To help clarify the search marketing and advertising options available to local businesses we’ll divide them into two categories: 1) partially automated search packages and 2) fully customized search marketing services. TopSide offers both options, and we are writing about them candidly from our own experience.

Partially Automated Local Search Marketing Packages

This search marketing service typically combines a web page or microsite with advertising traffic from multiple search engines for one fixed, monthly price. Depending on the provider, there could be other sources of web traffic, ranging from natural search traffic to contextual ads included in the package. Local search packages typically have a low cost of entry (starting at a few hundred dollars per month) and do not provide the option for lots of ongoing changes to the overall search program.

Since many packages include a web page or microsite, this is the choice for businesses that:

• Don’t yet have a website
• Have problems with their current website such as poor conversion of web traffic to buyers
• Want or need an additional online presence

The type of features that typically are not available in the packages include frequent changes in monthly ad budget, different geotargeting or changes in the geographic territory of who can view the ads, testing or changing landing pages, etc. The packages cost less primarily because there is less hands-on customization required in the building and ongoing optimization of the settings. The automation allows features that are otherwise not affordable to a local business.

We won’t mention any companies by name, but one issue to beware of is the bundling of offline advertising you have already done too much of (or otherwise don’t want) with the online search marketing that nearly every local business currently needs.

Customized Search Marketing

In contrast to the partially automated package above, customized search marketing is suited to businesses that need lots of changes and manual attention to the settings that control their ads. Examples of these changes include regular changes to the monthly ad budget (up or down), changes in the geographic location in which ads can be seen (by IP address), changes or testing of landing pages, etc. Although bid management tools may be used to reduce some routine manual actions, custom services require a great deal more hands-on time to build and maintain.

How to Compare Local Advertising Options

If the criteria listed above do not provide you with sufficient direction on which type of search program is right for your business, then comparing the actual cost or estimates of the total cost per lead or sale is the best first step. Be sure to count online leads and incoming phone calls. Cost per lead (and of course, the percentage of those leads that covert to paying customers) is a way to measure or compare any direct marketing effort. If you have decided that a local search package is for you, then use total cost per lead to compare one provider of local packages with another. We often see local business owners put too much focus on the process details and not enough on this simple but critical measure of results.

With the hope that this post will stimulate scholarly or scientifically valid behavioral research as to the reasons why searchers do not include geodescriptors in their queries, we’re going to have a little fun and go out on a limb with TopSide Media’s Five Categories of Online Local Search Behavior.

TopSide’s Five Categories of Online Local Search Behavior

1. Location Centric
   This searcher type knows that through his/her internet service provider (ISP) and IP address, the search engines, and even some web sites, know where he/she is located. So, why should anyone have to type a city or zip code in the search box?
   To see an example of a web site that recognizes your location, go to www.radiator.com. On their home page, just under the header graphics, you will see your city’s name in bold. Disclosure: I purchased a radiator from these guys recently; and no, they are not a TopSide Media client.
2. Product or Service Centric
   A second type is the searcher who is not aware of how search engines work. They are focused on the features of the product or service they are interested in–not about how the latest search algorithm works with or without city names included. I once had a boss named Bud who regularly reminded me that “customers want what they want, when they want it”. Bud’s advice did not include anything about where, so his description certainly applies to this type of searcher.
3. Swamped
   These searchers are busy and want to type the fewest words necessary. Less typing = faster info. On to the next item…fast
4. Handheld Choppers
   The choppers type on a PDA or cell phone keypad most of the time and always use shortcuts when typing. Even on ther desktp
5. The Search Gamer
   This searcher knows a lot about how search engines work but likes to play Stump the Chump. That way, they get to see the latest tweaks in the search engine settings and do business with the most web savvy local companies without having to type much to start with, or reload the page with more a detailed search. Rather than starting with a highly specific multi-word query and working out to broader ones (like an engineer or other left brainer would), the Search Gamer types in vague, one or two-word searches to see which webmasters or search engine advertisers have anticipated his or her sporting query and can serve up the most relevant results to it.

Why this matters to web site owners

From the perspective of marketing/advertising cost and reaching the customers you want to target (while excluding those you do not wish to reach) this topic matters a lot.

Example: If you provide a product or service that gets implemented locally, such as muffler replacement or a dentist office, you only want questions or requests for appointments within your service area, right? Unless you are selling ad space, reaching web searchers outside that area only wastes your time and money. Consider this: if your city has a population of 1 million and you somehow (magically; in reality this would not happen) could have 100% of the U.S. traffic for the key phrase muffler replacement, receiving 99+% of the search traffic from geographical areas other than the area around your muffler shop would do you no good at all.

The example above explains why effective integrated online marketing includes an optimum mix of optimization for local natural search (SEO) and search engine ads such as the Sponsored Links in Google AdWords. To get the web traffic you want when you want it, you need the right tactics in the right proportions and at the right time.

Like It or Not

Now that you’ve read this, we would like to tip our Stetsons to Click and Clack, the CarTalk guys for this tongue-in-cheek line of thinking.

We enjoy their show weekly, and listening to them on National Public Radio inspired the profiles above as well as the automotive example. If you found this post useful and/or entertaining, please leave a comment and pass it along to a friend or colleague. If you don’t care for it, write the reason(s) for your dissatisfaction into the memo section of a generous check payable to us, which we will use to hire a full-time copywriter for our blog