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What Your Carlsbad Business Has In Common With Dennis Rodman & North Korea

Human beings are social animals, and generally speaking we’re also a fairly needy bunch; we’re constantly on the lookout for attention from and approval of others. Now whether that statement applies to us individually only sometimes or all the time, it’s usually the emotional elixir of getting attention and receiving approval from others that drives the behavior.

It’s not the approval and attention we’re after; it’s the way the attentive approval makes us feel that reinforces our triggers to go seek more of it.

We all have emotions that sometimes drive our actions a little more so than they should.

That’s all well and good, but what in the H E double hockey sticks does this psychobabble BS have to do with North Korea, Dennis Rodman, or digital marketing for local your Carlsbad business new customer acquisition?

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Yellow Pages vs. Online Search – Which Horse is Your Carlsbad Business Backing?

 
In the race to acquire your small business advertising and digital marketing dollars, the winner doesn’t seem so clear-cut. At least when we take some geographical or demographic information into consideration.

Sure, the local phone book publisher has most likely seen a cataclysmic drop in ad revenue over the past few years. And certainly this must be directly correlated to the rise in online searches, increase in mobile internet accessibility, availability of improving technology, and the overall topsy-turvy world of defining consumer habits.

According to research from the Local Search Association (formerly the Yellow Pages Association) conducted by Burke, search has taken over as the top way to find local businesses for most demographics1.

Interesting that the Local Search Association was formerly the Yellow Pages Association, but maybe that’s another blog post. As a Carlsbad small business owner the challenge becomes how to best leverage each (and every) communication medium available to increase local sales and improve customer retention.

And of course how to weed through all of this digital chatter to identify those opportunities.

According to this recent article on the Google+ social networking move, the average U.S. visitor spent 375 minutes per month on Facebook in May, compared with 231 minutes for Google.

How many minutes are there in a month?

We can bet our mobile carriers can tell us. But are we getting our moneys worth for those minutes?

Moreover, how many minutes do we spend actually thumbing through the phone book?

We’ll reserve judgment on the blog posts…and promise to only take our finger-pointing to a whole new level via Twitter!

Although this is quite the contentious subject amongst some marketers, small business owners need not let emotion dictate the best communication tools for use in driving more local sales.

Hashtag AT&T are you listening?

What do ‘the phone book’ and MySpace have in common?

Hint: MySpace reportedly sold today for a whopping $35 million…it was acquired 6 years ago for $580 million…

 

Is Small Business Advertising in the Yellow Pages Still Worth It?

 
Yes, and we certainly recommend increasing your ad size to a double page spread to further increase your YP ad return on investment. Does that sound familiar?

Some business owners have had the unfortunate experience of dealing with a local YP ad rep that pushed bigger is always better. A long-standing rule of thumb in phone book advertising is to look at your competition, then go one size bigger for your ad. Ipso facto, more local customers that found your business in the phone book!

Sometimes, and sometimes it’s a waste of time and money. How can you be sure?

You need to be sure, before you increase ad size or before you cancel the ad altogether. If you’ve tracked your YP ad performance since inception, this should be easy to determine.

First you need to design the ad content; text, copy, images, logos, calls to action…etc. This can be a significant investment, but one important to overall ad performance. It makes no sense to pay up to several thousand dollars a year to place a substandard ad. After you nail down the design, call to action, and benefit points, you then you need to buy the space in the particular phone book that is most popular in your area, and most often it makes sense to look at several books in your area. Some key things to think about are readership or circulation, and where your competition is represented within the particular publication.

This all sounds like a lot, and we know for sure that your local phone book ad rep can certainly help your business advertise in their book, from soup to nuts. They’ll design the ad, place it, give you online options, connect your website, and everything else involved with initiating a phone book ad for your small business – just ask them…

But that doesn’t answer the question of phone book advertising performance in the digital world. In our experience, having a phone book ad for your small business is a good thing – if only to confirm your important business information for the digital environments out there that are sure to become more popular in local searches for products and services. To be clear, this means maintaining at least a cursory listing of business name, address, and contact info (website, email, phone number) within one(or more) phone books in your local area.

Having this most basic phone book listing allows other internet-based search environments to confirm your actual place of business, contact info, and sometimes even products and services offered. In the digital world, these connections to your business info are citations – and the search engines love citations. Just like citing correct sources for your PhD dissertation research, your business citations give the search engines a place to confirm your business information. The more listings out there with correct, verified, and owner-controlled business information, the better for online small business visibility.

But guess what?

An offline phone book ad can be a great place for search engines and other online directories to confirm and connect with your local small business.

Here’s a list of 25 other online places to build your citations – in no particular order or rank. There are hundreds more, and we’re working on compiling a ranked list for you, check back soon and let us know if you have any suggestions:

  1. http://citysearch.com   
  2. http://cityvoter.com
  3. http://insiderpages.com
  4. http://localbiznow.com
  5. http://hotfrog.com
  6. http://merchantcircle.com
  7. http://angieslist.com
  8. http://yelp.com
  9. http://kudzu.com
  10. http://bbb.org
  11. http://superpages.com
  12. http://yellowpages.com
  13. http://local.yahoo.com
  14. http://dexknows.com
  15. http://judysbook.com
  16. http://showmelocal.com
  17. http://chamberofcommerce.com
  18. http://local.yodle.com
  19. http://switchboard.com
  20. http://magicyellow.com
  21. http://facebook.com
  22. http://twitter.com
  23. http://topix.com
  24. http://allpages.com
  25. http://manta.com

Just like with traditional search engine optimization, a slow and steady approach will serve you best when compiling citations for your small business. Don’t sit down with 196oz of coffee and expect to knock out 300 citation listings for your San Diego small business in one marathon session. Visit these sites and determine the relevance to your products, services, and location. Some will choose to list themselves everywhere and some will be more selective, and as rankings change we can begin to identify only the most advantageous connections by constantly monitoring the environment.

Besides that fact, some of these places cost money to list your business and some don’t. Then if you do list, be prepared for the sales calls that result from some of these sites. They’ll certainly invite you to spend a little bit of money for listing prominence, profile enhancement, connectivity, and overall return on investment – at least that’s the promise. Take your time, be selective, and learn more before you burn cash investing in something you don’t know how to maximize.

Also, be sure to check out this cool tool from our neighbors in the Great White North: http://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/#

And having a business listing with the large data aggregators like InfoUSA are good too – http://www.expressupdateusa.com/home.aspx