Social Media Marketing Strategy is foreign to many small businesses.  “Why should I be Tweeting, posting to Fan Pages and Walls, sharing trivial stuff?  It’s a waste of time I don’t have.”

Here are 4 powerful reasons why you should not only care about Social Media Marketing Strategy, it should be given priority in your marketing plan:

1. 1. Your customers (and prospective customers) are there.

Facebook has 500 million active users – half log on in any given day – spending 700 billion minutes per month there.  65% are 25 and older.  40% are over 35.  The fastest growing age group is 55+.  Facebook is growing so rapidly that 10,000 new websites integrate with it every day.

Twitter has 190 million users generating 65 million tweets a day and 800,000 search queries a day.

1. 2. Your competitors are there

More than 700,000 local businesses have created a Facebook page – and growing rapidly.  Local businesses, whether they have a website or not, are discovering that the Return On Investment (ROI) in time and expense can be enormous once they understand how to utilize these communication tools.

The secret is to get some guidance from a knowledgeable professional to minimize the wasted time and focus on what will produce ROI – and find creative ways to sue these powerful tools to effectivelyconnect with customers and prospects.

1. 3. The business development opportunities are endless

A knowledgeable advisor can show you many ways to build your business using these tools by identifying targeted prospects for your products and services.  Here are just 2 examples of how effectively you can narrow your targeting:

1. Twitter Search – Go to http://search.twitter.com and click on Advanced Search. Put in a keyword phrase that someone would use if they were looking for whatever you’re offering.  For example, if you were a landscaper, you could type in “landscaper” or “need a good landscaper”  or “do you know a good landscaper,” enter your geographical service area, select the last 3 days and Search.  You’ll be presented with tweets that included your keyword phrase.  You could then reply to them conversationally and offer a 10% off coupon.

1. Targeted Facebook Ads – So much specific information is provided by users for their Facebook profile that the ability to narrowly target in on the best prospects for your products or services is incredible.  For example, if you sold high-end organic foods, you could identify Twitter users who not only were located in your geographic area and had a certain income, you could also identify users who said they were Vegans, and you could tailor a promotion specifically to Vegans in your area with a coupon to attract a walk-in.  Just incredible targeting opportunities to eliminate waste – an Facebook ads tend to be much less costly than Google ads.

1. 4. Most Cost Effective Way To Build A Relationship With Many People

In today’s cynical, barriers-up marketplace, the #1 goal for all marketing efforts should be to build RELATIONSHIPS with customers, prospective customers, partners, employees, vendors and other diverse politics.  Social media provide a venue that is more personal, intimate, often conversational in tone.  Social media can shrink the emotional distance between your business and your customers, prospects, etc.  Relationship-building builds trust that is the currency of buying decisions today.

So make sure you have a Social Media Marketing Plan that advances your marketing goals.  Get in the game.  Our Social Media Marketing Services can provide a guide to minimize wasted time and optimize ROI.

In future posts we will expand your understanding of how Social Media can become a powerful tool for your business.  We will show you specific ways a Social Media Marketing Strategy can drive substantial new business and become a competitive edge for you.

Mobile Marketing Strategy, like Social Media Marketing, is a mystery to many small businesses. It took a long time to get in the game with online marketing of any kind, and then here comes all the buzz about Mobile. How do you keep up with it all?

The best answer is, “You MUST.” Mobile is exploding. Alex Barzaof Google has publicly stated how big Google expects Mobile to be. As he put it, “Mobile will soon have more reach than TV, radio or the Internet.” Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, identified Mobile as Google’s#1 initiative.

Already twice as many people connect to the Internet from a Mobile Phone than from a personal computer. But it’s not just the huge growth. It’s thatMobile is so intimate to Mobile users. For example, text messages are opened, on average, 96% of the time – an open rate that far exceeds e-mail open rates. And messages are, on average, opened within 15 minutes, making the immediacy of the open rate even more valuable to marketers.

Mobile Marketing Strategies are becoming a major priority in large companies. But their importance is just as critical to small businesses in many categories. The problem has been a limited number of marketing professionals qualified to provide Mobile Marketing Services to local business clients.

Why has Mobile taken off so dramatically over the last two years? It’s the computing power of Smart Phones. 4G is the equivalent of putting a broadband cable modem in the palm of your hand. And now “the Cloud” puts the Internet, and all the information and capabilities it provides, in the palm of the hand –much more personal than a desktop.

