LOCAL
TARGETING WITH GOOGLE
Ever since Google
debuted their local targeting pay-per-click advertising
program in October 2003, Internet marketers have been contemplating
if "local search" is an overdue reality or a fad that
will blow away. The concept is simple enough. You market your
website to attract searchers to buy from your local, physical
business location.
How new is local search, or local
Internet marketing? Have people just started using the web to
find local businesses?
No. |
Do
people often go online to find accountants, dentists and coffee
shops?
Yes.
Have local search engine results
always been relevant?
No, but they're definitely
good right now.
 |
SEARCH
AND LOCAL SEARCH
The demand for
local search has always been there. The supply has not. A few years ago, you and your local business website could
try to compete nationally on search engines, but would most likely
spend money on Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) ads and traditional
marketing efforts. IYPs and local online portals such as Citysearch are now working together to provide a better
local search experience. |
INTERNET
YELLOW PAGES MARKETING
For a long time,
IYPs have provided the most supply for local purchases.
A recent study by comScore
Networks and the Yellow Pages Association™ says that IYPs
are still more efficient than search engines when it comes to
producing actual local purchases. It doesn't mention that
people who use IYPs are most likely further in the buying cycle than
people who use search engines (more on that below). |
 |
Search
Engines
In 1998, you
might have used a search engine to find a local dentist and found
the top 10 results full of online casinos, sex and gambling sites.
Why? It was then easy for people to manipulate search engines.
These engines have come along way since then, and for the better.
|
| You
can see the results for Minneapolis Dentist in Google, Yahoo or MSN right now. The results are much more relevant.
Some major search engines have known about local marketing for
a while. Both Google and Yahoo show
some local results over their main results. Their products...
Google Local
Yahoo
Local |
 |
Pay-Per-Click
Advertising
As mentioned
earlier, Google helped create the "local" buzz in October
2003 by debuting their local
targeting pay-per-click program. Before that, there was really
no way to use pay-per-click advertising to ONLY a particular local
market. The best you could do is include
your city/region name in your ad to SUGGEST to people that you
do business in a particular area. |
YAHOO
LOCAL MATCH
In June 2004,
Overture introduced "Local
Match" (now Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search).
This allows you to advertise online locally whether you have a
website or not. |
 |
PAY
PER CALL
Since then,
others have followed. Ingenio introduced
pay-per-call
services and partnered with 2nd tier Internet advertising company
Findwhat,
and most recently, AOL. Kanoodle introduced
Local Target. They hope to recruit partners
to help you advertise with local news and content pages. |
Internet
Yellow Pages (IYPs)
IYPs have been around the longest.
They started appearing soon after the Internet was growing in
popularity. At the time, they could easily sell an online listing.
It was basically THE way a local business could be mentioned online.
|
 |
MORE
PURCHASES WITH LOCAL SEARCH
The comScore
study mentioned above implies that IYPs produce more purchases per capita than search engines.
This is probably true. Many consumers think of IYPs
as a sophisticated online alternative to the big yellow book they
get every year. These consumers are more than likely further along
in the buying cycle. If you need an emergency plumber, you can
find one in the yellow pages. If you're looking for an income
tax accountant, you can find one in the yellow pages. |
| There
are different IYPs out there. Some of them are known by name in your
geographical area, and some are nationwide based. It can be worth
it for branding or if you have a sudden "call to interest"
message you want to send. This has always been the selling point
for yellow pages. |
 |
Interchange's Local
Direct program enables independent IYP companies such
as BDlocal
with aggregate yellow pages data, allowing them to offer additional
premium advertising services. |
Traditional
and Print Marketing
Local businesses
haven't always been seeking customers who search the web for them.
Like mentioned above, although the demand for local Internet marketing
isn't new, the supply hasn't always been there. Ever since local
businesses started appearing online, you have heard and seen radio-TV
commercials mentioning their URL or website name. As well,
online information became visible on business cards, letterheads
and print brochures. This has been a branding technique used
to provide additional options for their potential customers to
see them. |
 |
Word
of Mouth
There has always
been word of mouth marketing, arguably the most sought after way
to attract customers both offline and online. |
Future
of Local Search and Localized Internet Marketing
Since the birth
of Internet marketing, the only constant has been change. Online
branding, banner advertisements, search engine marketing, e-commerce
and pay-per-click advertising are just a few areas that continue
to change over time. Where will local search be in 5 years? Who
knows? The demand should be there, and only time will tell which
new local marketing programs develop and which current programs
continue to succeed and improve. |
 |
Most
likely, the successful programs will be the ones that help integrate
both online and traditional marketing. It can be important to
get local visitors to your site, but it's
more important to get local customers to your location.
|
| If
you live in a city of any size -- especially in an area where
new people are moving i n
-- people are increasingly using the Internet to find local businesses.
