Make Money Online

Local Internet Marketing

When everyone else is talking about creating businesses that appeal to a global audience, it’s quite easy to forget about the neighborhood. What about the local market? Should internet marketers simply ignore this segment or rely on chance to ensure they are included in the picture? When you’re an internet marketer, you should take care of your local market. They are as essential as the wider segment of your market and have a lot to do about the success of your business.

Global is huge but…
There’s one tiny detail about the global market that not everyone will probably tell you about. It’s targeted market. With a global market, you can essentially move within a very wide playing field with tremendous possibilities and opportunities for sales and growth. However, with a playing field as huge as that found in a global market, you will also face a much stiffer competition. You will also be faced with a market that consists of a wide variety of people with huge differences in buying preferences, tastes, temperament and habits.

With a local market, your prospective clients are far easier to identify and learn more about. The number of people searching online for local businesses, products and services are increasing. In fact, take a look at major search engines and you’ll find facilities for local searches with matching results. In 2004, for example, Nielsen and NetRatings declared that nearly 25% of searches performed on the most popular search engines were local in nature. That translates to nearly 5 searches made per searcher.

Why bother with the local market
It’s simple. If some segment of your target market is made up of local customers and subscribers, then it’s only practical that you create a local internet marketing strategy and have it implemented. People who find your products or services useful are not always people who live in other countries – they are people who happen to be in your local area, state or region. There’s also a good chance that they make up a good portion of your market. This is why having a local internet marketing plan makes perfect sense.

If your online business is about providing customized gift baskets, for example, there is probably a significant number of customers buying from you who happen to live within your vicinity. If the buyer is from Maine, it makes no sense to buy products from a store located in Utah when there is a store right within the locality.

Types of businesses that will benefit from local internet marketing
Not all businesses will benefit from local internet marketing strategies. However, there are numerous profession-based businesses that will. Industries such as cleaning, maid, and nanny services, for example, along with food and restaurants, movers, insurance and real estate typically find local searches advantageous. So do professional services such as legal assistance, medical and home and appliance repair and maintenance work.

Using local internet marketing to boost your business
The very first issue you should tackle when designing a business for local internet marketing is your website. Although it can still appeal globally, you should emphasize that it is capable of meeting local consumer needs. Take a look at the use of your domain name, for example, and find out if using a local or country code extension will benefit your business more.

You should also consider search engine optimization strategies for your local website. Learn about the keywords that matter to your local internet marketing business and use them strategically. Build links with other local businesses and design promotions and marketing techniques for local consumers. If you’re a small business right now, start locally and build from there. If you’re already an established business, do not underestimate the local opportunity.

Tags: local internet marketing, internet marketing, make money

Offline Internet Marketing

Nowadays, online businesses are so rampant that everyone is talking about how to market their products and services on the Internet. It can be noticed that majority of the entrepreneurs’ marketing efforts are built around online marketing. Very few rely on promoting their businesses the traditional way.

Here are some of the age-old yet time-tested methods of marketing products—say hello to offline internet marketing:

1. Make a winning promotion. Think of these—is your product going to benefit any of the TV viewers? What about the millions of radio listeners who would be able to learn something from what you are offering? Once you are convinced that your business really has benefits, present your winning promotion to a Promotion Director from one of the TV or radio stations. Make sure to get that director’s attention and be able to point out why you are worth their air time. A good strategy is to promote during holidays or relevant events; for instance, during Business Week, you could opt to have giveaways or freebies that would entice buyers to your services or products. If you can’t afford to give freebies, you can make a photograph of what you are offering plus a tagline that would immediately catch anyone’s attention.
2. Be a guest on some talk shows on radio. There are so many radio talk shows out there and most of them are in need of professionals who are experts in their field. They would definitely give a portion of their entire airtime if they know that their listeners would be able to learn something by listening to you. Here is how it works: listeners call in to ask several questions about a certain topic and you can become the expert that would answer all those queries. Throughout the entire program, you will have all the opportunity in the world to advertise your web address—free of charge. Doing this will definitely generate traffic to your online business. Most radio talk shows do not pay their guests but, on the other hand, your payment would be the amount of exposure that you get by being there for an hour or two. On this situation, the radio station wins, you also win.
3. Scout for TV programs that have segments where experts can talk about certain topics. Once you get a considerable number of TV programs that have these segments, try contacting each of them and present yourself as an expert who could be a guest on their segment.
4. Most towns have local business magazines which deal with topics that are relevant to the local business sector. It is good to contact one of the people who comprise the magazine and then make a proposition where you could also write regularly as a columnist. They get what they want, and you also get what you are looking for—exposure. Just make sure to provide your domain name when the credits are to be printed. You could use the same idea for local newspapers. When it is a newspaper that you are trying to get in touch with, make sure that you talk to the right person who is the Business Section editor.
5. Look for organizations with a considerable number of memberships (and with an existing newsletter that is regularly mailed to the members). Ask these organizations to allow you to contribute articles whenever their newsletter would come out and ask that your domain name be included during the publication.

There are so many ways of reaching your target market and the methods are not only those that can be done online. Remember that although the older methods maybe crude when compared to online marketing, that does not mean that they are less effective.

Tags: offline marketing, make money online