Last time I mentioned that I am currently making a living from working as a consultant for local businesses. It is a very interesting situation because I’ve found that it is A LOT easier to rank for local keyword terms (such as mytown pizza restaurant) than it is for global terms.

You will probably be surprised by the amount of people that are using their computers to find local businesses and services.

The yellow pages are dying! And they KNOW it too. I recently heard that they are considering phasing out those heavy yellow page books over the next few years and replace it with a CD. How crazy is that?

Now today’s tip doesn’t actually involve my keyword tool, but uses a very well known application, the Google keyword tool.

This tool is VERY helpful. You can access it by heading here:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

For this example I am going to use the small city of Towson, Maryland. The population there is about 51,000 (by comparison, the population of New York City is around 8 million).

I am going to determine how many people in this area are using their computers to find a local pizza restaurant, so I will enter a search for:

pizza towson

The Google keyword tool will provide results based on the last month. According to Google, last month 2,900 searched for “pizza towson” on Google. That is almost 100 people a day! AND this is a small city!

Pretty wild eh? Are you starting to see the potential here?

Go ahead and take some time and see what kind of numbers you are getting for cities that are close to you. The exciting thing is that we can walk into a local pizza parlor armed with this information, and show them PROOF that local people in the area are turning to the internet to find a new pizza restaurant.

Here is a script of what I like to say when approaching businesses:

“Hello Mr. Business Owner. As you probably already know, less and less people are using the phone book to find local businesses, as they are turning towards the internet to find this kind of information. Where do you go when you want to find something online? Google right? Well did you know that Google is actually kind enough to track what people search for? And that I have access to this information?

Let me give you an example, according to Google, just last month 2,900 people used their computers to find a local pizza parlor in Towson, MD by typing in “pizza towson”. That is almost 100 people a day! I wanted to bring this up to you because I noticed that your website is not currently ranking on the first page for this important keyword phrase. It concerns me that you are missing out on all of this potential business. Mr. Business Owner, it is like these people are knocking on your door and you aren’t there to answer!”

I have found this approach to be VERY effective.

I am so excited about this offline marketing stuff, because it works so well. There is a STRONG need for it right now. I am putting together a video series called “Getting Started with Offline Marketing” and it is going to be free, just like my keyword tool was. My goal is to show you just how easy it can be. It will be available shortly.

Have a great day,

Matt