5 Best Local Business Marketing Strategies

As a local business you have to learn how to use the internet to your advantage. If you aren't using the internet to bring in more customers you are missing out big time. These days people pull out their mobile device when it comes to finding a local business in their area that has what they are looking for. 

The days of using the Yellow Pages are quickly dwindling, 54% of people use the Internet over the phone book to search for a local plumber, florist, restaurant, mechanic, etc., sometimes just to get a phone number and other times to do research on the required services offered in their area. 

According to SMDigital Partners: 

  • 74% of all web users perform local searches
  • 100 + million people use Google Maps from mobile phones to find local business every month
  • 66% of people use online local search.
  • 61% of all local searches result in purchases
  • 82% of local searches result in offline actions, including, an in-store visit, phone call or purchase

A recent study from comScore revealed that 78% of local mobile searches resulted in offline purchases. If you aren't popping up in local search they will head over to your competition, this is guaranteed. 

Here are 5 simple things you can incorporate in your local business marketing strategy to help get more people in the door. 

1.  Create A Local Business Profile In The Top Three Search Engines

This is by far one of the easiest things you can do as far as local search marketing goes. All three top search engines, Bing, Google & Yahoo, allow businesses to create a local search business profile. This is absolutely free and it will take you all of 10 minutes. Make sure to include a phone number so that it can show up in search results under your business name. Go do it now!

2.  Get Mobile

These days everyone has a mobile phone. They use it to do all of their searching and other online activities. If your business can't handle mobile users you are in a world of trouble. Your business has to be able to come up in mobile search. Otherwise you will miss out on a ton of potential new customers. 

3.  Optimize Your Website Using Key Local Terms

When the search engines crawl your site they are looking for keywords that help them better understand what your website is all about. Always use the location of your business in the title tags. Include the full address include city and state. 

4.  Get Involved With Social Media Marketing

Well over a billion people are using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter at any given moment. Think some of your customers are hanging out on these sites? You better believe they are. And as a small business you need to have a strong presence on both of these sites. When it comes to local marketing this is one of the best ways to do it. Build up your following and you will always have customers coming through your doors.  Monitor your reputation on Yelp, the leading consumer review site where thousands of people review various businesses. 

5.  Use Paid Local Search

Paid local search allows you to only receive visitors that are in your region. You can actually tell the search engines the area you want to receive visitors from. This gives you complete control over where your visitors come from. So instead of paying to have visitors come to your site who are less likely to purchase from you, you can only get visitors who are in your local area and are looking for what you have to offer.   Using paid local search will save you a great deal of money. It will also help you increase your conversions as you are only presenting your offers to those who you know are most likely interested. 

And there you have it, 5 of the best local business marketing strategies for small businesses. Use all of them and watch your rankings and profits start to soar.


Stop Wasting Time. Start Earning Money.

 Watch this Free Webclass Now If ....

You own your own business

You would like to own your own business

You find yourself wasting a lot of time on social media

You are serious about building a successful online business

You would like to make money on social media instead of spending time on it


Even if you are a complete beginner, short on time or worried you do not have enough money or experience, if you are willing to give it a go, there will be a way to reach your dreams 

Spots for this webinar is filling up fast - Limited Seats Available!

This FREE web class will show you

* How to use the same time you have available in the day to build your online business instead of using social media for entertainment or worse just scrolling through it mindlessly

* How to use other people's products for free and then use that to promote and earn commissions 

* Copy the exact secrets of successful online entrepreneurs so you too can be successful without the need for a big budget or any experience with social media.

I don't want you to waste your time, so ONLY IF the above information resonates with you you'll find the training useful.

So if you are ready and eager to know more, go ahead and watch the training now !  

3 Steps To Make An Infographic And Top 5 Free Infographic Creation Sites

 Over the last couple of years infographics have become more and more popular. That's because they provide marketers with a great way to get their message in front of the masses. And while many people have jumped on the infographics bandwagon, very few have been successful with it. Most online marketers believe they can just post an infographic and the audience will just magically appear. 

This isn't the case. Your infographic has to be appealing and provide valuable information for it to be effective. So with this article I am going to share with you 3 simple steps to how you can create an infographic that will help you promote your products and services.

