Automated Blog Software

While most local service companies have a rudimentary understanding of the value of marketing using the web, many smaller service providers are barely visible online.  Indeed, some businesses have no Internet presence at all.

I want to concentrate my efforts in this article on those small service businesses whose online presence is clearly underutilized.  If you own a small business such as a hair salon, a plumbing service or a lawn care business, do you simply rely upon a classified listing on an advertising site to bring your enterprise to the attention of the ever growing community of web users?

Increasingly your potential customers are turning away from print advertising media and using the Internet to locate services when the need suddenly arises, when they move into your community or when they move into their first homes.  While a small listing giving your phone number and address is better than nothing, don’t most of your first time customers want to know more about you before they entrust you with their bathroom sink or their next haircut?  A hair salon should market online very effectively just as any other service oriented business.

A beginning point is with your own business website. 

Next add informative articles to your site to begin to establish your image as a professional.  For example, if you are in the lawn care business, you might have a series of articles about how to protect perenniel plants during the winter.  If you offer plumbing services, you might write about how to keep drains running smoothly.  A hair salon website could have articles about the latest trends in hair styles.  Someone who runs a child care center could post parenting tips.

Create an email distributed newsletter, and encourage your site’s visitors as well as your current customers to register for it.  The purpose of the newsletter is to develop a continuing relationship with your customers and prospects as much as it is to promote your business.  Mostly send informative emails, rather than focussing entirely upon self-promotion.  If you keep your blatant advertising messages, such as a coupon, infrequent, they will become more powerful.

Find ways to promote your site so that it rises to the top of the search engine listings for relevant searches made by your prospects.  The mere existance of a website is not enough.  You need people in your community to find it.  You should consider article marketing, which is a very effective way in which to promote your website so that it gets search engine attention.  You can write your own articles or you can hire others to write them for you quite inexpensively.

You may want to start on a small scale and ramp up your efforts as you start to see increased revenue as a result of your online marketing efforts.  You’ll be astonished what a difference you will experience in the long run.

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