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The 3 fears that all small businesses must overcome to be active in local search engine marketing are:

1. Local Search Engine Marketing doesn’t work.
2. Local Search won’t work for my type of business
3. Search Marketing won’t work for me.

Afraid Of The Unknown - Overcoming Fear #1

Sharing statistics is the best way to help a potential local advertiser understand the importance of advertising on the web. The ability to relate it to other media, as in this chart from Screenwerk is perfect.

Next, breakdown the traffic by site, this is getting a little old ( July 2006 from Comscore), but it’s still the best study I’ve seen on local.

Wouldn’t You Like to Be A Pepper Too! - Overcoming Fear #2

To overcome the fear that search isn’t right for the particular industry look at the competition.

Do a few searches on some of the sites mentioned above and look for others in that industry who are having success. Defining success is difficult… but the most convincing is time. If a competitor has been advertising on that site month after month… year after year… it proves it’s working for that industry.

Every Man Is An Island - Overcoming Fear #3

Copy is the key to overcoming this fear. Ask, “Why would someone choose your business over the competition?” The answer is very often the headline… and if you have a good headline… you want people to see it.

Small business owners are savvy enough to know that ad copy/promotional text/web design are important. They know it intuitively, but are not experienced enough to articulate it quite that way. So, this fear is the one that leads to procrastination… and if it’s a sales call… it will end with “I’ll think about it.” What they need to think about is the message but they don’t know it. If you don’t help them… then and there… you’ve missed it.

A small business will get involved with search, when they understand why and how:

Why they should advertise in Search Marketing.

And then…

How to do it effectively.

When these 3 fears are overcome, a small business will engage search marketing aggressively.

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I recently came across a keyword report provided by an IYP doing paid-search advertising for a local advertiser. The advertiser is a Heating & Air guy located in Central New Jersey.

I’m not going to say what IYP managed this campaign and because I got this report from a third party I couldn’t tell you whether the business is happy or not with the results. And because I’m looking at this keyword report in a vacuum, my objective in this post is not to judge the campaign. But rather to educate small business owners that are getting into search marketing for the first time as to what questions they should be asking their SEM.

Let’s begin by taking a look at the last 7 days of the report (note: I copied this excerpt from the original format into Google Docs and removed the column containing IP addresses):

Keyword Report .

1. Is the SEM fee-based or are they charging a percentage of spend?
2. Are there separate ads set-up for the different keywords? i.e would searchers find one ad, appropriate, for the keyword frigidaire and a different one for refrigeration?
3. Do each of the keyword/ad groups go directly to a page on my site that is relevant to the keyword when the ad is clicked?
4. Could I see the list of negative keywords for each of the campaigns? (and could you add ‘four seasons’ to it?)
5. What is the Click-Thru Rate for each of the ad groups?

Question one has to do with motive. Questions 2 through 4 represent the bare minimum of competence. Question 5 is a measure of quality in how well the SEM executed questions 2-4. If I did not get satisfactory answers to these questions I would abandon the SEM firm… not Search Marketing.

With all that said, you may be wondering why I did not mention conversion. That would certainly be among the first questions I asked when measuring the competence of a SEM. However, I did not mention it before in this article because I think that is the only question local businesses are asking their SEMs. And if they want to get the most out of their search campaigns they are going to have to get beyond that and demand more.

Please let me know your thoughts on this keyword report and/or any additional questions you think local advertisers should ask their SEM in the comments.

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