Internet Marketing for Local Small Businesses
Internet Marketing for Local Small Businesses
Once the site was completed and the switch was turned on there was a sense of pride and accomplishment with high hopes that the website would provide a marketing spark that would help to increase his client base.
After several months, with next to no traffic, my C.P.A. friend confided that he regretted investing so much money in something that brought so little value. After all, he mentioned, it’s not like he was selling his services to clients outside his local town.
After consulting with him I offered several strategies that he could use to increase the amount of local, hometown visitors to his website. If you are a small “offline” business you may find several of these innovative strategies useful to your local Internet marketing efforts.
Strategy #1 - Free Vacation Drawing
Set up joint ventures with local businesses to give away a ticket for a free two-night, three-day vacation drawing to their customers as a way of saying thank you for doing business with them. You provide the free vacation drawing tickets and they give them to their customers.
The ticket, which has a special code on it, instructs the customer to go to your website and enter in the special code to sign up for the drawing. The free vacation certificates cost $10 (admin fee) and you can get as many as you want from MyFreeTravel.com.
Lest you think these mini-vacations are a scam, I have used them myself and had a great time. Many (very nice) hotels would rather have a free occupant than no occupant because it introduces the visitor to their hotel. So they give away free mini-stays.
A similar technique was used just recently between Microsoft (to introduce the X-Box) and Taco Bell (to introduce their quesadilla), which netted hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to the X-Box website. Taco Bell gave a ticket with a code on it to everyone who purchased a quesadilla. The ticket holder then took the ticket home, went to the X-Box site and signed up for a free X-Box giveaway.
When you announce the winners (which cost you $10 a winner) they will be required to come to your office to pick up the certificate. So not only did you drive them to your website but you got a face-to-face visit with them and a little goodwill.
Strategy #2 – Business Card Drawing
Ask local businesses such as restaurants and dry cleaners to sponsor a monthly business card drawing giveaway with you in exchange for an electronic list of their customers.
The restaurant, for example, would have a small bowl or box for business people to submit their business cards for the free giveaway. You commit to paying for the two free lunches and to converting the business cards into an electronic customer list for the restaurant. The restaurant commits to sponsoring the business card drop boxes and to an endorsed monthly emailing to their customers plugging your business.
Once you have the endorsed mailing you can continue to email market (or send an informative ezine) to those people again and again with the email addresses from the business cards.
Strategy #3 – Create a Local High School Sports Website
If your small town is anything like my small town, people are high school sports crazy. Unfortunately, there isn’t one central location where you can access local sports scores and highlights.
Offer to pay the development and maintenance cost for a local high school sports website which can be maintained by a joint high school web team using volunteer high school students. You can call it “YourTownHighSchoolSports.com.” Of course you will have banners and links leading to your site because you are the sponsor.
I’ll bet other local businesses would be willing to help sponsor the site in exchange for a little traffic to their website as well. Not only do you get local website traffic, you’ll receive a lot of valuable goodwill as well.
Strategy #4 - Referral Email Marketing
Start collecting the email addresses of all your current customers. One way to do this is by setting aside a day or two, which is solely dedicated to calling customers and offering to send them a coupon via email in exchange for their email address.
A second way to collect your customer’s email addresses is to send out a physical newsletter and extend a great offer to everyone who sends you an email within the next 48 hours.
Put a viral marketing spin on this strategy by emailing your customers an offer for a free gift if they forward your email offer to three local friends using a tell-a-friend or refer-it script.
Strategy #5 – Flyer Marketing
Contact the local Boy Scouts and offer to sponsor a fundraiser activity by attaching door hangers on homes in the local area. The flyer will offer a $10 mini-vacation (same as in Strategy #1) to those who go to your website and enter in a special code that was given to them on the flier.
Again, with this strategy you would simply send them to myfreetravel.com to pick up their $10 mini-vacation certificate after entering in their special code on your website. Make sure you create a customized landing page with an offer on it for your free vacation visitors.
Strategy #6 – The Voting Page
Watch your local newspaper very closely for controversial topics. Once a super-controversial topic hits, develop a quick one-page polling website that allows visitors to vote on how to solve the controversy. Put your banner on the website and also code in a pop-under page to expose visitors to your site every time the visitor leaves the polling website.
Now call the local newspaper (or write a press release) and let them know about your voting site. Recently a fellow in Alabama took advantage of the local college quarterback controversy and put up a site called WhichQuarterback.com, Wrote a press release and received over 3,000 visitors overnight.
Strategy #7 – Free Site
Develop a FreeYourTown.com site which posts coupons, free offers, and discount services of local vendors. You can charge the vendors for placing coupons on the site and of course your links and banners will be on the front page because you are the primary caretaker of the site.
