Internet Marketing for Local Small Businesses
by David Pham

Not long ago I was speaking to a C.P.A. friend of mine who had invested a significant amount of his marketing budget to build an online presence. He spent a lot of time carefully designing the site and providing information and graphics to bring it alive.

Once the site was completed and the switch was turned on there was a sense of pride and accomplishment with high hopes that the website would provide a marketing spark that would help to increase his client base.

After several months, with next to no traffic, my C.P.A. friend confided that he regretted investing so much money in something that brought so little value. After all, he mentioned, it's not like he was selling his services to clients outside his local town.

After consulting with him I offered several strategies that he could use to increase the amount of local, hometown visitors to his website. If you are a small offline business you may find several of these innovative strategies useful to your local Internet marketing efforts.

Strategy #1 - Free Vacation Drawing

Set up joint ventures with local businesses to give away a ticket for a free two-night, three-day vacation drawing to their customers as a way of saying thank you for doing business with them. You provide the free vacation drawing tickets and they give them to their customers.

The ticket, which has a special code on it, instructs the customer to go to your website and enter in the special code to sign up for the drawing. The free vacation certificates cost $10 (admin fee) and you can get as many as you want from MyFreeTravel.com.

Lest you think these mini-vacations are a scam, I have used them myself and had a great time. Many (very nice) hotels would rather have a free occupant than no occupant because it introduces the visitor to their hotel. So they give away free mini-stays.

A similar technique was used just recently between Microsoft (to introduce the X-Box) and Taco Bell (to introduce their quesadilla), which netted hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to the X-Box website. Taco Bell gave a ticket with a code on it to everyone who purchased a quesadilla. The ticket holder then took the ticket home, went to the X-Box site and signed up for a free X-Box giveaway.

When you announce the winners (which cost you $10 a winner) they will be required to come to your office to pick up the certificate. So not only did you drive them to your website but you got a face-to-face visit with them and a little goodwill.

Strategy #2 - Business Card Drawing

Ask local businesses such as restaurants and dry cleaners to sponsor a monthly business card drawing giveaway with you in exchange for an electronic list of their customers.

The restaurant, for example, would have a small bowl or box for business people to submit their business cards for the free giveaway. You commit to paying for the two free lunches and to converting the business cards into an electronic customer list for the restaurant. The restaurant commits to sponsoring the business card drop boxes and to an endorsed monthly emailing to their customers plugging your business.

Once you have the endorsed mailing you can continue to email market (or send an informative ezine) to those people again and again with the email addresses from the business cards.

Strategy #3 - Create a Local High School Sports Website

If your small town is anything like my small town, people are high school sports crazy. Unfortunately, there isn't one central location where you can access local sports scores and highlights.

Offer to pay the development and maintenance cost for a local high school sports website which can be maintained by a joint high school web team using volunteer high school students. You can call it "YourTownHighSchoolSports.com."

Of course you will have banners and links leading to your site because you are the sponsor.

I'll bet other local businesses would be willing to help sponsor the site in exchange for a little traffic to their website as well. Not only do you get local website traffic, you'll receive a lot of valuable goodwill as well.

Strategy #4 - Referral Email Marketing

Start collecting the email addresses of all your current customers. One way to do this is by setting aside a day or two, which is solely dedicated to calling customers and offering to send them a coupon via email in exchange for their email address.

A second way to collect your customer's email addresses is to send out a physical newsletter and extend a great offer to everyone who sends you an email within the next 48 hours.

Put a viral marketing spin on this strategy by emailing your customers an offer for a free gift if they forward your email offer to three local friends using a tell-a-friend or refer-it script.

Strategy #5 - Flyer Marketing

Contact the local Boy Scouts and offer to sponsor a fundraiser activity by attaching door hangers on homes in the local area. The flyer will offer a $10 mini-vacation (same as in Strategy #1) to those who go to your website and enter in a special code that was given to them on the flier.

Again, with this strategy you would simply send them to myfreetravel.com to pick up their $10 mini-vacation certificate after entering in their special code on your website. Make sure you create a customized landing page with an offer on it for your free vacation visitors.

Strategy #6 - The Voting Page

Watch your local newspaper very closely for controversial topics. Once a super-controversial topic hits, develop a quick one-page polling website that allows visitors to vote on how to solve the controversy. Put your banner on the website and also code in a pop-under page to expose visitors to your site every time the visitor leaves the polling website.

