listing is very important as customers have the ability to post reviews about your products, services and business. Of course their ability to review you are not limited to the local business listing and include everything from Angie’s List to Complaint Boards on the web. While this may sound like a negative, you can turn customers with problems and complaints to long term relationship. You have to address their concerns and have them reach out to you instead of the Internet with their emotional frustrations.
Whether you are a single store, have multiple locations, are a franchise or a bank with multiple branches, you will want to learn more about local business listings. Learn more about Local Business Listings and submitting them to the search engines and other local related business websites and directories at SmartFinds Local Business Listings.
