The Money is in The List

So many business owners struggle with marketing their businesses. Why is that? 

Most likely it's because the business owner is just to busy trying to run his or her business to even think about how to market their business.

They usually resort to the "old fashioned" way of marketing, Yellow Page ads, print ads, maybe some radio or tv ads for a small fortune. But what tv or radio station does your customer base even watch or listen to, do you even know.

It's the shotgun approach to marketing. Spread enough "bullets" around and your bound to hit something. At what expense are you willing to keep thinking that type of marketing still works? How deep are your pockets?

Here's some interesting statistics recently put out by the Kelsey Group that every small business owner should pay close attention to:

• 70% of U.S. households now consider the Internet as the primary information source for shopping locally for products and services compared to 45% usage of the Yellow Pages
• 92% of Internet users say the Internet is a great place to get everyday information.
• 82% of Internet traffic starts at the search engine. If your not listed in the search engines your going to have to get creative to generate traffic for your website.
• 54% of all Americans have substituted the Internet for their local phone book.

Further findings suggest that local Internet searches are poised to surpass newspapers as the primary source of local shopping information. This means that if your customers can't find you online they'll most likely find your competitor. It was also reported that 27% of the searches online were local searches.

There is over 400 million websites online. That's 400 million other reasons for your customer to go elsewhere. Don't even worry about those 400 million other websites though if you're just marketing your business locally. You want to place high in your local searches for your keywords and build your customer list from there.

Local targeted traffic will drive customers to your business.

Online customers prefer to shop locally whenever possible! 75% of Internet users have looked for products and services within an area close to their residence or place of business. These people are looking to buy!

Take a look at your website...if a customer visits your site but doesn't purchase anything, how do you know if he or she will ever come back?  How do you know if that customer actually visits your establishment that they found you online? 

Do you know how to track it so you know if your website is costing you money every money, or making you money?

I can explain it to you and tell you what you need to do to turn that train around and it's a very simple process that involves building your customer list online. (that's my specialty with small businesses)

Building a customer list will immediately do a couple of things:

1. It gives you the opportunity to keep your name in front of your customer by frequently marketing to them, discounts, specials, upsells and builds brand awareness...
2. A customer list adds value to your business. More customers = more value.

You've undoubtly heard the phrase "the money is in the list". With the Internet now becoming so viable it is now easier than ever to build your customer list and market your business online for a fraction of the cost of marketing your business offline.

A huuuuge portion of small businesses are doing it all wrong when it comes to their online marketing.

The statistics show that the "old fashioned" marketing methods are fast changing. Spending big bucks on newspaper ads, Yellow Page ads, other print media, radio etc... there is no way to track just how effective those big dollar ad campaigns are doing for you. You're literally throwing money into the wind.

When a customer searches online in your local area for a product or service, do they find YOU, or your competitor?

If it's not you, you're leaving money on the table. If you want to capture some of this targeted traffic, you need to be found where they're searching.

A strong, online presence that captures local targeted traffic is essential for all small businesses.

Get them to your website, give them something of value in exchange for their name and email address, and begin building your customer list.

If you have a retail establishment that gets walk-in traffic, start collecting email addresses and build your customer database online. People check their emails almost daily and if your emails contain something of value, they'll get opened and you'll benefit from it. It's a win-win. 

It's not a matter of if the Internet will affect your business, but when. Use the Internet as a marketing tool and your bottom line will grow like you never thought possible before.