Local Online Marketing in St Louis: Are You Preparing for Local Search?

Local advertising is big business - putting your ads and coupons in front of your customers in the newspaper, the checkout tape at the supermarket, and on bus benches should be an integral part of your retail marketing strategy.

So...what are you doing about marketing online? Have you paid for a few Google AdWords? Maybe you have some banner or text ads showing on local websites? Well, Google is trying to up the ante, recreating CitySearch through its Google Maps (local version).

Enter the coupon. Google Maps now offers local companies the ability to add coupons to their local listings, making it easy for your customers to go online, look for the location of your business, and print out a coupon.

I have my doubts about the efficacy of the program - will such a program increase the number of customers and the amount they spend at restaurants, furniture stores, or car dealers? More and more people are searching online to research prices before coming in to your store. With Google being the most used search engine (60%), chances are most of your customers are at least typing your name into Google to see what they find.

A savvy competitor can put ads and links into the search engines that directly compete with your listing. There are few of those about, but they are getting better at diverting traffic from your site to theirs. Coupons is just one aspect of the campaign. As the big boys, like Federated, divert their money away from newspapers, customers will gravitate online for specific information. What is your strategy to grab your portion of that online audience?

Online marketing is more than spending money on SEO or a website. You should call us if you can't get the answers to any of the following questions.

1) What is the number one way to increase search engine relevance for my website?
2) How can I work with bloggers to improve sales leads?
3) What percentage of my customers type my company name into a search engine?
4) What can I do with $10,000 online that I couldn't do with newspaper advertising?
5) Is there a way to put ads created for the radio or newspaper online without costing me more money?
6) Where did all that money for AdSense go? Where are my new customers?
7) What is the difference between SEO and blog marketing?

For answers, contact Durbin Media Group.