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“All my business is referred” and “It’s all word of mouth” are often said by business owners when they are declining new advertising opportunities. It’s often said with a great deal of pride, which it should be… it says that the business is treating it’s customers well.

However, I think, some business owners take this too far and tie it in with esteem or ego. And that could be limiting… so let’s take a quick look at why this may be happening.

Go to a search engine and type in the name of your company and town. Chances are that you come up, right?

Now, do another search and type in the category of your business plus the town and then some of the surrounding communities.

If you are like most businesses you came in the first search, in the second it got a little tougher and the third search we may have lost you.

So, the reason all the business is from word of mouth is that your only opportunity for new business comes when someone knows your name well enough to type it in. Where else, but referrals, could it come from?

I understand that referred business is the best and I don’t mean to come across like search is the only answer… could be yellow pages, direct mail etc. I’m just saying not to limit yourself. And when ALL the business is word of mouth it says as much about your lack of advertising as it does your wonderfulness… so don’t make it an ego thing… you will only hurt yourself.

Some resources to get started:

Graywolf shares 13 tips to get you started for free
My DIY Website & Promotion on a ShoeString
Sugarrae on Launching the Local Website
Matt McGee’s Guide to Google Local
Seoish asks several experts what they would do with $100

Local Search #1 Rule

• Advertise on sites that a person would logically use when actively seeking to purchase from a business like yours.

A couple of examples… could you picture someone going to Google or Superpages.com and typing in your business category plus a geographic indicator? Yes.

But how about a blog like this one… would you go to the search box of this blog and do a local business search. No.

So, the conclusion is that small businesses should not advertise on Google’s content network… agreed?

This is certainly a debatable point, but my opinion is that small businesses should follow rule #1 closely. What surprises me is that a yellow page company doesn’t agree. After all, a yellow page ad is the purest form of this rule.

But look at this:

This is a page from a forum that is providing advice on aligning text with an image in XHTML. The ad placed by dex media is for a dentist promoting invisalign braces. It’s easy to assume that the Dentist is not likely to secure a patient from this ad.

Wonky Search Results Go With The Territory

Anyone who has done a search campaign has had their ad shown in wonky searches. I’m not beating up Dex for that. We will all do that at one time or another. But I am questioning whether or not they should put their advertisers on the content network.

I think the biggest reason advertisers trust yellow page companies with their search campaigns is because they believe intuitively that yellow page companies will naturally follow local search’s #1 rule.

I also think that search marketers who charge a percentage of spend need to hold themselves to a higher standard. A result like this could make it look like the person who set up the campaign was trying to increase spend. After all, on the content network this ad may only need to be shown, not even clicked, to drive revenue. As CPM is an option on the content network.

Confusion and difficulty is often cited as a big reason local businesses don’t participate more in search marketing. It does not need to be this complicated. Just don’t use the content network in local search.

For a list of the sites that I would recommend a small business consider see the image on this local search post.