Now call the local newspaper (or write a press release) and let them know about your voting site. Recently a fellow in Alabama took advantage of the local college quarterback controversy and put up a site called WhichQuarterback.com, Wrote a press release and received over 3,000 visitors overnight.

Strategy #7 - Free Site

Develop a FreeYourTown.com site which posts coupons, free offers, and discount services of local vendors. You can charge the vendors for placing coupons on the site and of course your links and banners will be on the front page because you are the primary caretaker of the site.

Make sure you get a lot of free publicity for the site. You might even ask your advertisers to giveaway handouts about the site to their customers. Have your FreeYourTown.com site sponsor local youth sports teams with the domain name on the back of their shirts.

Strategy #8 - Local Exit Traffic Exchange

Start a local exit traffic exchange between local vendors. Once a visitor leaves the site of one local vendor, an exit popup or popunder appears of a second local vendor.

The more local vendors you sign up, the more traffic everybody gets. Make sure you sign up vendors that only do business locally.

Another twist to this strategy is to develop an exit newsletter signup form. Once a local visitor exits the site, a newsletter signup form pops up offering the visitor the opportunity to sign up to newsletters generated by local merchants.

Strategy #9 - Joint Email Endorsed Mailings

Simply partner with another local vendor whose services you trust and would recommend and suggest a joint-email endorsed mailing. You send an email endorsing your partner's services with a link to her site and she sends an email to her customer base endorsing your services with a link to your site.

Choose partners whose customers would benefit and potentially purchase your product and service. In email marketing, as well as direct post mail marketing, the list determines, in large part, the success of the offer.

Strategy #10 - Search Engine

Optimize your website for your product or service and the name of your town or city. Many times I have found suppliers in my own small town using the Internet that fulfilled my requirements.

Conclusion

All it takes is a little creativity and effort to draw attention and visitors to your website. Of course you could just spend a lot of money and advertise your website address but the most successful, low cost, alternatives to drawing traffic to your website are joint ventures with local business people who also have a web presence.

In fact, it doesn't even have to be with local businesses. Local high schools and churches are always looking for different fundraising and promotional activities.

I purposely didn't include the strategy of putting your website address on all your promotional materials. It's not that I forgot it. I figure that strategy is just a given. If you're going to have a website, put it everywhere you would normally have your business name.

Some of these strategies are easier than others and produce better results than others, but they all are viable and absolutely doable. Your website can be a powerful marketing tool. Now that you've made an investment in your website, you might as well get the most out it.

Your clients and prospects are being bombarded by thousands of advertising messages every hour of every day. These advertising messages, from your competition and others are not only competing for your prospects money, but they are also competing for their attention!

Consumers today are too busy and caught up in their lives to care about you or your business. They are tired of being “sold” to – CALL TODAY, ONE DAY ONLY SALE. The consumer, your prospect, your client wants to know “what’s in it for me.” They want to know how your product or service is going to benefit their lives.

The days of being able to rely on a “loyal” customer base are dead. Too many business owners today are waiting for business to come to them rather than working at creating a systematic steady stream of business from both new clients and their existing clients. I am constantly shocked and amazed at the passive “strategies” that business owners use to get business.

• You can no longer be content to just get your name and phone number in front of the public like the ad agencies and advertising sales rep will tell you.

• You can no longer be content with waiting in your store, restaurant or office, hiding behind the counter, the kitchen or your computer for people to come to you.

• You can no longer be content having a website that does not produce well qualified leads for your business.

• You can no longer be content with not having an automated system for producing leads, prospects and sales for your business.

• You can no longer be content with not knowing how or whether your marketing efforts are profitable. having measurable, result driven marketing.

• You can no longer be content with accepting the lie that you have to discount your product or service and cut your prices and profit margins to get a new client or your existing clients to respond to you.

• You can no longer be content with being so bogged down in the day-to-day operations of your business doing your “thing” that you aren't able to focus on more important, longer-range strategic goals and activities.

• You can longer be content with not having a strategic plan that drives your business forward.

As you may already know, there are only three ways to increase your sales, your profits and your income...

1) Acquire more new customers.

2) Increase the value of your average transaction or sale.

3) Increase the frequency of repeat purchases.

That's it. There are no other ways. Every sale a business makes can be traced back to one or more of these three ways to make more money.

