Most Popular Mobile Search Business Types

The following are the most popular mobile search business types according to Google stats.

• pizza
• restaurants
• bars
• taxi
• car service
• limo also limousine
• auto repair also car repair
• auto insurance also car insurance
• tire repair
• oil change
• car wash
• used cars
• car rental also auto rental
• car towing also auto towing
• bike shops also bicycle shops
• bike repair also bicycle repair
• bike rental also bicycle rental
• flower delivery
• delivery
• nail salons
• hair salons

Obviously those businesses are reaching the most consumers on the go. If your business type is in one of them, you’d better have a mobile ready website which works perfectly under both traditional internet browsing and mobile browsing.

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

As you know that mobile devices are having much smaller screen than those laptops or desktop computers, most of the websites (I would say more than 80% of them) are not mobile friendly, which means their website look awful on smartphones like iPhone, BlackBerry, and so on.

Yet their website may have a  fancy and functional view on a computer, they won’t be looking good on smartphones if traditional websites are not optimized for mobile browsers.

Besides those fancy flash won’t work on any mobile browser. Plus people won’t be able to select the telephone number and make calls directly to the local businesses if they want, because those phone numbers are “nicely” made in images rather than plain texts.

For local businesses, especially for those pizza stores, car wash, flower delivery, car rental, taxi, restaurants, etc., it is critical to have a website working under both traditional computers and mobile devices. Because those businesses are most frequently searched by the mobile users.

Think of this: mobile has the broadest reach of 4.8 billion users vs. internet 1.7 billion. By the end of 2010, there will be about 5 billion mobile users when the world population gets 6.8 billion. Mobile gets 5 times better sales conversion rate than traditional online. Mobile gets 7 times better coupon redemption rate than online and offline…

So really mobile marketing is the future of internet marketing, best of all it just gets started.

If you want to know whether your local business website is mobile friendly or not, please go to this useful website for checkup. And if  you want to have a mobile friendly website setup, just contact your local business marketing consultant.

How You Can Make Money From Podcasting For Local Business

Let’s face it, most of the people go into podcast as a hobby. They contribute many funny and somewhat valuable contents for free. Maybe they got hundreds of subscribers who share the common interests. But they rarely make good amount of money. Did you know that you can turn it to a revenue generating marketing channel?

First of all, what is podcasting?

In a nutshell, podcasting is a form of blogging that utilizes the spoken word and/or video as the method of delivery as compared to traditional blogging which utilizes the written text.  However, it should be noted that podcasting is not used for just “blogging” . Some companies/businesses have used podcasting as a means of communication, as well as a vehicle for their marketing activities. With its rapidly growing popularity, podcasting is seen by some as the future of radio and radio broadcasts.

Technically speaking, podcasting is a method of delivering series of digital content (primarily audio and video) through the net for listening and viewing on digital media players/devices and computers (desktops and laptops).

Podcast differ from the traditional downloading of media files (though websites and web browsers) such that they rely on RSS feeds (just like blogs and news feeds) which automatically notifies the end-users, particularly subscribers, of new releases/episodes and automatically downloads the material to the user’s preferred device without the user having to revisit the site on which the files are hosted.

How do you make money by podcast marketing?

For local businesses, no matter what you provide (product or service), it’s the best way to use podcast to brand you and your business. You can do this by providing podcast subscribers with valuable content/information, for free.

Just go all out and do your best to earn the trust of your subscribers. And while you’re at it, briefly talk about your brand, talk about your products or services once in a while. Just don’t rub it in, don’t smother your audience with it.

Don’t worry you won’t see any new leads for your local business for the first few weeks or even months. Once you’ve earned your subscribers’ trust, it’s highly probable that when your subscribers would need the products or services you are offering, they will go to you rather than go look for them some place else. And that’s where you’ll get your revenue.

What’s great about podcasting is that you can use this brand building techniques in combination with other techniques such as paid (extra) contents and advertising, thus maximizing your podcasting earning potential.

Email Marketing Ideas For Local Restaurants

There are two steps to do Email marketing for any type of local business: the first one is list building and the second is to run email campaigns.

For local restaurant businesses, there are many ways of building your email list. Here are just some examples:

1. Include an email sign up on the comment card and bring them with the check to the clients in person when they finish the meal.