That may not be your preferred mode of research, but for many,
especially younger people, the Internet is their key to knowledge
-- both local and global.
Nielsen//NetRatings new MegaView Search
service found that 24.4% of searchers on major search engines
conducted searches that were local in scope, averaging 4.6 searches
per searcher. |
 |
LOCAL
MARKETING SEARCH
A Kelsey Group-BizRate.com
study found that more than 74% of respondents said they had conducted
local searches and confirmed that 20% of all searches among respondents
was local. Using the Internet to find
local businesses is now mainstream and
can only grow in frequency. |
| Some of the businesses that can be helped by local Internet
marketing include: chiropractor, computer retailer, travel agent,
locksmith, massage therapist, insurance agent, real estate agent,
mortgage broker, maid service hardware retailer, plumber, auto
repair, physician, dentist, florist, limousine service, accountant,
auto dealer, lawyer, restaurant, and movers, among others. |
 |
Fortunately,
for a local business you don't need a huge, complex, and expensive
website to be effective. You're not competing with the best
of the best nationally, you just need
to present yourself well to local residents and those within driving
distance. |
ONLINE
SEARCH IS LOCAL SEARCH
Target customers
who search online but purchase locally. Local Sponsored Search
listings enable you to drive customers from the Web to your door
whether your business has a Web site or not. You can precisely
target prospects searching online for products and services available
in your neighborhood, and connect with customers who are already
interested in what you sell. |
 |
LOCAL
SPONSORED SEARCH
Local Sponsored Search features a Locator page, which provides
prospects with information about your business, including address,
phone number, store hours and a map of your location. In addition,
if your business has a Web site, your main Web page will be displayed
along with the Locator page. |
| To
get started, you write a description that accurately describes
the products and services you offer and bid on keywords that apply
to your business. You also determine the size of the area (ranging
from 0.5- to 100-mile radius around your location) from which
you want to draw customers.) |
 |
Startup
businesses sometimes rush to advertise in the wrong places. They
see glamour in certain vehicles, such as general interest magazines
or cable TV, only to find that their costly ads don’t really bring
customers in the door. |
LOCAL
MARKETING FOR THE MASSES
Today’s emphasis
needs to be on local marketing - reaching individual communities
with specialized messages. The bygone
era of mass marketing, populated mostly by big companies that
could afford that kind of thing, is being replaced
by what marketing mavens are calling “mass personalization.”
|
 |
LOCAL
TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD
The latest trend
is to bring marketing down to the neighborhood level and make
it personal to the customer. Tom Feltenstein,
a top local marketing proponent, advocates targeting your marketing
efforts to specific neighborhoods, “making sure your message is
delivered only to people most likely to be your customers — those
within 10 miles or 10 minutes of your door.” |
BACKYARD
LOCAL!
One
marketer , who works with many corporate giants on their marketing
efforts, says that it’s all about thinking small and keeping your
marketing local. He encourages
stores, restaurants and other types of businesses to look no further
- literally - than their own back yards for customers. |
 |
Local
marketing keys: community involvement
This neighborhood-first
mantra suggests a heavy dose of community involvement in your
local marketing efforts. For example, here are three community-related
marketing strategies: |
| 1.
Good grades equal good customers: contact local school
principals to offer incentives of free products or services to
students who achieve high grades. When someone brings in a good
report card to your business, give him or her
the reward. |
2.
Surveys equal more
customers: regularly check the pulse of your customers with an
attitude profile survey. You’ll collect useful data, learn what
they like and dislike, and demonstrate your concern for their
opinions, all at the same time. |
3.
Complaints are your
best friend: nine out of ten unhappy customers never complain
— at least not to you. Instead, they don’t come back and then
they go tell their friends. Your business needs to invite criticism
so you can address the problem and turn it around. |
Some
other uncommon wisdom on marketing locally
- Tap the potential of your greatest profit opportunity
within your trading area - the customer base that is right in
your back yard. Businesses, schools, churches, community
events and even fellow retailers become your promotional allies
in building cost-effective programs to capture consumer dollars
right within your reach.
|
 |
- Local marketing is face-time marketing.
Look for ways to convey your marketing message to potential
customers one-on-one. You can go first to your employees, then
from your employees to your guests, and finally from your guests
to their families, friends, neighbors and co-workers. This
brand of face-time marketing is intimate and personal, as opposed
to slick and impersonal mass media advertising. Even
big chains are latching onto this concept by encouraging individual
stores to think small and locally in their individual marketing
plans.
|
- Contrary to some of the old
“rules” of advertising, the local marketing approach eschews
institutional “exposure” advertising. “Every local marketing
program should pay its way,” says Feltenstein.