This power isn’t just about Smart Phones, however. It’s about net books, gaming consoles, e-Book readers, GPS systems, car navigation systems, iPads and tablets.

The effect of all this new technology is excitingnew convenience for consumers, and they are embracing it. This paradigm-changing convenience and computing power has enabled a massive growth of Mobile commerce. Consumers are showing their willingness to buy goods and services via theirMobile devices – from books, movies, music and tickets to apparel, even cars. Retailers are seeing more conversions at a lower cost using mobile channels.

The Local Explosion

According to Google, one out of threesearch queries on Mobile devices have local intent. Local Mobile is the future. In future posts, I’ll explore this revolution, and how vital your Mobile Marketing Strategy will be to your local business over the next couple of very challenging years.

Local Online Marketing, or Online Marketing for Small Business, is one of many marketing tools that is available to small business.  Newspapers, magazines, television, radio, mail, billboards, Yellow Pages – each has its place – each has struggled in the new digital economy.

All, except Yellow Pages, are primarily “push” media where you invest marketing dollars, sometimes substantial dollars, to interrupt a person’s search for information, entertainment or everyday life to “push” a promotional message in front of that person and get their attention.  And, since most of those people are not actively engaged in searching for the advertiser’s solution at that moment, there is substantial waste built into the marketing budget.

Yellow Pages could be considered a “pull” medium where a person is attracted or “pulled” in search of information to solve a problem or fulfill a need or want.  However, the cost of Yellow Pages advertising remains high despite the world’s shifting its information search to the Internet.  In a recent survey, 54% of Americans have already replaced their Yellow Pages with Internet search, Via PC and Mobile, and that number is growing.

Why?  Because Internet search is the ultimate “pull” medium. Each person searching is actively engaged in the search for a solution and comes to the medium specifically looking for that solution.  So the challenge for the solution provider is to be visible when the person is searching, and communicate in a compelling way their relevance to the search and authority to be considered the preferred solution. Relevance and authority are the currency of the Internet.

While Local Online Marketing can, itself, be a push medium (e.g., buying banner ads on sites similar to TV advertising or placing classified ads online to sell products or attract inquiries), the biggest potential competitive edge for small business on the Internet is in leveraging the enormous power of Search, and, more specifically, Local Search.  The first page of Google for every niche is a major battleground for local businesses over this decade.

In fact, the astute and visionary small business can harness the power of Local Search Marketing, combined with other Local Business Online Marketing strategies, to actually dominate their niche in their local market – even in competition with  Goliaths who can outspend them  in marketing many times over.  Well-designed and consistent Local Online Marketing using Local Search as a primary tool can level the playing field in competition with those Goliaths.

Small Business Internet Marketing tools include:

• Enhancing Local Business (“Places”) Listings provided on the major search engines with photos, videos, testimonials, compelling copy and advanced strategies to maximize relevance and authority
• Maximizing exposure and credibility in relevant Internet Directories
• Applying advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies on your website to attract more of the visitors you want
• Leveraging Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) in researching and identifying the most powerful keyword phrases that are relevant to your market’s search for solutions
• Advanced Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies to increase visibility of your message and motivate click-throughs to your website, or to a special webpage created specifically for the targeted visitors.  Strategies can be free or paid – with the primary paid strategies being Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Cost Per Action (CPA).
• Social Media Marketing – broadening exposure to your brand identity through social and business networking sites such as Facebook, Linked-In, Plaxo, Twitter, MySpace, etc.
• Social Bookmarking strategies to enable your targeted Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources.
• Posting on Local Forums within your niche
• Advanced strategies for leveraging Audio and Video to enhance relevance and authority
• Article Marketing – placing keyword-rich, relevant articles in online article directories
• Blogging strategies to enhance online authority
• Online Publicity – strategic press release placement and authority-building activities online
• E-mail Marketing – including creating powerful AutoResponder automated follow-up e-mail programs that build relationships and  break down buyer resistance
• Highly sophisticated Linking Strategies to secure the maximum number of quality backlinks from websites with a high page rank – to  convey to Google and other search engines the authority of your website as perceived by other websites

Local Online Marketing, professionally designed and implemented, can be the highest source of ROI in any local business.

If you would like professional guidance to jumpstart your drive to local market dominance in your niche, 
e-mail us or call us at 609-927-0870 (toll free 1-877-527-5980) for a no-obligation consultation.

Local Lead Generationonline is a potential gold mine for small business. Most local businesses simply don’t know how to do it well.  The opportunity to leverage massive growth in “Local Search” to create automated online lead generation machines is a competitive edge that should not be ignored.

