Local Search Marketing Nashua

In a Previous post I dicussed the power of local search marketing. Having a local small business for many years in Nashua was rewarding and allowed me to learn alot about the community. One of the things that stands out to me after all the years
is the fact that the small business communtity is the life blood of the economy.

Most donations to community fundraisers are provided by small businesses, whether it’s the local boys club or youth sports teams, small businesses come through time and time again. I have been involved with youth hockey in the Nashua area for over 15 years.
Some of the most enjoyable times of my life has been donating my time coaching, being a team manager, donating catering services over the years for team parties etc.

I’m using my experience in Youth Sports, particularly Youth Hockey as an example, to show you that no matter what your interest may be there is a place for giving back to the community. Granted I had kids and still do involved in youth sports, but getting involved added a new dimension to the experience. I now have a lesser involvement as my son is playing high school level Hockey. I still have the role as Assistant Coach on his current team prior to the High School season starting. As I was dwelling on the fact that my involvement is slowly getting to the point of being the “encouraging” spectator parent in the stands, I realized it doesn’t have to stop here. There is plenty of room to give back even if our kids are grown up and out of that period of life. My hope someday in the near future is to start all over again and Coach 5 and 6 year old future hockey stars with my son after he’s done with school.

So what does all this have to do with Local Search Marketing ??
I started thinking about how much money I wasted over the years in business on things I thought were a good idea based on the sales pitch of a skilled salesman rather than some research on my part. So that would be LACK of due diligence as a problem I had. Why didn’t I check into things properly? The answer usually came back : I was to busy to really stop and run the business properly. As a small business person I was wrapped up in the day to day stuff without much room to think beyond the next week or so. I had blinders on and wasn’t seeing clearly what was going on around me in the industry. As technology changed I was reminded many times of the need to get a web presence and build a website for my catering business. But I remained a little old school and touted that newspaper ads and word of mouth is the best form of adverting … Blah Blah . I will say that Word of Mouth is still my favorite but I needed to come out of the dark ages when it came to marketing.

To make a long story short I got a nice website done up by a friend who is in the web design business and bingo… business increased . The reason for all the stories today is this….plain and simple. Marketing and advertising today is going through a change some of the old thing don’t work as effectively or don’t work at all.

Money spent on the old ways reminds me of the money I threw out the window years ago on things I thought were good because others were doing it. If you don’t track how your marketing is working you’re just throwing money out the window. I’m working with small businesses to tighten up the marketing and advertising belt and use some of the saving to either put more profits in the pocket or May be help out your local sports team or boys club or what ever.

You see the whole helping the community part can be a result of using your funds wisely and Giving Back with some of the surplus.
Without sounding like a total sales pitch here , I will say that if you advertise in any yellow book, send out any coupon mailers, put ads in the local paper, radio ads, tv even …. any of these . If your doing any of these and not utilizing Local Search Marketing your spending way more than you need to be. You may not understand how or even what Local Search can do for your business, but don’t make the mistake of ignoring new ways of marketing. Some small businesses right here in town don’t even have websites yet. Those businesses are either doing so great that they don’t need any new customers or they “think” that they don’t need a website. The Fact is most people search online for everything and technology is pushing us more and more toward mobile marketing with our smart phones to be able to do it all from our phone.

I’ll wrap it all up here just to say. With tight budgets these days we all need to work smart and get the most for our dollar. I’d be glad to answer any questions you have about cutting your marketing budget. Once you do that then you’ll be able to find the area in your community you can donate some time or money or both. If you already do that’s awesome! Then just think of all that extra cash you’ll have in your pocket once you make some tweaks and changes that will ultimately save money and build your business at the same time.

Local Search Marketing For Your Business

Local Search is the buzz right now. Yahoo and Bing merging will give many more bang for the buck.
That merger will give google a little bump …maybe …. I really want to focus on the little guy, the local guy,
the mom and pop, the corner store, your auto shop, your dentist, your favorite lunch spot, you get the point
right. It’s the little guy …the small business that has to adapt and learn how to do their local marketing on a small
budget. The big boys ,the larger corporations have much more to work with financially.

If you have read any of my posts you know that I had been the the food industry for many years
and owned my own Catering business for many years. My understanding of local marketing going back a few years was
to basically get out with flyers, newspaper ads, coupon mailers and the dreaded Yellow page ad.

I used to hate dishing out the monthly fee for the yellow page ad I had. At that time going back 4-5 years
I was paying around $300 per month for a realitively small ad about 1/12 page. The funny thing was, as much as I hated
paying for the ad guess what, it worked and the fact of the matter is if you didn’t advertise in the dreaded Yellow Books
you would lose business.

The reason you would lose business is because all your competion was there in the book. If you’re not and they are and someone goes to look for a caterer or what ever…… they get the call and you don’t it’s that simple.