“A marketing approach is either profitable or unprofitable based
on results. If your current marketing is not measurably profitable
on a per-project basis, kill it.” Move on to the next tactic,
go for sales, skip branding.
|
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
|
UNPAID
LOCAL MARKETING CONSULTANTS
To help generate more sales, treat your customers as authorities
and unpaid local marketing consultants. Ask their
advice and opinions of your operation, such as how you might improve
it to better meet their needs. Don’t be afraid to reveal inside
information, such as marketing ideas or recipes. The more
they understand your business, the more they will respect what
you are trying to do. Look for ways to show you are aware of them
as individuals, not just customers. |
| If
you have limitless funds to throw at mass marketing advertising
to build a name for your business, by all means go ahead. But
if you want to laser-target your efforts to the best prospects
in the most efficient results-oriented manner, try putting the
neighborhood, local marketing concept to work for your startup
business. Think small, think locally and capture the customer
cash that is the easiest to reach. |
If
you operate in a traditional “Yellow Pages industry”, Internet
marketing can work like gangbusters. |
What
kind of businesses suit local Internet marketing?
Providing that
potential customers are searching for your product or service
in your area, you can benefit from local internet marketing. |
| By
“Yellow Pages industry”, I’m referring to products
and services that are typically only intermittently required and
that people traditionally search for in the Yellow Pages. For
example:
Plumbing
Electrical
Mechanical
Landscaping
Pest Control
Some professional services (Legal, Accounting, Financial)
Construction
Bookkeeping
Using some of the internet-based
marketing strategies below, many of our clients are able to acquire
new customers for around 80% - 90% less than the Yellow Pages. |
Internet
Yellow Pages Help Target Your Customers |
Consider
your local population base
The effectiveness
of your local internet marketing activities will be influenced
to some degree by the population of your market. If you’re
a small
business accountant in Houston, then you have a large
population base from which to draw. But if you’re located in a
small country town, search-based local internet marketing may
not be as appropriate in your situation. |
 |
How
do people search?
When people search for products
and services in their local area, their search will most often
look something like this:
[industry name] + [location]
e.g.
Plumber Brisbane or
Financial planner Melbourne |
| For
example, one of our clients is a pest control specialist that
services the Houston area. Two of the more popular
search terms used to find their website are Houston
pest control company and termite control Houston .
|
 |
By
being highly visible in popular search engines (particularly Google)
for these terms , this company is able
to generate a lot
of new business (more about some of the specific traffic generation
strategies they use below). |
What
should your website say?
The subject
of how to convert website visitors into enquirers would fill a
whole book in itself, but here are a few important guidelines
that many high-converting local business websites follow: |
1.
Make it clear that
you operate in your local area so that local visitors know
they’ve come to the right place. Referring to your location
within your website content may also help to boost your ranking
in search engines. |
2.
Your
website content should take the form of a sales letter
designed to generate an action (i.e. an enquiry) from your visitors.
A good phrase to start with is, “Are you looking for a [what
you do] in [your location]?”. e.g. Are you looking for a personal trainer in Perth? Then go on to explain
the benefits of doing business with you. |
| 3.
Bear in mind that
when people search online, they’re probably comparing 3 or
more websites just like yours. So be sure to explain how
you’re different and give plenty of reasons why customers
should choose you and not your competitors. |
4.
Provide
a clear “call to action”, or instruction about what to do next.
e.g. “Fill in the form below for a same-day response.”
Our results show that most website enquiries come via a
online contact form as opposed to the telephone, so make
sure your contact form is easy to find and use. |
5.
Just like in a Yellow
Pages ad, do everything you can to enhance and communicate
the credibility of your business. In the Houston pest control website mentioned previously,
notice how the logos and industry memberships along the left hand
column reinforce their position as the pre-eminent pest control
provider in Houston. |
WEBSITE
TRAFFIC AND LOCAL MARKETING
The next part
of the equation is driving website traffic. You might have
a fantastic website but if no one in your target market can find
it, it won’t do you much good. Here are some successful local
traffic generation methods to try: |
 |
1.
