Today, almost every business that wants to reach target audiences in internet user communities has a business directory listing page or a website. Doing this ensures prospective customers can see their products and services before contacting them. But this is not all, having a good online business presence ensures search engine algorithms index their offers and highlight their brand in related business categories. Doing this also initiates their online marketing functions to some extent, thus lending better visibility and customer reach. Moreover, when the business is closed during off-peak hours of a day, potential customers can still contact them for quotations, or buy from them if they have an eCommerce store.
Limited Results, Business Directory Listing
It’s important for a business to have a good number of online listings to generate leads, from a local area or from distant locations. And it’s important to be better visible than competing firms, or better be the best.
But lead generation results from business directory listings have certain limitations. For one, there are simply too many business listing per page on any given directory. And if you have a mention in there, this can be contra-productive for your firm. How would that be?
[su_list]
- Imagine you are looking for beauty salons in Los Angeles and have hit upon one of the online yellow pages there. A quick research on the above criteria reveals over 3000 results. As a prospective client, your brand would have to stand higher than 2,999 plus beauty salons to get that business. Tough competition, isn’t it?
- Now let’s imagine this prospective client clicks on a couple of listings, most likely to be among the top 5 or top 10 visible ones. And simply books an appointment with a competitor’s firms because they ranked up higher. Although you may be offering better services and exciting deals, but a competitor has outbid you on a yellow page.
- Then let’s throw in a more complex competitor strategy… that let’s assume your business is yet to implement fully. A well structured website with loads of fans and social media engagement. Add to that a string of user testimonials, and that can make their products or services look better.
- This also brings in the fact that a well managed online presence gives that competitor more opportunities to generate customer signups and maybe price their products and services higher than you.
[/su_list]
Given above are some of the challenges of limiting a business marketing plan to online directories and yellow pages. But here is another challenge…
Cost Of Website Design, Development, Marketing
I believe it is important for every business to have good presence on online business listing sites. This helps get visibility to search algorithms from Google, Bing, Yahoo as well as SEO points. And potential customers are likely to visit your website from such listings.
But for most small and medium businesses, the very cost of developing a website and marketing it consistently to be on top, is intimidating. Add to that the seemingly complex mix of activities to hire an agency or freelancers and measuring their work to make appropriate payments. And then paying for advertising costs to search engines, influencers or social media networks to boost lead generation results.
And what could be the approximate cost? In the USA, businesses are spending at least US$1000 per month to maintain their online presence. Where competition is high with more businesses vying for same target audience wallets, this average monthly spend can shoot up to US$3000-5000.
Does this spending guarantee sales for a small and medium business? No. For no-one can or practically be able to guarantee sales.
What this spending ensures is higher visibility in target online communities and user bases. Given the competitiveness in marketplaces today, this approach calls for big budget marketing campaigns.
Is there an alternative? YES…
Solution: Free Start Marketing, Pay After Results
Sounds too good to be true?
Well, you could ignore this awesome service and keep paying for under-productive digital marketing campaigns. Or, you would stop for a while and peek into this remarkable marketing service – Free Start Marketing Plan.
Where hundreds of firms are aggressively offering you paid marketing services, we at Aidasinc have a different way of delivering results. We believe in building marketing relationships on win-win models and have built of business on a performance linked growth model.
Yours could be a local business looking for clients in specific neighborhoods of the city or a multi location business seeking customers from multiple regions across countries. Our digital marketing team has custom solutions to develop the tools, communication channels and sales funnel to support your growth.
So why wait, see the plan details here and contact us to start to build your online presence now, its free to start.
Come, let’s build a competitive advantage for businesses!