Local Offline Marketing - Does Size Really Matter?

Hello,
if it is a smaller market you may want to charge a smaller price.
You have to have the mindset that you are not selling to the customer,you are
helping the customer.
I walk into a location and I get shot down even before I can open my mouth.
That is my challenge and I say to my new customer that I am not selling you anything I am helping you to make more money.
That is when they sit me down and listen.
I hope this will help you.

In my experience, the main selling point for offering local businesses in small towns internet advertising services comes down to tourism. I've consulted for a few restaurants and bars in small towns (<200k) many of whom had been bilked by fly-by-night web design firms and were seriously lacking in the web presence department. We worked on getting them listed as businesses in the Google directory and into Google maps. We also were able to help them get comfortable working with some of the more popular restaurant review sites.

In more than one case, I ran into a business owner well after we'd finished the job and heard that they'd seen a noticeable increase in out of town business that had Google'd restaurants that they were going to pass during road trips and vacations.

It is also worthwhile to do geo-targeted AdWords campaigns aimed at a 20-30 mile radius around the town as people are definitely beginning to use Google to decide where they want to eat more often. The ad spend will be minimal, but the ROI, especially if you consider repeat customers, can be huge.

The smaller the locale...the more understanding into why they need to integrate their business online to compete is needed....a smart business owner should think like that anyways...If they do not have that frame of mind...then make it your job to educate them...

A locale of 250K is not exactly a small town....plenty of opportunity there!!
You do not state what area, or what country you wish to do business, but in these parts (Tucson, AZ)...you have Tucson...surrounding "burbs"....then 20 miles (or less) down the road is another smaller business district, 20 miles more...another...1hr to 1 1/2 hrs away...another sizable town/city. I think of a mile radius of say...150 as "my target area"...it's all with-in a few hrs drive.
(a locale such as florida, where you have jacksonville, orlando, st pete's, miama, tampa all with-in 1 -2 hrs of eachother...with many smaller business districts between them...allows you to target much more that your specific area...unless your lazy & don't want to drive)

A business in a smaller locale will need to target customers outside their own town & go after those who are 20-30-50 miles down the road...a well designed, properly Geo-Targeted SEO'd website will do just that...

By casting your line out a little farther...you hopefully catch 10-15% more sales...chances are those sales alone would out-weigh the cost of a buisness website, some local seo & maintanence...then that's a smart business decision...once the business owner see's the value of that....your services are an easy sell...no matter what size town your in.

Ken

Of course, widening the search geography to include areas not in the immediate area might bring clients that are further away, but not so far as to not do business.

Industry specific filters apply.

There is a lot of scope in offering IM services even in small Towns. Some of the advice has been to use SEO to target customers up to 50 miles away. Of course this is subject to the type of business you are dealing with. It is highly unlikely that someone will come from 50 miles away to eat in a restaurant or have their hair cut etc.

You mentioned searches for eg: Lawyers Your City are in the hundreds. That is a lot of searches for a local key phrase. A Lawyer, chiropractor, physiotherpaist etc only need a few clients a month to see a huge ROI on thier investment in certain IM campaigns.

There is also a lot of potential if you live in a town that attracts a lot of tourists.

One simple IM activity that can benefit the majority of businesses no matter how small the Town is Email Marketing.

Also, there is nothing stopping you from approching businesses in neighbouring Towns that have a greater population.

There are opportunities everywhere and Offline marketing can be very very lucrative if approached in the correct manner.

Hope that helps.

Riz

Here's the disconnect that a lot of people don't get:

- SEOing your local website to "get traffic" or "get our name out there"
is dreadfully naive but that's exactly what a lot of offline business
owners think they should be doing.

Here's the catch - "Are people searching for your website or category
in your area? If so, when they find you online what compelling reason
will your site give them to buy from you and not your competition?"

The reality is that while SEO results in a local area may be a good
thing for bragging rights for the business owner, it might not
result in a lot of traffic. That's not reason to ignore SEO, but it's
a good reason not to wage a war over a number 1 position of
little real value in terms of buying traffic.

What an effective website does is engage, inform, and build
your email list (for a local business) - it may even sell product
directly from the site, which is ideal but not appropriate to
many businesses. So, then, a site is basically a lead generator -
and basically it saves you all kinds of printing and postage
costs.

I see effective websites as money-savers over the old school
direct mail I did more of when I started with marketing. I love
direct mail, but costs add up and start to get pretty ridiculous
compared with email follow-up.

But, say, you've got a Limo service in Denver - it's probably worth
optimizing for "Limo service denver" because that's likely to
get some searches from buyers. BUT - it's absolutely essential
the page those visitors land on makes them a competitive and
compelling offer that gets them to take action and book a limo
right then and there.

