Local Search Marketing Recorded Webinar - 13 March 2013

HELEN HUTCHINGS: Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to today's webinar on Local Search Marketing. My name is Helen Hutchings from the Phillips Group and I am your host for this webinar. In a moment I will hand you over to today's presenter, Jake Falkinder. At the end of the webinar, I will hold a questions and answers session with Jake and we look forward to receiving your questions. This webinar is part of a series being provided by the Department of Tourism, Major Events, Small Business and the Commonwealth Games. We hope that you find it informative and useful for your business. Jake, over to you. JAKE FALKINDER: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, all about local search marketing. Let's now take a look at the agenda for today's webinar. The first five minutes will be spent doing an introduction in orientation. Followed by that, we will have approximately 45 minutes whereby we will review the key elements in the workbook. After that, we have allocated the remainder of the time for questions. If you would like to ask a question, I would like you to have a quick look at the control panel for Go To webinar. You will notice there, there is a section for questions and we will be taking these throughout the webinar. Helen will be collating these questions and will be presenting them to me at the end of the webinar. It's important to note that anyone who is using a tablet or iPad, due to restrictions/restraints with Go To webinar, unfortunately you won't be able to use the question facility in this instance. For those of you who like to tweet, please feel free to interact with us using the #QLDBiz. Okay, now a quick introduction about myself. My name is Jake Falkinder and I am an online marketing consultant working with the Phillips Group. I have got corporate experience across a number of varied organisations and a few of those include *** Australia based here in Brisbane, Ray White real estate, that energy drink we all know as Red Bull, as well as Nike, just to name a few. My search marketing specific experiences also ranges across a wide variety of corporate and small businesses and these involve industries such as building and property developments, home renovation and kitchen renovation services, fashion labels and other various online retailers. So let's hop into local search marketing and have a look at the definition. Local search marketing is all about promoting your product or service to people who are interested in utilising it from a specific geographic area. So from small business perspective, what this means for you is that it is applicable to any business who has a fixed address or a local following. Now let's just take a look at a typical local search query. It will generally include information about what the site visitor is searching for; for example, a business category or service or even a product name. And it will also take into account where the person is interested in finding this product/service and this will usually be in the form of street address, a city name, post code or even geographic coordinates. So you will notice on this particular screen, there are a few examples towards the bottom there. So let's take a quick look at a couple of those. If you follow my mouse pointer, you will see the first one is "building company, Longreach". So "building company" is actually the service in this instance and obviously "Longreach" is the physical address. Looking at the one below that, we have actually mixed things up a little bit and we have got the geographic location first which in this instance is "James Street" and the service being "a hairdresser". So local search marketing queries can actually take a variety of different forms. Over here you will notice we have got "osteopath", which is again the service, and "4220" which in this instance is a post code and I believe that's the post code for Burleigh Heads. So that's an osteopath being sought out in Burleigh Heads. Finally, we have got an example here for restaurants in Gladstone. So this follows a bit more of the natural flow of the English language, with "restaurants" as the service/product and "Gladstone" being the physical location. So these are just a few ideas of local search marketing queries that may come around. Now, while we are on this slide, I have highlighted a bar at the bottom and this is the progress indicator for today's webinar. So that you can keep track of where we are throughout the webinar, you will notice this on every single page. So please feel free to refer to this at any stage. Moving along, let's have a look at some stats from 2012, to see just why local search marketing is so important for your small business. First of all, one in five Google web searches in Australia are now actually local, which is quite phenomenal to think about. If someone is using a mobile device, this actually becomes even more prevalent with one in three searches actually being a local search. So what we are seeing is an increase in trend in people searching for local search specific key phrases. The second point there is that the mobile penetration of smartphones is increasing and expected to be over 70 per cent by the end of 2012. So this is the most recent statistic we can get our hands on about the penetration of smartphones and we are seeing 70 per cent of Australians actually holding them at this point in time. Third point is also a very interesting one, with 86 per cent of these smartphone users having searched for local info. Fourth, when you look at mentioning a location in an ad or search