I will also show you 5 sites where you can make your own infographic or have one created for a great price. 

Step 1

The first thing you need to do is think of an idea. You can't have a good infographic without a good idea. So sit down and think. Make a list of possible ideas. You can also look online at other infographics for inspiration.  Below is an example of what an infographic looks like.



Infographic Example

Step 2

Gather the data that will be used for the infographic. This can be statistics, or snippets of information that pertain to your subject. You need to make sure the information on your infographic is accurate. Provide the facts and bring it all to a conclusion. Make everything simple and easy to read. 

Step 3

Step three is to create a skeleton of how you want everything to flow. This will be your initial draft and will really get the ball rolling. Figure out what you want at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of the image. 

Step 4

Step four is to actually create the infographic. Be careful with the colours as you don't want to overdo it. Stick with the pastels and bright hues. These colours tend to be eye friendly. It might seem like a challenge at first, but, it will get easier once you learn the program that you will choose to make the infographic.

Top 5 Infographic Creation Sites

Now that you know the 3 simple steps to creating an effective inforgraphic let’s talk about the top 5 sites you can use to create your very own. 

1.  Easel.ly 

This is a pretty cool little program that allows you to create your own infographic. You can either do it with a blank canvas of you can use one of their templates. 

2.  Infogr.am

This one is very easy to use and it comes with five free templates you can use to create infographics. 

3.  Piktochart.com 

With Piktochart you can sign up for a free account or a paid one. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with what you are able to do with the free account. However, if you want to use more than six images you will need to upgrade to a paid account. 

4. Visual.ly

This is great for those who have no design background. You can create amazing infographics in a matter of seconds. 

5.  PowerPoint

This is not an infographic creating site, but, Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful program where you can create magnificent infographics and images that you can use to place on to it. PowerPoint also has graphics built in, charts and various Smart Art that can be very useful in creating a gorgeous graphic to display your data.



Three Things You Should Do In 2022 To Earn More, Succeed More, And Enjoy More

Impacting thousands of people in the days gone by used to be the special reserve of what used to be called multi-national corporations but today, thanks to the internet, a kid in her mother's kitchen table can reach thousands if not millions by simply pressing send or publish on her iPhone or laptop. Technology has evened the playing field so you have no excuse if you have not yet joined the information superhighway.

After over 25 years as a banking "professional" I started dabbling online in 2020, thanks to COVID-19 pandemic and what I've learned has changed my perspective on how to positive impact more lives, earn more, succeed more and enjoy more. Success, unlike beauty, is not in the eye of the beholder. Success as Jim Rohn says, leaves clues. In this regard I'm only concerned with financial success. When you're financially successful, it reflects in where you live, the type of car you drive and the causes you support.

To be financially successful, you have to earn by the minute or hour or days not every thirty days (or weekly as in America) as an employee even if you're the chief executive officer of your organization. The biggest names out there earn by the minute. And when you earn by the minute you can enjoy more, like spending more time with your loved ones, going on vacation together, reading good books and supporting the less privileged.


Image by congerdesign from Pixabay


Here are the three things I would do to earn more, succeed more and enjoy more in 2022 and beyond if you asked for my opinion and willing to pay me to coach you but you can get them here all for free. I believe you already know that you should be operating online, and if you don't know, put on your running shoes and run helter-skelter in search of who can help you learn that. Having clarified that position, here are the three things you should do:

1. Build Your Audience

In the online world, audience is your customers. If you want to succeed beyond your wildest dreams in 2022 build and grow your audience. Again, if you want to succeed online beyond your wildest dreams in 2022 focus single-mindedly on building your audience. I'm not just talking about audience, I'm talking about customers who are willing to put their hands in their pocket and pay you for impacting their lives.

Building your audience or growing your customer base is something that every man, woman and child aspiring to make it big online should instinctively know but many don't get it. While it's obvious to the cognoscenti, it's not always obvious to the jaded beginner. Rather than jumping mindlessly trying to do a thousand things, do just one thing in 2022 - build your audience.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. From the time of the industrial revolution to the present day, the only way to grow your business remains capturing ever more satisfied customers you can convert to raving fans. No other thing matters. Having customers salivating for what you have to offer is so obvious that gurus like Edward Deming, John Juran, Philip Crosby, Tom Peters and a host of other gurus have pontificated on it and written tens of books for over half a century.