Pay-per-click
(PPC) advertising, particularly Google Adwords. This is
instant, targeted and cost effective. There are other PPC search
engines including Yahoo! Search (formerly Overture), but Google Adwords consistently
produces the best ROI. |
How
to drive targeted local traffic to your website
- Online Yellow Pages - this can be a good source of high-quality
traffic. Like any marketing approach, you should track your
results to ensure that it is profitable in your situation.
|
- Search engine
optimization
or SEO. Search engine optimization means ranking your site in
the “free” search engines such as Google,
Yahoo and MSN. For many local search terms, it is relatively
easy to achieve high rankings. You can either employ a provider
of SEO services to do this for you, or learn about it for yourself
(Brad
Fallon’s resources are a good place to start).
|
The
above 3 ideas are obviously a non-exhaustive list, but these three
strategies alone can generate a significant amount of additional
revenue. The pest control business mentioned
above will conservatively generate an additional $200,000 in business
online this year - that’s a healthy sales boost that is
only set to grow as more and more people use search engines to
find what they’re looking for. |
| Google AdWords is introducing local
business ads, a new ad type that allows advertisers to promote
location-based products and services to interested users worldwide
(note: this service is available for business locations in the
U.S, Canada and the U.K.). Local business ads appear with
an enhanced map component on Google
Maps and in a text-only format on Google.com and other sites in
the Google network. |
 |
Why
local business ads?
Google's goal is always to offer users
relevant information through our search results and advertising.
Local business ads can help users by showing them products
and services that are physically nearby, and help advertisers
by providing a new way for them to reach more local customers. |
| What's
more, both small businesses and large chains can easily target
multiple locations within a single Ad Group using the same keyword
list – yet another way of targeting more customers more effectively. |
 |
How
it works
Whenever a user
enters a query that matches advertisers' chosen keywords and business
information, up to three local business ads may appear as "Sponsored
Links" below the user's Google
Maps search results. The ads display in two parts: a highlighted
listing in the search results column and a map marker that expands
to show additional business details when the user clicks on the
ad title or the marker itself.
|
| The
highlighted listing consists of your business name, two description
lines, your URL, and your business address, all of which is gathered
from Google Maps's local business
listings. |
 |
The
info window that expands from the map marker displays an optional
phone number and image,
along with the standard business information.
|
TEXT
ONLY FOR LOCAL BUSINESS SEARCH
Finally, a text-only
version of each local business ad automatically runs on Google.com
and other sites in our search network. The text version has the
same ad text and display URL as the enhanced ad on Google
Maps. A fifth line of text shows lists city (and state, if applicable).
The text-only version of your ad is ranked and priced just like
any other text ad running on Google. |
Top
Seven Strategies to Help You Market Your Local Business Online
and Market Your Virtual Business Locally |
INTERNET
LOCAL ADVERTISING
Roughly
75% of the business owners I speak with in any given town or city
see little, if any, need for an online presence. They believe
in doing business the way it's always been done, with local advertising,
foot traffic, telephone book listing or advertisement, special
promotions, and word-of-mouth marketing, and assume that local
residents will find out about their business in these same ways. |
| There's
absolutely nothing wrong with these promotional methods, but it
does create a tunnel vision view of marketing in this day and
age. A Kelsey Group-BizRate.com study found that more than 74%
of respondents said they had conducted local searches and confirmed
that 20% of all searches among respondents was
local. |
 |
Whether
business owners acknowledge it or not, the Internet is here to
stay, and using the Internet to find local businesses has now
become mainstream, and will only continue to grow as today's children
and teens, who have been online almost all of their lives, become
adults. |
| I
know that when I do a search for local businesses, I am often
taken to one of the local city directories, where I am given the
address and phone number of the business, and if I'm lucky, the
website URL, if they have a website. Most days, I search
out the website of a local business to "check them out"
before deciding to do business with them.
One of my most frustrating
times comes when I want to place a takeout order at a local restaurant
and don't have a takeout menu handy. I'll go online to find
the menu of the restaurant, and unfortunately, unless it's a local
chain with multiple locations, I typically don't find what I'm
seeking. That restaurant usually ends up losing my business
to one in which I can scope out the menu online and call in a
takeout order.
|
If
you have a brick-and-mortar business, how much business are you
losing because you don't have an online presence, or because your
website doesn't contain enough information to help someone decide
to do business with you? Or, if you have a virtual company,
what if no one can find you when they conduct a local search of
businesses in your industry?
I do no marketing locally, as there is little demand for the type
of services I provide in this area. However, I began to
wonder if I were losing out on what little local business might
exist for my virtual company, so I did some research to find what
websites would help my company website show up in any local searches. |
1. Local Portal Sites: Search Google,
Yahoo, and MSN for your city name and see what comes
up. Are there any sites on the list with which you can exchange
links, buy advertising, purchase a membership, submit articles,
etc.?If you live in a small city, as I do, you might also
search for larger cities that are close to your location, or search
for a regional name that your area might have. For example,
I found more portal sites by using "Southeast Texas" as a search term, rather than
an individual city name.
