If you have a storefront business,
advertise in the yellow pages,
or are looking for customers in
your city or state, listen up!
Surprisingly, 22 million small-
and medium-sized businesses spend
46% of their advertising budgets
on Yellow Pages marketing and
allocate only 3% for search engine
keywords.
Reason?
You (not to mention your competitors)
haven't discovered how search
engine keywords can dramatically
increase your profits.
Not taking advantage of the new
local search engine marketing
(SEM) programs? You are missing
out on highly qualified leads
that could be as little as $5
a month, depending on how much
traffic you want to receive.
A New Kelsey Group survey of
3,887 online consumers in early
September revealed the following:
- More than 74% of survey respondents
said that they had conducted
local searches
- Among local search users,
27% of their total search behavior
is for local information
- Approximately 45% of local
searches had a buying intent
- The survey also found that
20% of all searches among this
population are local
Google or Yahoo Search Marketing?
You can obtain local search engine
traffic from Yahoo Search Marketing,
Google, and Internet Yellow Pages
(IYPs) like SmartPages, SuperPages,
and YellowPages.com. If you are
just beginning a local SEM program,
it is wise to start with just
one Pay-Per-Click (PPC) provider
- either Google or Yahoo Search
Marketing - until you get a feel
for your results. Here are some
of the key differences between
Yahoo Search Marketing and Google
PPC local search programs:
Google |
|
Yahoo
Search Marketing |
Mathematically
driven based on ad relevancy
& cost per click (CPC) |
|
Strictly
price driven |
Almost
instant account set-up |
|
Takes
3-5 days to set up an account |
Price
based at or less than your
max cost per click (CPC) |
|
Price
based on your bidding on
the different matching levels
|
Account does not require
a physical address, but requires
a website
|
|
No website required, but
must have a physical address |
| Ads can appear on smaller
sites |
|
Yahoo Search Marketing is
extremely selective with its
partners and where your ads
appear |
| Allows syndication to be
turned on or off so that your
ad can appear in front of
just Google or AOL users |
|
Since Yahoo Search Marketing
drives most traffic through
partner sites, they do not
have a feature an on/off feature
for syndication |
| Google costs only $5 to
open an account |
|
Yahoo Search Marketing costs
$50 with a $20 monthly minimum
spend |
| Automatic approval of ads;
will continue to appear as
long as they follow guidelines |
|
Most ads are reviewed
before they appear live |
Consider Your Entire
Local Search Strategy
Not only can you initiate a SEM
strategy for Local Search, you
should also consider adding local
keywords to your Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) strategy in
order to garner the benefits of
local organic searches. Incorporating
keywords like "Scottsdale",
"Phoenix" or "Arizona",
depending on your location, can
help increase the amount of local
traffic to your website.
Whether you hire an internal
staff or hire a marketing firm
to handle your search engine marketing,
make sure that you consider Local
Search as part of your search
engine strategy.