Make sure you get a lot of free publicity for the site. You might even ask your advertisers to giveaway handouts about the site to their customers. Have your FreeYourTown.com site sponsor local youth sports teams with the domain name on the back of their shirts.
Strategy #8 – Local Exit Traffic Exchange
Start a local exit traffic exchange between local vendors. Once a visitor leaves the site of one local vendor, an exit popup or popunder appears of a second local vendor.
The more local vendors you sign up, the more traffic everybody gets. Make sure you sign up vendors that only do business locally.
Another twist to this strategy is to develop an exit newsletter signup form. Once a local visitor exits the site, a newsletter signup form pops up offering the visitor the opportunity to sign up to newsletters generated by local merchants.
Strategy #9 – Joint Email Endorsed Mailings
Simply partner with another local vendor whose services you trust and would recommend and suggest a joint-email endorsed mailing. You send an email endorsing your partner’s services with a link to her site and she sends an email to her customer base endorsing your services with a link to your site.
Choose partners whose customers would benefit and potentially purchase your product and service. In email marketing, as well as direct post mail marketing, the list determines, in large part, the success of the offer.
Strategy #10 – Search Engine
Optimize your website for your product or service and the name of your town or city. Many times I have found suppliers in my own small town using the Internet that fulfilled my requirements.
Two examples of this recently were when I searched and found a local patent and trademark lawyer who drove right over to my house after I contacted him on the web. My search on Yahoo was “patent lawyer” and “Friendswood.”
A second example was finding a great audio and video supplies and duplication service that was right down the road from my house. My search on Metacrawler was “audiocassette supplies” and “Houston.”
Conclusion
All it takes is a little creativity and effort to draw attention and visitors to your website. Of course you could just spend a lot of money and advertise your website address but the most successful, low cost, alternatives to drawing traffic to your website are joint ventures with local business people who also have a web presence.
In fact, it doesn’t even have to be with local businesses. Local high schools and churches are always looking for different fundraising and promotional activities.
I purposely didn’t include the strategy of putting your website address on all your promotional materials. It’s not that I forgot it. I figure that strategy is just a given. If you’re going to have a website, put it everywhere you would normally have your business name.
Some of these strategies are easier than others and produce better results than others, but they all are viable and absolutely doable. Your website can be a powerful marketing tool. Now that you’ve made an investment in your website, you might as well get the most out it.
Internet Marketing for Local Small Businesses - To learn more about this author, visit David Frey's Website.
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Not long ago I was speaking to a C.P.A. friend of mine who had invested a significant amount of his marketing budget to build an online presence. He spent a lot of time carefully designing the site and providing information and graphics to bring it alive.
Once the site was completed and the switch was turned on there was a sense of pride and accomplishment with high hopes that the website would provide a marketing spark that would help to increase his client base.
After several months, with next to no traffic, my C.P.A. friend confided that he regretted investing so much money in something that brought so little value. After all, he mentioned, it’s not like he was selling his services to clients outside his local town.
After consulting with him I offered several strategies that he could use to increase the amount of local, hometown visitors to his website. If you are a small “offline” business you may find several of these innovative strategies useful to your local Internet marketing efforts.
Strategy #1 - Free Vacation Drawing
Set up joint ventures with local businesses to give away a ticket for a free two-night, three-day vacation drawing to their customers as a way of saying thank you for doing business with them. You provide the free vacation drawing tickets and they give them to their customers.
The ticket, which has a special code on it, instructs the customer to go to your website and enter in the special code to sign up for the drawing. The free vacation certificates cost $10 (admin fee) and you can get as many as you want from MyFreeTravel.com.
Lest you think these mini-vacations are a scam, I have used them myself and had a great time. Many (very nice) hotels would rather have a free occupant than no occupant because it introduces the visitor to their hotel. So they give away free mini-stays.
A similar technique was used just recently between Microsoft (to introduce the X-Box) and Taco Bell (to introduce their quesadilla), which netted hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to the X-Box website. Taco Bell gave a ticket with a code on it to everyone who purchased a quesadilla. The ticket holder then took the ticket home, went to the X-Box site and signed up for a free X-Box giveaway.
When you announce the winners (which cost you $10 a winner) they will be required to come to your office to pick up the certificate. So not only did you drive them to your website but you got a face-to-face visit with them and a little goodwill.
Strategy #2 – Business Card Drawing
Ask local businesses such as restaurants and dry cleaners to sponsor a monthly business card drawing giveaway with you in exchange for an electronic list of their customers.
The restaurant, for example, would have a small bowl or box for business people to submit their business cards for the free giveaway. You commit to paying for the two free lunches and to converting the business cards into an electronic customer list for the restaurant. The restaurant commits to sponsoring the business card drop boxes and to an endorsed monthly emailing to their customers plugging your business.
Once you have the endorsed mailing you can continue to email market (or send an informative ezine) to those people again and again with the email addresses from the business cards.
