Why Offline Businesses Need Online Marketing

Your Customers Are Here, Are You?


You have a local based brick and mortar business, so no reason to invest in online marketing, right? Location based businesses couldn’t be more wrong. Do not miss out on sales and customers by ignoring or avoiding online marketing.  One of the key principles of business is to be where your target audience is looking for you. A growing number of consumers are searching online before making a purchase decision, so your business needs to be there in order for them to find you and include your company in their decision making process.
According to the BIA/Kelsey  report, 97% of consumers use online media before making local purchases.  Google Research  showed that 9 out of 10 internet searches resulted in a follow up action, such as calling or visiting the business. Mobile searches triggered an additional action or conversion 73% of the time; and 28% of mobile searches resulted in a store visit or purchase. Since mobile searches are on the rise, this behavior is only going to continue to increase. How do consumers search for businesses?

1. 90% use a search engine
2. 48% use the online Yellow Pages
3. 42% use comparison shopping websites

Embracing and online marketing can help you get the edge on your competition; especially when you take into consideration that a recent study  shows that 50% of small businesses’ online listings are incorrect and 70% of small business owners state they do not have time to keep their online listings updated. Therefore, something as simple as updating and optimizing your online listings, including the Yellow Pages, will give your business the edge over the competition.
Four takeaways for brick and mortar businesses looking to take advantage of online marketing:

1. With so much of your competition having an incorrect listing or nonexistent presence online, taking just a few minutes to fill in the data about your business in your online listing will make your business more visible to consumers searching for the products or services you sell, even if you do not sell anything online.
2. Websites for your local business should include a responsive design so that it can be easily read via mobile devices. Especially considering that tablets will outsell PCs this year, and more than half of all cell phones are smartphones. What is responsive design? The Wikipedia definition of responsive design  “is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)”. Mashable named 2013 The Year of Responsive Design and rightfully so with the growth of mobile search that results in visits to local businesses.
3. Including online sign up for appointments or reservations on your website will increase conversions and also provide an added convenience of allowing them to make appointments online 24/7. Of the consumers surveyed, 19% made appointments with a local business through the business’ website, that doesn’t include restaurant reservations; Cornell University research shows that over half of those surveyed made restaurant reservations online. If you do not have an online reservation system you have the potential to double your seatings.
4. Embracing social media will allow you to keep connected with these new customers that are tech savvy; making customer retention easier. Get social with the community, build a following host events, and engage with local consumers in an effort to stay top of mind.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-offline-businesses-need-online-marketing/62406/

Facebook Notes

Using Facebook to get a business recognized online is very effective and easy to do. Facebook users range in the millions at any given time thus making the platform for target audience almost infinite. Understanding the working of how to go about optimizing this tool will contribute to the success of any endeavour.

Just creating a profile is simply not the end to the Facebook style of launching and capitalizing on any endeavor. It entails much more than simply this and the following are some points to consider:

 After creating a suitable profile the continuous step of ensuring the line of communication is kept open at all times is important. Positioning the business platform and staying in touch with the viewers will give the site the exposure it needs.

 Unfortunate but all so true is the fact that the eye makes judgments’ long before the actual material is examined therefore presenting a pleasing file picture is very important as is the follow up information featured. This is the one chance the posting has to attract the viewer within the very slim window of opportunity.

The wall is the main platform of interaction thus the need to post relevant and interesting content. Keeping this light and entertaining will help to keep viewers come back for more.

However constant alerts may cause an annoyance so striking a comfortable balance is important. Society now is predominantly more attracted to visual stimulation and this is further broken down into the popular viewing of pictures and photos and other similar platforms when compared to the written word.

Therefore there is a need to explore the possibility of offering a well designed pictorial viewing that will help to enhance the viewer’s experience. Getting into a Facebook group is also another way to create interest in the endeavour being promoted as those within the group are usually like minded or connected to the posting in a more personal way.