Traditional lead generation services have an inherent challenge that often prevents small business from implementing a successful lead generation program.  Most of the activities needed for effective lead generation are outside the comfort zone for small business owners and managers.

Asking friends, family, members of organizations where you belong and other social contacts for business or for referrals is very uncomfortable to most people. And cold-calling of any kind is, for most people, something to avoid at all costs.

Implementing 360-degree Local Lead Generation programs in a business that asks or requires staff to engage in lead-generation activities is extremely difficult.  Few people like this activity.  Proactive, direct lead-generation programs, however well incentivized, may have an initial burst of success, but rarely endure. Even in the Referral Systems program we strongly recommend, some of the many suggested activities will be limited by human fears of embarrassment or lowered peer-image.

Paid marketing activities to generate leads are financially risky and can have wildly varying ROI.  It’s bad enough for even large companies with entire marketing departments to create and sustain high-ROI lead generation systems.  So how hard is it for small business with limited staff and resources to risk investing confidently in traditional lead-generation programs?

Automated lead generation – specifically, online lead generation – is the new power tool to building a sustainable Local Lead Generation system.  The difference from traditional systems is the fundamental difference between “selling” and “attracting.”  Online lead generation is about attracting leads by providing people who search the Internet with a path to a solution.

This entire blog is about the power of attraction.  With more than 80% of Americans searching online for local business information, today’s smart small business is setting honey pots all over the Internet that attract visitors  from their service area with the nectar of the age – solutions to problems.

I’ll be doing an entire post on lead generation “honey pots” because the metaphor is amazingly on-target and fun.  For now, let’s just say that attracting leads online with honey is a lot more powerful today than traditional lead generation systems.  Why?  Because it can be automated to attract actively-engaged solutions seekers 24 hours a day, every day – and do it affordably..

No need to actively seek them out and convince them to pay attention to you.  Just make it easy for solutions-seekers to find you, and attract their interest with something they want or need.

So forget the old objections – that there’s not enough search activity locally to make a difference – that figuring out how to do it is confusing and intimidating – that a nice website, and especially one optimized for the search engines, is enough.

There is a short window open for smart small businesses to dominate their niche with automated Local Lead Generation online systems. That window will close quickly as valuable online real estate is grabbed up by forward-looking local business owners (they could be your competitors) who “get it.”

Don’t go another day without investigating the Local Lead Generation online power of dominating Local Search in your niche – before a competitor does.

If you would like professional guidance to jumpstart your drive to local market dominance in your niche, 
e-mail us or call us at 609-927-0870 (toll free 1-877-527-5980) for a no-obligation consultation.

A Branding Strategy built on brand authority is a valuable investment. But why has Branding Authority been taking a major hit lately? Who can you really trust? What does it mean for marketers?

Answering these questions with confidence is the foundation of any business’s ability to compete in the marketplace today, and will become increasingly critical with each passing year.  For at the core of every buying decision is trust.  Trust is the real currency of the 21^st century.

No wonder our trust antennae are getting more sensitive.  Who wouldn’t be cynical?

• Institutions – government broken promises and self-serving special interests, negative political campaigns that win by tearing down opponents, scandals involving elected officials and representatives, sex scandals in the Catholic church, a broken education system, death of the middle class…
• Business – Wall Street greed and financial meltdown, bailouts, 10%+ unemployment, depression-era suffering, exorbitant CEO compensation, bankruptcies,  foreclosures, Enron, AIG, Toyota…
• Internet – identity theft, cyber-attacks, 95%+ failure rate for new Internet marketing ventures, social media proliferation creating overwhelming “noise,” sharp decline in the authority of recommendations by “a-person-like-me” peers…

This topic is one of the most important right now for small businesses who do not have big research, marketing or specialized Internet departments to keep up with and deal with relevant trends.  So I’ll be devoting several posts to assessing and growing brand authority and trust as vital to your small business Branding Strategy.

What can you do to leverage brand authority as a competitive edge?  This is big stuff.  We’ll spend considerable time looking at this challenge and enormous opportunity.

For this first post on brand authority as the foundation of Branding Strategy, let’s look briefly at the credibility of social media as a business marketing tool.

A recent Los Angeles Times article headline caught a lot of business owners and marketers by surprise.  “Social media are losing their power as marketing tools” is a provocative headline in the Web 2.0 age.

Isn’t this the marketing revolution power tool that, in 2005, had peers replacing well-known experts and authorities as their most valued source of recommendations?