results, you will notice that the click through rate can increase by up to 200 per cent. So what we are saying there that any advertisement online or any search result that is targeting a specific location will encourage for click throughs and often by up to 200 per cent. The final point there is that 61 per cent of local searches result in purchases. So what we are seeing is that those local search queries are actually generating more leads/conversions because they are a lot more targeted. So I think you are probably getting a feel why local search marketing can be so important for your business. Now let's have a look at our good friend, Google. This is a Google search engine result page and this particular query was for the key phrase "dentist, Brisbane City". So again going back to our local search marketing rules of having our product/service first, we have got "dentist" and that's followed by the geographic location which in this instance is "Brisbane City". So looking down the screen, for those of you who are familiar with Google's search engines, you will know that up the top here are the Pay Per Click results or the Google AdWords results which are actually paid advertisements and these also run down the right hand side here which again you can see from our mouse pointer. Beneath these, however, is where you will start to see the local search marketing results really kicking in. You will see a number of results here. From the top here we have got "central dental, Coorparoo family dental" and so on. And these are actually generated from Google Maps and Google Places as well as Google Plus pages, which will make more sense as I go on through this webinar. Down here, it's important to note Dr Paul Trembath who has got a Google Plus page. Google Plus is probably one of the best ways you can possibly utilise for optimising your local search marketing. So if notice here Google Plus and you have a look at all of the other dentists here, you will see there isn't actually a Google Plus review for most of those. So I will flesh this out as we move forward. Now, I would like to run a quick poll while we are on this slide, just to get a bit of a feel for how many of you actually do search engine optimisation at this time. So I am just going to start that poll now and I will give you around 5 seconds to respond to that. I will share with you those results. You will see that there are 56 per cent of you that are currently undergoing search engine optimisation of some sort. There's 40 per cent that have no search engine optimisation at this point in time and 4 per cent of you are unsure. The reason that I would like to highlight this is because search engine optimisation is all about the results that appear beneath these Google Places and Google Plus results. So on this particular screen we are not even seeing any of the organic search results which you will probably spending a lot of your time and energy on trying to optimise. So you can really start to understand now why local search marketing, particularly in the sense of Google Plus and Google Places is so important, because it's actually sitting above your organic search results which you are probably investing a lot of time in. So let's have a quick look at the local search marketing landscape. I have already mentioned Google but it is important to note that there are other platforms out there. Obviously, Google is probably the most prevalent, seeing it's where a lot of people spend a lot of time searching for products and services. From a typical user's point of view, the instance someone would use Google is when they want to find stuff, such as a product/service, and do a lot of research around that. If we move over to Facebook, things are a little bit of different. Obviously being a social network, people interact with Facebook in a bit of a different way. So we probably refer to Facebook as more of a word of mouth engine and one that can you can use to search through to see what your friends recommend. The third option or the third platform where local search marketing is quite prevalent is the location based services. By location based, we are often referring to things that live on mobile devices or are accessible on mobile devices, such as apps or mobile websites. I will go through these in a bit more detail, shortly. For now, let's have a look at Google Plus and the evolution of the Google products over the last couple of years. First of all, I would like to run another poll. This one is: has your business already set up a listing on Google Maps or on Google Places; either of those options. So we are going to have a look at these results. It's a very even split between the "yes" and "no". So approximately half of you do have a Google Places or Google Maps listing and approximately half of you don't. I am going to hide those results and talk through a few chambers that have happened in Google. So it's great to see that a lot of you are already actively involved in Google, particularly Google Places. Now, it's very important for me to highlight that Google Plus is now taking over from Google Places. So Google Plus is a tool that you can use to list your business. In the past you would have used Google Places or even a product called Google business listings which existed for about 12 months before being sucked into Google Plus. When you add a business to Google Plus now, what you are creating is called a Google Plus local business page. Later in this webinar, I will show you how to set one up. The thing that is also happening is that in Google Plus, Google is collecting data from other sources, such as