One of the best ways to do this is through local search advertising, which lets you target potential customers in a desired region using the right keywords and search phrases to pull them to your Web site or storefront. The trick to connecting with these consumers involves a successful local search marketing strategy that helps improve your chances of being found online. Also, with local search, it’s about delivering highly relevant search results to consumers looking for specific products and services.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Conduct a search for your business on Local.com and some of the other major local search sites. Does your business appear? Is the information accurate and up-to-date? Many of the major players allow businesses to add and update these free listings. This will help ensure that customers can actually find you and it doesn’t cost anything. To get started, go to http://advertise.local.com.

• Determine who your target customers are and what type of products or services they want to purchase.

• Identify the keywords these potential customers use when trying to find you and your type of business. Add these keywords to your Web site and make them part of your core marketing blueprint.

• Add fresh content to your Web site regularly. This can include news and press releases to keep your customers informed; special discounts or updates on your products and/or services; customer quotes or testimonials that validate your company’s business; resources for recommended vendors or affiliate partners; and links to information or companies you support. You could also add blogs, bulletin boards, podcasts or educational discussion forums that may open the lines of communication with potential customers.

You can make it easy for potential customers to find you by employing a personalized landing page, which can be instantly updated as products or services change; or by building “back-links” or links from the local search engine to your site to assist with your search engine marketing efforts. Cost-effective measures such as these will pay for themselves quickly as they target prospective customers already searching for your type of business on the Internet. To learn more, call (888) 723-9271 or visit www.local.com.

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Squidoo is the creation of the brilliant mind of marketing guru Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae, among other titles.

Squidoo is just another example of how you can harness the power of social media and use it as a tool to promote and grow your business.

Sites like Squidoo offer particularly good news for small business owners that may be struggling during these tough economic times — when you have more time than money, it makes good sense to focus your energy (and your creativity) on the resources that are available to you. If you aren’t using Squidoo, you’re leaving money on the table.

But What Am I Going to Do With this Lens?
For starters, you can redirect a parked domain to your newly designed Squidoo lens. If you are less than impressed with some of the alternatives for parked domains, give this some careful consideration. Perhaps you purchased a few extra domains when you set up your main site — whether that purchase was simply to protect the names or part of a project on your never-ending “to do” list — these names are perfect candidates to redirect to your Squidoo lens.

Use your lens as a tool to boost your main site’s ranking.

* Create well-ranked pages in Google that can bring in even more traffic;
* Position yourself, your business or blog as an expert, and direct qualified traffic your way;
* Use your lens to promote news items that provide a tie-in to your business;
* Post original articles that illustrate the need for your product or service;
* Provide technical information or alternative uses for your products.

Use Squidoo lenses for cheap market research. Your only investment in Squidoo lenses is your time — so this is a great way to conduct a bit of research to see if there is enough interest to launch a full-blown site. You can test out niches to see how they’ll perform - with minimal investment and effort.

Promote collateral affiliate products and services. Squidoo offers an assortment of monetization methods to its lensmasters, and, as long as you adhere to their terms of service, you can certainly incorporate your own as well. Whether you choose to embed text links within the body of relevant articles or showcase an assortment of Amazon products — these are just a few of the options available. The key is to use your creativity to strike a balance between providing solid content and making a bit of coin in the bargain.

Earn money for your favorite charity. This last point may be a bit of a surprise, so let me explain. Squidoo encourages folks to designate a portion (or even all) of their earnings from their lenses, and donate them to charity. This isn’t mandatory, but Squidoo reports that over 50% of their lensmasters current donate some portion of their earnings.

If you elect to donate a portion of your earnings to a particular charity, this is something that you could cross-promote on your main website, and get your current customer base involved in. In fact, launching a lens (or series of lenses) in support of a particular charity could be the basis for an entire promotional campaign — with press releases, promotional videos, flyers, sales, and other activities.

Not All Lenses Are Created Equally
It isn’t enough just to get your page up on Squidoo — you want your page to actually be found. In order to do that, you must have solid content, good titles, and strong keywords. With over 900,000 pages, that is no small feat, but it is possible. A well-built lens can advance through the rankings quickly — and begin to generate quality traffic for your site in fairly short order.

Ready to Make a Splash on Squidoo?
By now, your head is spinning with the possibilities, as well it should be. But if, for some reason, you have more ideas than time, don’t get your tentacles in a bunch.

Visit Squidoo Flipping to find loads of helpful tips, tools and resources — whether you want to try to build your own lens from scratch, purchase a premade lens, hire us to build one for you, or start flipping lenses for profit.

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The package contains a 90 minute teleclass that discusses how webmasters can generate free, qualified and targeted traffic so that you can set your website on auto-pilot. Unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed when the conference call was canceled and instead, offered as an audio download.

