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.