Search Engine Marketing For Local Businesses

The potential to attract new customers via local search is enormous. Today, there are well over 10 billion unique searches done each month, and that’s just in the US. Of those searches, 40% have local intent, 5% use city or state name, 2% use informal terms like neighborhoods and 0.5% use zip codes. The question is: Are you taking advantage of these highly targeted, local searches?

What is Search Engine Marketing For Local Businesses (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella term that is made up of a few key Internet Marketing strategies. By combining these strategies correctly, websites move up in rank and experience increased visibility on the search engines for specific ‘target’ keywords. This can be done using paid and organic marketing efforts.  All of the following strategies fall under the umbrella of Search Engine Marketing:

Search Engine Optimization:

SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is a long term, strategical marketing investment and solution that will bring you one of the highest returns on Investment online compared to most other marketing options. SEO can provide laser precision targeting to bring quality traffic to your local business website. A consistent search engine optimization campaign is one of the most powerful ways to dramatically increase leads, sales and customers generated from Internet.

Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay Per Click, also known as PPC, allows you to reach customers who are ready to buy, target the right audience for high conversions and measure results with a high rate of return. There isn’t a quicker way to get in front of your target market online because you pay for positioning. Online paid advertising is not only available through the major search engines (Google, Yahoo & Bing), but two of the more popular social networking websites today (Facebook & LinkedIn) now offer paid advertising through their respective paid advertising platforms: the Facebook Ad Network and the LinkedIn Ad Network.

Local Maps Marketing

Local Maps Marketing is one of most powerful and effective ways to get your local business to show up at the top of the search engines, greatly enhancing your local business’ visibility and targeting highly qualified Internet searchers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. And since local maps are now mobile enabled, your potential net of prospects just grew by about 5 billion consumers.

In addition to the 3 major local business directories (Google, Yahoo & Bing), there are several other extremely influential local websites and directories that will give your local business an instant credibility and more opportunity to attract business through the Internet.

Getting Started With Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Being able to rank on target keywords that are specific to your business is a great way to get qualified prospects to learn more about what you have to offer. This is the first step you’ll need to take and it’s called ‘getting traffic’ or ‘getting found online’. By positioning yourself high in the search engines, you will start getting more and more traffic online from people surfing the web looking for your product or service!

Don’t make the mistake of stopping there. A lot of businesses think they are doing great because they have “x number” of website visitors every month. There isn’t anything farther from the truth. You’ve got to take a look at whether those website visitors are doing what you want them to do (pick up the phone and call to make an appointment? sign up for your newsletter so you can re-market to them through your email newsletter?).

If you have visitors but no one taking action on your site, then you’ve got a problem.

Cogent Digital Agency approaches each private client in a very specific manner. We dig into your business, your marketing goals, your target market, what kind of message your want to get across, what you’re competition is doing, what it’s going to take to “rank” on in the search engines in YOUR niche. And we put all of that information into what we call our “Digital Research Report.” Once we have completed your Research Report, we will provide you with 3 different level marketing plans to choose from. These marketing plans act as a road map for everyone involved and are based on the goals you outline. The proposed marketing plans will be focused on the 3 major aspects of the online sales funnel: Driving Traffic, Converting Traffic (getting people on your site to take action) and integrating an Automated Follow Up Program.

If you’re serious about marketing your business online and would like a Cogent Digital Agency Team Member to contact you about becoming one of our private clients, simply fill out the form below.

* Please, serious inquiries only (serious means: minimum of $1000 monthly marketing budget, you are serious about marketing your business online, you’re ready to collaborate to better market your business)