Local Online Marketing Vs Local Marketing Offline

By Author: Claude Whitacre
Total Articles: 164
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Everyone has a purchasing progression they go through. It may take as short a time as several hours to go through it all. It may take a year or more to go through the buying process. But here is the process.

This is the way most people buy;

1) The prospects are aware of a need, or want.

2) The prospects collect information about the product, service, or solution to their problem.

3) The prospects ask friends, gathering social proof.

This is another way of gathering more information to make a decision. Reading customer review, reading articles on the subject, watching videos, twittering friends, e-mailing friends, reading Consumer Report, or calling an expert on the subject are all simply ways to gather more information.

In due course, enough information is gathered to make the customer comfortable in making a decision.
Again, the time required can vary radically for the individual
customer.

Nearly 95% of the "Buying Process", the customer is gathering information. Only about 5% of the time is the customer actually looking to buy right ...
... then.

With print marketing, you will likely make the most profit by concentrating on the buyers that are at the end of the buying process. Why? Because offline marketing to provide information ignores the people ready to buy now.

Virtually never does a newspaper reader search for ads to buy from. They are looking for news or opinion. The radio listener is listening for music, news, or a talk show..they are not waiting to hear your ad.

In offline marketing, you are surprising the customer by going to them. They are not looking for you. And the customer hearing your radio advertisement, does not write down your phone number to call until they are prepared to buy. The newspaper reader won't clip out your ad until the shoppers are ready to buy.

So marketing offline to people at the beginning of the buying process is a waste of money.

Every advertiser that has tested marketing results, will agree with that assessment.

Currently, with local online marketing, it's totally different. Why?

Because people are going online to get information. After entertainment, the biggest reason people go online is to learn something. Buying something is a distant second place reason to go online.

And with information, I call it "Content Marketing", you can become the source of the information the local prospect is looking for.

With content marketing, you can interest prospects at every point of the buying process. You can become the number one source for opinions, reviews, videos, articles, buying guides, product comparisons, and more. You can be the "Go To Guy" for that prospect.

How? By creating all of these things yourself or having someone do it for you. Online search engines are loaded with online directory listings, and websites. Do any local search, for any product category, and you'll see what I mean. Every listing in a Google search will be online directory listings or website listings.

But do you know what search engines like Google love? Content. High quality, relevant, factual content.

So they list articles, reviews, and particularly video higher in the local search results.

Those listings can almost all be yours.
To discover more regarding how "Content Marketing" will be able to help your local small business dominate the local search results, go to http://www.localprofitgeyser.com To pay a visit to the author's web site and discover more about Claude's speaking services, go to http://www.claudewhitacre.com