Events @ GTS Blog

Can Your Customers Find you online? (Local Search)

wendym — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:45:08 GMT

Much has been written about advertising on the Internet, and using search engines to get customers to your website, but can those customers really find you in your town? An easy (and free) tool many business owners don’t take advantage of is the “local search” listing section of the major Search Engines.

What is local search? Simply put, local search is a listing within the search engine’s maps database for your business. It is important to note that local business listings are only valid for businesses that have a real physical location. “Virtual” or “mobile” locations are typically not allowed. Local business listings include the company’s name, address, phone number(s), website address, and even hours of business and services offered. And best of all, they are FREE!

As an added bonus, local listings are shown in the local business results section within the regular search engine results page. A Google “10-Box” local business results section is shown below, for the search “commercial roofing products” near Portland, Oregon.

Chances are, your company already has a local business listing on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Live Search, even if you didn’t enter that information yourself. Here’s why: The major search engines take business information posted on other websites. Data from business review websites, like CitySearch.com, Yelp.com and MerchantCircle.comis imported by the search engines for this purpose as well.

In the example below, the local business listing was created from listings on Super Pages and Dex Knows, and has not been claimed or edited by the business owner. There are 8 additional web pages that mention the company (ABC Supply), and 2 pages of user-generated content, typically blog posts, that also reference the business somewhere online. This business has not received any reviews online, positive or negative.

Some questions to consider about your local business listings:

· Do they exist in the 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live)?

· Is the information they contain correct and relevant to your business?

· Have you claimed your business listing in each of the major engines?

Yes, all of the major engines allow, and actually prefer, business owners to claim their local listings. To quickly find out if your local business listings have been claimed, visit GetListed.org and enter your businesses name and zip code. GetListed.org even gives you easy links to claim your listing in each search engine.

Once you have submitted a claim request to each engine, the engines will verify that you are indeed the business owner by calling you or mailing you a letter with a unique code that must be entered into the listing. After you have verified your ownership and claimed the listing, you are free to edit your listing information. Here are some tips to consider when you do this:

· Make your listings as accurate as possible.

· Place your listing in as many appropriate categories or types as possible in each engine’s local business center.

· Solicit positive reviews from customers! If a customer thanks you for doing a great job, ask them to review your business on Google, CitySearch, Yelp, or other review sites. A good idea would be to create postcards for your company, with the URLs to your local business listing, Yelp, CitySearch, etc…to make it easy for them to find you on those popular review sites.

Total number of reviews, as well as amount of additional user content and web pages helps the local listing to rise within the “10 Box” results section. Note that while negative reviews are not good for the company’s reputation, they do actually help the listing get better rankings in local search, and provide a way for the company to address customer issues publicly, which increases trust.

In review, it is very important to have a good local search strategy in place for your business. You can start by following the tips below:

1. Go to GetListed.org and check your local listings.

2. Claim each listing.

3. Edit/update each listing.

4. Solicit user feedback in the form of reviews and user generated content (blog posts, etc).

5. Ensure your full business address is located on your website.

Does Marketing work in this economy?

wendym — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:16:05 GMT

We all know what’s happening in the economy. We’re living it. Homeowners are in trouble. Home buyers are nowhere to be found. Banks aren’t lending. Consumers aren’t spending. The sky is fall. Responsible businesses are slashing spending across the board to ride out the storm… Or are they? Or should they be?

Penn State’s Smeal College of Business * study, “Turning Adversity Into Advantage: Does Proactive Marketing During a Recession Pay Off?" , finds that companies that proactively market during a recession not only survive but thrive. Marketing dollars spent during a down economy are more powerful than the same amount spent during the good times, because each dollar represents a greater percentage of the marketing pie.

This isn’t time to launch a huge branding campaign, but it is the time to weigh every penny against results. Just getting your name out there isn’t enough. Accountability is important in every aspect of your business. Marketing shouldn’t get a pass.

· How many people are seeing/hearing your advertisement? (If you can’t answer this you’re losing money!)

· How many people are responding to your ad?(Same as above!)

· Your buyers have changed the way the research and buy. Have you? Forrester Research found that in the next six months 26 percent of interactive marketers plan to increase their interactive marketing investments and 46 percent will maintain them at current levels. GTS' own Mike Jones has a great blog post on this subject.

What have you found that works? Are you doing enough?

*I sincerely apologize to my fellow University of Pittsburgh alumni for noting a Penn State Study. I tried desperately to find something from anywhere else. (It could be worse. It could be West Virginia).

Recap of the Client Conference in Las Vegas

kevinj — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:15:01 GMT

What a great week!

Thanks to everyone who came and joined us. From the evaluations of the courses we can tell the attendees learned a ton. In fact, I had a number of people who told me that their brains were full. That is our goal - stuff your brain.

There are a few things I wanted to point out post-conference:

1) All attendees were given a USB thumb drive with the materials on it. In addition, all the materials can be found on the Community Portal under the Client Conference community. This is available to ALL CUSTOMERS, whether or not you attended the conference.

2) Notes were taken and posted in the Client Conference Blog. For example, Wendy Miller took some fabulous notes on the "Retaining Top Talent" roundtable. Definately something you will want to check out. Thanks, Wendy!

3) Congratulations Jill Foxworth! She was the lucky winner of the new Dell laptop. She and many others worked hard to put together answers to a TON of questions from the conference. They then created their own document in the Client Conference community and typed out their answers. Thanks to all those who participated!

4) Pictures were taken throughout the conference. Check'm out....

Now we look toward the next Client Conference. As we move ahead and plan we will share the details with you as we have them. We hope you will join us!

Can't Make the Client Conference? (How to sneak in the back door)

kevinj — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:18:08 GMT

Are you not able to make this year's Client Conference? That's too bad because we are going to have a great time. But, hey - maybe next year!

We don't want you to miss out on ALL the fun, so we have done or will be doing a number of things to help you feel a part of the festivities:

I will be blogging each day's activities that week. From setup to sessions, from Vegas life to being totally wiped out at the end. Be sure to check back to find little bits of information and any announcements we may just have (teaser...).
A community for the Client Conference was created to house all the information: course materials and handouts, schedules, discussions, etc. Feel free to browse around and grab any of the information out there. Sure, it is not as good as actually being there, but at least you will be able to share in some of the learning and information.
Notes from the roundtable sessions will be taken and posted. There will be some great information there!
During our stay we will be taking pictures and posting them up on Flickr, a photo sharing site. In this community you will be able to see them all and hopefully attend vicariously with us.
Of course, some of the most valuable information comes from the discussions you would have with other attendees. And we don't want the end of the conference to end the conversation. We want to carry those discussions past the conference. Feel free to join any of the discussions we have in the Client Conference community - network with others who were able to attend.

So be sure to join us (online) for a great conference. We will miss seeing your face, but hopefully won't miss your participation!