6 Statistics for local marketers to pay attention to

Statistics, they're boring most people know that, some people are amazed by them, they are numbers and figures that sometimes just don't seem to make sense to some people. However knowing them can give you tremendous insight to how your business needs to progress further.

Have you ever noticed that when you type in pizza delivery it normally returns your local Dominos or Pizza Hut?

Businesses especially new ones and local ones seem to forget some very fundamental procedures used by google, that is that all search results are local to the person searching. It's pretty curious actually.

Now back to the statistics

1. 50% Of mobile visitors visit stores within a day due to localised searching

According to google researchers, and I mean they seem pretty reliable, it seems that a user will google a store and visit that store the very same day. Think about that for a moment. 50% of people that google a store will visit it that same day, that's potentially immense amounts in-store traffic depending on your client base.

Here's what you can use to improve your local rankings:

• Get your business listed on Google's My Business, complete a profile and you'll be good to go, Google's my business allows you to be found a lot easier within the search engine as it itself is localised to the search engine. It also provides information that the user wants to find which we'll discuss later

2. 60% of consumers have used local information within ads

In the same study as before by those brilliant google researchers, there is a definite majority, roughly around 64% that really like local information within ads, and here they are.

• A staggering 67% of people want their ads to be customised by the city/town postal/zip codes that they reside in. 61% also feel that they want ads to be customised to their locality, so that they are relevant to their immediate surroundings.

• 61% of people use the address and phone numbers within the business ads, so really google is becoming a bit like the internet yellow pages... Sorry not becoming, IS.

• 68% also use the get directions or call buttons, they're pretty handy features actually, being able to call or find the place you're looking for with one search, personally I know I've used them before particularly in London where I've been so unbelievably lost.

2. 88% trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation

eighty eight percent trust online reviews? That means 12% of people are sceptics and really aren't worth your time, or they prefer to experience for themselves. Still if 88% of people trust in online reviews then you need to make sure your business sits will with things like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google+ Local etc

Another interesting thing to note is 39% of people read reviews on a regular basis.

In the study there is a trend line, demonstrating that there are more and more people reading online reviews and using them consistently for their decisions about local businesses. This is valuable information because if this trend continues, which it's likely that it is, more and more people with use these reviews.

2. Business Address and Location is the first bit of information locals search for on google

Researcher at comScore shows that the top sought after information by searchers are as followed:

• PC/Desktop

  • Address/Location – 22%

  • Find a business with products/services needed – 17%

  • Phone Number – 16%

  • Research products/services – 11%

  • Hours of operation – 10%

  • Driving Directions – 10%

  • Coupons/Special Offers – 7%

  • Ratings and Reviews – 5%

• Mobile Phone

  • Address/Location – 27%

  • Find a business with products/services needed – 16%

  • Phone Number – 15%

  • Research products/services – 6%

  • Hours of operation –7%

  • Driving Directions – 13%

  • Coupons/Special Offers – 8%

  • Ratings and Reviews – 8%

• Tablet

  • Address/Location – 14%

  • Find a business with products/services needed – 20%

  • Phone Number – 15%

  • Research products/services – 12%

  • Hours of operation –15%

  • Driving Directions – 12%

  • Coupons/Special Offers – 5%

  • Ratings and Reviews – 7%

http://searchengineland.com/study-78-percent-local-mobile-searches-result-offline-purchases-188660

What this information shows is that each media looks towards the location and service/product the business provides. While also looking for where their location is. With the exception of the tablet of which there are less people searching for the business location but more people searching for the business itself and its hours of operation.

This information is useful as you can tailor your businesses online presence to suit each individual media, for tablet users you can provide more information on the business such as the phone number and services but not care so much for the location(still care a little but not as much as you would for PC/Phone).

Proving that searchers are more inclined to search for your businesses information such as location and phone number than say if you have special coupons. Pretty common sense, but still get your presence known!

2. 80% of users prefer to have ads customised to their location

According to surveys done by google, 4/5 people prefer to have their ad's customised to their location and to local businesses. What this means is that people actually want to be engaged with localised businesses.

2. 50% of users prefer the mobile browser to a mobile app

This is a big one, with more people using mobile phones than ever before, optimising your website to mobile will prove to be a valuable asset to have in your business. In April 21 google launched Mobilegeddon, a new algorithm that increases or decreases your rank on google purely on the basis of mobile accessibility. After Brightlocal provided some statistics it was shown that mobile users prefer a mobile friendly website.

Website? For a small business? Don't make me laugh!

Surprisingly small businesses don't see the value of a website, even in small towns and villages. Word of mouth and advertisements in the local news paper seem to be all they care for. Which isn't inherently wrong, but in today's age that could be to your businesses detriment.

We are now firmly in the technology age, and that doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. People are now using smartphones and tablets with more frequency than ever imagined in the conceptual days of the personal computer. In those days they thought there would be one for every STREET, not 3 for every person(Tablet, Phone, Laptop/Desktop).

Ofcom a communications regulator in 2014, the average adult will spend 8 hours and 41 minutes a day on media devices, now this does include TV, and Radio etc. The premise is still there, people are HOOKED on tech, it's the new age addiction. With everyone desiring to be interconnected not investing in the internet is a foolish idea.

