local online advertising for dummies

Court Cunningham CEO of Yodle Stephanie Brown Local business consultant Learn to: • Plan and launch an effective local online advertising campaign • Set up a Web site that draws local traffic • Maximize your presence on top search engines Inside — find out how to get a $100 advertising credit from Yodle ®! Local Online Advertising Making Everything Easier! ™ Get a $100 advertising credit from Yodle! Look inside for details on how your company can get $100 in online advertising from Yodle! Open the book and find: • Proven strategies for using search engines to get more customers • How the Web is becoming more local • Definitions for the lingo of the online advertising world • Ideas for creating a catchy Web site • Ways to engage your customers and keep them coming back • When help is worth paying for • How to use e-mail without becoming a spammer • Ten common mistakes and how to avoid them Court Cunningham is CEO of Yodle, a leading local online advertising company that works with thousands of businesses. Before joining Yodle, he held positions at Community Connect and Double Click. Stephanie Brown is a local business consultant who has been helping businesses market online since 1994. Internet/Web Marketing $24.99 US / $29.99 CN / £17.99 UK ISBN 978-0-470-49742-5 Go to Dummies.com ® for videos, step-by-step examples, how-to articles, or to shop! Competition is tough! Get an advantage with online advertising aimed at local customers The Internet has changed the way you attract customers to a local business. Now you need a killer Web site, strong presence on search engines, and a vibrant social media campaign along with your other ads to grab the attention of consumers. This book offers the advice of advertising professionals who know how the online world can provide big help for your business! • Create a plan — discover where your customers hang out online, set goals, and identify strategies for success • The site’s the thing — learn how to create a customer-focused Web site that’s search engine–friendly • Getting them there — understand how to use search engine marketing, banner ads, and social networks • Turn clicks into customers — use blogs, online video, and online coupons to engage visitors on your Web site • Measure results — find out how to determine ROI, where your leads come from, and how to see if your ads are working Local Online Advertising Cunningham Brown spine=.7680” www.it-ebooks.info How to go to your page This eBook contains a Bonus Chapter that is paginated separately from the rest of the book. The pagination consists of “BC” plus the page number, separated by a hyphen. For example, to go to page 5 of the Bonus Chapter, type BC-5 in the “page #” box at the top of the screen and click “Go.” To go to page 7 of the Bonus Chapter, type BC-7… and so forth. www.it-ebooks.info spine=.7680” Start with FREE Cheat Sheets Cheat Sheets include • Checklists • Charts • Common Instructions • And Other Good Stuff! Get Smart at Dummies.com Dummies.com makes your life easier with 1,000s of answers on everything from removing wallpaper to using the latest version of Windows. Check out our • Videos • Illustrated Articles • Step-by-Step Instructions Plus, each month you can win valuable prizes by entering our Dummies.com sweepstakes. * Want a weekly dose of Dummies? 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Get More and Do More at Dummies.com ® To access the Cheat Sheet created specifically for this book, go to www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/localonlineadvertising www.it-ebooks.info Local Online Advertising FOR DUMmIES ‰ 01_497425-ffirs.indd i01_497425-ffirs.indd i 3/3/10 3:51 PM3/3/10 3:51 PM www.it-ebooks.info 01_497425-ffirs.indd ii01_497425-ffirs.indd ii 3/3/10 3:51 PM3/3/10 3:51 PM www.it-ebooks.info by Court Cunningham and Stephanie Brown Local Online Advertising FOR DUMmIES ‰ 01_497425-ffirs.indd iii01_497425-ffirs.indd iii 3/3/10 3:51 PM3/3/10 3:51 PM www.it-ebooks.info Local Online Advertising For Dummies ® Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permit- ted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http:// www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/ or its af liates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. 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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010922570 ISBN: 978-0-470-49742-5 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 01_497425-ffirs.indd iv01_497425-ffirs.indd iv 3/3/10 3:51 PM3/3/10 3:51 PM www.it-ebooks.info About the Authors Court Cunningham is the CEO of Yodle, a leading local online advertising company that works with over 6,000 local businesses across America. At Yodle, Court oversees all aspects of operations and strategy, including technology, product development, sales, and marketing. Prior to joining Yodle, Court held the position of COO at Community Connect, a niche social networking company, where he lead consumer marketing, product management, and development efforts. Before that, as SVP/GM of the Marketing Automation group at DoubleClick, he was instrumental in establishing DARTmail as the industry leading e-mail marketing solution. Court received a BA in English from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. For more information about Court and his company Yodle, go to www.yodle.com. Stephanie Brown has been evangelizing Internet marketing since 1994. In fact, she specializes in helping clients use many of the tools and techniques contained in this book to grow their businesses. Over the years, she has held management positions at marketing  rms and Internet companies, where she has led teams in creating customer-focused online solutions for accounts big and small, local and national. Today she is a partner at Word Communications, an integrated marketing  rm in Albany, New York. Her clients are a living laboratory for exploring the latest best practices — in e-mail, social media, search marketing, landing page design, Web analytics and optimization, and of ine integration. Stephanie can be reached at sbrown3@nycap.rr.com or www. wordcommunications.com. 01_497425-ffirs.indd v01_497425-ffirs.indd v 3/3/10 3:51 PM3/3/10 3:51 PM