Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz would have made a fantastic online seller simply because she knew one clear truth: there is no place like home. Print media, once the staple of local advertising, has now lost its appeal to many neighborhood merchants. In fact, an incredible 70 percent of American households use the Internet to find local information, and 36 percent of all searches are for local businesses.
These staggering numbers add to the opportunity. With the right mix of website strategy and geo-targeting, any business can attract nearby customers like never before.
The top 10 ways to make money where you live are:
1. Keep your website in sight. Most people start shopping on one of the big search engines. Your site must use the correct keywords and other search engine optimization techniques to get noticed.
2. Make your website out of sight. Once your site is optimized, buyers will find it, so make sure they like what they see. Explore your competitors’ sites and compare: does yours have the best content, navigation and graphic appeal?
3. Bring people online when they are offline. Advertise your web address everywhere: letterheads, signs, print ads, flyers, your door, menus, napkins, t-shirts, hats, anywhere you can think of.
4.Log on. Log in or sign up for local websites, vertical market sites, local online newspapers and yellow pages, and business directories like Yahoo!® Local and Switchboard®.
5. Consider the source. Geo-targeted ads identify users by zip code, area code, IP address, or some combination of the three. Decide the width of the net you want to cast; Depending on your market, zip codes and area codes can contain very different population numbers.
6. Check the accuracy of ad providers. Find out how geo-targeted ad providers collect your user data. Declared data, or information provided by the user during a registration process, is much more accurate than observed data. The most commonly observed data is IP addresses; but these cannot always be traced to a specific or precise location.
7. Do not be guided by the content. If your business is in the heart of Manhattan, you might think advertising on nytimes.com makes sense for geographic targeting. It doesn’t. Popular news sites attract visitors from all over the world.
8. Make an offer they can’t refuse. Ads that feature a specific offer get much higher click-through rates than ads that don’t. Local buyers want to do business with you, so give them a reason to do so now.
9.Send an email newsletter. Everyone knows that neighbors like to gossip, so they might like a newsletter that covers the local scene and what’s going on with your business. And, by adding newsletter content to your website, you optimize it for search engines.
10.Blog A web log, or blog, can help establish your company as a thought leader in your field, or simply give local buyers another way to get to know you. Since business blogs are gaining in popularity, potential customers often search blog-specific search engines instead of traditional ones. You may have the blog search space to yourself, at least for a while.
In short, effective geo-targeting requires a combination of advertising strategy and SEO. Google(TM), Yahoo!® and the other big engines are implementing powerful tools to filter searches to sites that are closest to a shopper’s location. Local businesses with optimized websites and geo-targeted ads will capture the home-play advantage.