Now back to small businesses, in my home town I went through my local ad paper and found that a very small portion of the small businesses there actually had a website, this genuinely shocked me. For a while I questioned as to why they hadn't invested in what seemed to me as such a fundamental part of human life now, but after a while it dawned on me, people in small towns don't necessarily have access to people that can create website, or have an idea where to go or how to start.

However to all you small businesses out there that have found this post and if worrying about the next dollar/pound/yen you might receive, even if it costs you a new mortgage, get a website. It will increase your quality of life, and here's why:

A reference point

A website gives your customer a reference point, somewhere to go to see who they are asking to do something for them, a trademark if you will. Something so it eases their mind, because I guarantee you, your customer will google your company and find nothing and get suspicious as to why you have no internet presence in this day and age, questions like “Are they trustworthy?” “How do I know they will do a good job?” will pop into their minds frequently, and so they'll search a key word or two into google and find someone that they can reference to.

Showcasing your skills

A website allows you to showcase your particular skills in your profession, from galleries of your before and after shots, to videos on what you've been doing. Showcasing your skills means that your client will find you particularly more alluring, because they can see what you can do, and if they think it's worth the money they'll take it.

Connectivity

Connectivity is having a connection to your customer, a website is a bit like a store in the good old days, people would go in and browse your wares and either purchase something or leave. A website functions in that very same way, people will come to your website, browse you for a little bit and either choose you or look somewhere else.

Accessibility

With a website you are ACCESSIBLE! The best kind of thing to be. People can find you easily and handily and you can potentially turn over a greater profit because you can reach more people in loads of different media's. Some people like photos, some people like videos, everyone's taste is different but with a website you can display all of these media's in a very, very accessible way.

By now you're probably thinking, well still it can be really expensive to set this up and do it properly, I say it's worth every single penny you can spare. In the 1930s the great depression happened, as I'm sure you're aware. It wreaked havoc in America causing businesses to restrict their budget on advertisements and public awareness to save costs through such struggling times. There was one company however that completely against the rational mindset of trying to tide through it, spent more money than they had previously spent on advertisements. That company was Kellogs, ring any bells? They saw a golden opportunity and took it, when all the other competitors were down and out, they took the gamble and it paid off... BIG TIME

Now the question is, do you want to be a small business? Or a Kellogs? Well to be honest either way you'll be fine, as long as you have a website.

What defines an "Organic" search?

An organic search defined by google is:

“Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements. In contrast, non-organic search results may include pay per click advertising.”

Pretty interesting but straightforward stuff. Basically an organic search result are the results that are not paid per click advertisements, adwords etc. I mean that's all well and good, but why organic searching? Why not just pay per click?

Organic searches were found to have a particular amount of success, A study by BrightEdge concluded that organic searches were the largest driver of revenue, over paid search, within most areas studied. According to Groupons marketing team, 60% of all direct traffic is of organic search, and according to BloomReach 49% of the UK consumers use organic search to find retailers.

However in further studies from Slingshot SEO, it was concluded that 18% of organic clicks go to the first results, 10% to the second and 7% to the third. That means 35% of organic searches go to the top three results of an organic search. Mind blowing.

What does that mean for the business itself interested in SEO strategies? Well with 79% of all people clicking on the natural search results, and 80% not clicking on PPC(paid per click) advertisements. It seems logical to invest in natural search results.

Now this opens up some interesting thoughts, why do companies focus so heavily on PPC when organic search results seem much better? Well suppose that 20% of people that do click on your ad, they could potentially be more likely to be interested in your product. Increasing in your revenue. Customer commitment and all that.

So why does PPC fail so heavily? While organic results sky rocket the company to greatness? Well my interpretation of it all is that people really don't like being sold something forcefully, PPC seems forced and the psychology would mean that people would shy away from something and choose something that seems a little more authentic and natural. However in reality getting your results to the top of google is tremendously difficult, and requires hard work and strong SEO team. Particularly if the keywords you'd like to use are high trafficking. PPC means that you can be at the top of google for an arbitrary price.

I suppose it's status, high ranking google means you're high in the standing, to people that's respectful and for a business having your clients respect is paramount to achieving a strong customer base. Page one google rankings helps that.

Anyway, that's enough of my interpretation of the situation.

Really, if you have ever heard of eye tracking and heatmaps, there's a much simpler and easier to digest version. People will view the content in an F-Shape, starting from the top left, scanning the words until they reach the end and moving on to the next line. This is all well and good, but the thing is, with each line the users become more and more disinterested, and thus create an F shape, where the centre line of an f is smaller than the top and so on and so forth. So by the time the user hits the third of fourth line they're not even taking in half the information on the sentence and they are just scanning and hoping for key words of relevance
.

As you can see from the image, the F-shape model holds true, with 91% of google users seeing the top paid results and 100% of users seeing all organic results.

9% of the users don't even bare witness to the top paid advertisements, that's a shocking amount, for every 1,000 searches, 90 people don't even give your ad a glance. That's insane amounts of revenue lost. In contrast if you have a result on the first page you are guaranteed to get a look in, with 100% looking at all organic results, with more intensity of concentration towards the top of the page.

To be within the top three organic search results are paramount if you really want to reach for the sky, it'll open up more opportunities and provide exposure to your business or website. Investing in a strong SEO team, or even trying to do some yourself is worthwhile.

My name is George, thank you for reading.