They might be your best customers...
When it comes to Internet marketing for small businesses, it can be easy to get caught up in the enormous number of tactics and resources available online.
You might even forget about the good-old fashioned local media that has been working for businesses for ages.
I'm talking of course about local television, local radio, local newspapers, etc. You can still look to these resources for advertising in the online world, because chances are, most of these outlets have web sites that offer advertising opportunities, providing not only a chance to have your message appear to users across the web, but have it targeted to local residents at the same time.
You've got your obvious local audience looking for local news and items of interest, and thanks to blogs, social bookmarking, and news aggregation like Google News, stories will be linked to and picked up all over the place.
This will translate to more eyeballs on your ad. Think about it.
On WebProNews, Mike Sachoff talks about a study that finds how consumers trust advertising on local newspaper, magazine and television Websites take action after viewing ads on these sites.
According to that same study, the following percentages of consumers taking action correlate with ads on each type of site: Local Newspaper Site: 46%
- Local Television Site: 44%
- Local Magazine Site: 42%
- User Review Site: 39%
- Portal: 37%
These are not small numbers.
When you are evaluating the different pieces of your own Internet marketing puzzle, it is not wise to count out the sites that hit closest to home for your most likely customers.