Google Places, which a lot of you have already listings on and Google Maps as well as other products like Yellow Pages and whatnot. So Google Plus aggregating all of this information that has existed in previous systems and bringing it altogether. Another question for you I am going to run another poll now and this one is about Google Plus business pages. So I would like to get a feel for how many of you out there have already set up a Google Plus local business page. I will run that poll right now. ... So 24 per cent of you currently have a Google Plus business page. So what I will run through now, for those of you who haven't set up one, is how to set one up. And for those of you who already have one, how to optimise that page, to make sure you are utilising it best. I would first like to highlight the benefits of being set up in Google Plus as a local business page. You actually get three key benefits. One of them is that you will appear in Google's search engine results pages, as we saw in that screen shot just a couple of slides ago. The second is that you will also appear in Google Maps and the third one is that you will appear in Google Plus, itself; Google Plus being the social media engine for Google. So let's have a quick look at that in way of screen shots. So now again we are looking at the Google search results page which we did look at a couple of slides ago but this time we have used the key phrase "café". Now Google knows that I am logged in and that I live in south east Queensland. So despite the fact that I have typed in a very generic phrase here, "café", it's actually returning relevant results to me in the Brisbane area. So you will see the first result here in the local search marketing is "Pearl Café in Woolloongabba". A very nice café, I might add. The second café is the "Cliff's Café" at Kangaroo Point and so on. So now, probably it's no coincidence here that the top ranking result you will see beneath it, the Pearl Café, has a "plus.google.com" link. So this means that Pearl Café has set up a Google Plus page. If you scroll down and continue looking at these results, you will notice that most of the others don't have this particular link beneath them. This is because this information is actually being sucked in from other legacy systems, whether they be Google Places or something else. So you can already start to see how Google Plus can really benefit your business and the exposure for your business in the natural search engine results pages. Now, let's flick on over to Google Maps. A few of you may use Google Maps fairly frequently. It is a good way of navigating around cities and it's accessible when you are in Google just at the Google Maps' link at the top here. So again, I have typed in "café" and this time I have had to put in the keyword "Brisbane" just to get things a bit more targeted for my search results. But lo and behold once again, what I am seeing up here is "Pearl Café", and we are seeing a lot of the same results but again Pearl Café is being prioritised and we are speculating that the reason is because it does have a Google Plus page. So again, you get a lot of exposure out of having these Google Plus pages. Let's move on over to Google Plus. This is probably a system a few of you use but it hasn't really quite taken off to the rate of Facebook, as yet. The way to access Google Plus is often, if you were logged into your email, which you will see at the link at the top here, on the far left, this will be a plus with your name. If you click on that, you will get straight into Google Plus. Google Plus has a number of many options which run down the side here. I have selected "Google Plus Local", which is a couple of icons from the bottom, and I have keyed in the keyword "café" and the location "Brisbane". Once again, I am seeing the result "Pearl Café" come in first. The reason being that Pearl Café has that Google Plus page. So again, just recapping on what we have had a look at just now: we have had a look at Google research results, we have had a look at Google Maps results and Google Plus results and what we are seeing is this particular café which has a strong Google Plus presence is actually ranking at the top for all of these individual Google products. So I stress the important of having a Google Plus page because it will get you a lot of exposure. So let's have a look at how you can set up a Google Plus page. The first step is obviously to jump in to the set up page. I have provided that on screen here. The address is plus.google.com/pages/create. So that is on screen, if you like to visit it now or note it down for future reference. And what you will see, when you visit this URL is the screen pictured to the right there, which will allow you to pick a category and start setting up your Google Plus local business page. Before I go on, it's very important to note that if you don't already have a personal profile on Google Plus, you will need to set one of those up first. It's a condition of setting up a business page that you must have a personal profile. If you don't have one of those, I have also provided a link for that on screen. Now assuming that's all set up, what you will do is click on the "local business/place" icon which is marked by that red marker icon there. And what you will see is as follows: you will see a pop up, and it will allow you to nominate a country which I assume for all of you is "Australia" and also a phone number. Now, the phone number may sound like a formality but I would like to stress the importance of this phone number. This actually matches any existing records within Google. So