2. Search Engine Directories: Search
Google Directory, http://directory.google.com
for your city name and look for a category that ends with "Guides
and Directories". When you click on that, you'll see
the directories listed by importance, as determined by Google's
Page Rank feature (you'll need to download Google's
toolbar to see this info. The toolbar can be found at http://toolbar.google.com.
The higher the rank (10 is high), the more traffic the site has.
|
| Yellow
Pages Sites: There are a number of bigger city options here:
YellowPages.com (SBC and BellSouth): http://www.yellowpages.com/ guide/cityguides/
Super Pages (Verizon): http://www.superpages.com
|
 |
.
Nationally-Based City Guides: The largest of these services,
CitySearch, http://www.citysearch.com/, drives content to many other
city guides. Other city guides include AOL CityGuide,
http://www.digitalcity.com,
Area Guides, http://www.areaguides.net, Online City Guide, www.onlinecityguide.com,
and Associated Cities, http://www.associatedcities.com/
|
| Newspaper-Based
Local Sites: If you live in a larger urban area, your local
newspaper may sponsor a site for your city, like Charlotte.com,
sponsored by the Charlotte Observer) or Boston.com, sponsored
by the Boston Globe. |
 |
Locally-Based
City Guides: Again, in larger urban areas, your local chamber
of commerce, convention and visitor's bureau, or a private business
may operate a local portal for your city. Here in Southeast Texas, our locally-based site is SoutheastTexas.com,
owned by a private business. Others, like FortWorth.org,
is sponsored by the Ft. Worth Convention
and Visitor's Bureau.
|
| Association Guides: Your membership to your local chamber of commerce, convention and
visitor's bureau, professional association (by industry), general
business groups (networking groups, men's or women's business
associations, civic groups) may pay off if the association has
an online membership directory where your listing might be found.
Make sure that the listing includes both your contact info and
a link to your website.
|
 |
I've
only scratched the surface of the local possibilities available
for both virtual and brick-and-mortal companies. In doing the
research for this article, I discovered there are thousands of
businesses who aren't listed in any of these directories.
Don't let yours be one of them. Get your business listed
locally so you local customers can find you! |
WHY
LOCAL SEARCH?
More than 40%
of all Internet searches for businesses or services are local
in nature, and that’s why targeted local search marketing
is a crucial strategy for attracting local customers. Businesses,
like yours, simply cannot afford to ignore the power of online
local marketing search. |
 |
Sweet
Spots on the Web: Local Marketing Grows Up
Enter broadband
Internet. Consumers search for information instantly (mostly using
broadband connections) to the tune of 450 million queries daily.
While many searches are recreational, Forrester Research reports
around 70 percent of consumers will research products and services
this way in a given year. In addition, a majority will then purchase
the product or service locally. |
| With
this huge number of consumers scouring the web, a new marketing
tool has entered the picture, known as Local Search Advertising,
which works like this:
Let’s say a web-savvy Houston family needs a new refrigerator. They visit a web search engine to
research the models. Typing “Frigidaire” on Google
or AOL yields typical results, displaying a link to Frigidaire’s
site with other “less useful” listings. But there’s something
more going on here. |
 |
Even
without entering their location, the top and right sides of
this results page display ads for Frigidaire showrooms right here
in Houston. One click to the local company’s Web site can
let the potential customer see current stock and a special Internet
sale for Frigidaire buyers. The merchant has been presented as
both a solution for the information and a local contact for the
purchase, and the loop is closed. |
| A
search for “Tax Forms” shows accountants’ ads, “Steel Building
Types” shows contractors, and so on. And more than half of these
searchers don’t have a particular vendor in mind at this stage,
making it a great opportunity to find new customers. This is
not spamming, and I am not talking about those annoying pop-up
ads; rather it’s a chance for a merchant to react to a customer-initiated
request for help. |
 |
The
search engines aren’t providing this fancy technology out of the
goodness of their hearts. Businesses spends
$22 billion a year on local advertising, and many studies
show that local firms are looking to shift parts of their budget
in favor of the Web. There are many reasons, including the difficulty
in saying “We’re in the yellow pages” without “Which one?” coming
back as the reply. |
PLACEMENT
AND LOCAL-ORIENTED SEARCHES
Some of the programs being offered
for local search placement in major search engines are Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search
Marketing and Verizon Superpages
pay-per-click. Each wants to become the consumer’s (and by extension
the advertiser’s) next choice for local purchase-oriented searches.
