How many of you have included some degree of “offline” in your Internet Marketing strategies?
Did you know that 60% of Local Searches that take place on Google lead to sales? I mean.. How powerful is that man! 🙂
This is not some regurgitated statistic, it’s Google themselves who have declared this on a number of occasions. Offline searches are growing as more and more consumers come online and it’s becoming the norm now to look for physical items everywhere on the Internet, and not just on eBay and Amazon for instance.
Internet Marketing has taken a turn that’s only increased the potential profitability of any campaign you will ever conduct again, and the turn says “offline marketing”.
So how does this benefit your Internet Marketing campaign?
Local Searches being conducted by people can be interpreted immediately as “hot leads” or “hot buyers”.
Why?
..because they may be searching for a local place where they can buy something they need from, right here, right now.
For those searchers who have this intention, the fact that they are searching locally to fulfill some need or requirement, instantly makes them “buyers” and not just cold to luke-warm traffic if you manage to get them to your site before they hit anywhere else.
Most people only perform local searches when they need to get somewhere or to get something. It’s the latter case, “something”, that can prove to be the one amazing difference to the profitability of your Internet Marketing campaign.
You may be thinking: “But how can I get these offline searching folks to come to my website (wait a minute.. why should they come to my website at all?.. They’re looking for something local no?..) instead before getting directions to the nearest Walmart or Macy’s?
How does targeting offline searches benefit my Internet Marketing campaign? ..if at all that is.”
This is a question most “Offline Offline Offline” chiming Internet Marketing pseudo professionals tend to never answer correctly 😉
The answer is pretty simple.
In fact, it’s staring you in the face..
You are implementing the strategy I am about to say a few words about, every single day in your daily lives.
Local Searches for products imply that people are willing and looking to buy something from a local place right?
For this they need to “travel” to the place right?
When they buy something from a local place, they may need to return it due to ‘x’ number of reasons, for which they’d probably need to “travel” back there right?
All this time that they’d end up “traveling” can be spent doing something more useful, say around the house or at work or on your latest product launch 😉
All the money they spend “traveling” by car or local transport costs them money as well, right?
Imagine you were searching for a product online and clicked on a link to Uncle Joe’s convenience store, located 5 miles from where you are.
You decided to travel to Uncle Joe’s.
Now if what you’re looking for costs say $20, you will need to add a few dollars to it’s price then for traveling to and from Uncle Joe’s. So this product ends up being roughly $25, give or take a few cents?
Even if you don’t travel by car or local transport, you’re still going to waste valuable time getting to the place, and we all know that prices at local places are marked up by a few percent to accommodate maintenance costs at the place.
Now what if you had been redirected to a website where you could order what you need for $12 and have it delivered next day for Free? And to top it off, the product came with a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee and free, pre-paid, Return Packaging incase you need to return it.
Would you as a local searcher go with this offer where you’re saving time, hassle, transportation costs and getting a zero-risk product at a much lower cost, or would you go to the local place where you’d spend $8 more for the product, will have spent some money on fuel or transportation expenses, wasted valuable time traveling to and fro when you could have done so much with it in other ways?
9 out of 10 times, ofcourse not! 🙂
THIS is exactly why targeting offline consumers through your Internet Marketing campaigns is becoming more and more profitable today.
People want to save money in these dire times, the economy is far from recovery anytime soon, and the more time and money people can save, the better. Hence the boom in offline searches, from people looking to save a few bucks by finding what they need locally instead of pulling the same “head into town for shopping” routine.
You as an Internet Marketing professional can do then an even greater service by conducting some research and setting up websites specifically optimized for people in a particular location, so that when they search for something online, there’s a very good chance they’ll find you on many occasions.
You can setup a Google Maps listing, Facebook Places item, Yahoo and BING Maps listing for a business with keywords optimized for searches trending in any particular area, and enter your website’s details as directions or contact details.
There are many other ways to achieve a stronger presence in the offline search community through your Internet Marketing efforts, but the whole idea behind it is to guide and drive as many people to your sites where you are setup as an eBay or Amazon Affiliate (even ClickBank products actually) or selling your own products in wholesale and make a commission on sales/make direct sales.
Worse comes to worst, if the offline searching folks don’t end up buying from you, at least drive them to opt in and give you an email address in exchange for a goodbye freebie so you can get in touch with them again (these are warm to hot buyer leads), building your list at the same time. Internet Marketing principles all in one 🙂
So next time you hear the words “Offline Marketing”, know how powerful and highly converting it is than most other Internet Marketing strategies, dive into it head-first and get cracking! 😉
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About The Author:
Ali K. spearheads The SEPCON Project, a 100% Free Email Advisory with a mission to educate anyone and everyone interested in home based internet marketing in the art of Explosive Internet Marketing for Profit and Success. The SEPCON Project provides Cutting-Edge Software, Courses, Videos, Audios, PLR Re-Brandable Products, eBooks and tons more. Anyone can Subscribe to the Program for FREE (no gimmicks) at The SEPCON Project
Ali is also an Affiliate Marketer, Product Creation & Launch Consultant, Copywriter, and one of the most Highly Recognized Programmers in the Home Based Internet Marketing world, the Lead Technologist behind the Blockbuster Launch of The Internet Time Machine, and Search Engine NowRelevant.com, and mentioned in several International News Publications such as Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, NY Times, LA Times, and Reuters, to name a few, for his work.
I totally agree on some of your ideas…I shared this on my Fb account.
Thanks for this post. You are right we need to wake up!
Google is always making always making a way to improve their online service. And while they do it, they are on the otherhand helped businesses.
In the future, there will be no difficulty locating establishments for they can be seen in google searches/maps. On the otherhand, businesses will gain extra advertising opportunity.
In other words, this project is beneficial to both parties.
Google will allow someone to set up a maps listing without a physical address or phone number? I thought all of the local search results had to actually be based in the particular town people are searching for.
– Andrew
i think Google will grab +90% of the local sale market in few years …..
@bilal – I wouldn’t be surprised if Bing made a much bigger push in the local market. It’s a long shot, but it could happen.
Man, 60%? That’s insane. I mean I knew it was high, which is how I convinced my partner in my business that’s *not* local search related that he needs to get going with increasing his web presence to start capturing more leads. But seriously, at 60%, that can mean a massive difference in income in the high-priced personal training world. Thanks!
Ali- I have a question. If my client were to see that title of the article he’d go, “If 60% of searches are driven through an offline medium, why would I invest in digital? It’s best I utilize the digital media budget into an offline medium”.
It’s quite dangerous to say 60% of searches through an offline medium have translated into sales online. In essence, it should be digital driving sales not the other way around since the world is now more connected than ever.
Thoughts?
Google being the giant search engine nowadays will definitely accumulate mammoth local searches and convert into sales, most especially if those local searches are on top pages where they gain more exposure and good conversion rate then lately comes into cold cash!
Great stuff! I love your passionate tone of writing. Very informative as well about Local Search. It makes so much sense that 60% of local searches turn into sales. Gotta get those eyeballs on ya listings! Thanks for the information.