Not Found On-Line?
Even though 30% of searches are for local things. Local businesses have a hard time getting found by keyword searches. Sometimes this is because they don’t have a website. But more often it is because Google, Bing, Yahoo or whatever, can’t tell if they are relevant for those search words. So those local customers (customers that are geographically near a business with their product or service) are buying from someone in China or Toronto or some other place while the business in Peoria is wondering why know one ever comes in to buy.
As we customers do more and more of our initial shopping on the internet, businesses that don’t show up on a search are never visited.
My example:
A couple of years ago, the company I worked for was discarding some equipment. Among the items being disposed of was a photography tripod. It was of good quality, but was missing the piece that attaches to the camera and then clips into the mount. (I don’t know what this is called, but will update this post with the right name if someone will put it in the comments.)
So I grabbed it and immediately searched for it on-line to see if I could find a store that sold the parts.
And I did, in Toronto. (Not trying to pick on Canada)
And I bought it and had it shipped to me. (had to wait like a week or something.)
Now my boss was a photography nut. And soon after I had this new toy, he stopped in a photography shop to get some filters or something. (I don’t know I just point the camera and pray.) We had gone to lunch together and so I went in too, just to look around.
Well, of course I saw that they had the same tripod, and sold the mount thing for the same price.
But they didn’t have a website, or a list of products or anything on-line to let me know they were there!
I see this happening all of the time. Perfectly good businesses and they are failing to do the basics.
- Every business, (yes, even the shoe store), should request and gather email addresses from web site and physical site visitors.
- Every business should have a website, and list some products on it.
- Every business should create some useful and pertinent content and send it to their customers to build a relationship and keep reminding the customer about the great experience they had.
I can’t think of any reason not to do three these basic things.
Will doing these get you to the front page of Google? Probably not. But I guarantee that not doing these is costing you money. (and it costs the customer money to when they can’t find what they want and need.)
If you want to know more, lets talk. roy@theIntegrationEngineer.com
Or check out MarketMilestone.com to find out more.
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