if you have actually set up in Google Places or in Google Maps or even in the Yellow Pages a business listing already, Google will be matching against that. So make sure you are using your primary phone number and your actually phone number. Don't just type something in for the sake of filling that out. So once you have filled that phone number in, what you will see is the following: one of two scenarios. If you already have some matches within Google Plus, as mentioned before, whether it's from the Yellow Pages or Google Maps or something else, what you will see is the screen on the left. I will just highlight that with my mouse pointer. This screen here. So I have keyed in a slightly random phone number up the top here and these are the results that have followed. I have got a variety of matches on that phone number. So the matching one in this instance that I was interested in setting up is actually "central dental", so I would click on that search results. Now, if there are no matches, what you will see is the screen shot on the right, here. So there will be no matches located and you will click on "add your business to Google". Once you have selected whether you have got an existing match or whether you are starting out afresh, you will again see one of two screens. If you have got an existing listing and you are matching it up, now it will give you the chance to confirm your information, which I have highlighted here with the mouse pointer. So, obviously, the phone number is pre populated and the address has been pre populated. But if it's incorrect, this gives you the option to modify that listing. If you are starting afresh, you will see this screen on the right that says "add your business" and this will give you the opportunity to include your business name and your full address. Now, again, on the topic of accuracy of information, it's important to add your correct address here. Keep in mind that not only will people potentially visit this address on foot but this will also be the location that Google may send you collateral or even verification codes from time to time. So you need to have a correct address and ideally with a post box, so that you can be receiving that verification information from Google. Now, we move on to the next screen, once you have filled out the address, and this is step 5. This will allow you to enter things such as your external website and your visibility. Now, the external website is again quite important to fill out correctly. Obviously, you spend a lot of time setting up your website for starters, so it's important to take opportunities to point traffic towards your website wherever possible. Secondly, putting in your website here, actually sits with your search engine optimisation efforts because Google Plus will be passing a bit of its page rank over to your website. So there's a benefit there as well. And finally, it's important to consider that your Google Plus will probably often rank above your actual web page. So by putting in your actual web page here, you are kind of getting a double whammy in terms of your website exposure in the search engine results. So once you have keyed in your website, you will see that there is a drop down list below that that says "your content is appropriate for" and 99 times out of 100 I would recommend that you type any Google Plus user because you really don't want to be limiting yourself to only certain levels of traffic. You could actually select the certain circles there if you wanted to limit your exposure, but as I said 99 times out of 100, I would recommend against this. Hit "continue" once you have filled out that screen. And now you get to the fun part, customising your profile. So much the same way as people like to customise their own homes or anything, customising a profile is all about adding the colours/imagery and adding a bit of emotion to your page. You probably should not underestimate the importance of this step because this is essentially the public perception of your business. So try and keep your imagery professional and well polished and also your logos and whatnot, keep them at the right resolution, and I will run through the specifications for all of those on the next screen. Now, it's also important when you are filling out all of the details on your local business page that you include keywords relevant to your business. So by "keywords", if we were talking about dentists, as we mentioned before, the keywords would literally be things like "dentist, dentistry, dental and teeth". So it's important to get those kinds of words into the descriptions on the page, without stuffing, which essentially means "overusing the words to the point where they look suspicious". Let's have a look at the details of populating the information on your Google Plus page a bit further. So first of all we have got the profile photo. If you are a Facebook user, you will be used to this. It is the photo that most often represents your Google Plus page. Its size is 250 by 250 pixels. So it's a square. And I would recommend that usually you would use a brand image such as a logo that can be seen at quite a small size for this particular section. Next, you have got the banner image which is that large image that runs across the Google Plus page there. This is more to create emotion and a bit of a description around your business. So maybe use a bit of lifestyle imagery that's associated with your business or maybe one of your key products or key jobs that you have completed in the past; and include this as your banner image. Now, the specs are written there as 940 by 180 pixels. I do