subject: Small Business Internet Marketing [print this page] Kelowna is a smaller sized urban center with a trading area of just under 200,000 citizens in central southern British Columbia, Canada.Due to the demographics of the human population, and a large increase of visitors in the summer months, as well as winter skiers, Kelowna is a well-served community with plenty of facilities, plenty of retail which includes a surprising number of web advertising and web design businesses.
Using internet marketing to target a local market this size or even larger, is a smart use of resources for the majority of companies. Kelowna area residents are very web savvy and spend a lot of time online. Local community websites have a solid user base and the overall web traffic makes local internet marketing a viable option for many businesses, though not all capitalize on the possiblities.
The starting point for marketing in a city like Kelowna is to build a decent website that caters to the local market. Generally speaking, this means identifying the best keywords from prior SEO and PPC efforts, and adding a local designation such as the name of the community, the name of the region, or the name of the neighborhood the business is located in. Very simply, you are adding a geographic modifier to the keywords that you would otherwise use in your pay per click or search engine optimization. Home inspectors would also be wise to advertise by location rather than just targeting the obvious keyword phrases of "home inspector" or even "Kelowna home inspector."
Brief online video clips can also give local marketing efforts a real lift, for very minimum cost. These videos do not need to be professionally produced and simply need to be clear in what they communicate- notably the business website- and then uploaded to video sharing sites.
Very often in the local market the video will show up on the first page of the Google organic results. As a result, you not only gain a video presence on the first page of Google, you are actually in many cases bumping a competitor off the first page. If your local web page shows up along with the video clip on the 1st page for the same keywords- a common occurrence in local internet marketing- you can easily take two or more of the 10 slots on the first page of the search results.
Pay Per Click advertising is often foolishly shunned by small business owners marketing to a local market. Yet the ads can generate very good traffic at a very low cost, and is a good supplement to a strong organic listing.
Big urban markets are becoming very competitive online, though good web marketers can still get great results. However, in smaller markets like the one in the Okanagan Valley communitiies like Kelowna, the compeitition online for some businesses is almost non-existent and there are still many niches that are wide open for the taking online.
So, what's the applicaton? Get a good website, talk to an internet marketer (which is usually distinct from a web designer) and go after your local market!
