Are online coupons good for small businesses? Like every marketing strategy, coupons have good points and bad points. It all comes back to management and control – lose control and you can cause serious damage to your business. That was the case with one (of many according to social gossip) business who decided to run a campaign through Groupon. While much has been said about Groupon’s role in the demise of this business, the business owner has to take some responsibility. In this case, they failed to put a cap on the number of coupons sold, and when Groupon sold 450, the cost was enough to break the business.

Group deals do need careful attention. The particular deal in question was a $15 coupon for $30 of product. Groupon charged $7.50 leaving the retailer with $7.50 for $30 worth of goods – a loss of $22.50 for every transaction. With 450 deals sold, that was a loss of over $10,000 to the business. Coupons can be an ideal marketing tool, however, if you’re a small business, you need to limit your costs. In this case, it may have been wise to cap the coupons at 50 or 100 – better yet, to rethink the whole process. The Groupon deal was clearly not going to favor a small business such as this.

Twitter has been an ideal channel for the promotion of coupon type deals. Through Twitter (and Facebook) you can announce short deals; for example, you can offer a decent discount for all lunchtime (11:30 am – 1:30 pm) transactions. You can also announce similar deals – one day, five days, the first 100 customers are good examples. The important consideration here is that you, the small business owner, have a lot of control of the costs – the downside, you are generally promoting to existing customers.

You can use independent coupon sites, however, you do need to be in a position to control the number of coupons that are in the marketplace, and you do need to set firm expiration dates. Don’t fool customers by hiding dates in small print in obscure places – be up front. If the coupon expires, they’ll need to wait for the next coupon issue.

Online coupons are great promotion tools for new products, new shopfronts or websites, or for increasing traffic flow during quiet times. As a business owner, you need to maintain as much control as possible over the issuing of coupons; otherwise, you’ll have cost blow-outs that could cripple your business. On a side note, this business was lucky, the local community worked together to revitalize the business, but that’s a story for another day.

How does Google Maps rank your business for searches conducted? Here’s a short video that explains how that happens. HINT: In a nutshell, it’s based on three ranking factors.

1. Location
2. Relevance
3. Prominence

Watch the video, then we’ll talk about it.

Location, Location, Location

Even online, location is important. But your Google Maps listing will be ranked based on a user’s search query and your location from their search location. For instance, if you search Google Maps for “small business marketing wayzata, mn,” then you’ll find Small Business Mavericks in the No. 1 position. Conduct a similar search, however, for small business marketing companies in Minnetonka and we drop to the No. 2 position. Make that search for Apple Valley and we drop to No. 10.

What happened?

As the searcher is farther and farther away from our location, the less relevant we become for their search query. That’s an important criteria in some industries such as hotels and restaurants where services cannot be delivered online. Location is very important.

The Relevance Factor

Relevance has to do with placing your business in the right category. If you are an automotive shop that performs tune ups and oil changes but do not do body repair, then you’ll want to make sure you list your business in the right categories. After all, you want to be found for the search queries people make and relevance is a key factor.

What Is Prominence?

Prominence is a different matter. It has to do with how important your business appears to be within your niche. This is likely judged on the basis of your reviews and ratings and whether or not other Google Maps users save you in their searches and add you to their maps.

What Do You Have Control Over?

To a certain degree, you have control over some aspects of each of these criteria, but there are other aspects of them that you do not have control over – particularly location and prominence.

You do not have control, for instance, over the location of the searcher. You do, however, have control over where you say you are located in your profile. Be honest and don’t try to game the system or it could hurt you. List your business location and see how it affects your rankings in Google Maps.

With prominence, you can ask your customers to review and rate your business, but you have no control over what they say. Just provide a good service and you won’t have to worry about bad reviews.

When it comes to relevance, you have a lot of control. If you place your business in the right category, use keywords in your description, and use traditional SEO tactics to a certain degree, then you can influence the relevance factor in the Google Maps algorithm.

If you’ve been wondering just when Google Places was going to get its act together and starting being social in a social media world, it’s time to relax. They’re actually getting there.

For the record, I’ve kind of been wondering myself. Just when is Google Places going to allow you to do more than list your business and rate other businesses in a website environment that looks like it was built in 1998? Well, take a look at Google Places now.