Organizations have responded by setting up Customer Service Departments, installing huge and expensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and spending millions on training yet nothing much has changed. The more they spend the more their service deteriorates because it's not about systems but attitude of people towards customers.

So as an online entrepreneur, if you want to succeed sustainably over the long haul move away from saying and get on with doing - focus on building audience and turning them into raving fans by doing everything you can to make their lives better. You can do this by enlightening them on more productive ways to achieve their goals, by sharing your experience how you overcame adversity, by educating them how to set up their money making machine, by sharing expertise how to be more result oriented and by showing them how to do things with more ease through automation.

Some gurus may advice you to begin with a product and not audience. For your online success, know that audience and products are the two sides of the same coin. However, you need just one product to succeed but you need thousands of customers to reach a tipping point. Your product doesn't have to be great, it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be excellent from day one. It just has to serve a purpose. It should be able to take your customer from Point A to Point B. You can always come back and tweak it later on as you build momentum. But without audience your product will remain an orphan. So focus on building and growing an audience.

If you do it right, having a product does not even matter because your audience will at some point ask you if you have a product that can solve their problem A, B, or C to offer them. You can then tweak your existing product or build an entirely new one to add more value to their lives. The most successful online gurus like Brendon Burchard, Marie Forleo, Natalie Ellis, Gloria Atanmo to mention a few all know this and it's not a secret. Indeed, they preach it and if you want to succeed in 2022 and beyond, you'd better listen.

So again, focus on building an audience. Build relationships day and night using all available channels. Be generous because generosity is the number one currency of the internet. Have your perspective. Know that there is nothing people want online that they can't get through Google, YouTube and other search engines. But they might not have the confidence to try them out and they might not understand the context because there are so many viewpoints. That is where you come in - to provide clarity. Help your Audience build self-confidence and clarity because people are on different points on their life's journey so what works for Mr. A might not work for Mrs. B. By providing clarity, you position yourself to attract more prospects you can then turn into customer thereby positioning you to earn more, succeed more and enjoy more over the long haul.

2. Earn daily rather than monthly?

While the majority of people earn monthly because they are in paid employment, do you know you can earn daily or by the hour or even by the minute if you knew what to do online? The majority of people who know nothing about online business believe it's impossible to earn daily, talk less of earning by the hour. They can't just fathom how that can be done yet there are thousands earning by the minute because they have set up their systems on auto-pilot.

Let's say you hate earning daily, why not position yourself to earn at least once every five days? By so doing your earning power will go up by a factor of six. And the good news is that you don't have to know state governor, you need not be "connected"; all you need is a laptop. And more importantly you don't have to work six times or thirty times harder. It gets even better if you can earn while you sleep. And because you're not into anything illegal, you can sleep with both of your eyes closed.

If you're an employee and living in a country like Nigeria, where I reside, you're earning once every thirty days, and to say the least, you're cheating yourself. If you're sceptical about what I'm saying I quite understand. I would have felt the same way when I was working as a lowly paid bank worker. Then I thought I was on top of the world. How wrong I was!

The scales finally fell off my eyes when I left paid employment to try my hands on management consulting, which had always been my dream. The first thing I did was to engage a coach and he showed me various ways I could make a living online. What he showed me exploded my perspective but I was still sceptical because it sounded too good to be true. Despite investing quite a huge sum in training, coaching and website development, I gave up after 12 weeks and went back to knocking doors as a struggling management consultant I was accustomed to because everything looked so complicated.

The decision to go back to my familiar territory set me back over seven years until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. As millions of people from all over the world, I was locked indoors and I had no choice but revisit what the guru taught me. I applied one simple strategy and it exploded my earnings. Suddenly I became a "guru" in my own necks of the wood. All I had to do was to learn the Basics how to grow my audience, how to use social media the right way, how to build relationships, how to create products and so on. Once I learnt the Basics I realised online business was not as complicated as I thought it was. I wish I knew how to earn daily twenty years ago.

If you're an employee earning income once every thirty days you can make 2022 your best year ever by learning by the side how you could earn at least once every five days for a start. This calls for an open mindset, curiosity and linking up with a coach to show you how things work online. You must also have the self-confidence to understand that if things don't work the world will not come to an end.