2. Insert a card promoting your email campaigns with your take-out and delivery orders. Simply put your site URL in it and tell people to go there to sign up for a special deal or something.

3. Sign people up for your email newsletter when they make the reservation. If you can have a reservation form on your site, it’ll be even better because people already become your email subscribers before they become your clients.

Now comes the email campaigns. What you should include in your email newsletters. Here are some ideas:

1. Menu. It could be your seasonal menu, menu change, or ingredients in your dishes;

2. Coupons. A small discount, exclusive to your email subscribers, will keep customers coming back;

3. Directions. Provide a link to driving routes, tips on parking, and public transportation information;

4. Gift cards. If you have them, speak it out. People are always looking for great gift ideas;

5. Pictures. Colorful pictures of food are the best enticement;

6. And don’t forget to mention your reservation phone number and best of all online reservation form.

For additional information on online marketing for local restaurant, please contact your local online marketing expert.

Dentist, Are You Ready For The Relationship Marketing?

The other day I received a mail newsletter from one of the local dental practices. It is the only newsletter I’ve ever received for the past couple of years. I was curious enough to go through every articles and news there. I would agree that they have done a great job, not only by delivering valuable information but by building its brands. Although it is costly to do that mail-out campaign, it is effective in building relationship between patience and its practice- just by that 2-page color printed newsletter.

As a matter of fact, dental patience tends to easily switch to new practice every time they see a coupon somewhere. While most of the dental practices have been aware of that, they fail to use various marketing ways to build the brand loyalty with their existing customers.

We are talking about relationship marketing more and more. Because to acquire new customers takes about 80% of the time, effort and money, but the revenue which generated is only 20% or less at the beginning. With the royalty relationship building up, we are going to generate more and more revenue.

There are some online relationship marketing tools other than those traditional ones. For example, email newsletters, coupon offers, rewards program, sweepstakes, etc. Stats show that over 90% of the people download or print coupon in the email; over 75% of people will purchase product offline because of the information he gathered from emails; over 70% of people will click the link to read company or brand content; and over 65% of people will share and forward the coupon in an email to their networking.

We also need to change the way of just thinking about coupon-based incentives to building brand loyalty based on more intangible, emotional values. Cone found that users developed positive feelings toward brands they felt they could interact with on new media channels. New media channels include videos, audios, photos, blogs, online social networks (i.e. twitter, facebook) and so on.

According to a survey conducted in September 2009, 74% of the respondents agreed that after interacting with companies or brands with new media, they generally have a more positive impression of the company or brand; and 70% of the respondents said that they are willing to engage with company or brand who has a presence in new media.

It is our goal as an online marketer to create on-going conversations with your new and existing customers to build brand royalty by various online relationship marketing tools.

Canada Internet Users

Canada’s Internet population continues to grow – by 2013, it will hit 25.9 million, or nearly 75% of the entire nation. That’s is really impressing. The total population as of January 2009 is around 33.5 million, while 69.2% of them (23 million) are internet users.

Many of these people are among the world’s most committed Internet users, spending 45 hours or more online each month. Since over 70% of the internet users are searching for local related content according to Google, local business marketers should be adapting to the online search surge.

While nearly 65% of consumers in the country own a mobile phone, they do not prize them as highly as Americans do. And the majority do not feel compelled to pay for a data package to surf the Web while away from home.

But traditional media isn’t dead — television still dominates, especially in the highly desirable over-35 audience.

(resource: emarketer)

Local Small Businesses Raise Search Spend

Small businesses using search advertising have sharply increased their search engine advertising in Q3 2009, according to data from WebVisible. Average spending by small-business search advertisers was up 91% year over year and 93% quarter over quarter in Q3. While Google still got most search spending, it lost 5% of the spending share over over last year. Bing gains 2.9% of the spending share.

More and more local small to medium businesses have concluded that over half of new customers are ‘referred’ by the internet. According to Google, more than 70% of the online searches are for local products or services. Remember, we are talking about billions of online searches everyday.

Stats show that 90% online commercial searches result in offline purchase; 82% of local searches follow up via online store visit, phone call or purchase. However 90% of local businesses have no clue of what to do to take advantage of those online local searches to benefit their local businesses.

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