Speak­ing to the Cana­dian mar­ket, Chris O’Neill, the Direc­tor of Google Canada, pointed out that only 40% of Cana­dian busi­nesses have web­sites. In con­trast, a whop­ping 86% of Cana­dian con­sumers have done research online before mak­ing a pur­chase. And then there’s the rapid ascent of mobile mar­ket­ing; it’s fore­cast that by the end of 2014, half of all Cana­di­ans will own a smart phone. Clearly then, con­sumers will be search­ing online for infor­ma­tion to inform their pur­chase deci­sions, and with mobile web-enabled smart­phones, those searches will often be focused on find­ing local, imme­di­ate results.

With all the choices, and all the work, that small busi­nesses face to inte­grate dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing effec­tively, Google offers up a handy list of ten pop­u­lar mar­ket­ing options busi­nesses can choose from today to boost their online marketing. 

1. Local list­ings and clas­si­fieds
• Add your busi­ness to list­ing sites. List­ings are typ­i­cally free, and a busi­ness does not have to have a web­site to take some advan­tage of localized directories.

2. Search adver­tis­ing
• Google Adwords, for exam­ple, can be a very effec­tive mar­ket­ing tool to get a mes­sage in front of con­sumers when they are con­sid­er­ing a pur­chase. It is a sim­ple process to cre­ate these text ads that appear on web search results pages. This tac­tic does require some sort of online pres­ence, like a com­pany web­site or com­pany blog.

3. Con­tex­tual ads
• These are ads you place on web­sites that are rel­e­vant to your poten­tial cus­tomers. For exam­ple, if your store sells pet sup­plies, an ad on a web­site ded­i­cated to car­ing for pup­pies could pro­vide your busi­ness with qual­i­fied prospects.

4. Dis­play ads
• These take it up a notch from text ads, with images or even video clips embed­ded in the ads.

5. Geo­tar­get­ing
• That’s a fancy word for restrict­ing your mar­ket­ing to a very local mar­ket. A free first step is for a busi­ness to claim its loca­tion on Google Places – no web­site required.

6. Group buy­ing
• This may not work for every­one, but with the huge pop­u­lar­ity of these pro­grams today, it’s worth investigating.

7. Mobile mar­ket­ing
• As Google put it, it’s not too late to be early on mobile mar­ket­ing. The trend is crys­tal clear – mobile has huge momen­tum, and offers oppor­tu­ni­ties for cre­ative mar­ket­ing. Get­ting a jump­start on it now will place most busi­nesses ahead of their com­peti­tors and pre­pare them to take bet­ter advan­tage of mobile mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties as this mar­ket rapidly devel­ops. Accord­ing to Google, right now 59% of the peo­ple who search for a local busi­ness on their mobile devices end up in the store.

8. Social net­work­ing sites
• It’s free, you don’t have to have a busi­ness web­site, and your cus­tomers are already spend­ing a lot of time on social net­work­ing sites. Three steps to get started are Lis­ten, Learn, Engage.

9. Affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing
• Affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing is a sys­tem where you pay for other busi­nesses to drive prospects to your web­site. Some affil­i­ate sites are designed to allow you to set up a store on their domain.

10. Online videos
• Post­ing short (under three min­utes, ide­ally) videos on video-sharing sites, with a call to action, can be a cost-effective way to drive business. Mediative’s Chris Pinker­ton was a speaker at the Google Engage Con­fer­ence in Van­cou­ver. We will be writ­ing a lot more about local and mobile mar­ket­ing as we focus on this indus­try trend.


Biography / Resume : Karl joined Mediative’s service delivery team in 2008. A year later, he moved to the company’s research department where he conducted online surveys, eye-tracking studies, one-on-one interviews and usability testing. Most recently, he transitioned to the marketing department. Before Mediative, Karl worked in sales and marketing. In 1997, he caught the digital bug and became the original “webmaster” for Roland Canada Music. Around the same time, he began teaching the relatively new topic of Internet marketing to college and university students. Karl’s insatiable curiosity and drive to get to the core and substance of every situation has served him well in his various roles at Mediative.