Advertising Your Local Business Online Without a Website

It is not groundbreaking news that the Internet is swarming with consumers and businesses looking for goods and services. Websites have popped up by the millions and continue to grow as Internet usage increases. While not all websites are developed for the sole purpose of profit many are and for good reason.

Massive Local Exposure

As a business owner you may wonder if the Internet will ever have a place for your business or you may have already started planning on developing a website to increase exposure of your local business to the Internet population. Never think because your business isn't online that there isn't a place for you because you are without a developed website. Increasing exposure to your business is the best way to increase walk-in sales to your establishment and the Internet is massive exposure at it's best.

More and more people everyday search online for local businesses that are offering what they may need or want. With the increased demand the development of information portals for the sole purpose of providing geographic specific data to searchers has exploded.

You might begin to start wondering how much money you will need to begin saturating your local Internet market and my answer to you is nothing. While there are excellent ways to market your business online through paid advertising there are also free programs that can help increase your business exposure.

Free Services Can Actually Work

One of the best free opportunities out there to date for brick and mortar business owners is Yahoo Local listings which allows business owners to enter specific information about their company to the public as well as list sales and coupon offerings online. Listing your business will not only increase exposure to people searching in the Local Yahoo listings but also allow your business to possibly come up in searches through other engines for keywords related to your business.

Google has also started a program for local business owners that allows you to enter specific information about your local business for free. They too allow you to add coupon promotional offers for your business free of charge in your listings which can greatly increase customer traffic.

While both services from Google and Yahoo are free they do offer upgrades to your listings to get you more exposure for your business. While these are good services for any brick and mortar company without a website there is another type of paid service that can be more effective if you want to pay for more exposure and guarantee better results.

Paid Advertising that Works

There is a type of service out there that is still in it's infancy but growing rapidly in the electronic information age, that service is pay per call advertising. Pay per call advertising online allows you to advertise your business but only pay when a customer calls you.

Many information search companies are using an ad that looks much like a contextual Google ad, the ads you see in Google searches. Instead of clicking a link however they are asked to call a number instead. This number will be a number different from your business number but will be routed to your phone line when called. This allows the agency to track your calls and bill you accordingly.

This type of advertising is good because you only are paying for results but are being exposed and branded to your local market. The costs of the calls will be variable by industry and agency, but can be well worth the cost if you have a sales team ready to take in orders or additional foot traffic.