Halifax Businesses Must Take Note Of Local Marketing

Local Marketing Halifax from Onvizi



Onvizi, a local internet marketing specialists explain how local small business owners in Halifax should use local marketing.



Google has as of late changed the way in which it shows results on its internet search engine for local listings. Right now it's essential than ever to ensure that your business, regardless of how small or large, takes full advantage of this. If you choose to ignore it, the only winners will probably be your competitors.



To start with, we ought to investigate exactly what is local search and why it's so essential for decision makers.



If you provide a service or product, particularly within a catchment area (for instance a restaurant, hardresser, golf club or florist), your prospective customers will be looking for your services online in 82% of all cases. As a nation, we now use the internet to source products and services that are within a 20 mile radius of where we live or work, meaning simply that if YOUR business is not being found when these searches occur, you're going to be soon preparing to exhaust your supply of customers.



They could be using their Ipad or home laptop to search for a family day trip, their computer in the office to search for a nearby plumber or maybe even their smart phone to look for a different car for the family. The options are endless, despite this truth remains constant in that if YOUR business doesn't show up on the first page of Google for the search terms associated to your product or service, it is going to be extremely difficult to obtain their attention.



So what is local search? Recent statistics are telling us that when we search online for these products or service providers, we're also now adding geographical identifiers into the search criteria. To put it differently, we add a location, city, town or even postcode to find solutions that happen to be local to us, eg "florist in HX1" or "emergency plumber in Pellon". We also know that 80% (June 2010) of those that search online for a local provider procedes to take offline action - ie, they make a purchase.



In addition to all this, at the begining of November 2010, Google changed how they showed the local results (sometimes also referred to as maps or places). Whenever you undertake this type of type of search, you will undoubtedly be presented with an image from the Google Map showing the place involved. For a long period, this map was shown at the top of the screen (under the ads) with the listings belonging to the top 6 relevant companies shown by the side. Now this has all changed and the results show the listings actually underneath the map - basically, relegating all the non local results (the organic results) to the bottom of the page, or even onto page 2. Seeing as the vast majority of the clicks occur to those results that show in the top five, this is certainly some massively fundamental change.



There are many different strategies to ensure your company can be found and even dominate the local results including:



article marketing

mobile marketing

forum marketing

search engine optimization

local search engine optimisation

one page optimisation

lead generation

pay-per-click

blogging

video marketing (Youtube, Metacafe and Vimeo)

Web 2.0 Marketing (eg Hubpages & Squidoo)

Social Bookmark Submitting

backlink building

directory submissions

commenting on blogs

social media marketing including using Twitter, Facebook

audio podcasts



All of these techniques can turn into a hook to draw visitors back to your business, However your business needs to decide upon which are most likely to be effective given your target market. You should also identify those areas that you can do yourself and those that you need assistance with.


It is crucial that every local business develops a local search marketing plan as a way to take advantage of the huge power that the internet can provide.This really is no longer something you desire to do, it is something that is completely essential. It makes no difference if you are a sole trader, small business or corporate company, developing a big online presence is a must.