know that Google Plus has updated its specs within the last five to seven days, so that banner image may have changed. So please refer to the Google Plus documentation for more information about that. Thirdly, we have got the address there, which we have mentioned earlier and should be pre populated from a previous step. Again, I would like to stress, make your address is 100 per cent accurate because this is where that verification postcard that I mentioned earlier will be sent. Now, also enter all of your other contact info. So this includes email addresses, additional phone numbers, fax numbers, even online chat facilities, because this is the point of reference that a lot of people will come across to contact you and your business. Number five is the category. It's important to make sure you are listed in the right category because people may actually use Google Plus to search based on category, rather than the name of your business. So if you are a café, don't list yourself in the bars if you are not a bar because people will obviously not be able to find you when performing searches. Number six is the hours of business. If you are the type of business that opens from, say, 8 to 5, Monday to Friday, be sure to include that; because again this will help people to understand when your business is available and will also reduce the need for people to call you just to ask when you are open. And then we have got number seven, which is the description about your business. And this is very important because it's essentially a little opportunity for a bit of search engine optimisation for your business. So be sure to include a valid description about your business but also those keywords that we mentioned earlier, because this will really help you along and help you rank for a range of different keywords when in search engines. So once you have completed all that and hit the "okay" button, what you will see is a completed Google Plus local business page. So if you refer to that example on the front there, for "Misfit Media", you will see there's a profile image, which is the logo for the business. You will see that there's that banner image at the top which contains a series of what I would call emotive images about that particular business, which really shows what it's about; and there's a range of other information on that stage. You will also notice from the orange circle that there are a couple of icons there. I will get my mouse pointer and hover over one of them. You will see there's a little tick there and this means that this particular page is verified. Now, if we have a look at "Creekside Environmental" up here, which is not quite a complete profile, you will notice that it says "unverified". This is what I was referring to before when I mentioned the postcard. Now, a postcard will be sent to your business once you have filled everything out. It takes about two to three weeks generally to arrive and it will contain a five/six digit verification number on the back. And what you will do when you receive this, actually follow the instructions on the postcard, key that verification number into Google and it will allow you to verify your listing. Now, the reason this is important is because your Google Plus business listing won't be listed on all of those other Google products until this is done. So you may not appear in Google search results for your Google Plus page; you may not appear in Google Maps and you may not appear on Google Plus until you verify your listing. So this is also a very important step. Now, once you have set all this up, it's important not to launch it and then forget about it. Google actually recommends having an on going plan in order to continue your optimisation for your local search marketing efforts. I am going to run another little poll here and I what I would like to know is how many of you actually have a marketing plan for your business for the year. So there's 39 per cent of you that currently have a marketing plan for your business for the year, 57 per cent of you don't and there's 4 per cent of you that are unsure. So they are interesting stats. What I take from that is: some of you are a little bit more fluid with your marketing plans, whereas others are a little bit more rigid. In the case of Google Plus and Google Plus local business pages, I would suggest that the more rigid option is probably going to be the more effective for you. The reason being, it will allow you to plan out your content over time and make sure that you are abiding by the rules that Google likes and that's to have frequent updates and relevant updates to all of your Google properties. So what I recommend is creating a plan, something like the one that appears on screen there, that's mapped out by day or even week/month, if you want to be a bit more casual about it; just to make sure that you are regularly updating your Google Plus page with relevant information/posts. So a post might be something like a link to your own blog or a link to someone else's blog with relevant information. It might be images that you post of new products that you have got in store or a new job that you have just completed; or it could be just even a quote or something like that, that's going to be relevant. So the idea for this is to increase engagement and build your following for your Google Plus page and at the same time appease that need for Google to be seeing frequent content in order for you to rank well in the local searches. So that concludes the Google Plus side of things. Now, let's move on to Facebook Places. So a lot of you would be familiar with Facebook. With 