Strategy #3 – Create a Local High School Sports Website
If your small town is anything like my small town, people are high school sports crazy. Unfortunately, there isn’t one central location where you can access local sports scores and highlights.
Offer to pay the development and maintenance cost for a local high school sports website which can be maintained by a joint high school web team using volunteer high school students. You can call it “YourTownHighSchoolSports.com.” Of course you will have banners and links leading to your site because you are the sponsor.
I’ll bet other local businesses would be willing to help sponsor the site in exchange for a little traffic to their website as well. Not only do you get local website traffic, you’ll receive a lot of valuable goodwill as well.
Strategy #4 - Referral Email Marketing
Start collecting the email addresses of all your current customers. One way to do this is by setting aside a day or two, which is solely dedicated to calling customers and offering to send them a coupon via email in exchange for their email address.
A second way to collect your customer’s email addresses is to send out a physical newsletter and extend a great offer to everyone who sends you an email within the next 48 hours.
Put a viral marketing spin on this strategy by emailing your customers an offer for a free gift if they forward your email offer to three local friends using a tell-a-friend or refer-it script.
Strategy #5 – Flyer Marketing
Contact the local Boy Scouts and offer to sponsor a fundraiser activity by attaching door hangers on homes in the local area. The flyer will offer a $10 mini-vacation (same as in Strategy #1) to those who go to your website and enter in a special code that was given to them on the flier.
Again, with this strategy you would simply send them to myfreetravel.com to pick up their $10 mini-vacation certificate after entering in their special code on your website. Make sure you create a customized landing page with an offer on it for your free vacation visitors.
Strategy #6 – The Voting Page
Watch your local newspaper very closely for controversial topics. Once a super-controversial topic hits, develop a quick one-page polling website that allows visitors to vote on how to solve the controversy. Put your banner on the website and also code in a pop-under page to expose visitors to your site every time the visitor leaves the polling website.
Now call the local newspaper (or write a press release) and let them know about your voting site. Recently a fellow in Alabama took advantage of the local college quarterback controversy and put up a site called WhichQuarterback.com, Wrote a press release and received over 3,000 visitors overnight.
Strategy #7 – Free Site
Develop a FreeYourTown.com site which posts coupons, free offers, and discount services of local vendors. You can charge the vendors for placing coupons on the site and of course your links and banners will be on the front page because you are the primary caretaker of the site.
Make sure you get a lot of free publicity for the site. You might even ask your advertisers to giveaway handouts about the site to their customers. Have your FreeYourTown.com site sponsor local youth sports teams with the domain name on the back of their shirts.
Strategy #8 – Local Exit Traffic Exchange
Start a local exit traffic exchange between local vendors. Once a visitor leaves the site of one local vendor, an exit popup or popunder appears of a second local vendor.
The more local vendors you sign up, the more traffic everybody gets. Make sure you sign up vendors that only do business locally.
Another twist to this strategy is to develop an exit newsletter signup form. Once a local visitor exits the site, a newsletter signup form pops up offering the visitor the opportunity to sign up to newsletters generated by local merchants.
Strategy #9 – Joint Email Endorsed Mailings
Simply partner with another local vendor whose services you trust and would recommend and suggest a joint-email endorsed mailing. You send an email endorsing your partner’s services with a link to her site and she sends an email to her customer base endorsing your services with a link to your site.
Choose partners whose customers would benefit and potentially purchase your product and service. In email marketing, as well as direct post mail marketing, the list determines, in large part, the success of the offer.
Strategy #10 – Search Engine
Optimize your website for your product or service and the name of your town or city. Many times I have found suppliers in my own small town using the Internet that fulfilled my requirements.
Two examples of this recently were when I searched and found a local patent and trademark lawyer who drove right over to my house after I contacted him on the web. My search on Yahoo was “patent lawyer” and “Friendswood.”
A second example was finding a great audio and video supplies and duplication service that was right down the road from my house. My search on Metacrawler was “audiocassette supplies” and “Houston.”
Conclusion
All it takes is a little creativity and effort to draw attention and visitors to your website. Of course you could just spend a lot of money and advertise your website address but the most successful, low cost, alternatives to drawing traffic to your website are joint ventures with local business people who also have a web presence.
In fact, it doesn’t even have to be with local businesses. Local high schools and churches are always looking for different fundraising and promotional activities.
I purposely didn’t include the strategy of putting your website address on all your promotional materials. It’s not that I forgot it. I figure that strategy is just a given. If you’re going to have a website, put it everywhere you would normally have your business name.
Some of these strategies are easier than others and produce better results than others, but they all are viable and absolutely doable. Your website can be a powerful marketing tool. Now that you’ve made an investment in your website, you might as well get the most out it.
Internet Marketing for Local Small Businesses - To learn more about this author, visit David Frey's Website.
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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