But it’s hard to explain away the data that reports the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of consumer and business information dropped from 45% in 2008 to just 25% in 2010, as reported by Edelman,  a major international PR firm.

The culprit appears to be all the “Noise.”  With social media exploding, and all types of businesses vying to harness (or exploit) this new media, people are more skeptical of peer recommendations – or what appears to be peer recommendations.  And with times so uncertain, people seem to be looking for “a firmer guarantee of clarity, objectivity and accuracy.”  Experts and broadly-respected authorities are coming back in vogue.

What’s the lesson here for small business marketers?  First of all, it’s not about throwing in the towel on social media. Far from it. Social media done right in building brand authority is enormously powerful.

However, the real message is to seriously and methodically build credibility  and trust on all fronts – and do it with total transparency – not behind a self-serving façade.  Do it honestly and totally consumer-focused.

Do it consistently, even exposing coming up short sometimes.  Keep it real and make every communication reflect your genuine focus on adding value to people’s lives.  Then watch your brand authority grow.

If you would like professional assistance with building brand authority as part of your Branding Strategy,
e-mail us or call 609-927-0870 (toll free 1-877-527-5980) for a no-obligation consultation.

Of all the Small Business Tools, Referral Marketing should be the foundation of every Local business. Period. In a recent survey, small business owners said referrals produced the biggest returns of any marketing activity – by far – 10 times more than print ads, 4 times more than telemarketing, 3+ times more than direct mail and 2.5 times more than the next most-effective marketing activity – networking (MarketingBestPractices.com).

Why is referral marketing so powerful?  Because a trusted third party who knows you and your work is vouching for you to someone they know.  Nothing could be more credible or authoritative.

Think about it.  If you were presented a referral from a trusted source, there’s a presumption that the referrer would never refer you to this person or company unless the referrer thought it would be in your best interests.  That’s called “Social Proof” of the highest level.  It’s pure gold.

Although most small business owners recognize that referrals are extremely valuable, few have a systematic referral program to generate consistent referrals.  And that is a tragic waste of business value.

There are many, many reasons referral marketing is not systematized in most small businesses, including:

• “It’s tacky and very uncomfortable asking clients/customers for referrals.”
• “I feel embarrassed and humiliated if they refuse.”
• My clients/customers are too busy.  It feels like I’m imposing.”
• “I ask and they say yes, but I seldom get anything back.  I don’t want to bug them.”

A systematic Referral Marketing program should enable you to:

• Never have to ask another person face-to-face for a referral ever again.
• Get all the referrals you can handle with the pride and dignity that you deserve.
• Put robotic referral systems in place that keep working day in and day out.
• Get highly qualified referrals that are eager to do business with you.
• Incentivize customers so that they’re highly motivated to talk about your business.
• Get customers and clients to tap deep into their network to give you referrals.
• Give you complete control over the number of referrals you get

I strongly recommend  that you take a careful look at the most comprehensive, single best Referral Marketing program for small businesses.  It’s from David Frey who is one of the most trusted small business marketing experts anywhere – online or offline.  He’s been around for many years so his referral programs are well-tested and refined.  And on his website you’ll find hundreds of unedited testimonials from business owners like you. This Referral Marketing program is one of the most important of all the Small Business Tools.

No matter what else you do in your marketing efforts, you MUST do this and do it well. Learn how to build a Referral Marketing machine.  David simply makes it easier, more comfortable and more systematic.

If you invest in nothing else, invest in David’s Referral Marketing System.  It’s ridiculously affordable and it will pay for itself many, many times over.

Local Lead Generation is getting more and more challenging every year – for many reasons:

1.  Fragmentation – Promotional media choices are fragmenting into serving niche markets (e.g., radio “narrowcasting” is increasingly niche-focused).  That’s great for certain businesses focused in very narrow niches.  But many small businesses aren’t so narrowly focused.  That means having to buy several media to reach the audience that you want to see your message.

Plus promotional choices for small businesses are broadening.  The Internet, mobile digital technology and social media are changing everything.  And many of these new media opportunities are confusing and intimidating to smaller businesses – as well as risky financially.

2.  High cost/low return – How is the ROI on your marketing investments?  The vast majority of businesses I talk to are having a hard time justifying the big-dollar investments in marketing or are experiencing too much waste they can’t easily pinpoint.  The ROI just isn’t there.

