Can Local Internet Marketing save your small business from this bad economy?

It seems that everyday while I’m driving around Phoenix i see more and more small businesses shutting down. I don’t think that there is a strip mall in the city that doesn’t have at least one vacancy.

Just a few short years ago Phoenix Arizona was booming. People were moving here in droves and new businesses were springing up everywhere. There seemed to be a restaurant on every corner. Things couldn’t seem better.

Then it hit! The housing market crashed and foreclosures skyrocketed! Suddenly once busy small business owners found themselves scratching their heads wondering where the all the customers went.  Many have closed their doors and many more are right on the verge of closing.

In all this doom and gloom there are still small business owners that are doing well. There are businesses that are still attracting new customers and moving forward.

What are these people doing differently? Learn about Phoenix Search Engine Marketing

Why are they growing while others in the same line of work are closing their doors?

They found out how to properly use Local Internet Marketing!

You see, some small business owners realized several years ago that traditional advertising was not pulling the numbers anymore. They started shrinking the size of their Yellow Page ads, and running less newspaper ads. They started investing more advertising dollars into Internet marketing and found a virtual goldmine of new customers.

Let’s look at the facts about advertising your small business in your local market.

For years the Yellow Pages were the ‘go to’ place for everybody when they needed to find a product or service in their local area. If you did not have a decent ad in the Yellow Pages you received less phone calls. Everybody read the newspaper, so it was a great place to get your message out to thousands of readers.

Then over the past 10 years something started to happen. There was a major shift in human behavior as more and more people began to use the internet to find everything they need. Unfortunately, most small business owners were caught off guard and are still trying to attract new customers using the much less effective traditional advertising methods.!

Why is Local Internet Marketing so important for small business owners?

People are using search engines to find products and services in their local area. It is a heck of lot easier to type a few keywords into Google then to spend 10 minutes thumbing through a 10 pound book. People also started to read the newspaper less. Why wait for day old news to come to your house when you can get up to the minute news as it happens  online. Why pay for a monthly subscription when you can get your news free online?

This major shift from traditional media to online media has been slowly happening for the past 10 years and it is still happening.

Yes, people still use the Yellow Pages. Yes, people still read the local newspaper. But, the numbers just aren’t there anymore. There are not enough readers to justify the cost, and the numbers are declining every year.

If search engines are the preferred method of finding local businesses, the small business owners that jumped in a few years ago are doing much better then the ones that are still sitting on the sidelines.

The future of Local Internet Search!

Smart phones are powered by search engines and people are doing local searches right from their phones while on the road. Droids, Iphones, blackberries are everywhere and the potential market for reaching customers via mobile search is HUGE!

I have a Droid and just the other day I was looking for an Italian restaurant in the Cave Creek area. I spoke into the Google browser on my smart phone and said “Find Italian restaurants in Cave Creek”. Within seconds I had a list of Italian restaurants in the area complete with directions, reviews, and all the info I needed to make my decision.

The bottom line…

If you are a small business owner I put you in one of three categories:

1. Online and aggressively seeking new customers using local search marketing the right way.

2. Online and doing it wrong. There are many reasons why just being online does not equate to new customers. Most commonly it is a website that is poorly optimized or poorly designed business listings in the local search engines.

3. Still on the sidelines. Still don’t see Internet marketing as a viable way to attract new customers. Many small business owners that do not understand how local Internet marketing works are reluctant to dive in. This way of thinking is killing your business. It is not too late to get in.

Here is the good news!

Local Internet marketing is still in its infancy. In fact most of the marketing strategies being used today by successful small businesses are only a few years old. Better yet, most of your competition is still not in the game.

Here’s what you need to do next!

First of all, you need to get your business listing in all the search engine local sections and all the local directories. This is the new Yellow Pages. This is the new ‘Go To’ place for shoppers local for local businesses. But be careful. your listings must be set up properly and targeted at your best customers.

Next, you need a website. Not just a website, a professional looking, search engine friendly website that is designed to get your viewers to take action. a website is your window to the market. You don’t need a huge fancy website with all the bells and whistles. In fact, most of those really cool looking flash websites don’t convert viewers into customers. Your website should be directed at the customer and give the viewer a reason to take action right then. I recently wrote an article you may want to read. Common Mistakes Small Business Owners Make With Their Website

If you have a website and it is not working for you, then it is time for a website redesign.  Be wary of website design companies that do not focus on search engine marketing or you will end up with a website that looks good and receives no traffic! This is the most common thing I see when speaking with small business owners.

Last but not least is getting involved in Social Media. The Internet has gone social and it is only going to get bigger. Did you know that the average person spends 47 minutes a day on Facebook? But its not just Facebook. There are powerhouses like Twitter, Youtube, and many other social media sites have garnered a lot of attention in the past few years.

Video is huge and is a powerful marketing vehicle. People prefer to watch a video then read text on a web page.

Social Media is a completely different animal and must be handled properly. Social media users do NOT like to be bombarded with sales pitches. In fact, it can work against you to attack social media that way. Social media places like Facebook (who just hit the 500 million member mark in July 2010) are places where people gather online to socialize. They talk politics, trade recipes, videos, photos, and gossip about stuff.

They don’t want pushy salespeople invading their space. However, there is a way to handle social media by making creating Fan pages and video channels and targeting people that are interested in what you have.

In closing, I want to make one thing clear to all small business owners. It is time to reevaluate how you advertise and market your business. By now, you probably realize that local Internet search is too big to ignore. If you wait, your competitors will beat you to the punch and you may never fully recover.

Find out what works for your small business by getting a Free consultation with Local Internet Marketing GoldMine founder Jeffrey Taylor. Jeffrey has been using internet marketing for over 15 years and is in tune with how local internet marketing works.

Jeffrey Taylor lives in  Phoenix Arizona He is a 15 year Internet Marketing expert. He is the founder of LocalGoldMine.com and specializes in helping business owners use search engine marketing to create powerful online marketing plans.