As a local Oxford, MS Internet marketing consultant, I get this question all the time: "Why do I need to invest in Internet marketing when I am just a small local company?" It is a great question and one that needs to be addressed with one fact. And that fact is the power of SEARCH... people are using search engines more than ever and they are using them to find your business! Think about it.
When is the last time that you picked up the phone book to call a local business? If you are like me, then it has been awhile. If you are like me and the billions of other Internet users, then you probably just pull up Google when you want to find local businesses. Maybe you are looking for a phone number; maybe you are looking for product information; maybe you are looking for an address... whatever you are looking for, the point is you are using SEARCH ENGINES to find it. In fact, a study by the Yellow Pages Association found that 12% of all core search queries on search engines are geared toward local terms, a 51% increase year over year. Think about that... of all the billions of searches each month, 12% are focused on LOCAL terms... that means people are now attaching local geographical phrases to their searches to find what they are looking for.
So, for instance, instead of searching for web design, people are now searching for "Oxford, MS web design"... it is LOCAL. This fact has huge implications for businesses of all kinds in a local market.
Let's do an example: Suppose you are a barber in Oxford, Ms... now, back in the days of phone books, a barber in Oxford would not need a presence on the Internet at all. However, in the current days of Google domination a barber is leaving business on the table if he does not have a web presence simply because people are typing in "Barbers in Oxford, MS" every single day. So if you are the barber that has a nice website and on top of the search engines when someone types that term in, then you are the barber that is booking appointments... plain and simple.
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