Local SEM Consulting

Promoting local businesses as an Internet Marketing consultant can be relatively easy. That’s because, compared to ranking well internationally, nationally or even regionally, there’s way less competition.

You still have to do the work that maintains your client’s position in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages). Most often, that means refreshing the content of both the client’s landing page and backlink resources.

While the on-page SEO of Web pages is vital, backlinks that are keyword-targeted to the client are imperative. Search engines are less impressed with what you say about yourself, compared to what other links say about you. That’s especially true if those links are on another IP address.

Local business searches have become the main way most people start searching for something they need to buy. The old ways of searching through print publications have been overwhelmed by the search engines.

In order to have your client do more than show up well in the search engines, backlinks to your client must dominate the search results. Most importantly, those search results need to be:

• Profitable
• Non-aggravating

While the first reason is easy to understand, the second could be most important. If your client ranks well for targeted local traffic that is mostly freebie seekers or not related/totally unrelated to your client’s main source of revenue, that’s NOT effective local business promotion!

To truly promote an offline business effectively, you, the marketer, need to understand the business as a whole. It’s not enough to slap a few keywords in the < head > portion of a website and submit the site to a bunch of search engines.

A deep understanding of the client’s sales process, current source of new traffic and the like will inform you as to how and where to promote that specific business. Do your research before you are tempted to offer up a solution-in-search-of-a-problem!

Golden Offline Cash Cow for Internet Marketers

If  you, like me, were bitten by the whole “offline gold” bug back in 2008, you know that using your Internet Marketing skills to promote local businesses is hot!

Maybe you went out and talked to local business owners. Did you get the same responses I did?

• “I can’t afford that stuff!”
• “What do you have to show me that will work for me?!”
• “Sounds great! I’ll let you know…”

Sure, business owners know their business, but they often don’t know or understand marketing. Getting a local business online may seem like an unnecessary extravagance.

The thing is, other forms of advertising don’t seem to be delivering the results that you know a good Direct Response marketing campaign will deliver! Take Yellow Pages ads, for example.

In the 20th Century, Yellow Pages was the way businesses connected with their local marketplace. In fact, they pretty much had the field to themselves. Where else could you go to find a local  business you wanted to patronize from the comfort of your home?

Then came the Internet. Suddenly, people had a way to find things with search engines that were unheard of for most of the 20th Century.

At first, local businesses ignored the Internet. Many of them saw it as a threat to their bottom line. What if people went online and bought stuff from an Internet company, instead of them?!

Fast forward to today. The Yellow Pages are dying  fast. The current economic climate (approaching an Ice Age) means that unprovable advertising expenses are being cut to the bone.

Put a Front Door on Local Businesses in Google!

At the same time, folks who make money online using Direct Response Internet Marketing methods are cleaning up! They’re also asking,  “what’s hot right now?”

The answer is: “Local internet marketing for brick-and-mortar businesses!”

If you have any experience doing Internet Marketing, simple SEO and backlinking strategies can work magic in local search. Setting up and maintaining an autoresponder for a local business could bring you big bucks every month!

The thing is, you can’t (and shouldn’t) just walk into a local business and try and sell them this stuff. You have to take the time to understand them, as people and as a business.

The best approach to becoming a local business consultant is to ask pointed but polite questions like:

• How’s business? This one is relevant, given the economic climate!
• How’d you get started in this business?
• How do you get new customers — walk-in, word of mouth, print ads, TV/Radio, other?
• What is your sales process?
• What is your business plan — specifically, your Mission Statement?
• What are your most profitable products or services?
• What underused capacity do you have that you can comfortably “scale up”?
• What causes you the most aggravation? Don’t promote it or stop doing it!
• How do you keep in touch with your current customers? They’re easier to sell than a new one!
• Do you use the Internet to market your business? Websites, autoresponder email marketing, YouTube videos, blogging, Slideshare presentations, social bookmarking/networking pages, etc.?
• What do you plan to do next?

All of this stuff has to be talked about before you, as a consultant, can even begin to help a prospect become a consulting client.

For more info on doing this right, go to http://frontdoorpagesexposed.com/ and see how “IM Pro’s” are doing this in their local areas.