Do you ever wonder how your customers find you? In today’s digital age, this seems to an easy answer, Google Analytics and Adwords provides a lot of valuable tools that business owners can use to gain insight, but the issue is there are so many ways to promote a business that figuring out the ones that get the most conversions and create customer loyalty in a fragmented online marketplace is the multi-billion dollar question.
MarketingSherpa recently highlighted a Chart of the Week where they displayed the findings from a survey of 2,147 U.S. adults to help identify effective channels for local marketing.
The big winner in this survey showed that when it came to searching for local businesses or services, search engines won out – 65% indicated that search engines is the first place they would turn look for a business. That said while 65% is nothing to sneeze at, MarketingSherpa did mention that there were still 30-percent of people NOT looking at search engines. So where are they going?
In the chart of the week, company websites and mobile searches came out as silver and bronze medal winners followed by a fourth runner up – PRINT yellow pages. Print, regardless of online marketing experts discounting its effectiveness, is still a popular medium for finding a business. Newspapers were also on the chart at a somewhat surprising 30-percent.
What is the lesson here? Ultimately, MarketingSherpa says this means that both traditional and online methods can work in combination. Digital has the mechanism to better track their users than do print sources, but ultimately, a mixture of both print and online is a good strategy: Yahoo!, Yellow Pages, Yelp and your local newspaper can all work together to grow your business.
Now what were the least likely tactics that people used to find a business? See below…
- Location based social media sites – 18%
- Blogs – 19%
- Paid online listings – 21%
From the Local Search Association
Question – When looking for a local business – how willing are you to consult these information sources:
- Location based social media sites – 18%
- Blog sites – 19%
- Paid online listings – 21%
- Internet-based industry guides- 21%
- Apps on your phone – 22%
- Internet based city guides – 23%
- Internet -based videos – 25%
- Social Media – 27%
- Daily Deals -28%
- Ratings and Reviews – 29%
- Newspapers – 30%
- Internet Yellow Pages – 33%
- Print Yellow Pages – 35%
- Mobile Search – 36%
- Company Website – 50%
- Search Engines – 65%
While it may not be surprising that search engines are the most common way people find your business, you should consider what people see when they search for your business. Online reputation management involves taking proactive steps to make a positive first impression when people are searching for you or your company online, by promoting positive information about you and your business and minimizing or eliminating the impact of damaging online content.
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