Now today the same thing is happening with search engines. When you go to google and type in what ever your looking for , Google starts giving you the local businesses that match you search criteria. The problem today is most small local businesses don’t have a clue on how to tap in and get their share of the local search results.

If the owner of a small business doesn’t take advantage of local search and all the techniques available the bottom line is that business is missing out on the best and most ready to buy audience. If you own a small business and are spending money monthly on the yellow pages and mailers and ARE NOT utilizing the power of local search ….. Forgive me but you are spending much more than you need to, to get less results… period. I can help you get your local search marketing done right and bring more customers in your door.

Sign up for the free report “Google Places for Local Businesses” on the top of the page and you’ll get a link to download the report.
Also head over to my Free Reports page to pick up a short Local marketing report. Hopefully this information was helpful to you and if you need and help with any of it let me know.

Building Your Own Online Business

Building your own online business can and probably will have all the same trials and tribulations that building any kind of business will have. Before you even start you need to figure out whether you’re going to sell other peoples products (Affiliate Marketing) or sell a product or products that you create. An example would be those of you who make crafts or some kind of physical goods. An example of affiliate marketing would be either digital products such as software to be downloaded or ebooks etc. Also selling for Amazon as an affiliate etc.

Once you decide the direction to go then you need to set up your plan.
In either situation you should get your own:
—– Website/Blogsite
—– Hosting
—– Autoresponder
—– Learn some SEO
—– Learn Link Strategy
—– Learn how to write articles
—– Learn PPC
Affiliate Networks such as Click Bank are great for downloadable products.
There are many products to promote there. Another would be Commision Junction.
If you have your own product you’ll need to set up a site to sell with shopping cart capabilities.

The key to all of this is being able to get traffic to your site once you’re all set up.
Learning some SEO(search engine optimization) will go along way in getting traffic to
your site. Feel free to sign up for “GEEK FREE SEO” if you would like a copy.

All the training you need to Build Your Own Online Business can be found here. It’s an investment in your business.

Head on over to my Business Building Page for a Video Series I will be doing on just that !
I will be updating that page regularly with new videos as soon as I get them done.

Online Business Opportunity???

How many Online Business Opportunities have you checked out only to be disappointed and even more confused about online business. Honestly, I’m one of those who opted in to alot of lists and tried many “opportunities” only to be kicking myself in the you know what for getting caught in the “get rich quick net”.

You know that net that is full of the people who want some magic potion to make them an internet marketer. You know that net that sucks you in with “you can be making $500 dollars a day by next week”.

You know the net that scoops you up with “all you need is 10 minutes a day to push a few buttons and you’ll be able to quit you day job” HA HA Jokes on you (and me for awhile)! Doing business online starts with education. Then once you know enough not to get burnt by the next “great offer”, then you can start to accumulate some products to help with your marketing efforts.

Education is first and foremost in the process. Once you have a good foundation, you start taking action on some of the things you have learned. Whether you want to sell your own product online, be an affiliate marketer, be a web developer, learn PPC, Learn email marketing, Learn how to drive traffic to a website, Learn how search engines work, Whatever it is in the area of online business you really should start with education.

If you want to seriously make money online then you need to realize it’s going to take effort on your part along with patience. If you have alot of time on your hands there are many ways to find information free to help with the learning process. If you don’t have that much time I’ll introduce you to an online university that will teach you all you need to know to succeed.

Click here to check out what I believe to be the best place online to teach you how to start a profitable online business. What is an education worth if it can give you all you need to succeed? I will have many free resources available on this site but if you are on the fast track to success check out the training that I am continually accessing to futher my knowlege! Click Here!

The ‘Big 5’ Challenges People Face

In an article in Septembers issue of Success Magazine, John Maxwell touches on these issues.
Discouragement
Problems
Change
Fear
Failure

Learning how to overcome these Big 5 will develop your attitude
toward anything that may come up in life.
We’ll expand on each in future Posts. In the meantime check out Success Magazine
for some really great articles and uplifting stories.

Is Traditional Marketing Dead ?

Small business internet marketing is such a significant topic today. Virtually all large companies have now switched all their marketing focus (and budget) to the internet. The same techniques can totally transform the fortunes of small businesses, many of which are struggling in the recession.
The traditional methods of marketing such as Yellow Pages and newspaper ads just don’t bring the results that they did just a few years ago. It used to be essential to be in the yellow pages. Not any more. In fact you may well be wasting your money entirely. Last time I put a decent size ad in yellow pages, we didn’t have a single response. Not one. Over a whole year. The same applies to brochures and flyers – when did you last get a decent response from any of those? People just get so much junk mail these days, it all goes straight in the bin.
Get the report here