A Yellow Pages Ad or a Web Site?
Smart Local Business Owners Know the Answer!

From Theresa Coffey, TNT Editor...

Which has more value these days a Yellow Pages ad or a Web site? An excellent (and very timely) question!

Local business owners can still survive without a Web site for the next short while. However, some interesting e-commerce trends are developing that will soon make a Web site an absolute necessity...

1) Increasing numbers of searching "pre-customers" are finding those big, heavy paper Yellow Pages directories too inconvenient and limiting. It's so much easier and flexible to use Google and other Search Engines.

2) Search Engines are going local! It is now possible to target your consumers by city, right down to the zip/postal code. Google is leading the way! (More on this below.)

3) More and more small local businesses owners are catching on to the Net's potential to grow their local businesses, steal competitors' customers and add brand new revenue streams that they would never have thought possible.

With an SBI! niche Web site, regardless of the nature or size of your business, you can compete on the same footing as bigger companies. There is no need to buy expensive Yellow Pages packages or multiple half-page ads in order to get "full coverage" across several business categories or geographic regions.

Consider the benefits of your SBI! site versus an Yellow Pages ad. Does a Yellow Pages ad...

• attract hundreds, even thousands, of visitors, many of whom become new business, per day?
  
  
• PREsell prospective customers before they call you?
  
  
• nurture, encourage and develop the relationship you already maintain with existing customers, increasing both loyalty and repeat business?
  
  
• command undivided attention? Once they are on your site, you have their total attention (unlike a crowded Yellow Pages page)
  
  
• take clients away from competitors?
• develop new ways to monetize your skills and knowledge?
  
  
• give you the ability to update frequently and to reach your clients with seasonal specials, interesting tidbits, etc.?
  
  
• open new markets globally?

Full-compare SBI!'s power to a Yellow Pages ad!

Traffic is the lifeblood of your business. You can never have enough traffic or business. More traffic means more potential customers and more potential sales. Follow the process in the Action Guide, step by step, and you will consistently pull in a high volume of targeted traffic to your site... and generate income.

In a nutshell, here's your pathway to success as a local business owner...

STEP 1) Create high-value Content about the niche that your business fills. This is a critical because people search for information, for solutions, locally and globally. They do not search for YOU or your company. If they knew you existed, they would not be searching. They would already be customers adding to your bottom line.

STEP 2) Create Web pages that rank highly at the Search Engines. You have a distinct advantage over your competitors. SBI!'s Brainstorm It! makes it simple to identify frequently searched, profitable keywords. And its Analyze It! tool shows you how to optimize your pages effectively. As a result, your site is easy to find and it attracts free, targeted, interested visitors (Traffic).

STEP 3) PREsell effectively with relevant, original, high-value information that focuses of the needs of your target group. Publish an e-zine to further build trust and credibility. And then...

STEP 4) Monetize those targeted, PREsold, niche-interested visitors. Your primary goal is to convert some of those warm, willing-to-buy visitors into local customers (and then repeat customers, thanks to your e-zine) for your products and services (i.e., solutions that address the needs and wants of your unique audience). But you also have excellent opportunities to develop several additional streams of revenue so...

STEP 5) To monetize as large a percent as possible of your visitors (whether they live in your neighborhood or in another country), diversify beyond a single monetization model. Add other streams to maximize both revenue and overall business stability (i.e., join an affiliate program or two, develop and sell an e-book, register for Google's AdSense program, set up a finder/referral contract, sell auction items, etc.)

Keyword-Focused Content + Traffic + Diversified Monetization Models = Profits.

And since we are on the topic of profitable customers... do you know the approximate Lifetime Value of a new customer (i.e., the amount of profit that a new customer will bring to your business over his/her lifetime of dealing with you)? It is usually in the thousands of dollars -- sometimes in the tens of thousands.

The value of a single new lifelong customer, and the offline word-of-mouth "buzz" that s/he creates, means your business stands to lose by not maintaining a Web presence.

Bottom line?

A Yellow Pages ad is no longer a cost-effective advertising option and its appeal is spiralling downward. David Jonah, an SBI! Certified Webmaster, sums up the situation well...

"As convenience and accuracy increases, consumers will accelerate their use of Web content search tools for local search tasks and, in the process, increase the importance of content and web sites for business operations. This will occur in every business regardless of size, because the Internet, lead by search engine's time-saving convenience and search accuracy, is driving the web to become a local community information phenomena.

'Let your fingers do the walking', the familiar Yellow Page directory promo is now being amended to let-your-fingers-do-the-finding, or more pointedly, know-before-you-go. Know-before-you-go web search has revolutionized the travel industry and is about to turn retail on its check-out counter wait lines."

Complete text of David Jonah's complete article... "Google Puts Local Search on the Map... Get Your Local Business Site Ready NOW!" (originally published in the Site Build It! Xpress e-zine.