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Maybe you’ve had trouble wrapping your wits around the idea of using the internet to market your local business. Maybe you think this is unnecessary. Perhaps you find the idea of internet marketing confusing or appalling or a waste of time.
Well, you should probably change your mind about that, and FAST. The internet is here. It’s been here for a VERY long time now, and it’s not going anywhere in 2010 either. In fact, local internet business search has increased dramatically in the past year.
A social networking website for local businesses called Yelp has increased its membership to over 8.6 million by mid-2009. And it’s still increaing. Their mobile smartphone app has made it even easier for consumers on the go to find out about local businesses without having to be home to find out. If you look for yourself for proof of this, you’ll find evidence everywhere. A local hair salon sees an 80% increase in clients from Yelp alone. A college survey showing that local business search is one of the top 3 things they do on the internet…out of about 50 different internet activities possible. Yelp’s statistics of membership alone should be enough proof for you to know that having an online presence for your local business is becoming increasingly more important.
It’s the second decade of the 21st century. It’s the year of local online marketing. GET GOING!
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Hi Bill,
I cannot agree with you more. Your posting is right on target. Two quick points I would like to make.
The first is that it is amazing to me how popular Yelp can be with consumers and there are “so” many local and small business that have no clue that local business listings exist. Furthermore they are being reviewed on Yelp or through other local business listings and they are not aware about that either.
The second is that there is more than Yelp. I suspect that local business listing websites from Google, Yahoo, Bing, YellowPages, Yellowbook, Ask, City Searc and many others are all going to be seeking out the consumers to review a business on their website. That in itself will become an interesting “war” to watch.
The other part of the second comment is that this will push the local and small business to manage their local listing at multiple local business websites. As you can imagine there is a solution for this as well. We recently read about a company that KillerStatUps reviewed that will help the local and small business with their local listing at multiple local business websites. You can read KillerStartUps review at:
http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/smartfindslocallisting-com-be-found-online
Local business listings are the one thing on the web that can help the local and small business for the first time. Mobile searches are up 30% in the past year and 70% of all searches are related to local information. With the information showing up in search results and on mobile devices this is almost a no brainer. Hopefully this group of businesses can actually adopt a business tool that can benefit them early for a change!