Ever since the year 2011 came into existence, a lot of internet marketing gurus have predicted that this would be the year of local and mobile search marketing for small businesses. Guess what? Their predictions came to pass!
Never before have I seen so many geo-location apps pop up all over the internet by start-up companies such as Gowalla, Foursquare, Google places, Google Maps, Yahoo local, Bing local, facebook deals and more.
These apps have come to replace the regular yellow pages and have helped small businesses merge their online and offline marketing efforts. Also, these apps have offered local small businesses the much-needed free publicity and leads via check-ins on their mobile-optimized websites and an increase in sales at their physical business location.
But a little has been said about suitable geo-location apps for the lean small Nigerian businesses. This issue is what I am going to de-mystify in this article. In my own online marketing experience, I have being able to try a couple of them and found out that just a few of them are suitable for Nigerian small businesses. They include:
- Google places and mobile maps: this geo-location tool has been and will always be a blessing to lean small Nigerian business owners like myself, who can’t afford to compete with the large corporate businesses in terms of huge online and traditional advertisement budgets (television, radio jingles, newspapers) and hiring of expensive search engine optimization companies to help make their websites rank high in the major search engines (bing, google, yahoo etc). This local search optimization tool has indeed come to replace the regular yellow pages, as Nigerian business owners can list or claim their physical business location on google places and maps. This can be done through owning a google account, registering their phone numbers, business location, website (optional), giving free coupons, videos, business description etc.
If done properly, small business owners are sure of making the front page Google’s local and mobile search engine for sure! Read my last article on “Can Your Customer Locate Your Business on Google Places?” to learn how to list your business on google places and mobile maps.
- Wowcity: this is yet another geo-location app for linking small Nigerian businesses and customers together. It acts like a yellow page. Once you sign up and list your business, wowcity rewards you with points just for uploading your business picture, logo, videos, products, services, coupons, promos, events etc. These points you can redeem via advertising on the front page of their website for 30 days.
Now you know everything about everything about listing your local business online. The question is, are you going to implement them? Take action today.
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