How to promote Local Business on the Web

By mbari, 23rd Dec 2009 | Follow this author | RSS Feed | Short URL http://nut.bz/wd5jx591/
Posted in Wikinut>Business>Starting A Business

There are many who want to promote their business only in a region like real estate and insurance agent
With this article you can discover top seven methods for promoting your business locally

1. Build an e-mail list of local customers
2. Yellow pages advertising
3. Offline promotions
4. Buy promotions on local web sites
5. Buy on regional or national portals
6. Local advertising through E-mail services and Ad networks

1. Build an e-mail list of local customers

Many of our local businesses have Web sites or ISP accounts. However, only a few are able to execute effective marketing campaigns that bring in actual results and those are the ones who understand e-mail and direct response marketing.
Before you can run an E-Mail promotion you need to have a e-mail list for this purpose you will find four primary ways for to generate an Opt-in email list for your local business.

• As part of a newsletter or registration offering: after registration your prospect can download your digital offer or you send weekly/monthly a digital newsletter to him/her e-mail
• In your store and on the phone from people who buy or request information:
• As part of every coupon or discount promotion:
• On your Web site: if you have a web site offer a discount or coupon or free bonus when he opting in.

Companies who do it right!

1. Boulder Theater (http://Bouldertheater.com)
2. Pedestrian Shops (http://pedestrianshops.com)
3. Whole Foods (http://Wholefoods.com)

2. Yellow pages advertising

Yellow pages have always been an important part of local advertising and prospects search for business in yellow pages.
There are two primary advertising options with yellow pages
• Physical yellow pages: has high cost
• Online yellow pages: Online Yellow Pages like DEX (US West) and SmartPages.com (Pacific Bell). These listings are often included for free if you buy a physical yellow pages ad, however, they are also sold on a stand-alone basis.
Major directories
• SmartPages.com
• USWest.com
• BigYellow.com
• AnyWho.com

3. Offline promotions

You need to include your web site address in every ad you run

• Newspaper ads
• Press releases
• Radio ads
• Television ads
• Direct-Mail
• Flyers
• Publicity events and sponsorships
• Outdoor Advertising like billboards

4. Buy promotions on local web sites

You can buy promotions on public sites and content based sites that have a many visitors every day. in this case you can increase your succeed rate.

5. Buy on regional or national portals

There are hundreds of regional portals which sells advertising locally such as

Digital City

Sidewalk

And national portals like Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and AltaVista that sell banner ads based on keywords.