Find LOCAL Business

What Are Your LOCAL Clients Doing to Find LOCAL Business?
The demise of the 20 pound paper directory

You might think that the Net, especially your own web site, offers few opportunities to help your customers to find a local business. After all, the Web is "world wide"... a "global medium."

And you would have been fairly correct, up until recently. But matters have been changing rapidly...

More and more, to find local business, your potential clients are forsaking those heavy Yellow Pages paper books for Google and other engines. It's easy and fast to do a search for "lawn care Montpelier" -- and if you don't find one in the town of Montpelier, widen the search to "lawn care Vermont" -- try widening your search with Yellow Pages!

Consumers find those big, heavy paper Yellow Pages too inconvenient and limiting. It's so much easier and flexible to use Google and other Search Engines to find local business. People are now comfortable with the Net -- and soon, most will be using broadband access with 24 x 7 constant, convenient and high-speed access.

To summarize...

Increasing numbers of searching pre-customers use the Net to find local businesses. Combined with the trend that more and more small local businesses are using the Net.

Result?

A self-feeding trend is hitting critical mass.

IMPORTANT:

Both Google and Yahoo!/Overture have launched "local search" versions of their engines. To the left, you see a sign of things to come from Google. All major Search Engines consider local online search of paramount importance. Their intense marketing efforts will accelerate the demise of the 20-pound paper-bound directory of businesses.

Looking for a plant nursery in Fargo, North Dakota? Easy, just go to Google and enter "plant nursery Fargo" -- if you draw a blank, try "landscaper Fargo", etc. If you still don't find one, just widen your search to a nearby city or to the entire state. Try that to find local business with Fargo's Yellow Pages!

With a Web site, the smallest of companies can compete on the same footing as the biggest when it comes to helping their customers find local business. You do not have to buy complicated, expensive Yellow Pages packages, multiple half-page ads, to get "full coverage" across several business categories or geographic regions to "get noticed." Actually, a web site gives you a substantial advantage over bigger companies, specifically because of your niche.

You can pull high volumes of targeted traffic to your site, by building pages that focus upon frequently searched keywords applicable to topics related to your business. Traffic that will dwarf what the Yellow Pages delivers on a dollar-per-thousand inquiries basis, and traffic that may open up entire new horizons.

While a Yellow Pages ad may generate a few inquiries per week (per month?), a web site generates this kind of business potential, both locally and (with a bit of entrepreneurial imagination) globally (if you want)...

Conclusion

Clients, potential customers, and even some of your competitors, are going online to find local business. A web site allows you to build a highly trafficked site that will in turn build your offline, local business.

BUILD YOUR OWN WEB BUSINESS





Family Business Experts Understands
Family Values andBusiness Systems



Please stay in touch and subscribe to our
Understanding Family Business e-zine.


Return from Find Local Business to
Local Business

SHARE THIS PAGE WITH FAMILY, FRIENDS & BUSINESS ASSOCIATES!

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.