Introduction to Online Local Marketing for Small Business Owners

Hey everybody! Garrett here from Tech Function and today I’m super excited to be releasing my first ever video series on what’s going to be highlighting everything a business owner needs to know for online marketing. This quick introductory video is just going to be highlighting what we can expect to do throughout the course, some of my background, how I ever got involved in online marketing and SEO and all that fun stuff and really the ins and outs of what you have to do to be successful in driving leads to your business and doing it in a sense that you actually make money off of it.

When I was growing up I actually spent a lot of time working for my grandpa on his sod farm. And, you know, over all those summers and winters (fixing equipment too) I didn’t just learn a good work ethic, fix equipment and grow sod, I also learned over those 10, 12, 15 years that it takes a lot these days to run a small business. You know, being in business for myself these days a lot of my friends say, “Oh, it must be so nice that you get set your own hours. You get to wake up when you want, head to the office, leave the office when you want and just tell your employees what to do and it all gets done.” But, in reality I think we all know that’s not how it goes. You’re usually the first in the office, the last one to leave, always dealing with employees and clients and invoicing. When does it ever end, right?!

But, without diverging too far from the point of this video, what we’re really going to be covering is what it takes, and all the ins & outs (I don’t want to say secrets of SEO and local SEO and all that). We’re going to be covering a lot of the stuff that a lot of the other gurus out there don’t want to cover because really they’re only giving you half of the story and they’re hoping that you can’t figure out the other half so that you go to them and pay them to do it for you.

As I’m sure you already know, like we covered, working nine to five doesn’t cut. You’re probably already working 12 hour days and not be able to find the time to set aside two to three hours a day and implement these strategies for your website and business, but I will say that if you can even find just an hour or two a week it may take you a little longer but the results will be great.

I know that if you’re just starting out, you especially can’t afford to hire an agency and pay the retainer for three months for three thousand dollars a month to do all the local SEO and link building over six months, write the content and maybe design a website for you because you’re not capable of that. I get it, its tough! Especially when you’re just starting out and that three thousand bucks a month is probably you have set aside to pay yourself, if you’re even paying yourself anything at all!

We all know how it goes starting out, unless you have a big investor chances are your income into the business is only covering your overhead and any employee costs you have and you’re just taking home whatever is left at the end of the month. With all of that being said, where do you find the time to find new clients? Do you:

  • Put an ad in the Yellow Pages (I hope you’re not doing that anymore!)
  • Hire a sales guy? (Which further takes money out of your pocket)

All that stuff that is in the back of your head every day – it is a lot to think about and I hope I’m not scaring you off because the intent of this series is to learn online marketing. There is a lot of stuff going on! If you can just set aside one or two hours I guarantee you are going to see better results for your business and I will help you along the way. With everything that’s going on, I’m here today to help you. I’ve put together this video course and I’m going to show you everything I would do for one of my local SEO clients. This includes electricians, plumbers, pest management guys, restaurants & bars, any type of small, local businesses that you can think of that might cover a county or two.

This series will be beneficial for any business of any size, but it might not be super helpful for let’s say an enterprise level managing forty locations or more across the country; things are going to change a little bit. But, the basics are still going to be there to learn from. Most importantly, we’re going to be covering all the stuff that people don’t’ want to tell you about. This is going to include things like citations, of which I know there tons of websites and gurus that are telling you to how to do everything, and blah blah blah, but what ends up happening is they only give you, they might even give you 60% of the puzzle, but they keep 40% of those pieces to themselves because they know you’re not going to figure it out and then you’ll go back to them and be like, “Alright, here’s 700 bucks and I’ve done most the work, you just finish it up for me!”

I don’t want you to just think I’m another guy on the internet telling you what to do. When local search marketing really became a thing about four years ago, I really helped write the book with my business partner Steve. We really went in and figured out what Google and Bing and search engines of the such were looking for and why they display results the way that they do.

I don’t you take my word for it when you have no idea who I am, this is my first video series, first information that I’ve ever released to anybody other than my employees. So, one of my clients, Marty Overline has agreed to let me mention him. Over the years we have done a lot of local marketing for him and I’m going to show you everything I’ve ever done for him and how its translated into his phone ringing off the hook day after day, week after week, month after month and for the last four years, year after year. To the point where he can’t hire enough guys to service all the pest management clients that he has. He is hiring aggressively just to keep the business going, and he’s actually in the spot where he has to turn some work down. Which, isn’t always a bad thing but I’m sure he’d like to be able to find those qualified workers so that he can keep taking more money in and getting more happy customers.

I guess this is all I really have to say in this introductory video, the next video is going to give us a an entire overall rounded view of the local marketing world, the whole sphere of everything and how everything works together.

So, if you’re ready, if you want to put aside two, three hours tonight or whatever, que up the next video, or tomorrow night or whenever you have a free minute, maybe on the weekend, the next video should be qued up for ya. If you’re ready, let’s get going! I know I’m ready.

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Author: Garrett Graff

Garrett is a qualified engineer, and when he's not helping businesses grow as a consultant at Palladous, you can find him building hobby race cars, managing the family farming business or chilling out on the lake fishing. Get in touch on Google+ or drop him a line by e-mail.

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