The way customers search for local businesses is changing:

• 74% of U.S. households use the Internet as a source when shopping locally.
• 20% of all searches among this population are local.
• 45% of local searches had a buying intent.
• Within a year there has been a 13% decrease in yellow pages usage.
• Local marketing on the web is on a par with newspapers as a local shopping resource and should soon supersede newspapers.

The question is, when a prospect searches for your type of business on the Internet, will they find YOU or your competitor? And if they find you, will you have an Internet marketing system in place that converts them into a profitable customer? If you cannot answer 'Yes' to both of those questions, then you have a problem.

As a local business owner, you are probably struggling to figure out this whole Internet marketing thing.

One of the obvious barriers a small business confronts when attempting to market online is complexity and confusion. There's obviously a learning curve and the whole process takes time. Unlike offline marketing, where strategies and techniques are time-honored, the Internet is relatively new to the promotional field. There are no standards or turnkey solutions.

The current problem local businesses face is that everyone wants to sell you solutions. They want to sell you a web site solution, a search engine marketing solution, an e-mail marketing solution, etc. But these are all parts of the puzzle, and what you need is a complete system that uses all these parts and more to convert customers. You need a web conversion system;one that slurps in prospects and spits out profitable customers.

That system should consist of three steps:

• Site Building
• Prospecting
• Customer Conversion

Site Building - Most local businesses are simply building online brochures, and in most cases really bad ones. The power of the Internet allows you to create a potent interface that lets you persuasively present your business, while interacting with your customers. It provides two-way communication, something lacking in all offline promotions.

Surprisingly, most web designers lack the ability to create a web conversion system. They have little comprehension of the power of web dynamics and how it applies to basic marketing techniques. They're satisfied in building you an ineffectual online brochure, and will often charge considerable money for it,

They may pay lip service to marketing strategies like search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and email marketing. But in general they are incapable of implementing successful marketing campaigns. You need to educate yourself on how to make the Internet work for your business. They are few who are capable of doing it for you.

Prospecting - There is no denying there are tried and true offline techniques for marketing your local business. But the Internet offers opportunities to geo-target your customers like never before. There are two overpowering reasons why you need to market online:

• Your customers are increasingly turning to the Internet to search for local products and services like yours.
• The Internet offers the opportunity to significantly reduce your cost per acquisition.

Only a year ago there were few options for reaching your local audiences online. Now the opportunities are exploding. The early players in this field are going to have a distinct advantage. Through search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and local directory listings you can explode your sales.

Customer Conversion - On a local level, customer conversion is more than getting a customer to walk into your store or order your services--(although, that is one of the goals). Your focus is maximizing the lifetime value of your customer. The technology of the Internet allows you to not only interface with your customers, but also interact.

Through email newsletters, request forms, auto-responders and interactive programs, you can create an on-going dialogue with prospects, and form a trusted relationship with customers. And many of the conversion processes can be automated. That means when you are not open for business, your web conversion system is still in the process of converting. Only a very small number of businesses are tapping these conversion resources.

Are you starting to get a feel on how the Internet can impact your local business? With the right knowledge you can avoid the 'confusion and complexity.' With the right strategies you'll be on the cutting edge of the next Internet wave.


Fred Waters is the author of the Take No Survivor Guide to Local Online Marketing. Designed for local businesses that want to reach new customers and profit from the Internet.