Google’s Lat Long blog has announced some upgrades to Google Places recently.

Google has made it easy for you to upload a photo to your Google Places profile, which is now linked to your Google account profile in a very obvious way. You can also see all of your reviews on a single page, making the review process simpler and a lot more fun (I love the way that Google has formatted the reviews pages so that users can easily give their favorite places stars and easily write and edit reviews).

When users log into their Google Places account, they’ll now receive recommendations based on past places visited and location. If you are an existing business near another business that has been reviewed, there’s a good chance that you’ll be reviewed too.

Another nice feature is the ability, and the ease of it, of adding friends to your Google Places profile. I really like that feature!

There is no better time than now to encourage your customers to stop by Google Places and give you an honest review. Make sure you stress “honest.”

One of the ways to ensure that your website ranks well for local geo-phrases is to write about local events and places, but you have to be careful how you do it. If your blog is for a local brick and mortar business that is trying to attract customers from within a specific geographic area, then one way to “humanize” that blog is to write about the people and places in your area – in a good way, of course.

First and foremost, you want to build good will with the people in your community. One way to do that is with customer spotlights, or feature stories.

Look at your local newspaper to see how this is done. Most community newspapers devote a part of their story space each issue for local features. These usually include a photo with a write up of a local person. It can be a celebrity, a person in the community who is active in real social work or community improvement, or it can be someone who is doing, or has done, something extraordinary.

Here are five different types of stories about people in your community that you could write for your blog no matter what product or service you offer:

• Someone who has used your produce or service in an unusual way or who has done something extraordinary with your product or service.
• As a community service, you could highlight people in your community that you think are performing a valuable service to the community. It could be a business person, a politician, or a community organizer.
• If you have a prospective customer profile, choose someone who fits your target group but who is not a customer and ask them to try your product for free, then solicit their feedback and report it with brutal honesty.
• You can also write up a personality profile of your 100th customer for the day, or think up another fun event where one person can be a winner and just write up a 300-500 word personality profile on the person telling who they are, what they do for a living, what their hobbies are, etc. Expect nothing in return for this. It’s a fun community service idea.
• Hold a contest. Write about the winner on your blog.

There are more ways to use local people and organizations to geotarget your blog. These are just a few fun ways.

The moment you decide to put a website online, you’ll have to make a few decisions. It doesn’t matter if your website is an extension of your off line business or if it is a standalone entity. You’ll still need to make the same decisions (an extension of an off line business may actually have a few more to make). One of the decisions you’ll have to make is whether or not your Web business is local, global, or if it even matters.

If you are local, you’ll spend a good deal of your time marketing your website in very specific ways:

• Online Yellow Pages
• Local directories
• Off line

Just to name a few.

But what if your business is global?

Global online businesses have specific marketing plans as well, but it’s actually a little more difficult to plan for local online marketing. That’s because there are certain things you have to consider that you wouldn’t necessarily consider for a global brand. However, it might take you longer to achieve search engine traction for your global brand.

You’ll have to figure out how local search will play into your overall SEO initiatives. And you’ll have to figure out how social media will play a part in your online marketing as well.

When you run a local online business, consider how you will find your customers using local online marketing tactics. It’s not as easy as you’d think.

If you think Groupon is a good deal and enjoy making daily deals, or taking advantage of the daily deals offered by other local businesses in your area, then you’ll likely fall in love with Amazon. That’s right, Amazon.com, the online retail giant.

Amazon has recently offered its own daily deals site to compete with Groupon. It’s called AmazonLocal.

This is a big deal for a number of reasons. First, Amazon is a recognized name brand, which means instant recognition. In fact, Amazon enjoys being one of the most recognized brands online so the fact that they are getting into the daily deals space means that 1) the daily deals space is a hot item and 2) that Amazon believes that a presence in this market can boost its own revenues and its own clout with consumers. I think both of those statements is probably true.

Right now, the service is only available in Boise, Idaho. But I expect new markets to open soon. If the test markets work well for Amazon, you can bet that Amazon’s huge list of current customers will be hearing about AmazonLocal.