The quality was very poor and lacked substance and originality. Most of what was covered has been discussed many times over on forums and in other e-products. In fact, the sales-letter which was very cleverly written enticed buyers by offering secret methods of generating tons of traffic.

In conclusion, the only thing worth studying and taking notice of is their original sales-letter. Analyze that for a quick course in copy-writing 101 and save your money.

http://www.anautopilottrafficmachine.com/

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Whether you already have a Web site or are considering one, it’s important to think about how to attract
customers to your business.

Nearly everyone uses search engines to find a product or service, so having your business show up in a Google search is far more important than an advertisement in the phone book. In fact, according to a 2008 eMarketer study, only 2 percent of advertisers believe they receive a worthwhile return on investment with a Yellow Pages placement, compared to more than 50 percent who engage in online marketing and advertising. Small, strategic investments in online marketing can make your business Web site much more visible, and grow your revenues.

Get Found by Search Engines
Search engines scan Web sites for keywords to determine what the site is about, and then rank the sites in order of relevance. To get your Web site listed in these natural (also called organic) listings, many businesses engage in search engine optimization (SEO). SEO incorporates specific key phrases into the content and programming code, so that a search engine is more likely to reward your site with higher rankings. SEO also includes building up a Web site’s popularity by getting links to it from other Web sites.

According to a report from iProspect and Jupiter Research, 62 percent of searchers click on a link within the first page of results. Using SEO is a great way to increase your site’s natural search rankings and drive more traffic to your Web site (and more revenue to you).

TIP: For the best results in SEO, start early. If you can incorporate optimization into the structure of your Web site as you build it, you’ll already be ahead of the curve. Consult an SEO expert about ways to get your site maximum exposure on search engines. Although SEO is an ongoing process, getting your site designed with SEO in mind can save a lot of time and effort down the road.

Turn Visitors into Customers
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a cost-effective way to drive traffic through your doors, increase online
orders, grow your list of contacts and get visitors to take action on your Web site. PPC is an advertising method in which ads are displayed on a search engine result page like Google or Yahoo!. These advertisements, or sponsored links, appear at the top or on the right side of a search results page. An advertiser only pays for an ad when a visitor clicks on it and is taken to the advertiser’s Web site.

“Unlike traditional advertising, only consumers that are already searching for products and services you offer will see your PPC ads,” says Harry Brooks, director of search marketing for Network Solutions. “This can lead to a friendlier user experience for shoppers, less wasted ad costs for you, and a higher conversion rate for your ad campaigns all around.”

Whether a customer is shopping for the product you create or the consulting service you provide, PPC ads can reach the right customers at the right time — when they are ready to buy. A recent study by Piper Jaffray & Co. found that the average cost per acquisition for search engine advertising was $8.50 versus $20 for advertising in the phone book.

FACT: According to a study by iProspect, when a user encounters a PPC ad and an organic SEO listing on the same search result page, there is:

• a 45 percent increase in orders.
• a 45 percent increase in actions taken on the Web site
• a 43 percent increase in page views
• 39 percent more time spent on the site

Get the Word Out
Online Media Marketing is another way to market and advertise your business online. Through press releases and e-mail campaigns, customers learn about your business and can find your products and services more easily. If you’ve got exciting news about your company — sales are up, you have a new product or you’ve recently appeared at an industry event — an online press release can build your site’s popularity and boost your search engine rankings even more. Targeted e-mail campaigns go the extra mile to reach out to your customers through newsletters and announcements.

On the Internet, it is all about driving customers to your Web site, so the more you distribute information about your business electronically, the better.

TIP: In addition to distributing press releases online, posting releases onto a “news” section of your Web site is a great way to keep your site’s content fresh, which in turn helps with SEO rankings.

For more information and more tips on how to get your Web site noticed, visit
http://education.networksolutions.com.

- Courtesy of ARA

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In the U.S. small and mid-sized businesses create 75 percent of all new jobs and generate 50 percent of all national revenue. But when economic times get tough businesses can band together and come out ahead on the other side of a downturn.

Here are some tips from executive performance company, Vistage International, to help your business survive, and even grow, during a recession:

Take a whole office inventory: Be sure to include not only supplies, but also talent and assets. This will allow you to see the big picture, find opportunities that exist and see how resources can be better utilized.

Tap into local talent: Many colleges and universities are filled with students willing to intern for free to build their resumes. Younger students also tend to be tech savvy and can help improve your company’s Web site, find new ways to interact with customers online and raise your search engine rankings.

Don’t go it alone: Communicate with other business owners and share ideas. Peer-to-peer groups, like Vistage International, help companies stay connected with the communities in which they operate and help businesses find new solutions to their problems.