So traffic is one thing - converting it into revenue is another...
and each business needs it's own solution to be competitive.

If the town is midway between Bigtown and Hugetown you could perhaps get the local Motel or eatery more business with passing trade.

I"m technically in Houston, but the community I live in is under 100k people and is pretty insular as far as shopping.

Even a small business needs an online presence, what they focus on is just going to be a little different. In some industries, all the business is going to need is a decent web site that is structured properly and they'll beat out the rest. In others like real estate and lending, it doesn't matter how small the market is they are going to have put effort into their site to get good results.

You could always put together an intro "Web Marketing Package." Do some keyword research (because you know a lot of them are targeting keywords no one is searching on,) clean up their content, show them how to blog, get their RSS feed published, integrate their Feedburner, Twitter, LinkedIn (etc) accounts, and set up a Facebook page for them.

If you wanted to do more, you could always offer a periodic article/press release service and not only submit it to the online press release directories, but the local media as well.

Even if its only a few hundred searches per month, they definitely are valuable searches that would be worth reaching for. Especially if you're targeting "Lawyer Hickville". As I'm sure you're well aware (as most of my clients are) leads for lawyers are extremely valuable. But even if its (barber Hickville) then you have to show the bigger picture in terms of repeat business.

Very Interesting Thread.....

This is an area I spend a lot of time on and have worked with hundreds of small businesses from $50k to $50m. There are several scopes of thought discussed here.

First is pricing and perception. we have clients in towns as small as 30,000. We don't discount our services because of a small town, our services are priced on perception, that people purchase a state and that's an anticipated feeling derived from the product or service. Meaning, if they netted $50k in revenue from my services, what should we charge? The same price as the competition? A cookie cutter price? Now the question is since there is more people in bigger cities, there are more opportunities. Of course this is true, but typically competition tends to follow population and it's all relative to the size of the city, therefore based on basic assumptions this isn't true.

the next question is your audience. some are discussing hotels and restaurants. these prospect, at least at this time, won't have the revenue for your charge a fair price for your services. A typical local business marketing on the Internet requires consistent 10+ per week dedicated. I find it hard to build a business model with re-occurring revenue, margins of 30%+ and offering a value added service charging a customer anything less than several hundred a month, closer to the thousand mark. Otherwise we'd be comprimising our quality.

there are some rules and questions that need to be asked before you go out to attract a prospect. For example, a local business cna be service based, product based, b2c, b2b, inbound or outbound service, franchise, corporate, retail, etc.... There are only certain segments that fit into the stripped model I discuss above. all the others are a waste of time. either it's too hard to show the value for the margins trying to achieve or it's simply not a good model.

for example, a dry cleaner and a defense attorney in a town of 30,000. I live in a town of 30,000. The customer value of a defense attorney could be over $100k in a DUI lawsuit, regardless of the size of the town. That attorney could spent $12k a year in Internet marketing and be listed in the organic, lbr and paid for that price. If they landed on client with a large lawsuit, the value is there for them.

the dry cleaner on the other hand you could easily get them 3 new clients per day, say 250 days in a year. that's 750 new client, but with perhaps a 10% in that business and the average sale at say $20, that's about $1500 in new profit over the year for that dry cleaner. how the heck am I suppose to make money if the situation only dictates there is $1500 profit on the table? not interested.

in any event, i'd like to direct you to a free video that we have on our blog. the blog post title is "Selling Internet Marketing Services to Local Businesses Webinar". This is a one hour video that discusses all the components discussed on the types of local customers you should look for, the pitfalls, pricing, proposal and sales strategy. it follows a solution selling approach. there is no opt-in to see the video either.

You also have to remember that to a small town lawyer or whatever a few hundred hits to their website would be HUGE each month. They would just need one lead to convert and that would more than pay for your fees, etc.

Hi,
Maybe you should be thinking bigger. Why do you feel you're limited to just your town - the web makes you global if you want to be.

You could create a good business just by finding sites or yellow page ads in your market and then contact the owner by phone or mail, with your pitch telling them how you can increase their response. You could probably get up to $500 per customer.

Another idea is to find some local clients and then ask them for referrals from business friends outside of town!

I got one client in a somewhat small town who loved my services so much he introduced me to his friend (who I also have as a client) in the biggest city in my state! Pretty cool stuff

Matt

Wow, great read guys Thanks for talking it out.

I'm working on a similar issue, I'm thinking about a JV with several small non-competing businesses in a "City Newletter" format with problems and solutions offered with links to their sites.
I'll tell you how it works out

Paul