Google Local Business Center: If your business is not listed on Google as a local business then follow the instructions on getting your business listed. It is free and is a fast and easy way to get noticed online. Make sure that you select the keywords that people will be typing in to the search engines to find you. To be found locally make sure that you put the name of your city and several cities where your local customers may be looking for you.
Something similar to Google LBC is Merchant Circle. It is dedicated to connecting Neighbors and Local Businesses online to help build real relationships between local business owners and their customers. To date, nearly 1,000,000 local businesses have joined Merchant Circle to get their business more exposure on the internet.
News Alerts: if you want to keep up with everything and anything that is being said about you, your company, your employees, your kids, etc. go to Google Alerts and follow the instructions. Each time anything newsworthy pops up that has this subject matter you will be sent an email. Great way to do early damage control or just make sure that nothing slips by you. You should set alerts to scan for your name, the names of your management team, your company name and the names of your competitors. Also, if you have particular brand name products that you want to keep up with I would set an alert for them also.
Reader: several to choose from but one that is free and does the job is Google reader. A reader is a program that will allow you to subscribe to certain online venues that have information of interest to you and to your industry. For instance, I can search for a particular topic, find websites or blogs that interest me and subscribe to them via my reader program. This will keep me up to date anytime anything changes on those sites. I just visit my 'reader' everyday and can read only those things that interest me and that will allow me to keep up with growing changes.
Just a few words about your website. Make sure that your website has all the WHY'S answered and that it tells a story that is understandable, relatable and makes people want to be a part of your story. One of the most overlooked things in website marketing is making sure that proper Search Engine Optimization has been done on it. In layman's terms it makes your website friendly to the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and allows people looking for your product or service to find you easier. Without it they will have to know your domain name and that really defeats the entire purpose of marketing to people who aren't familiar with you yet.
I think print advertising still works (I wouldn't be in publishing if I didn't) but only if it gets the attention of your customer, is located in a medium that your customers will read, and has your website on it. Also, remember you should answer a WHY question in your ad. The same goes for radio and TV advertising. Answer the whys, tell a story and drive them to your website.
So what is Marketing in the 21st century about? Marketing in the 21st century isn't any different than it was 2,000 years ago. It is still about answering the whys, telling your story and staying connected to your community of customers.
The only difference is that we have new ways to deliver our message.
I will leave you with this little bit of advice handed down to us from John Jantsch, Founder of Duct Tape Marketing. John said this just last month:
"Over time the single greatest opportunity is to rule the local search landscape. 20-30 year olds go straight to their mobile browser or Google Maps to find everything -- shoes, food, insurance, a dentist, you name it. If they don't find you by doing that, then you don't exist."
Make sure that your future customers can find you!
