Small Business Digital CoachGROW REVENUES BY 25 TO 100% OR MORE IN 90 DAYS OR LESS while reducing advertising cost and effort

If you’re the owner of a small local business, here are 3 huge local search marketing mistakes you’re likely to already be making:

MISTAKE #1 – Letting the random internet reviewer represent your company and your marketing message on the internet.

• Our hero the rude carpet cleaner from the marketing mistakes post doesn’t realize that his 25+ years in the local business area doesn’t count for anything with today’s “what have you done for me lately and how can I google it?” crowd. Even worse, a search for his business on Google brings up the word, “J-rk!” followed by 2 negative reviews.
• On top of that, a huge proportion of the time, money and effort this poor entrepreneur is spending on local telemarketing is being contradicted and counteracted by a single solitary act of one disgruntled “prospective” customer (sheesh…not even an actual customer).

MISTAKE #2- Depending on business directory websites as your primary internet presence.

How would you like to pay $300+ dollars a year for the privilege of having your nearest competitors steal internet prospects who happened to be looking for a business like yours or even for you?

I was recently looking for some more information about a particular acupuncturist whose name I’d come across somewhere. When I googled the business, a directory listing page came up. When I clicked on it, it took me a while to find the business I was actually looking for because nearby competitors were listed ahead of them on the search results page!

Directory listing services often cite the listing your business on their directory websites as a strong benefit. What they don’t mention is that their search results pages are not optimized to your benefit. Rae Hoffman’s blog has an excellent post about how one of the business directory listing sites (ironically the same one where “jerk carpet cleaner” was reviewed) view search engine optimization.

MISTAKE #3 – Spending gobs of money (or not much at all) to create invisible websites that generate little or not web traffic or customer leads.

I see this most often in dentist websites, accountant websites and with other professional practice websites. They usually sign up with hosted website packages that purport to deliver all these benefits that miss the main point.

If you’re a professional practice or professional service firm, your website should be a core strategic marketing asset from which you can easily:

• Attract, engage and convert leads into clients
• Obtain referrals by creating a content based website that people in your community refer others to.
• Position your business as the first and the best with your clients, the media and the larger marketplace.

All these reasons will allow you to build a business that grows, give you the possibility to engage your clients with more frequency (a proven key to building a sellable business), help your cashflow with derivative revenues (consulting for instance) and help you get more and better clients while spending less.

Which local small business owner in her right mind wouldn’t want this?

So if you find that you’re making any or all of the mistakes above, go to www.TurnAttentionIntoDollars.com to learn hands-free methods to convert your expertise into paying clients.

Till next time,