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Roughly 75% of the business owners I speak with
in any given town or city see little, if any,
need for an online presence. They believe in doing
business the way it's always been done, with local
advertising, foot traffic, telephone book listing
or advertisement, special promotions, and word-of-mouth
marketing, and assume that local residents will
find out about their business in these same ways.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with these promotional
methods, but it does create a tunnel vision view
of marketing in this day and age. In September
2004, a Kelsey Group-BizRate.com study found that
more than 74% of respondents said they had conducted
local searches and confirmed that 20% of all searches
among respondents was local. Whether business
owners acknowledge it or not, the Internet is
here to stay, and using the Internet to find local
businesses has now become mainstream, and will
only continue to grow as today's children and
teens, who have been online almost all of their
lives, become adults.
I know that when I do a search for local businesses,
I am often taken to one of the local city directories,
where I am given the address and phone number
of the business, and if I'm lucky, the website
URL, if they have a website. Most days, I search
out the website of a local business to "check
them out" before deciding to do business with
them. One of my most frustrating times comes when
I want to place a takeout order at a local restaurant
and don't have a takeout menu handy. I'll go online
to find the menu of the restaurant, and unfortunately,
unless it's a local chain with multiple locations,
I typically don't find what I'm seeking. That
restaurant usually ends up losing my business
to one in which I can scope out the menu online
and call in a takeout order.
If you have a brick-and-mortar business, how much
business are you losing because you don't have
an online presence, or because your website doesn't
contain enough information to help someone decide
to do business with you? Or, if you have a virtual
company, what if no one can find you when they
conduct a local search of businesses in your industry?
I do no marketing locally, as there is little
demand for the type of services I provide in this
area. However, I began to wonder if I were losing
out on what little local business might exist
for my virtual company, so I did some research
to find what websites would help my company website
show up in any local searches.
1. Local Portal Sites: Search Google,
Yahoo, and MSN for your city name and see what
comes up. Are there any sites on the list with
which you can exchange links, buy advertising,
purchase a membership, submit articles, etc.?
If you live in a small city, as I do, you might
also search for larger cities that are close to
your location, or search for a regional name that
your area might have. For example, I found more
portal sites by using "Southeast Texas" as a search
term, rather than an individual city name.
2. Search Engine Directories: Search
Google Directory, http://directory.google.com
for your city name and look for a category that
ends with "Guides and Directories". When you click
on that, you'll see the directories listed by
importance, as determined by Google's Page Rank
feature (you'll need to download Google's toolbar
to see this info. The toolbar can be found at
http://toolbar.google.com. The higher the rank
(10 is high), the more traffic the site has.
Or, you can manually search Google as follows:
Regional Directories (by continent/country): http://www.google.com/Top/Regional/
By state in the US: http://www.google.com/Top/Regional/North_America/United_States/
You can also search Yahoo Directories, http://dir.yahoo.com.
To suggest your business for inclusion, see Yahoo's
guidelines here: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/suggest/index.html
Yahoo's regional directory listing can be found
here: http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/
and listing for the US states is found here: http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__States/
3. Yellow Pages Sites: There are
a number of bigger city options here:
YellowPages.com (SBC and BellSouth): http://www.yellowpages.com/guide/cityguides/
Super Pages (Verizon):
http://www.superpages.com
4. Nationally-Based City Guides:
The largest of these services, CitySearch, http://www.citysearch.com/,
drives content to many other city guides. Other
city guides include AOL CityGuide, http://www.digitalcity.com,
Area Guides, http://www.areaguides.net,
Online City Guide, www.onlinecityguide.com,
and Associated Cities, http://www.associatedcities.com/
5. Newspaper-Based Local Sites:
If you live in a larger urban area, your local
newspaper may sponsor a site for your city, like
Charlotte.com, sponsored by the Charlotte Observer)
or Boston.com, sponsored by the Boston Globe.
6. Locally-Based City Guides: Again,
in larger urban areas, your local chamber of commerce,
convention and visitor's bureau, or a private
business may operate a local portal for your city.
Here in Southeast Texas, our locally based site
is SoutheastTexas.com, owned by a private business.
Others, like FortWorth.org, are sponsored by the
Ft. Worth Convention and Visitor's Bureau.
7. Association Guides: Your membership
to your local chamber of commerce, convention
and visitor's bureau, professional association
(by industry), general business groups (networking
groups, men's or women's business associations,
civic groups) may pay off if the association has
an online membership directory where your listing
might be found. Make sure that the listing includes
both your contact info and a link to your website.
I've only scratched the surface of the local possibilities
available for both virtual and brick-and-mortal
companies. In doing the research for this article,
I discovered there are thousands of businesses
who aren't listed in any of these directories.
Don't let yours be one of them. Get your business
listed locally so you local customers can find
you!
(c) 2006 Donna Gunter
Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed
professionals make more profit in less time online.
To sign up for more FREE tips like these and claim
your FREE ebook, TurboCharge Your Productivity:
50 + Tools To Help You Automate Your Business
and Make More Profit in Less Time Online!,
visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizCoachingCompany.com.
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