These large ad networks claim to cover 70 to 80 percent
of the Internet with their pages and “partner sites.” |
 |
In
addition to the timing, a benefit to the advertiser is the pay-per-performance
pricing model. The ads are free until someone clicks, at which
time a small fee is charged and the visitor is sent to the advertiser’s
Web site. |
| There
are no long-term commitments, and advertisers can change or stop
ads any time. They can create predefined budgets for the day or
month and fraud-proofing mechanisms prevent competitors from rapid-fire
clicking. Markets can be limited by single or multiple cities,
states, languages and countries. |
|
The
actual cost of a click is usually based on a bidding model. Whoever
is willing to pay the most for the visitor in a region is able
to buy his or her way to the top, in most cases. For markets the
size of Lexington, bidding wars are not that common, and you can
usually get into a good position for under
50 cents per visitor. If you’re like my clients, the value of
a targeted site visit is many times this amount.
|
| During
a campaign, reports are generated about click-through rates (how
many visited a site from an ad) and conversion rates (how many
visitors made an inquiry or purchase.) Advertisers can nurture
effective ads and remove poor ones.
My favorite use of
this data is as a planning guide for Web site redesigns. I tend
to carefully measure inquiries and near-purchase pages such as
“directions to our store.” Ads must be carefully written to
avoid “window shoppers” and monitored closely at first to look
for leaks. |
 |
PAY
PER CALL ADVERTISING
As usual online,
this is just the start. In development are special pay-per-call
advertising technologies and mobile device/phone searches using
GPS. Businesses will be able to reach out to consumers with timing
accuracy never before possible. |
| The
power and profitability of local online marketing are more apparent
every day. We have seen that if you want to sell/purchase goods
or services via a print ad in a local newspaper, you may get 10
calls. However, when you place your ad online in a local online
community directory, such as Craigslist.com, you will undoubtedly
receive 100+ calls. |
Realizing
the “New” Powers of Online Local Marketing |
Whether
you are looking for plumbers or restaurants and everything in
between, the first place people look is on a local search engine,
such as Yahoo!, Google, or MSN. In our modern, fast response world, more and
more people are using online yellow pages to research and plan
travel, therefore, if you want to align your hotel services with
local activities you must participate in local online mediums
that are relevant to the travel industry. |
- SideStep Launches
Activity Search – This cool, new feature of SideStep allows travelers to create
their own itinerary of things to do once they arrive at your
destination.
- On this site, people can find listings and
information for local Amusement and Theme Parks, Cultural, Dining,
Museums, Other, Outdoor and Adventure, Shows and Theater, Sports,
Tours and Attractions, and Transportation - within a specific
radius and timeframe.
|
 |
This
is more reinforcement of the fact that people
are coming to your hotel because of the various happenings, events
and attractions in your local area. The bottom line: Give
travelers a reason to visit your hotel. Here’s what’s new in
the realm of online local search tools . . . |
- Top
Two to Three Results on search engines come from Local Search
Engines!
Local search engine results show as the top two or three results
for any query on every search engine.
- Typically, results are based on geo targeting.
According to Google Map (Local), Google regularly updates its
index with information from third-party providers to add new
businesses, incorporate changes to existing businesses, and
remove businesses that no longer exist.
|
 |
- If you want to ensure that the right information
appears in Local results, you need to contact these sites discretely.
Positive Online Customer reviews help improve your results on
local search engines. It is important for any business to be
first enrolled in Local search engines and then make sure that
they contain quality reviews on different engines, portals and
directories.
|
| Market your restaurant, spa, meeting facility or
any business located in your hotel.
If your hotel has great restaurant or spa onsite, it is worth
setting up a “subdomain” for the restaurant by enrolling it in
local search engines as a separate domain. Typically, locals go
online and search for a local restaurant by distance or type.
If only the hotel is enrolled in a search engine, locals or visitors
to your town will not find your onsite restaurant located in the
hotel |
Local
Search for Big Brands
When you
think of local search marketing, what type of business comes to
mind?
If you're
like most people, you probably think of a small, local service
organization or retail shop. The pizza place near your home, electricians
or plumbers in your city or town, maybe even a bed-and-breakfast
run by a local family.
It may
be time to broaden your perspective. |
Local
Search Isn't Just for Local Businesses
It's true that local searches
often correspond to local businesses. When you're looking for
a specific, locally owned and operated business, there's nothing
better than finding exactly what you seek on a search engine results
page. But the overall marketing opportunity local search presents
is much, much larger than this. |
| Big
companies looking to strengthen their brands and leverage the
Internet's power are increasingly aware of local search's benefits.
A few scenarios that illustrate this:
- Ever been on a trip and looked for a Starbucks
close to your hotel?
- Ever needed directions to an AMC Theatre in
another town?
- Maybe your windshield's
cracked and a friend recommends Safelite
AutoGlass?
|
 |
Common
situations such as these often result in a local online search.
