To be a successful seminar marketer in todays ever increasingly connected marketplace, ensuring your firm’s basic online information is accurate and up-to-date is critical. In fact:
- 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results, and 61% of those searches result in a purchase. (Search Engine Watch), and
- 86% of consumers stated that using a search engine allowed them to learn something new or important that helped him/her increase his/her knowledge. (Pew Research Center, Search Engine Use 2012)
Whether you know it or not, your firm is being searched for and displayed by more than 150 websites and mobile apps. It’s called a “local listing”. A local listing is an online profile that contains your business name, address, phone number, and other details. There are thousands of websites and directories on which local business owners are allowed to create free business listings. Some you may already have heard about include Google+ Local, Yelp, Bing Places, Internet Yellow Pages, and Yahoo! Local. This chart helps illustrate how these sites and apps are connected.
The purpose of creating and managing local listings is to make your business visible on the Internet. Each new listing you create increases your chances of being found by the prospects you’re inviting to your seminar events. At the same time, many of the local business indexes share data with each other. Thus, the more places you are listed and the more visible you are, the more these indexes trust the accuracy of your business data—increasing your chances of ranking well in local searches.
Why is this so important? Imagine your ideal prospect opens the seminar invitation you sent them and decides to “Google” your firm and they see out-of-date, inaccurate or incomplete information. They may see your actual company site, but because of the conflicting information being posted by sites like Yelp, Bing Places, Internet Yellow Pages, and Yahoo! Local, etc., they decide not to attend your event.
To find out if you’re firm’s online listings are up-to-date, give us a call and we’ll run a quick scan and generate a report like the one shown below.
Then you can decide if you want to fix each listing yourself of if you’d like some help.
Jorge Villar is President of RME360, with more than 26 years of direct marketing experience, he is known in several industries for his ability to create mail packages that garner the highest response rates. He is responsible for the Seminar Success program that for the last 17 years has accounted for more than 65% of the events being held in the nation, with over 17 million individuals making reservations. Mr. Villar has also been very successful marketing to physicians and business owners regarding Succession Planning and Asset Protection. RME360’s marketing programs are presently being utilized by over 10,000 clients, including: top producing financial advisors, estate planning attorneys, large financial organizations, health care organizations, franchises, universities and many other industries. Mr. Villar is a frequent key note speaker at national financial symposium and marketing training conferences.
Academy Guest Blogger
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (800) 846-1555
www.aaepa.com
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