In August 2009, I was sitting in a large room in Silicon Valley with the local business product managers from Google, Bing and Yahoo no more than 30 feet from my chair.  When it was time for questions, I was the first to stand up and asked the question.. How do you plan on solving the service area problems? Well, I've wanted to create this post for some time, however I'm not sure if it will really add any value to you, unless you're a search engine! They didn't have their answers, or didn't want to share them at this time.  In fact, when asked if they would listen to us marketers who represent 10's of thousands of local business, would they listen?  As much as I love Google, I was appauled by the response, I felt like this Google employee had a chip on his shoulder and basically said "We're Google, we don't need you". On the other hand, a couple of days later my office phone rang with the caller id showing "Microsoft Corp".  It was Kevin Hagwell, Bing's Product Manager...how cool is that?!  I mean, scary too, I don't remember giving him my card! The problem the search engines are facing right now is the service area challenge in their local business listings. Let's take a look at this search.  Notice the keyword [courier service].  Google has kindly let me know of the local companies in my area and given me a map without telling them where I am located.  T[...]

When people start promoting a local business on the internet, there are a lot of mistakes that they can make if they're not careful. One of the worst of these is creating content that is really just a straight up advertisement for their products. People coming from the local business world often have problems with this, because when advertising a local business off line – you need to advertise! However, once you move your business on the internet, you need to take a different approach, or even hire an Internet Marketing Agency. When you first start creating sites and pages to promote your own site, one of the first that you'll probably tackle is a Squidoo lens.  That Squidoo lens is an example of a local courier service company creating value for their industry and yet not promoting their company extensively.  This is, in its most basic form, simply a page on a give topic. The important distinction about a lens that you need to make is that you don't want to make it about your site itself. That’s an advertisement, and won't be successful. Instead, you need to think of the lens supporting your site. This means that when someone pays a visit to your Squidoo lens, they shouldn't be bombarded with things telling them how great your site is, or links pointing to your site. Instead, they should find something that actually provides them with information that the[...]

Well, is it over or is this just the start?  The last two weeks I've likely worked 200 hours, with 15-18 hour days and our site just went live and now I can not sleep.  I'm not looking forward to the time to teach, and not build an infrastructure. I've spent something like almost the last two years creating material for the MLBO course and recently the LMS teams has been working hard to build a strong, robust back end.  It's really something else actually. Between the automation, the video broadcast, the amazing forum and comple x backend, we are able to deliver some pretty cool technology.  I'm still amazed what we can do. In any event, this is likely the most informal post on this blog and I really no objective for this post except to announce MLBO is live! Check it out. Marketing Local Business Online http://www.localmarketingsource.com/marketing-local-business-online There is a lot you can read there.  There is A LOT of video content on the site, all for FREE.  There is information on the blog and there is a full 30 day money back guarantee.  Everything is 100% automated, you pay, you get immediate access to the content, the videos, the files, the forum, everything, right away. Check it out, if you don't like what you see, cancel your membership and you get 100% of your money back. http://www.localmarketingsource.com/marketing-local-busines[...]

The Marketing Local Business Online Agency Coaching Course is almost ready to launch!  Local Marketing Source, LLC plans to launch the course on Thursday November 12, 2009.  Make sure to register to your right if you want to be informed when the course goes live. LMS has been providing some great content lately, such as the Selling Local Internet Marketing Services video.  This is about 25 minutes of a 60+ minute webinar with open questions. You can check out our Squidoo Lens on Marketing Local Business Online. Below you'll get previews of three of the 39 videos included in the course. Introduction Preview Here is a preview to the Introduction video of the course.  This video is shortened from it's 20 minute length. This video is the preview from Chapter 5, Website Conversion for Small Local Businesses This is a short preview video of Chapter 4 Driving Traffic and Conversion [...]

Local Search Marketing is the process of a local business who wants to acquire new customers utilizing strategic placement within the search engines. Therefore, local search marketing is comprised of placing such local business in three separate areas of the search engine results page (SERP). These three areas are: Paid.  as in PPC or Adwords in the case of Google. Organic.  These are the mainstream results. Local Business Results (LBR).  This is when Google or Yahoo! shows the map of the physical location of the company. Here's a nice post on SEO vs PPC.  Here's a post on Local Business Results and Citations. In order to place a local business in any of these area requires a specific skill set.  Just like how different how a carpenter, plumber, electrician and artitect are require to build a home, to position a website in any of these areas require a different skill. These skills are differents sets of online marketing skills.  There are experts in each field of Local Search Marketing. For example, being good at the paid results means you can double the traffic and cut the costs by 50%, from the numbers Google gives you.  Perhaps the skills for LBR including knowing that citations are the driver along with public opinion.  This skill is leaning more towards creativity than science.  SEO, or organic, on the other hand, is a highly misleading concep[...]