And your business should be actively pursuing all three ways.
The trick is to NOT use the same "industry standard" ways to do those 3 ways like everyone else in your market... unless you want to get crushed! You need to stand out and only then will you dominate your market.

We've discovered the solution. We call it The TBStools Strategic Profit Blueprint TOTAL SOLUTION Marketing System. It's your roadmap to success in a very competitive and challenging world.

 How do you make your business immune to competition?
 How do you defend your existing position in the marketplace?
 How do you attract a steady flow of loyal and appreciative clients begging you to take their money?
 How do you make yourself stand out from the crowded market?
 How do you make your advertisements generate 3X to 10X as many high quality leads as they do now... without spending a penny more?
 How do you position yourself as the undeniable, authoritative expert in your field?
 How do you create an automated 24 hour a day/7 day a week profit-producing system that is working while you are sleeping, golfing, relaxing, or spending time with your family?
 How do you continue to raise your prices year after year, while your competition has to discount just to get business?
 How do you balance your workload so you’ll have plenty of time for family, friends, fun and relaxation?
 How do you accomplish all of this without killing yourself with 50 to 80 hour work weeks or spending a fortune?

The TBStools Strategic Profit Blueprint Total Solution Marketing System can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business, plan solutions, and launch new initiaves aimed at helping you get back on track to achieving your goals. It is a proven tool used by our most successful clients, and you can use it, too.

Direct Response
Advertising Services

Tired of Hit-or-Miss Mediocre Results From Your Postcards, Sales Letters, Ads, Website and Marketing Materials?

At NextLevel Business Development Consulting, we have assembled a first class team of Marketing Professionals to help you develop the advertising tools youl need to take your business to new levels of sales success and profitability. You’ll benefit from our years of experience, contacts and relationships.

Our team includes:

• Senior level Account Supervisors and Senior Marketing Consultants
• “Killer” copywriters with strong credentials in direct response and other types of advertising, who write words that actually sell something.
• Graphic artists with a serious commercial bent who can visually express marketing messages in ways that positively enhance and complete sales.
• Web designers and developers for the creation of Websites That Sell
• Traffic Generation Specialists who, once your site is built, can drive tons of well-qualified prospects to your site.
• Access to our unique Professional Services Network of sales trainers, accountants, attorneys and/or other consultants (depending on each client’s needs).

This is NOT your typical ad agency stuff -- you won’t hear talk of “branding” around here. The language we speak is "Sales!"

We've lived through the branding hype of the past decades, and we've witnessed its many shortcomings. What our clients need most--and undoubtedly what YOU need--are customers, sales, cash flow and profits. A fancy logo or image-building (branding) brochure bring you precious little of that.

Branding is expensive and breaks our #1 rule:
Every ad, sales letter or other advertising investment you make to attract more sales and profits must be measurable and accountable and must produce profitable results!

Among Our Services:

Copywriting --
Most copywriters suck--Ours don't.
A good copywriter crafts a message that draws readers into the copy, stirs them up emotionally and gives them a reason to act NOW. Good copywriting is “salesmanship in print” and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. We offer “killer” copywriting for the following:

• Print and Broadcast Advertising
• Direct Response Sales Letters
• Print Collateral
• Websites
• Direct Response Email campaigns
• Brochures
  
  Other Services:
  Campaign Development
  Graphic Design
  Lead Generation (Online)
  Lead Generation (Offline)
  Media Selection and Placement
  Websites That Sell - Website Development - NextLevelSoft Custom Software Development Division
  
  Outsource your entire marketing department.
  What would adding a virtual marketing department mean to the profitability of your business?  Business development and increasing profitability requires a plan, a strategy and a vehicle for driving all the marketing tactical activities consistently.  No matter whether you're looking to grow or defend your existing position in the marketplace...you need an active marketing department.

Only problem is, building a talented, constantly motivated marketing department is notoriously difficult. Experienced creatives are hard to find and sometimes a challenge to manage. So why not let us do it for you?

We can be your outsource marketing department for the implementation of your marketing plan. Our creative staff have many years of Agency experience, and are strong team players. If you'd like to explore this possibilty further please click on Schedule an Appointment and fill out the form. Get Started Today

Our whole team is focused on one thing:
the creation of a marketing system dedicated
to increasing your sales and enhancing your profits.