Creating an online portal for a physical business can be an excellent strategy. Whether a business resides in a mall, in its own building, or even in a home, a website can be a great way to increase traffic to the physical store. It can also provide a second point of sale. Unfortunately, many owners create excellent websites but see no resulting increase in sales. Lack of local advertising could be the problem.
Try Role-Playing
Business owners can test their online visibility by playing the role of their customers. They can sit down at their PC and try a search with their favorite search engine. Ideally, the listing for their company appears on the first results page. If it shows up at the top spot, they have hit the jackpot. Unfortunately, the business may not show up on the first page at all. Even worse, a competitor may show up instead. If this is the case, the potential online revenue is flowing to the competitor.
Test External Listings
A second test is to see if someone could find the business through local online listings. If an owner types in the business type and base city, does the business listing appear? Does it appear before that of the competitors? Even more importantly, is the listing accurate in both location and contact information? If not, it may be time for the businessperson to contact us at Webstract Marketing and let us apply local advertising techniques.
Get Local and Business Directories on Board
We can make sure that businesses are accurately and prominently featured on all of their local directories in order to make sure that their customers can find them easily and quickly. This is a process we can implement very quickly, and will provide an immediate increase in visibility to the customers. We also help manage online ratings. Some businesses suffer from negative comments made by past customers. The problem is that disgruntled clients tend to voice their opinions more readily than satisfied customers do. For instance, a business may enjoy a thousand happy customers, but only the two dissatisfied customers left comments at the rating site. We can help with this situation as well. For instance, we can implement a program to encourage satisfied customers to leave their comments. We can also help businesses address negative feedback, and win back dissatisfied customers.
SEO Can Be a Great Route
Sometimes, the best way to increase website visibility in search engines is to employ SEO techniques. We do this by inserting a strategic number of keywords into the website content, in order to make the site “search engine friendly.” By doing this, we make sure sites feature content that search engines deem relevant to users.
Take Advantage of Our Expertise
In today’s digital environment, the success of a business may depend on how effectively it uses local advertising with the online portal. Let Webstract Marketing make sure your customers find you before they find the competition. Contact us today.