There are seemingly endless ways to market a local business online these days. From a website, to SEO, to search engine places pages, to pay per click marketing, to buying leads, to social media – there are more avenues to utilize for even many local marketing firms to keep up with.
If you have done SEO for a local business, you will be aware of some of the hardships and annoyances that can come when trying to get citations to match across a hundred local directories, finding local news sources to get links from, and all the rest. I know that I personally have realized some of these frustrations and it got me thinking… Why isn’t my company the one that local businesses and SEOs come to for links rather than me going to dozens of other sites? Or what if I could at least give myself and my clients a head start on marketing with some of my own local niche properties? Here was my idea in a nutshell:
“Be the link you want to have on the web”
Cute huh? Well, I decided to start my own local business directory to accomplish two goals. 1) The directory can actually become an income source outside of doing SEO, 2) not only would such a directory give my clients another local link and citation, it would give me a unique edge that none of my competitors have, and 3) it would give me more visibility in my local community in general.
Those of you who are familiar with the WordPress CMS will realize that there is a WordPress theme for nearly every conceivable website idea under the virtual sun. I experimented with four different local business directories before I landed finally on one. (See my review here: Local Business Directory Themes for WordPress). It cost my company just under $100 and we have started work on modifying the geo theme to fit our specifications.
I’m pretty excited about the direction and hope that this idea will be of benefit to other local marketers who are looking for an advantage over their competition. There are many directions that we can take with this directory idea, and I’m excited to see how it plays out.
If you have done anything similar or have any other local marketing ideas you would like to share, please let me know in the comments below. Thanks.
– MarketerMatt
Scepter Marketing – Local Internet Marketing