Minnesota Web Experts notes Word Of Mouth Has Changed, So Must Your Marketing
If you have a physical address and and haven’t claimed your claimed your business on Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local, there is a good chance that you are in big trouble with your online reputation. Minnesota Web Experts used to have to do our search engine marketing by calling out things like Minnesota web design, Minnesota web hosting, Minnesota search engine marketing, or Minnesota search engine optimization – today is a different day since these local online directories do that for you based on where you are located when someone does the search. One more thought before we begin; advertising in the Print Yellow Pages and other local print sources is old news. Think about it – do you know where your print yellow pages are because I surely don’t!
Here are the facts:
Search Engines out-perform print yellow pages by nearly 50% as the primary source for local business information.
It isn’t just young people that have quit using print yellow pages as even the 45-54 year old demographic uses search engines more as their primary source for local business. Unless your only customers are 60+, you need to change now or watch your new business prospects slowly fade away to your competitors.
According to Google 73% of all searches are related to local content in one way or another. While internet purchases are rising, for every dollar spent on the internet, five dollars are spent offline on products and services that were influenced by online research.
And how about this?
91% of U.S. internet users do comparison shopping and research online and of that group 51% explicitly characterize themselves as “shop online, purchase offline”.
If taking advantage of the local search optimization opportunities isn’t on your to-do list, you risk becoming invisible to the paying public who are looking for the products and services you offer!
Claim Your Local Business Listings!
While Google is the “big dog”, you are short changing your business if that is the only local search engine place you claim. Think synergy because that is how these local portals work. Interestingly, Google will pick up your business activity on other sites like Yahoo Local, Bing Local but so many more. Have you heard of CitySearch, InsiderPages, HotFrog, or Yelp? Google sure has because it picks up comments on those sites and displays them on their own Google Places site. We haven’t mentioned the other sites like Angieslist, Judysbook, and various online yellow page directories nor some very industry specific directories important in some categories.
In all, there are over 100 local business listing sites that play a key roll in how you show up in search engines when a potential customer looks online for local business information. If you spend money on search engine marketing – search engine optimization and your vendor hasn’t said anything about this or your businesses haven’t been claimed – fire them now!
Whether You Like It Or Not….
I’ve had potential customers tell me they don’t care about doing anything with these local business sites since their business is already on them – oh really? We are helping a local Dr. with his online reputation and found the following. Before he claimed his local online listings, they had an old address, a wrong phone number, and his business name was wrong. Besides that, everything was perfect – UGH!! At least they had his category right and knew he was a doctor…..
These Local Sites Allow Comments But Do Not Lie!
We went through the local listings and found some Minnesota Web Expert competitors had dozens of comments. However, they were all BS and I’m not talking “best stuff”. While it might make sense for competitors of Minnesota Web Experts to have comments about Minnesota web design or Minnesota web hosts, real people would not make comments about Minnesota search engine optimization. The phrase Minnesota search engine optimization is industry lingo that only insiders would use. When potential clients call us for online marketing, they ask how do I get to the first page of Google, not SEO and not Minnesota search engine optimization. That is the same situation for other categories where people fake comments using their own industry lingo – you can see them a mile away! If you fake comments, then potential customers also know that you are probably unethical in other ways and they will move on to another vendor.
We start with the negative on local online business comments to make sure companies don’t cheat because synergy works in negative ways too. Besides businesses using industry lingo like Minnesota search engine optimization, we also see 25 comments all on the same date across local business websites like Google Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp, YellowBot, etc. These companies aren’t smart enough to realize that many of these comments are collected on the various local business sites which mean with one quick search, a potential client will notice all of these comments on a single day saying exactly the same thing. Cheaters never prosper and the thing we’ve noticed is some competitors going so far as to call out cheaters that use these tactics.
At the end of the day, word of mouth everyone knows that the most effective method of gaining new customers but how “word of mouth” spreads is now online with local business listings. Encourage your customers to make real comments online on these sites as bring incredible search engine optimization synergy to your business. Fake comments will be seen by potential customers and they will move on to others that act in an ethical manner. Remember Minnesota search engine optimization examples when you consider making up people/comments on these sites.
We’ve covered a lot of word of mouth marketing today and created a 3 minute video on MinnesotaWebExperts.com that will provide more details that weren’t covered here. We love to answer any questions that may not be covered in this article so please contact us directly on our website contact us form or call us at (612) 454-7167 so we can help. Happy marketing!
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