3.  Clutter – Pity the poor consumer trying to make informed choices.  So many marketing messages coming at them from so many directions.  No wonder selecting the right choice in any buying decision is frustrating.  No wonder those choices are too-often made without real confidence in the decision.

The new small business marketing paradigm is being driven by the incredible growth of Local Search. The holy grail of marketing has always been to identify prospective buyers when they are actively engaged in the buying process – preferably right before the precise moment when the actual decision is made.

Traditional small business marketing is usually not precisely targeted and timed to be there in front of the prospect at just the right time.  But the Internet is changing that.

With more than 80% of consumers doing pre-buying research online via a PC, phone or other mobile device, including at the local level, the opportunity to leverage this new technology to identify prospects when they’re getting ready to buy is becoming more and more achievable.  And it’s not just about searching on desktop computers and laptops.

The biggest growth in Local Search is in mobile devices where there are 272 million mobile subscribers and 29 million smart phone users in the US alone.  And, perhaps even more importantly, purchase intent for mobile users is 3-8 times higher for a wide range of major niches.

This trend is so exciting and opportunity-filled, I have an entire Category of posts exclusively on this get-in-early trend. And you cannot ignore the exploding power of building a Social Media Marketing Strategy.

If you’re not using advanced-level Local Online Marketing, Local Search Marketing, Mobile Marketing Strategy and Social Media Marketing Strategy in your marketing plan, you’re getting further behind the curve every day.  And you’re dangerously vulnerable to an astute local marketer in your niche taking your customers away and driving your prospective new customers in their direction – and you won’t be able to stop it.

Don’t let that happen.  Get in the game now.  If you would like professional guidance to jumpstart your drive to local market dominance in your niche, e-mail us or call us at 609-927-0870 (toll free 1-877-527-5980) for a no-obligation consultation.

Local Lead Generation is the real lifeblood of most local businesses. While customer/client retention is crucial and should be a major focus of any business, the process of closing new business leads must be a continuous activity, too.

If you Google “new business leads” or “sales leads,” you’ll find virtually every listing is about generating, buying or qualifying leads. Too little attention is paid to what comes next – closing the leads.  And that’s the real challenge.  Every business wants to close the highest percentage of leads possible as fast as possible.

The reality is that very few leads close quickly – especially for higher priced products and services, less-tangible, more complex or lesser-known products or services.  Check out these statistics from the National Sales Executive Association for the U.S.:

2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
10% of sales are made on the 4th contact
80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact

If so few leads close quickly, a program of continuous contacts is essential.  However, it’s not the quantity of contacts that counts.  It’s the quality of those contacts – for each contact‘s primary objective is to build trust – the real currency in sales.

It’s a universally accepted fact that people buy from someone or from a company they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST.  So contacts must help the prospect get to know you better,  come to like you and eventually TRUST you enough to choose YOU rather than any competitors who are trying to win the same business.

New Business Lead TLC - Just like watering, feeding and lovingly caring for a germinating seedling, followup contacts should be viewed as opportunities for TLC (Tender Loving Care).  Every contact is important.  No matter how mundane or technical or difficult, the prospects are making judgments from each contact that are filed away. Each judgment either reinforces a perception or changes that perception – often in subtle ways.

These judgments build a file that is called up at the point of selection between you and competitors – and each file has three sections – (1) familiarity and empathy, (2) likeability and (3) trustworthiness – which can be broken down into credibility, expertise and reliability.

All of these judgments blend together and, collectively, often unconsciously, influence the buying decision.  So if most buying decisions are not immediate, by definition, the size and reinforcing consistency of those files are critical.  Every lost opportunity to reinforce a positive file or change a competitively weak file can make the difference at crunch time.

So while you invest your energy and resources in Local Lead Generation, make certain you’re equally investing in and planning your TLC strategy for every new business lead.  And if you would like professional assistance in assessing your TLC strategy, call us at 609-927-0870 (toll free 1-877-527-5980) or e-mail us.

Branding strategy begins with a question. Why should a prospective buyer of your product or service select YOU rather than any of the other choices available?  Seldom is there the luxury of exclusivity any more.  A buying decision is really a competitive choice – us versus them – no second prize.

Think of all the marketing dollars you invest to get traffic, generate leads or attract attention to your product or service.  But are you positioned to close the deal?  Why choose you?  There are other choices.  It’s a buying DECISION.  I call it the “Big WHY.” It’s the most misunderstood and often the most poorly constructed part of the business plan.

