Local Online Business

Which option to choose for promotion in the network? What will give a greater inflow of quality traffic – social networks, own site or electronic catalogues? These and other questions arise for beginners businessmen who are looking for their clients on the Internet.
Pages on social networks
The rapid growth in their popularity leads to the fact that representatives of any type of business, from owners of local businesses to large companies, go looking for their target audience on the Internet. And many of the young companies working in the regional market (eg, cafes, restaurants, pharmacies, car dealerships and the like), do not see the point in creating a website, limited to attracting customers through social online platforms.
The main reasons for this choice are as follows:
- a lack of understanding of the difference between SMM and search engine promotion;
- rapid contact with the vast coverage;
- lack of financial costs – creating your own page is not worth anything;
- minimum requirements for experience and knowledge – a schoolchild can create it.
Using a social media page allows you to quickly form a warm target audience interested in your brand, product or service.
The benefits of SMM promotion include:
- wide opportunities for targeting;
- increased growth by reaching more users;
- indexing pages in search engines.
You can attract users to your group or to a page by sending an invitation to your friends and their acquaintances, leaving comments in theme groups, placing interesting for people posts and making their reposting.
Minuses of promotion in the social network
The lack of special knowledge when creating a page leads to increased competition and the emergence of template approaches – almost cloned business pages with minimal differences. The design of the online platform also sets certain limits, not allowing, for example, an online calculator or payment system to be added.
The disadvantages of using pages in the social network include limited opportunities for promotion by social network rules. Therefore, in order to be effective in promotion of a group or a business page, you need first of all to understand their algorithm of work, which will reduce the risk of hitting the bank.
You should also consider that users have the ability to prohibit themselves from being invited to groups and communities, which limits the growth.
You should be prepared for social online platforms to constantly change their algorithms, reducing audience coverage to encourage business to use paid advertising, rather than selling the product through page promotion.
Another disadvantage is that people who have their own commercial page or community are completely dependent on the administration of the online platform.
If you do not have a site, the way to communicate with the target audience is possible only if the user leaves his contact details: put on the page “like”, lyknet content, write to the messenger, interested in the product so much that it will find out all the details in the chat room booth. To communicate with the client by phone, when calculating the conversion, it is recommended to allocate a separate phone number for each social network or each launched promotion.

Electronic catalogues – pros and cons
Owners of local businesses (beauty salons, medical centers, veterinary clinics, car services, fitness clubs, schools of yoga, dance, vocal and other) often undeservedly underestimate such a promotion channel as Internet catalogues. And absolutely in vain, because they have an audience that knows exactly what they are looking for. The main advantages of catalogues are the relevance of information and constant updating of data.
The advantages of catalogues include:
- the maximum amount of information about the company and its products;
- simultaneous presentation on dozens of sites – apart from the catalogue, these are partner programs, Yandex and Google maps;
- some portals;
Therefore, people who are really interested in a product, service or business get verified information about the quality of the company’s work and demonstrate a high level of trust. It is better to start making a statement about yourself on aggregation sites with leaders with the highest audience coverage.
The advantages of these resources include the availability of your own analytics – for example, when you connect to a premium account on zoon.ru, companies will connect calltracing, which allows you to track the proportion of calls from the site by phone. The analytics allows you to track the conversion of calls, receive reports on reviews, information on competitors and more.
Collaboration was an important stage in my business development. We constantly monitor the feedback of our customers, take into account their wishes and can respond to them promptly. This has increased the competitiveness of my company – the number of clients has grown by 23% in 6 months.
Minuses of directories
Each handbook declares its own rules. Some limit the ability to download prices, information about employees, and some include it in the extended paid package. The disadvantages of the use of electronic directories include a high level of competition – firms have to fight for the client through the service, quality of goods and services, competitive prices. Paid services can also be attributed to the disadvantages.
What’s good and bad about a personal website?
A web resource is the owner’s personal territory, which he pays for when choosing hosting.
Its advantages include:
- freedom of action – design, interface, content, functionality and other criteria will be the way the owner wants to see them;
- the ability to monitor user behavior and conversion on the site is incomparably higher;
- additional income from the placement of someone else’s advertising or content.
The site is a corporate business card, presenting the brand on the Internet. In the presence of a web resource and running contextual, banner or teaser advertising and other online tools for analysis and statistics. The absence of a corporate website in the age of the global Internet looks unsolid and makes people feel like a one-day company that has not even bothered to invest in its own resource.
The drawbacks of creating a web resource include the need to invest in its creation finance – you have to attract specialists, ranging from a programmer to optimizer and content manager.
So what channel of promotion in the network to choose for local business?
The answer to the question depends on the goals set by the business, as well as resources – the availability of knowledge and experience in online promotion or the ability to hire a competent specialist. If you have a small budget, and your company works no more than 2-3 people, the easiest way to start with the creation of a page in the social network – it’s free, and you can train in the skills of creating advertising and posts.
Local business, aimed at the future, should start with registration on the aggregator – at low financial costs, you can declare yourself in the regional market and begin to interact quickly with the interested audience. Companies that care about their prestige, aimed at long-term development, manufacturers, online stores engaged in building their brand – do not do without the corporate website business cards.
To get a hot target audience and at the same time minimize the time and finance required for online business promotion, we advise to combine methods of promotion so that they do not duplicate, and complement and reinforce each other.
For example, local business can connect work in social networks with aggregators, online store – to attract users to your site through SMM marketing techniques. Starting to take the first steps in online marketing, the entrepreneur raises his business to a qualitatively new stage of development, and the selection of suitable tools for the promotion – tests and corrects in the process of work based on his experience.