www.it-ebooks.info 01_497425-ffirs.indd vi01_497425-ffirs.indd vi 3/3/10 3:51 PM3/3/10 3:51 PM www.it-ebooks.info Dedication Court Cunningham: I want to dedicate this book to all small business owners, the hardest working people I know. Stephanie Brown: This book is dedicated to the people and the dogs I ignored during the researching and writing of it. (You know who you are.) I also dedicate this book to my mother, Helga Olsson, and my stepmother, Ruth Brown, whose examples have always taught me to persevere. Authors’ Acknowledgments Court Cunningham: A large number of people on the Yodle team played signi cant roles in creating this book — not the least of which was Cam Lay — who was instrumental in helping to organize the content of this book, leveraged his own marketing background to give us another set of eyes for each and every chapter, and arduously provided the  rst round of edits. Additional content contributors from Yodle included Joseph Sievers, Michael Baker, Arpan Jhaveri, Milind Mehere, and the invaluable John Switzer. Finally, I want to thank the Yodle Marketing team members who provided further feedback including Kara Silverman, Herman Mallhi, Allyse Coughlin, and Alisa Adler — as well as our Senior Director of Marketing, Joel Laffer, who encouraged me to do this book in the  rst place. Stephanie Brown: It would be a sin not to acknowledge the two people who worked tirelessly (and occasionally feverishly) to bring the best out in this book: Editorial Assistant David Idema, whose wry humor makes this a fun read, and Yodle’s Cam Lay, whose steady support and gentle task-mastering got us through. Eat your peas! 01_497425-ffirs.indd vii01_497425-ffirs.indd vii 3/3/10 3:51 PM3/3/10 3:51 PM www.it-ebooks.info [...]... 1 Part I: Getting Started with Local Online Advertising 7 Chapter 1: Online: It’s Where Your Customers Are 9 Chapter 2: Engaging Your Advertising Arsenal 19 Chapter 3: Planning Your Online Advertising Campaign 43 Part II: Setting the Foundation for Local Online Advertising Success 59 Chapter 4: Building a Great Web Site: The Key to Online Advertising Success 61 Chapter 5:... analyzing the results of your online marketing efforts www.it-ebooks.info 3 4 Local Online Advertising For Dummies Part III: Doing the Advertising Part of Local Online Advertising This is really the nuts and bolts of the book We look, in some detail, at search engine advertising and the elements of a successful e-mail campaign You also find out how to employ techniques, such as advertising in banner ads,... amount of local content online leads consumers to increasingly look for local services online Increase in local consumer searches online leads local businesses to see big opportunity Local search postitive feedback loop Figure 1-1: The positive feedback loop created by local search To better serve both consumers and local advertisers, search engines improve organization of local content and add more local. .. Part II: Setting the Foundation for Local Online Advertising Success 3 Part III: Doing the Advertising Part of Local Online Advertising 4 Part IV: Keeping Your Customers Coming Back 4 Part V: The Part of Tens 4 Icons Used in This Book 4 Where to Go from Here 5 Part I: Getting Started with Local Online Advertising 7 Chapter 1: Online: It’s Where Your Customers... Web is local search Local search is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: local people looking for local goods and services Of course, local people have always been looking for local goods and services What’s changed is how they search That is, on the Web The defining characteristic of local search is that the people who use it have local intent That probably sounds pretty broad, and it is Local. .. www.it-ebooks.info xiii xiv Local Online Advertising For Dummies Chapter 8: Getting Web Traffic for Free: Practicing Search Engine Optimization .139 Leveraging Local Search Listings for Easy Visibility 140 Your (nearly) top-dog status 141 Counting the reasons to hook up with local searches 142 How to go local 143 Looking at local listing providers ... little effort, get as much (or as little) information you need at any particular moment Zip, zop, and you’re there If only the rest of life was so easy The following sections briefly describe what the five parts in this book cover Part I: Getting Started with Local Online Advertising This part gives you an overall picture of local online advertising: Why it’s become such a major tool for local businesses... xviii Local Online Advertising For Dummies Chapter 19: Ten Steps to an Effective Local Online Advertising Plan 333 Committing to the Planning Process 333 Having Clear Goals in Mind 334 Knowing Your Audience 334 Understanding How Users Behave Online 335 Considering Your Investment of Time and Money 335 Building a Web Site Designed for. .. complex, even intimidating, to local business owners who’ve relied for years on traditional advertising channels and methods In reality, all the Web does is greatly accelerate the speed that traditional marketing concepts can now be applied and responded to by eager customers and prospects In Local Online Advertising For Dummies, we look at how local businesses can put online marketing to profitable... www.it-ebooks.info 2 Local Online Advertising For Dummies In any case, this book isn’t a textbook; it’s a reference, or a guide This book’s purpose is to give you a basic introduction to local online advertising, from which you can then go on to more sophisticated sources, if necessary Conventions Used in This Book We use a few conventions throughout this book to make things easier for you: ✓ We use italics for emphasis . Getting Started with Local Online Advertising 3 Part II: Setting the Foundation for Local Online Advertising Success 3 Part III: Doing the Advertising Part of Local Online Advertising 4 Part IV:. Stephanie Brown Local Online Advertising FOR DUMmIES ‰ 01_497425-ffirs.indd iii01_497425-ffirs.indd iii 3/3/10 3:51 PM3/3/10 3:51 PM www.it-ebooks.info Local Online Advertising For Dummies ® Published. Sheet created specifically for this book, go to www .dummies. com/cheatsheet/localonlineadvertising www.it-ebooks.info Local Online Advertising FOR DUMmIES ‰ 01_497425-ffirs.indd i01_497425-ffirs.indd