Branding strategy is about answering the “Big WHY” with such clarity and persuasive power that the only possible choice is YOU.  The weaker your positioning clarity and persuasive power, the lower your sales conversion rate.  That’s the law.

Unfortunately, there’s a catch.  There’s always a catch.  No matter how clear and persuasive your positioning strategy is, what if it’s the WRONG positioning?  Oops!  In 35+ years of brand strategy consulting, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a business owner approve a positioning that, after research and analysis, proved to be off the mark – sometimes a little – sometimes dangerously off-target.

So branding strategy has two primary components:

1.  Brand positioning – does your positioning strategy fit your differentiating strengths precisely and clearly?  Does it reflect the true YOU?  Or is it, as I often see, not a reflection, but rather a projection of what you want your brand to be?  Or, just as myopic, what you think others perceive it to be?

In other words, is your positioning a lie?  You are who you are.  Brand development is about uncovering truth – the real you – your real competitive strengths.  It’s not about trying to build your business on an identity that you would like to be yours, but it’s not.  You don’t really own it.  It’s not really you.

You can aspire and work diligently to become the brand you want to be, but, until you really are that brand, you can’t claim it.  You’ll be found out.  Fulfilling your customers’ expectations will come up short.  You can’t pretend to be something you’re not in today’s incredibly competitive marketplace.  Customers get dissatisfied real fast today when their expectations aren’t matched by your brand.

So you must choose your brand positioning carefully.  It must exude truth and credibility.  If you’re not the brand you want to be, work hard to get there.  But don’t lie and promise that you’re already there. It may have some success for a moment, but it can’t be sustained.  Because it’s not the truth.

Figure out precisely what your truth is and then figure out how to communicate it in a compelling way.  And that’s the second primary component of a powerful brand strategy:

2.  Brand communication strategy – does it precisely and clearly convey your positioning in such a way that it is powerfully persuasive?  Does it make selection of your product or service inevitable?

From the logo through all the marketing tools available today, do they reinforce your core positioning?   Do they creatively tell a story that influences, with ultimate power, what will happen in that magic moment – the point of decision – the choice?

Any marketing investment that does not convincingly reinforce your brand positioning is like throwing a portion of those dollars away.  And who can afford that these days?  If you’re not actively judging every marketing investment against this standard, start now.

Whatever the size of your business, answering the “Big WHY” with a precise Branding Strategy is critical.

For a  no-obligation consultation on assessing your Branding Strategy, call 609-927-0870 (toll free 1-877-527-5980)or e-mail us.

Local Online Marketing is the new secret weapon for dominating your niche. It’s both accessible and affordable to even the smallest local businesses.

Local Online Marketing is David's Slingshot

Feel like David fighting Goliath in your local market? Local online marketing to generate local leads for a business or organization is like David’s slingshot – a weapon that, in the hands of an expert of any size, can help small business compete, and even dominate, a local market.

Why is Local Online Marketing so powerful? It’s because prospective clients/customers/members/donors are actively searching for what local businesses and organizations offer. Think of the first page of Google as Main Street. People are constantly driving down Main Street looking for someone to solve their problems, fulfill their desires, feed their passions. They’re proactive, actively engaged in that search.

82% of American adults now search the Internet for local business information [1] – five billion times a month in the U.S. alone [2]. And these are active buyers. 61% of local searches result in a transaction [3].

The first page of Google is a major battleground for local businesses in this decade. Virtually any local business, with proper guidance, can more effectively compete with the Goliaths and often win. A winning Local Online Marketing Strategy includes Local Search Marketing, PC and Mobile, plus Social Media Marketing Strategies.

One important objective is dominating the first page of Google and other search engines in your local market for your niche. That’s where most of the traffic is. That’s where the action is. That’s where the incremental added business is. It’s there for the first local business in your niche that can figure out how to dominate Main Street.

Is that you, or will a competitor be the first to figure out how to do it? Ignore the power of Local Online Marketing at your own peril. This is the land rush of this decade. Most local businesses don’t yet know how critical and time-sensitive this land rush is. The real estate is extremely limited. Are you ready to stake your claim? It’s not easy. You’ll need professional guidance. But the rewards are potentially enormous.

Get your Local Online Marketing slingshot assembled, loaded, cocked and ready ASAP.

If you would like professional guidance to jumpstart your drive to local market dominance in your niche, e-mail us or call us at 609-927-0870 (toll free 1-877-527-5980) for a no-obligation consultation.

[1] Webvisible and Nielson – reported by Marketing Charts; [2] The Kelsey Group; [3] comScore