The other thing that has been working against the yellow page publishers is market saturation. It used to be there were maybe two versions of the yellow pages for an area. Today at our home in McKinney we probably receive 6 or 7 different versions over the course of the year.

No one keeps all of these. Every time a new version is introduced, the marketing effectiveness of each existing version is diluted.

In May of 2007 Bill Gates predicted that “within five years, yellow page usage amongst people under age 50 would drop to near zero”. A bold prediction at the time, but at the present rate it could be less than five years.

Think of yourself. If you’re looking for the phone number of a restaurant or for an allergist what are you going to do, dig out the yellow page book or search Google?  For the majority of consumers today it’s Google.

So, as a business owner you must position yourself so you are found by the search engines, especially Google.

This is where local search engine optimization comes into play. More and more internet searchers are typing in geography specific “long tail keywords”, that is rather than simply searching for “dentist”, they’re searching for “cosmetic dentist, dallas” or “children’s dentist plano, texas”.  According to Google the average search now consists of 4 words.

If you want to maximize your businesses’ potential, your website has to be positioned so that when someone types specific, local search terms you come up high in the natural or organic search engine rankings. Ideally on the first page of Google.

Depending on your the business you’re in and the market you serve you may be able to obtain page one listings faster than you may think. With the right combination of optimization on your website and some strategic link building, the internet could quickly become your number one source of new customers.

And don’t forget about Google Maps (but that’s another topic for another post).

Internet Marketing with Video

This presents a huge opportunity for savvy marketers. A well done video tells your story perfectly every time and can become a lead generation tool as well as a powerful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy when properly distributed.

Having a marketing video online is  like running a commercial without having to pay for expensive air time. It provides an interactive method for educating your prospects on why they should choose you over your competitors. Or, perhaps you have a product or service that they don’t know they need – video is an excellent way to create the need.

Just having a video won’t do you  any good, you must be sure your potential customers/clients are able to find it. The best way to do that is to submit it to the major video hosting sites. And as you know, YouTube dominates that space.

Internet Video Marketing

If you’d like to discuss if/how marketing with video can help you, how to inexpensively create videos and how to effectively distribute them, give us a call.

It wasn’t that long ago (5-7 years) that most people considered the yellow pages book as their primary source for finding local resources. During a few recent talks I have asked the audience to raise their hands if they still used the printed yellow pages on a regular basis and only a few hands went up in each group.

Think about how much easier it is to just Google “Family Restaurants Plano” or “Low Cost Shoes Dallas” than to pull out a phone book and “let your fingers do the walking”.

This brings up another point: According to Google executive Avinash Kaushik the average Google search now consists of 4 words. This is called “long-tail” search, meaning people are not simply typing “dentist” they are typing “pediatric dentist plano texas”

Internet users have become more sophisticated & know that if they are more detailed with their search terms they’ll receive more accurate results.

This bodes well for smaller, local businesses. They no longer have to compete with the big national companies for their keywords, they can focus their internet marketing efforts on local areas and rank well for in the search results for their targeted audience.

Times have definitely changed and the leading small companies in every market have embraced the new rules of marketing and continue to allocate more of their advertising dollars to local online marketing. Have you?

If you went the press release route you then had to hope you put it in the exact format that the news media was looking for and then send it to a ton of journalists and hope they were in a good mood when they saw it – IF they even saw it – there was a good chance it got buried in their inbox with 100s of others.

Even then, that journalist probably only worked for one publication, so best case, your story would be published in one media outlet.

The internet has changed all of that. You still have to write the press release, although in a little bit different style. However, you are no longer at the mercy of overworked, fickle journalists.

Today your press release can be distributed worldwide almost overnight without a journalist ever laying eyes on it. You can submit your press release to press release distribution sites (some free of charge) and it will be picked up by hundreds of news media websites.

Not only will this help your natural search engine rankings for your website overall, the press release itself may rank well in the search engines.

Press Release Case Study

On March 9th, we wrote and submitted a press release using our press release distribution process that is part of all of our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) packages.

You can see the results below. For the term “Done For You Marketing” – which according to Google has 1,410,000,000 competing websites – we have three page one rankings including the number one overall position.

Three page one listings in less than one month! That is hard to do if you’re trying to rank well for “underwater basket weaving”, much less a term with 1,410,000,000 competing websites.

Check out the Google screenshot below to see the power of press releases.