Starbucks. AMC. Safelite. Not exactly small companies, are they? It's
no secret these firms spend a lot of time and money building their
brands and running national (and international) ad campaigns.
Yet savvy marketers at large corporations are starting to realize
they can reach local customers in a new way -- a very relevant
and helpful way. |
National
Brands: Local Experiences
Starbucks is one of the world's
most powerful brands, yet when you walk into a store, order your
grande nonfat latte, purchase a CD, and sit down on the
couch, it's very much a local experience, isn't it? People experience
the brand one cup of coffee at a time. Your opinion of Starbucks
is far more influenced by your experience in that store at that
moment than by any ad campaign, online or off-. |
 |
So
consumers interact with brands locally. That's nothing new. Here's
the piece many marketers are still missing: A person's local experience
could easily begin before he walks in the door. It may begin online
on a search engine. Customers may be searching for local businesses
at home, at work, or from a mobile device. |
| The
Starbucks Example
Just this week I saw Starbuck's
back-to-school
campaign (co-marketed with Visa). When you purchase a $50
Starbucks card using Visa, you get a $10 bonus card." I saw
banner ads, search ads, and content-targeted ads across the Web.
Safe to say it's a pretty robust campaign. |
GOOGLE
MAPS AND LOCAL SEARCH
Then I went to Google Maps
and searched for a Starbucks store in several college towns. I
searched Boulder, CO; Austin, TX; Madison, WI; and Boston, MA. Sure enough, the back-to-school
ad was listed as a Sponsored Link on the left side of the local
map page. Brilliant targeting? Perhaps. More likely, it was the
result of a large budget. Turns out the ad was listed on any Google Maps page if Starbucks was included in the search
query. Still relevant, nonetheless. |
Let's
recap this local search experience: I'm searching for a Starbucks
in my college town. I can view all store locations on a street
map, a satellite map, or a combination map. I can zoom in and
out. I can select my desired store and get the address, driving
directions, phone number, and customer reviews. I can send all
this information to a friend in an e-mail. I can even send driving
directions to my cell phone and click on a Starbucks back-to-school
ad -- all from the same local interface. Not bad, huh? And, amazingly
more robust and flexible than flipping through the yellow pages. |
| But
wait, it gets better. Google recently
announced the addition of a new local couponing feature,
meaning Starbucks could also provide coupons, printable right
from the map and redeemable in select college town stores (no,
not those coupons. (More on this in a future column). |
 |
Don't
Miss the Power of Local
Yet given all this, big-brand
marketers continue to dedicate nearly all their budgets to TV,
radio, print, outdoor, and direct mail. It's a shortsighted strategy
because raising awareness using traditional channels causes today's
consumer to go online and -- you guessed it -- search. Marketers
must close this loop and follow their customers online. Take advantage
of this highly focused, highly relevant way to reach people online:
the local search experience. |
| Putting A Local Spin On Your Global Brand
Global brands need to strike
the right balance between localization and globalization when
packaging their consumer goods. That’s because many markets are
conditioned by local traditions and inherited cultural values
that may influence consumer response to package features such
as shape, colors and text. The Chinese, for example, associate the color
red with happiness and luck, while in most Western cultures
the same color has more negative connotations. Similar examples
are legion. Given these complexities, can any best practices be
identified for global packaging? |
Several
years ago, McDonald’s announced plans to introduce a single line
of product packaging for use around the world. But last February,
the company seemed to step back from that strategy in favor of
one in which nutritional information and some
graphics on the packages are localized. McDonald’s reportedly
plans to have these new packages in 20,000 of its restaurants
in Europe, the United States, Asia, Latin America and Canada by the end of this year. |
Why
the apparent about-face? In spite of McDonald’s reputation as
a leading global brand, its restaurants are actually positioned
very differently around the world. In the United States, for example, the Golden Arches are associated
with a low cost meal. But in the UK, where the chain got a later start, the brand represents
something more premium. And in China, McDonald’s is viewed as a very premium gateway
to the West. Says Mark Kennedy, chief strategy officer at Landor Associates, “Even though the physical product itself
looks the same, it does very different things.” |
LOCAL
ADAPTATION IS KEY
From the point of view of product
positioning, McDonald’s local packaging would seem to be just
what is called for. But Kennedy also makes a distinction between
product brands and experiential brands. And McDonald’s would seem
to fall in both categories. On the one hand, the company is a
purveyor of food products that require local adaptation;
but perhaps even more than that, Kennedy says McDonald’s is a
highly experiential brand that demands global consistency. “Although
the food product is important,” he says, “what the company is
really selling is the McDonald’s experience.” |
To
the extent that the company is selling a product, its product
has to be focused on the needs of local audiences. McDonald’s
retreat from its global packaging strategies would seem to make
perfect sense, according to Kennedy, if the company has in fact
decided to alter its brand image from one that is experiential
to one that is more product-oriented. |
Let
the category be your guide
Professor Kees Sonneveld of Australia’s Victoria University argues that product categories should be the
guide for a brand’s global packaging strategies. He feels, for
example, that global food and beverage products are better off
with local—or regional—packaging because these
products often have low dollar value and are more sensitive to
taste and flavor perceptions of the local market. As an
example, he cites the marketing of Coca-Cola in parts of Asia where the brand name on the package has been translated into an Asian
script but the typeface design resembles the original logo. An
associated advantage of local packaging, he notes, is the ability
to comply with local and regional regulations such as food labeling
requirements and environmental legislation. |
| In
the case of more functional, fast moving products such as personal hygiene and care, household care, cleaning products, OTC pharmaceuticals
and cosmetics, Sonneveld believes consumers
in local markets are less sensitive to packaging variations.
