How Important is Internet Marketing for Local Companies?
According to a recent study by comScore, Inc. Local search (using search engines to find local businesses, products and services) grew 58% in 2008 to a total of 15.7 billion searches.
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?
2 Responses to “How Important is Internet Marketing for Local Companies?”
Leave a Reply
Click either image to learn more
Subscribe to our Blog
Working on website for self, but nothing yet to report.
I wanted to share in response to your blog post. You just described my husband’s small seasonal business but he got smarter and pulled out of Yellow Pages ads. Little return, then contract signed, etc. No value for investment so loss on our end tons of yrs. Ouch.
Now he’s focused on online presence attracting local businesses for seasonal service repairs. However with product creation he can expand out of his “box” to the nation. His is physical work.
The Yellow Pages doesn’t create win win situations. Let’s talk: seasonal business small company that advertises in the Yellow Pages for mandatory contract and 12 months commitment. This person only works 7 months of the year. Their ad is $100 monthly so $1200 and can’t break contract. 5 months of no work at $100 monthly is $500 flushed down the toilet. Does the Yellow Pages care about this person eating or surviving during their down times? I do and will expose others to knowing the Yellow Pages is enjoying their hard earned money when they have a zero cash flow. $500 can for be for some a house payment, a trip, tuition, car repairs, etc.
Loved this blog article and thank you.
I’m also a raving fan of @adamurbanski.
Hi Carol,
Thank you for sharing your experience, you are exactly right about the Yellow Pages – definitely not a win-win situation any more, especially for seasonal businesses. Additionally, it’s not uncommon to get 7 or 8 versions of them delivered over the course of a year. How do you know which one(s) to advertise in because no one keeps that many.