3. Take Action


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The third and final thing you should do to earn more, succeed more and enjoy more is to take action. While this is so self-evident, as humans, we like to remain in our comfort zones, we like to procrastinate, and we don't like to make a fool of ourselves. Some of us are perfectionists and until we are hundred percent sure we are right; we don't like to venture on any new endeavours. There are a thousand things that could go wrong if you start a new venture 99.99% of them may never happen. All that is keeping you down is your ego.

So without belabouring the point, take action. A lot of people attend seminars, webinars, read books and even engage coaches but the never lift their finger to do whatever it takes to move the needle in their favour. There are many thing you can do to succeed in any endeavour you engage in but in the center of it all is "You." You have to learn the tools, techniques, systems, processes, strategies and tactics. While technology is important, it's an enable and until you focus your mindset to get things moving nothing will happen.

If you want to make 2022 your best year ever and position you to earn more, succeed more, and enjoy more, focus on these three things, build and grow your audience as if your life depended on it because it does, rework your strategies to start earning daily, and better still, hourly, and finally, take action. If you do these three things, you'll succeed beyond your wildest dreams in 2022 and become the go-to person in your necks of the wood.

Paul is the creator of iBMC (Internet Business Mastery Course), aka, iBMCer, and BWC (Book Writing Clinic) where he teaches how to build businesses online, thought leadership, entrepreneurship and how to write best selling books. He is the author of the book Bridges to the Customer's Heart, dubbed The Customer Service Bible, which has sold thousands of copies in Nigeria. The late Richmond Dayo Johnson described him as "One of Nigeria's most authentic experiential writers." He is the Chief Executive Officer, Vision & Talent, Nigeria's foremost company dedicated to teaching Service Excellence holistically. You can access his Intellectual Property by visiting the website http://www.pauluduk.com/page. You can reach him by mail to paul@pauluduk.com and phone: +234 803 307 5133. you can access Paul's learning platforms at https://ibmcer.com and https://visionknowledgebase.com.  Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Paul_Uduk/1194732.  Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10554437

How Anyone Can Make Real Money Online With Fiverr

Fiverr is one of the most innovative online creations that offers an infinite amount of opportunities to earn money on the Internet. From wacky tasks to conventional online gigs like content writing, there are a lot of different ways one can earn some hard-earned cash from this online marketplace. 

For online sellers and freelancers, Fiverr is a very profitable site, with tons of website traffic coming on a daily basis. In addition, this marketplace has over 2 million tasks listed and 4,000 brand-new services, across a hundred categories. 

What Is Fiverr?

To earn money with Fiverr, first you need to understand what this website is all about as it will help you decide if it’s right for you and to learn about the earning potential of this online money-making source. 


Fiverr, in a nutshell, is an online global marketplace that offers services and tasks (referred as gigs), at a small cost of $5 per performed job. For the most part, it is used by freelancers to offer an array of services, and by clients to buy such services.

This site lists over 3 million different services that range between $5 and $500 hundred dollars, though anything priced over $5 is called a gig extra, and all base gigs are $5, that’s the rules.

For example, if selling article writing service your gig would be: “I Will Write A 500 Word Article for $5”. Then a gig extra might be, “Write 1000 word article” +$10 and another gig extra might be: “Write 1500 Word Article +$20 etc. 

Many sellers also offer gig extras that expedite speed of delivery for express service as opposed to their normal delivery time.

Price Per Task

As a freelancer, this online marketplace offers you a simple and extremely viable way to earn money online because they have a lot of traffic and thousands upon thousands of members.  

This, in turn, will give you a good source of income, or supplement your other one. While $5 is a relatively small amount of money for many freelancers, there have been a lot of freelancers that have earned a fortune from this online marketplace that sell many gigs per month along with the upsells on the gig extras.

For each gig, Fiverr gets a 20% cut, which means you will only have a net pay-out of $4. 

On the bright side, you can earn much more than $4 dollars per gig, as you develop a good reputation and get more clients to buy your services.

 As your sales increase and you get positive feedback from buyers, your rating as a seller increases, which, consequently increases your rankings within Fiverr for even more exposure that leads to more sales.

