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One of the most effective types of advertising since the first-ever business has been Word of Mouth advertising. Now with the addition of social media sites, an online local business forum is not only more effective, but creates very affordable advertising.

If businesses utilize their forums correctly they can initiate and direct the conversations in a very positive way. The readers and forum participants are those that spread the word, often bringing in new clients and valuable repeat business.

By allowing site visitors to post reviews to your local business forum you’re giving those customers a chance to influence others on a global scale. That’s how the popularity of social media has changed the playing field: word of mouth marketing is now more than just beauty shop discussion or letters to the editor of the local newspaper.

One person who has hundreds, thousands or even millions of online followers can have a huge impact on a product or service. Think of Oprah online. Big companies have been tapping into this social media, or as they call it, social marketing, for years.

But it’s also readily available for small local businesses. Including a forum on your website to encourage customer involvement and interaction is simple to do. You might need to initiate conversation and encourage participation, but once you get the ball rolling they will do the rest.

Adding a business blog in addition to a forum is another effective idea. Blogs allow you the opportunity to share up-to-the-minute thoughts and ideas about your business. They should be linked to your website for easy customer access.

Blogs become free publicity for your business as they influence search engines when potential customers search online for products and services that you offer. As you can see, this type of “ad campaign” is an awesome and affordable way to drive traffic to your site.

You can even include videos- they can be produced fairly inexpensively- which can spread quickly online. Your business’ return on investment for this type of marketing will be incredible.

As with any type of word or mouth marketing, you do have to be aware of negative communication or misinformation being spread. A disgruntled customer or a competitor out to sabotage you can certainly cause some damage.

That is why you will need to be very aggressive in getting out as much positive and accurate information as you can. Don’t overlook the importance of timeliness and consistency. Make known your achievements and successes and add positive customer reviews and testimonials.

Most people are realistic and can see through the few sour grapes that show up, especially if there is a huge ratio disparity between the positive and negative.

Summary: You can reap great benefits by offering a local business forum to tap into the thoughts of your customers. You can also utilize social media to expand on your forum and to take advantage of the free publicity that it brings.

If you enjoyed this article by Jeff Schuman on local business forums please visit our local business website today. We help small business owners grow their business in their local market using the power of the internet. http://www.LocalBusinessGroup.com
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An effective way to promote your local business information and also increase sales at the same time is to include coupons with an email marketing campaign. Those receiving the promotional emails are more likely to open them when discounts for products or services are involved.

A recent survey by Experian discovered that when marketing emails also included a coupon there was a higher transaction-to-click rate than those without. The results were the same whether the full list received the email or if only a segmented group received it.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s important for all small local businesses to understand the importance of having an auto-responder and some type of opt-in subscription form on their website. Once in place, business can be more efficient and effective with sending marketing emails.

With most consumers now thinking of ways to save money, businesses need to be keenly aware of the importance of offering deals. Those that understand this and meet those demands will be more successful than those businesses that underestimate the importance of doing so.

In fact, Experian has also found that 66 percent of United States households now use coupons. It’s important for businesses to send out coupons via email because there’s an increase of nearly 50 percent of people using coupons from that source since 2007.

The value of email coupons is that they increase interaction or participation of the readers and can be seen in these statistics: marketing emails including coupons are opened approximately 25 percent of the time compared to only about 17 percent if they don’t include them. When coupons were redeemed online, there was a 17 percent higher click-through rate.

There are some best practices that local businesses should consider when planning an email marketing campaign that includes coupons:

- Make sure the offers you send out match the type of list you’re targeting.

- To find out what gives you the highest return, test your coupon amount and frequency.

- To make your coupon recipient feel special, use the words “exclusive” or “selected” on the coupon.

- To create an urgency to “react now” to the offer, mention a time frame or specific date that it must be used by.

- To aid in inventory clearance, time your coupons to your business cycles and offer deep discounts on products nearing a season’s end.

- Add a link to the email that gives the recipient the opportunity to “share with a friend” or “tell your group”, etc.

Coupons can be a real win-win for everyone. Customers get the deal they’re looking for and you get extra sales while clearing out inventory, and a chance to promote your local business information.

If you found this article informative by Jeff Schuman about local business information and emailing coupons please visit our local business website today. Learn how you can use local business marketing to rank highly on search engines and get more traffic to your small business website.
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