By: Andy Sambandam

A single Superbowl ad spot for 30 seconds can cost you over two million dollars. Not everyone can spend that kind of money on marketing. It is reserved for big companies. For the rest of us, there is Google. If you are a small business owner you probably know that these are times you simply can’t rely on referrals alone. You need to be wise in your spending and find innovative ways to gain visibility. You need to be in front of your potential customer when they are searching for you.

Having a successful online presence is the key to business growth today.

Targeted Marketing
Lets face it. Not just the younger generation, but almost everyone goes online to find products and services; and, in many cases, people things get done online. The Internet and social media segment of the web has revolutionized everything, forcing businesses to re-think their marketing strategy. In other words your potential customer is out there and looking for you even before seeing your advertising message. Internet Marketing is the key to build a successful business.

The Numbers Speak for themselves
Lets look at the facts. Local search and advertising is the fastest growing segment in Internet for the past 3 years. The number of people using yellow pages is constantly dropping. Of the 220 million people who use the Internet in America, more than 70% of them have performed more than 1 billion searches looking for local businesses. A study by COMSCORE, a news analysis company, shows more than 110 million people perform searches every month looking for local businesses.

We all know, when people look for things online, they go to Google. In some cases they start at Yahoo and AOL. Regardless of where they start, they are looking for things using specific keywords combined with their location. For example, they search for “AC repair Delaware”, or “lawn care Dover”, or “Restaurants Rehoboth beach”.

You need to be ready, and be there with your message, when your potential lead is searching for you.

What do I need?
At a minimum you will need the following: 1. A professional looking website or landing page (under $300) and 2. Appear on the front page of Google for keywords related to your business.

Now, getting a professional website or landing page is the easy part. If you already have a website, you can get a makeover for as little as few hundred dollars so that you can represent your business in a professional manner. Even a single landing page (also called lead generation page), can help. You can get a professional landing page and real-time lead delivery package from Landing5 (www.landing5.com) for just under $300.

Appearing on the front page of Google search results is also easy. Organic SEO should always be your long-term goal. Even though it is time consuming it will generate lots of leads for your business. In simple terms, it means, tuning your website with proper keywords and linking them via local directories such as NewarkZip.com. The more quality incoming links you have for your website, the better your ranking could get. You can also use PPC (pay-per-click) advertising and appear on the front page, however this method can be expensive.

ZipListing is a micro-targeted online local directory that will help you gain visibility and provide you incoming links, through local directories. Their push technology creates entry points for your business listing across the web including social media sites. Google loves these incoming links and your business listing (or website), will eventually get higher rankings as a result. The key is to have your business listing in a unique page with SEO friendly title and keywords in the URL itself, all of which is designed to improve your search engine rankings. ZipListing even provides Google maps integration with satellite street views showing your business.

Building a successful online presence takes time, but ZipListing can show how you can dominate the online marketing game and gain the much-needed visibility for your business. The best part: Listing is FREE for local businesses!

Andy is an entrepreneur and a visionary involved in developing technologies that bridge businesses and consumers online. He has held several key technology management positions in his career and has served Fortune 500 clients and top management consulting firms. He holds a degree in Engineering and is committed to helping small businesses and women entrepreneurs.