After you have completed at least ten Fiverr transactions, you will be able to unlock several advanced tools that offer add-on services as well as increase the value of your gigs. 

What Gigs Can Be Offered?

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist in order to earn money from this online marketplace. As a matter of fact, some Fiverr sellers have earned a lot of money from doing completely crazy and totally unique gigs like impersonating celebrities, daredevil stunts and crazy dancing. 

But, it is the legitimate and conventional gigs that are selling like hot cakes. The most popular and best-selling gigs in this site are SEO services, article writing, business consultation services, video editing and logo designing. 

Tips For The Ultimate Fiverr Success

  • Use catchy key phrases and words for the gigs offered in your profile description page. 

  • Showcase your awesome work by uploading the pictures of the gigs you have delivered. 

  • Deliver fast responses to customer inquiries. 

  • Always deliver the project or gig in a timely manner. Keep in mind that buyers are always eager to get their hands on the end product.  

  • Deliver what you promised on the sales page.

  • Make sure the sales page clearly defines what is offered, and anticipate all the questions buyers might have and make sure to include appropriate answers as well.

  • There are international sellers on Fiverr, but, it is an English site, and sale success can be damaged when sales pages are written in horrible English that no one can understand. If you are not fluent in the English language then outsource your sales copy to an appropriate seller on Fiverr.

  • Quality work is essential to maintain the required number of positive reviews to keep your business growing. Even one negative rating can quickly cause sales to dry up, and so attention to detail and quality is essential for success on Fiverr.



What Is Pay Per Click Marketing And Its Benefits

Whether you are new to online marketing, or an online entrepreneur who wants to learn more about PPC, then you are in for a treat.  In this online guide, you will get a plethora of information about PPC campaigns and how they work. Moreover, you get to learn how this Internet marketing medium can be very beneficial for your business. 

What Is PPC? 

Par Per Click, or also referred as PPC and Search Engine Marketing, is a form of online marketing that has been used by a great number of online entrepreneurs and marketers from all over the world. 

Pay Per Click allows you to gain search engine traffic that can boost the conversion rates of your calls to action and increase sales. All paid search ads appear before organic listings on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Pay Per Click is basically a sponsored Internet advertising scheme in which you (as an advertiser or marketer) have to pay a fee every time an internet user clicks one of your ads. 

Generally, it is a technique of buying visits or leads to your website. As its name suggests, you do not have to pay for anything with PPC, unless a web searcher clicks your ad that is displayed in the search engine results for the keywords you are bidding on

How Does It Work?

Basically PPC works like this, ads are created within the admin area of the network, for example, in Google Adwords. 

Those ads then appear in search engine results based on a keyword bidding system that is in place in Adwords, each time a user clicks on an add, the advertiser is charged a certain fee by Adwords. The fees depend on the value of the keywords being bid on, the more competitive terms cost a lot more than those that are not.

There Are 3 Entities Involved In PPC:

  1. Searcher Engine Users – They are the people who use search engines to look for information. They are the ones that these ads are targeting based on specific keyword searches. 

  2. Search Engines – Search Engines like Yahoo and Google have to cater to both advertisers and searchers simultaneously. With the help of search engines, searchers get to find solutions to their problems and queries, while advertisers are able to promote their products or services. In other words, they provide relevant and helpful result pages to the users, while driving highly targeted traffic to advertisers. 

  3. Advertisers – Advertisers who use PPC get to set up their accounts with the particular keywords they want to target for their campaigns and bid limits of what they will pay each time their ad is clicked in the SERPS (search engine page results). Each ad is designed to target relevant keyword searches and to show up when people are searching for them.

Pay Per Click advertising mainly revolves around using the right keywords. To be successful in your PPC campaign, you need to put extra emphasis in keyword organization, grouping and research. 

It is also of utmost importance to understand how the system works since paying per click can get very expensive, very fast. 

Constant monitoring, measuring and testing is necessary to retain a positive ROI (return on investment).

The Best PPC Services

There are a lot companies that offer Pay Per Click management services, but, only these two can be considered the best:

  • Google Adwords

  • Bing Ads

The Benefits of PPC marketing

As a website owner or advertiser, you get to enjoy these perks:

  • Greater Reach - With PPC marketing, you get an additional source of traffic to your website, which can enhance your online presence as well as help you establish your business as one of the leaders in your niche or industry. 