Also, when I went to the AmazonLocal website, I was greeted by name. Of course, being a customer of Amazon, they have my IP address. That’s a smart move, Amazon. And I think that level of personalization, which Amazon is very good at, will benefit AmazonLocal a great deal at it enters this new local marketing space.

The benefit to you, the local business owner who offers daily deals, is that you can piggyback off the well known Amazon name.

You may be tired of hearing about it by now, but the predictions have been made. The future of search is local. A new study indicates this to be the case.

Now, the question remains: What does it mean when they say that local search ad revenue is climbing? In a nutshell, it means that Google is going to make a lot more money. And Bing will make a little bit, too.

But for local small businesses, it also means that search ads will be a primary online marketing channel. Are you surprised by that?

Figures show that by 2015, local search ad revenue will hit $8.23 billion. Online and interactive advertising will hit $16 billion. It looks like local online advertising is poised to grow. Surprise, surprise.

Those of us “in the business” have seen it coming for at least two or three years now. Local online advertising, and search in particular, is going to be the area that a lot of your competitors focus on. They will be making money on that effort. The question for you, as a small business owner with a local clientele, is: Will you be making money on it?

Now is the time to start planning for your local online marketing. Get ahead of the curve and you stand a good chance of staying ahead.

Local.com is carving out a niche for itself in local search. This is good because local search is one of the most important marketing channels online right now. Most small businesses serve a local market. Furthermore, many service industries can do nothing but serve local markets.

For instance, you can’t provide dental services over the Internet. Nor can you change a spark plug or change an automobile’s oil online.

There are some things that you just can’t do through wires and cables. Because of that, many searchers will always be looking for information on local businesses. These include restaurants, movie theaters, medical services, house cleaning, massages, and retail shopping of various sorts.

There is a reason that Google spends a lot of time, money, and resources on making its local search product better. But I think Google, as good as it is for many things, could use a little competition in the local space not to mention its obvious shortcomings when it comes to this specific aspect of search. Local.com fills a very important niche.

So how can local businesses benefit from Local.com? No. 1, you should have your physical address and phone number mentioned somewhere on your website. It might also help if you add some geographically targeted content on your website. You want to give search engines – local and otherwise – every opportunity to geotarget you so that local searchers looking for your type of business can find you. Local.com is an up-and-coming player and could prove to be very important in years to come.

It might seem strange to consider it news that Google is taking its local search offerings local, but as Frank Reed put it, they’re putting a human face on it.

One interesting thing that Frank brings out in this article, and if you perform a lot of local searches you probably already were aware of this, is that you don’t have to add a local qualifier with certain search terms like “pizza” and “movie theaters.” Google does that automatically for you based on your IP address, or based on your personalized settings if you are a user of Google’s personalized search features.

I’m pretty certain, and I’m sure Frank would agree, that Google Places will be the main focus on Google’s local efforts far into the future. No matter what innovations the search engine introduces, it will likely involve Google Places in some way.

This is why I think the No. 1 most important thing for any local small business to do is to claim their listing in Google Places (and in Bing’s and Yahoo!’s local directories as well). That should be your starting place for online local marketing.

I’m with Frank on one thing. I’m anxious to see what Google is going to do with local search marketing based on this effort to “reach out” to small businesses.”

When it comes to ranking your web pages for local search traffic, it’s easy to assume that the same factors affecting global search rankings will also affect local search rankings, but that may not be the case. Certainly, I think on-page content is one factor, and inbound links, to a certain degree, are also a factor. But what else can be a factor?

It seems obvious – at least to me – that local links are more valuable than what are generally termed “relevant” links. In other words, if you are a local real estate broker, a link from your Chamber of Commerce will likely carry more weight than a link from a national real estate website.

I also believe Web citations could prove a factor as well. A Web citation is any place off of your own website that mentions your business, web address, or Local business listing information without an accompanying link.

So how can a non-link affect your search rankings? If you’ve claimed your business listing in Google Places, Bing Local, and Yahoo! Local, then the search engines know your business address and phone number. They also know some other basic information about you. If that information also appears on another website – say, your local Chamber of Commerce or BBB website – then it adds a level of credibility to your business. A link isn’t necessary.

So here’s my tip for today. If you are a local business trying to rank better for your search terms and a geographical targeting metric, see if you can get a few local Web citations, with or without a link.