In these cases, the functional characteristics of the product
or package may outweigh the need for localized package design.
Since profit margins are usually larger in this category than
in the food and beverage sectors, he thinks packaging design can
be more universal. Economies of scale can then be achieved by
making use of more centralized manufacturing and standard packaging.
|
In
branding universal products such as consumer electronics, appliances,
toys and the like, Sonneveld argues that packaging—at least in marketing
and selling the product to consumers—has traditionally played
a much smaller role than in the other two categories. Prospective
buyers tend to be more focused on the design and functionality
of the product than the packaging, he says. Aside from its
role in drawing attention to the brand, the package in these categories
largely serves to protect the product and facilitate transport.
Brand owners in these segments, according to Sonneveld,
are likely to reap the highest rewards when they minimize their
packaging costs. |
Virtual
management
To reduce packaging costs associated
with localization efforts, some global companies have looked to
Internet-based virtual management tools. One virtual management
company, Interbrand’s BrandWizard
Technologies, has developed software that takes brand information
and automatically channels it to product distributors around the
world. In this way, packages in various parts of the world can
retain the basic brand identity but display different information
locally.
Richard Gerstman, chairman emeritus of Interbrand
US, explains. “It might be the language that’s used on the packages
or it could be the illustrations used on them. Certain things
would change, but the basic brand look would be there.” |
| He
says the technology provides economies of scale. “Global corporations
can take their brands and their packages to different regions
without each region having to work on its own. All the brand information
on these packages comes through a central source and is channeled
to different regions.”
BrandWizard’s vice president of marketing, Robert Thomas, says
this strategy works best for decentralized companies. “One of
our biggest clients is Hewlett-Packard,” says Thomas. “HP is trying
to achieve global consistency in its packaging. The packaging
doesn’t really change; the company is just trying to accommodate
local languages and imagery.” |
According
to Thomas, HP is focused on using its color palette as well as
its logo in such a way that customers will immediately
identify a box with “HP blue” wrapped around it as an HP product.
Thomas concedes that the BrandWizard’s
tools are not for everyone. “It’s a very
customized solution. It’s time-intensive and fee-intensive, and
it can take upwards of two to three years to develop,” he says.
Thomas adds that his clients tend to develop packaging for large
regions such as Europe or Africa, rather than for individual
countries. As a result, a single package may have to display text
in multiple languages. |
Case
in point: Hewlett Packard
Randy Boeller, a manager on Hewlett-Packard’s global packaging
team, likes the flexibility that a decentralized approach gives
him in adapting packaging materials regionally. He says this freedom
allows him to better accommodate the processes that dictate material
types, especially when moving away from paper and toward cushioning
packaging. “Different processes are more readily available and
more economical in different regions,” he notes. |
| Size
and weight of the package are important considerations for Boeller
when deciding whether to distribute globally or regionally. “When you change the size and weight, you’re changing
the outbound logistics cost. The bottom line is that you are changing
the amount of fuel it takes to deliver that finished good from where it was produced to where it will be sold.
The smaller and lighter you can make it, the better,” he says.
|
In
the case of Hewlett-Packard printers, production is localized
within regions, and final packaging takes place locally. Products that can be localized with the fewest package modifications, on
the other hand, are produced in one location and distributed worldwide
from that location. These products tend to be small with high
dollar value, and available in a limited number of stock keeping
units. Products that may lose value rapidly due to advances
in technology—digital cameras, for example—also fall in this category.
|
According
to Boeller the physical structure of
the package in most of these centrally distributed products is
the same around the world, with mainly the graphics changing to
meet regional needs. “But there are some exceptions,” he says.
“It really just depends on a lengthy analysis of material costs,
transportation costs, take-back fees where they exist and that
| |