  • Increases In Revenue - For high converting sales pages and websites, PPC can yield a positive ROI, and instant sales, as opposed, to other methods, such as, SEO or social media marketing that takes time and a lot of effort.

  • Quick Results - Unlike your traditional organic online marketing techniques, PPC advertising can be easily and quickly launched. This, in turn, will bring qualified leads and targeted traffic to your site in a very fast and efficient fashion. 

  • Quality Traffic - With PPC campaigns, you get to assign an array of ads for particular demographics and keywords. As a result, the quality of traffic coming to your website can be significant. 

  • Testing And Measuring Benefits - Your PPC campaign can be used to test the effectiveness of your Internet marketing in a lot of different ways. For instance, you can use it to perform an A/B test on your promo ads, banners and landing pages. Additionally, you may use these campaigns to test for the right keywords and key phrases to use in your campaigns with other marketing methods. 


What Content Ranks Best In Today's Fussy Google SERPS

 I am often amazed when people ask what type of content ranks best in today's search engine. The answer is and will always be the same, Google wants one thing and that is quality content. Google strives to provide its users with the best possible results.

There are several reasons why some sites rank at the top and others rank at the very bottom. 

Two of the main reasons why websites rank high in Google are:

  1. Delivering high quality original content that is both legitimate and credible.
  2. Updating the site with fresh content on a regular basis. 

So my first piece of advice is to stop trying to game the search engines with black hat techniques. Yes they may work for a short while, but eventually the search engines will catch up and put your site in the sandbox.

Once in the sandbox Google won't send you anymore traffic. Instead of spending hours trying to find a way to trick the search engines why not spend an hour or two writing a valuable piece of content the search engines will love? 

There are two main things Google looks at to determine if content is of good quality. 

1. Engaging Users

The first one is engagement. How engaging is your content? Are people actually reading the entire article or are they hitting the back button as soon as they see it? This is how Google measures engagement. They want to know how long people are sticking around to read your content. If they stick around for several minutes they know you are providing value. This metric is measured by what is called Bounce Rate, and lower bounce rates can help rankings.

If users typically click back, and your site has consistently high bounce rates, this can affect rankings in Google. 

2. Backlinks

The second thing they look at is linking patterns. Google and other search engines learned very early on that people link to content they consider valuable. Content that is considered useful almost always gets shared by users. Content that is considered useless doesn't. 

And while linking algorithms have advanced quite a bit over the last several years, the basic principles of this concept still hold true. So if you want your content to rank make sure its valuable. Make sure it helps the end user. That's the key to getting your content ranked. There are no magic methods or solutions.

Make Content For Users Not Search Engines

I am sure you have heard this said before and it’s true.  When one creates a web page for search engines their focus is keywords, making sure the Google bot understands what keywords the page should rank for, and overstuffing the content with such to the point that it may become unreadable to the human eye. 

But, these types of black hat tactics rarely work, and if they do, it’s only for a short while and then the site gets hit with a big fat penalty and ends up in the black hole of SERPS.

Make every effort to provide useful content. It’s sort of a merry go around:

Useful content leads to happy users and a low bounce rate, happy users link back and/or spread the word about the content through social media which leads to more traffic which leads to better rankings in Google.

So, it’s all about useful content. That's what Google wants and that's what your potential customers want. 

Anytime someone uses Google to make a search they have an intent. They either want to find out about something, learn about something, solve a problem, buy something or treat something. 

Google is going to provide users with information that fulfils that intent.

So do your research and find out what type of content your target audience is searching for. 

Make it a point to craft your content around their wants and needs. This will not only increase your rankings, but, it will also increase your conversions and sales. 

The one thing to keep in mind is people read content, not the search engines. Do away with the keyword stuffing and anything else that is designed to manipulate the search engines. Write good content that people will love to read and I your content will get ranked.


The e-Learning Industry: A $370 Billion Opportunity You Can't Afford to Miss

With the recent pandemic and the shift to online living, the e-learning industry has been growing at an unprecedented pace. According to rec...