Monday, November 8, 2010

Creating a Local Buzz

With most local stores or services there needs to be a buzz around the community regarding the company or service. Simply having a website does not mean people are going to find you online. Creating an online buzz about your website or service means putting yourself in geo-specific sites. The benefits of geo-specific sources include targeting local customers and companies as well as branding yourself as the provider for that area. There are some easy steps you can take to creating a local buzz around your community, which includes getting listed with geo-specific online directories and searches, using social media sites, optimizing your website for local searches, and more.

The benefit of online directories is that they connect you with customers searching for a service in a local area. Meaning, if you registered in a directory for Los Angeles, than you would get leads for Los Angeles customers and maybe even neighboring cities. One of the largest geo-specific directories is Yellowpages.com (now YP.com). YP.com is a great source for any business or service because they have the largest number of visitors to their website looking for specific services in their local area. Party Jump USA is an alternative option to YP.com for customers looking to get exposure to YP.com visitors without the expensive cost of advertising. For more information visit the party directory advertising page.

Another great geo-specific advertising option is the local Yellowbooks. These Yellowbooks are divided into city sections and companies can get advertising for a specific area in the books. These books, however, can be even more expensive than online advertising and business owners should only advertise in their most profitable locations. Other geo-specific advertising consists of local newspapers and magazines that are affiliated with the businesses industry.

One of the most promising methods of creating a local online buzz is through online optimization and marketing through social sites. A business should start off by optimizing their website for the areas they service. This can be done by creating landing pages for the city keywords or optimizing the company website for highly searched keywords that contain the city name in it. Using these landing pages, a company can increase its conversion rates by providing information that is most relevant. Some other sites that can increase or help geo-specific marketing are social review sites like Yelp.com. These sites help recommend products or services to people searching for a specific location. Another option is adding the business name to Google Places. Google Places is free and provides local business search results for people using the Google search engine.

Creating a local buzz about your business involves multiple avenues with different advertising options. The more geo-specific sources your business is exposed to the more likely you will create a brand or image within your community. Even incorporating social networking sites into the advertising mix can help increase popularity through sharing and viral marketing.

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