The Cutting Edge of Online Marketing

Do you tend to have time or money, but not enough of either at once? It’s never been difficult to understand the time/money dilemma. Either you have lots of time and no money or lots of money and no time?

There’s any old cliché that gets kicked around that says, “Work smarter, not harder” and it is appropriate to this discussion.

A few months ago, in my very first article in this blog, I posted a video called “SocialNomics” that explained the current and coming importance of Social Networking in your day-to-day marketing plan.

But it isn’t JUST Social Networking that is a key to your future prosperity. Some tried and true methods from the good old days of the oughts (2000-2009) work just as well today. But as I review the online marketing strategies of both clients and their competition, I am surprised by how few businesses take advantage of all the opportunities provided by online marketing despite proof that using them will increase your bottom line over time more than any other method – and at lower cost.

Technology can free up time and generate revenue at the same time – IF it is properly implemented and used.

Let’s be blunt about this and state the obvious, but unvarnished truth – some of you are not going to survive the next few years. That’s right – some of you will be out of business by the end of this summer, and more of you by the end of the year.

At least then, you’ll have plenty of time.

Some of you will prosper over the coming months and years. You may not have a lot of free time, but you’ll have money and your business.

And some of you will have both more time and more money – a bigger business. Which of you? If you’re thinking that this is impossible to predict, you’re not in the last group – the ones with both time and money.

You see, the future of business in general, let alone in the manufactured housing industry, is in the hands of the few who use every practical method of increasing their business and who pay special attention to ROI – return on investment – the holy grail of marketing.

This week, MHMSM.com takes pride in rolling out our Solutions program, designed to put the talents of the best marketing and sales specialists in the industry at your fingertips.

So have a look at the MHMSM.com Solutions page, and let top pros serve your needs. You can have a better future. We are sure of it.

We want you to be around next year… and the year after that. Be there by working with The Solutions Pros. Save Time, Make Money. To enhance your ROI, put your time and money to work smarter. You’ll be glad you did.

No more Local Business Center… it is now called Google Places.

And claiming your own business listing, which has been a “no-brainer” for some time now, is even more attractive to local businesses thanks to some new features.

What’s new (per article USA Today):

• Instead of just submitting an address, business owners can instead show a geographic area they serve. Additionally, home-based businesses can make their address private.
• A new advertising feature, for $25 monthly, lets business owners “tag” their listing with special offers to stand out. Google is testing Tags in a few cities, including Austin, Atlanta and Washington D.C., before going national.
• Free photos of your business. For the business owner who doesn’t want to take the time to upload a photo of their business, Google is offering a free photographic service to come and shoot your location for viewing in Google Maps.

If you haven’t claimed your business listing in the Google Local Business Center… oops, I mean Google Places, do it right now. If you don’t have the time, desire or technical savvy to do it yourself, Google Places listings are just one of the many benefits included in an Orange Cat Online Marketing 1-2-3 package.

After posting a link to one of MHMSM’s April articles on MHMSM’s Facebook Fan Page, a long-time friend commented on my post with some questions she had about manufactured housing. Her questions presented a golden opportunity to give some information about the quality and advantages of factory-built housing. If you’re not using Social Media to engage consumers, you’re missing the boat.

Here is an image of that Facebook conversation:

Brief as it was, it can be read by many others and have a multiplying effect of a positive nature.

In the first issue of MHMSM.com, I submitted a short post with the video SocialNomics. This would be a good time to have a look at that video if you missed it the first time around.

It took about a minute to post my response, but I’ll bet that I’ll receive many times that in value.

I was putting this post together for readers of my Local Business Marketing blog at BobStovall.com when I realized how important these stats are for retailers, developers, community owners and anyone in the MH industry who do business on a local level. So here it is. It’s a quick read but carries a small wealth of information.

“Ten years ago, your marketing effectiveness was a function of your wallet. Today, its a function of the width of your brain” – B. Halligan

Recently Microsoft gathered some numbers on Internet usage and here is what they found:

• 86% of searchers start at a major search engine when shopping online.
• Even when consumers plan to purchase offline, they often go online first.
• 42% of retail sales in 2009 were online or “web-influenced”.
• $917 billion in US sales were “web-influenced”.
• 63% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses.
• 44% of local businesses have a web site.
• 50% use search engines first for local business information.
• 24% use the Yellow Pages first.

Which Search Engines are the most important?

• Google: 49.2%
• Yahoo: 23.8%
• MSN/Bing: 9.6%
• AOL: 6.3%
• Ask: 2.6%
• Others: 8.5%

By being properly optimized for and indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing, you’ve covered 82.6% of all online searches.

How important is it for your local business to be found in a search on one of the top search engines?

The Internet has 1.2 billion users world-wide

Facebook has 350 million user accounts

Twitter has 17 million user accounts

LinkedIn has 35 65 million user accounts

FourSquare has 1 million user accounts

So even the incredibly popular Facebook only accounts for 29% of Internet users, an astonishing number in it’s own right, but it still leaves 71% of Internet users unaccounted for. Would you bar 71% of customers from your business?

Social networking is an important part of marketing online, but it is in addition to, not in place of search engine marketing, whether using Search Engine Optimization or Pay-per-Click advertising.