Small Business Commando News

Bravo to Businessweek for once again delivering an insightful piece on the growth of the local Internet and the firms making it happen.

Their story takes about surfing the internet on a television to find local information.  This concept is not new, and perhaps the technology will work this time.

However, they do casually note that the company does not have a well developed local sales plan for attracting advertisers.

One this is for certain.  When it comes to capturing local advertising dollars, if you build it, they will NOT come, you need to go and get them.

Special thanks to Randall Hilton for his recent series on Yellow Pages advertising for plumbers. Randall is a plumber’s plumber.

He has become a mouthpiece for the industry offering solid advice in a home-spun way.

I’ve learned a helluva lot about plumbing and the issues facing plumbers reading his newsletter, and I do a much better job for my plumber clients becuse of it.

He recently ran a series about Yellow Pages advertising that comes from the advertiser’s perspective.

Check it out at www.plumb-biz.com

Traditional Yellow Pages ad design holds that the advertiser’s number should be in the lower third of the print ad.

A shopper will read the headline, scan the ad looking at the graphical images and cometo rest on the business name, address and telephone number.

Notice the phone number in the lower right of the ad. I might add that this is a very high performing Yellow Pages ad.
Well, if you apply the same design principles to a website, particularly a small business website, you will miss business. Quite often, the lost business is staggering.

On a website, the contact information should be front and center. Top of the page, above the fold.

This small business website shows not only the phone number front and center, they reinforce the concept of making a call by putting a photo of an employee on the phone.

The website visitor does not need to scroll or navigate around the page in order to call.

In this instance, a plumbing / HVAC contractor, the phone is their primary customer contact.

It’s important to understand the difference in various media to generate the highest number of calls for each.