Owning and running a successful business in the Lake Tahoe area takes wisdom, savvy and excellent online marketing.
We live in towns that have populations that swing from taking an hour to get through the line in Safeway to watching tumbleweeds roll across the road. I’ve interviewed over a hundred local Truckee and North/South Lake Tahoe area business owners to see what their biggest challenge is and what they think their best opportunity is as well.
The answer? Over 90% of them said that it used to be that they relied on word of mouth advertising and perhaps the Yellow pages and print ads. With the “new economy” those marketing methods simply weren’t working. Many said that their biggest challenge was not enough paying clients and business was quite irregular. What did they want? They wanted to sleep at night and have peace of mind that their businesses would be profitable and they could feed their families and quality of life they sought when they first pursued this entrepreneurial trail.
So, what’s the answer? There are so many choices of methods to market with … signs, print ads, postcards, phone calls, letters, newspapers, phone books, bulletin boards … some are free, some quite costly … what’s the best choice?
One answer that I don’t see enough businesses taking advantage of are the local directory listings. Google Maps, local.yahoo, yelp, etc… These are free listings and I’ve helped some local Truckee Tahoe clients get 3 or more listings on the first page of Google! If you want to learn more about this method of online marketing, feel free to contact me at Jim@TruckeeWebDesign.com or (530) 426-8404.
So after talking to business owners, I was committed to finding the most affordable and effective internet marketing methods possible. When we think about marketing, it’s a great idea to walk a mile in our customer’s moccasins – where would they look for a business like ours? Who would they talk to? What words would they type into a search engine? How could we get our message to our ideal client? These are powerful questions.
The other factor I considered was that it’s tough for some ski or tourist related businesses to market TO their customers on a budget, because they come from the San Francisco Bay Area, the central valley, Sacramento, Roseville, Reno areas. How the heck do you market to all those people? Widespread radio, magazine, newspaper, billboard advertising is simply too expensive.
The key to successful marketing in local ski area Lake Tahoe Truckee like areas is online marketing. Yes, high quality service and products will always be the best marketing method for generating positive word of mouth. Besides that, people are searching for our products and services on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. They are wandering around with their noses in their iPhones, droids, blackberries, iTouches and even asking their cars where to go for dinner, coffee, gas, hotels, etc…
Once you set up a website and have it ranked well for the most common and relevant keywords, get your local business listings up and running along with your social media sites, you have an excellent chance of getting exactly what you want … more paying clients, higher profits, a better night’s sleep and more fun in our amazingly gorgeous and fun Lake Tahoe Truckee area.
Please feel free to comment or ask questions – I’d love to help you and your business today!