Dana Borowka, chief executive officer of Santa Monica-based Lighthouse Consulting Services, is a member of Vistage, a CEO peer-group organization. Vistage-member CEOs spend one day a month with other executives examining their own businesses and economic issues and offering each other guidance and support.

“Well in advance of the market shifts, we anticipated that companies would be looking for ways to make more targeted hiring decisions and do more in-depth employee screening,” says Borowka. “My Vistage CEO group challenged me to think ahead and their advice has proved indispensible to our success today.”

Build strong relationships: In tough times, customers feel the same level of anxiety as business owners. Pay attention to their needs and look for ways to be more relevant to customers and help them solve their problems.

Find ways to reward loyal customers and be more involved in the community — it sends the message that your company is listening and is investing in the future.

Communicate: Now more than ever, communication is key. The economic situation is changing too quickly to ignore and you must communicate changes to staff, clients and prospects. By being overly communicative with your staff, you give employees the opportunity to get involved and be creative to find solutions to you business challenges.

Determine the health of your competitors for growth opportunities: Economic struggles for one company can translate into huge opportunities for another. Sound out your competitors and see if there’s the possibility of an acquisition. Buying out the competition when they’re struggling gives you greater market share and access to a new customer base.

Dominique Raccah is the owner and publisher of Sourcebooks, an independent book publisher just outside of Chicago. Nationwide, the publishing industry is struggling and the environment isn’t expected to improve for some time. With the support of her peer-group, Raccah is protecting and growing her business by closely scrutinizing price points, customer demand and product mix, and extending the publishing firm’s distribution network.

“Although the publishing industry takes economic slowdowns harder than most, and competitors are
conservative, my Vistage Chair and group helped me realize my company is better positioned than I thought and it might be an opportune time to make an acquisition,” says Raccah. “I was in survival mode and wasn’t even thinking about growing. The acquisition idea came up within the last six months, we just closed the deal, and the feedback and excitement is amazing.”

For more information on CEO peer groups and business tips, visit www.vistage.com/economy

- Courtesy of ARA

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Invest in technology.
Maintaining your computer systems is vital to keeping your business running smoothly. If you’re not a technical whiz and you don’t want to pay for ongoing information technology support, consider Macintosh computers for your business. Although they cost a little more initially, many people find the investment pays back in ease of use and longer life. More companies are releasing business software that runs on the Mac and you can also use a program such as Parallels to run any needed Windows-only software on the Mac. Investing in technology will allow you to implement other cost-saving processes and programs.

Share files and data.
When you share a centralized database and critical files between computers, it can increase productivity. For example, if a customer gets a new phone number or moves, updating it in the central database that everyone uses will keep you connected to customers. “Synchronization and file sharing are easy and intuitive on the Mac and these were key reasons driving the move to Mac,” says John Ives, who runs a defense-industry consulting firm and recently made the switch to Mac.

Communicate with your customers and prospects efficiently.
In a tougher economy, don’t stop marketing, just do it more efficiently. Rather than sending out direct mail, consider e-mail marketing as a way to reach out to customers and prospects alike. Using a tool such as a CardScan contact management system, you can capture all your contact information electronically. Scan and read all your business cards with the card reader and use “drag–and-drop” to capture e-mail signatures or prospect contact information from Web sites. Using CardScan software, you can create and assign categories for your contacts. If you meet a group of prospects at a meeting, scan in the cards, assign the category with the meeting name and then you can send targeted follow-up e-mails to these prospects in just a few steps.

CardScan for Mac also keeps a photo of each business card, so you can flip through the various images of them on your computer, rather than losing them in a folder or a pocket. For business-owners on the go, the scanner plugs directly into your laptop’s USB power source, allowing you to scan your cards on a bus, in the hotel or on an airplane – before you return to the home office.

With over 7200 contacts, Ives, needs to be organized. Using a CardScan system, he quickly enters notes for contacts such as special interests or where he met the person. “I can type in a few letters or words and instantly find the one person I need with the CardScan system,” he says. “It’s very easy to use and
synchronizing to Address Book ensures we are using accurate and up-to-date information.”

Get your business online.
Many small businesses put off building a Web site, or they let it get out of date because it costs money to maintain. But there are now many non-technical and free tools to build and maintain a Web presence. For example, using WordPress, an open-source blogging tool, you can build a blog that looks professional and is very easy to maintain. It’s also a more modern approach to communicate with customers and prospects.

Use inexpensive creative resources.
If you need photos, illustrations or graphics for your marketing materials or blog, resist the urge to use the amateur-looking clip art packaged with your software programs. Instead try inexpensive online sources such as iStockphoto.com for low-cost photos and graphics, or tempatemonster.com for Web templates and blog themes. Visit www.cardscan.com to learn more.

- Courtesy of ARA

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