1 billion users world wide, it's a bit hard to ignore these days. It was actually launched back in 2004. It seems like such a newcomer but it has almost been around for ten years now. And Facebook Places actually launched in 2010, so it's definitely a newcomer to the Facebook scene. As of 30 December 2012 there were 604 million monthly users who used the Facebook mobile product. For those of you who carry around an iPhone or android and you jump onto Facebook every now and again, you are probably one of about 60/70 per cent of users who like to use Facebook mobile. Now, a smaller portion of that actually use Facebook Places to check in. Facebook guard these figures quite closely but reports at the end of 2010 said about 30 million people have tried Facebook Places. So we are looking at a much smaller proportion there but still a very significant proportion. Obviously, in comparison to something like Google, it's probably a lower priority, but it's still something very much relevant. So let's jump over and have a look at where Facebook is heading. Interestingly enough, at the start of this year, Facebook came out and released some very interesting developments that are planned and they are called Facebook Graph Search. This is going to be an absolute game changer for local search marketing because what it will allow any Facebook user to do is query the Facebook engine based on almost any parameter they please. So I have got some examples down the bottom of this slide. One example could be a search query typed in, that would say "people who like tennis and live nearby". So if I am up for a game of tennis on a Saturday, I can just type that into Google. It will go and work out amongst my friends who plays tennis and who likes tennis and it will produce results accordingly. Now, obviously from a local search marketing perspective this becomes really powerful. If we look at the example for sushi restaurants there, which is towards the bottom of that list, "sushi restaurants in Noosa my friends have liked". So what this will do, when key phrase is keyed into Facebook Graph Search, is that it will allow me to hunt around through my friends and work out who has recommended a sushi restaurant in Noosa. Obviously, this is very powerful because it relies on real word of mouth information. Now, the advice I can give to you as a business is that: Facebook is a word of mouth engine. So you can't force Facebook, you know, in the same way that you can massage information on Google Plus; you can't really do that on Facebook at this stage. But what you can do is encourage people to check into your Google Facebook page whenever they enter your store and you can do this by setting up certain promotions or even just a prompt, by a sign on your counter. You can also encourage people, you know, to interact with your Facebook page by posting frequent content and interacting withers through your Facebook page. I think the important thing to note there is: just remember that Graph Search is coming, it's going to be very powerful. So you should have a strong Facebook presence and try and build that word of mouth on there for the time. Now, let's take a look at a couple of other local search marketing channels. The two types of channels that we are highlighting on this particular screen are social networks and location based services. So the key examples I would like to point out on this screen are Foursquare, Yelp and Posse, which are recommended by the icons on the top right there. Now Foursquare has been around for a little while and it was argued that it was going to be superseded by Facebook Places when it came out, but it hasn't actually been superseded as yet. In comparison to some of the other technologies, Foursquare seems to have built in popularity and started to level out. It hasn't dropped yet but it definitely has levelled out; so the longevity of it, may be questionable for some. However, the way it works is that there is an app installed on your phone, Foursquare. What it allows you to do, each time you visit an establishment you check in. And it uses a term that some like to call gamification and it’s creating a bit of a game out of life, essentially, by awarding people points each time they visit an establishment. So the more points you get, I guess the more you succeed in the game of Foursquare, itself, and you can become mayor if you have the most points for checking in. So it's an interesting little one to play with. You will see from the example on screen there, on the chalkboard, the way you can encourage the use of Foursquare for your store. This is particularly good for things like coffee shops and places where you buy lunch. It's to encourage a check in in each time someone visits and once you secure eight check ins, you will get a free sandwich/coffee or something like that. So that's Foursquare. Another platform there that we have mentioned is Yelp. Yelp is a location aware app, so if you are carrying around an iPhone or android, Yelp is aware of your location and it can provide you with recommendations of what's in the area based on your specific search needs. So say I open the Yelp app, I am standing in the middle of bring city and I want to know where I can grab a coffee. I open up Yelp. I press "coffee" and then suddenly it will show me all of the areas that are listed on Yelp, the establishments, with instructions on how to get to each. So it's a great little app. It also allows social interaction, so that people can write reviews on there and it's one that I definitely recommend getting your business listed on. The third platform there is Posse. Posse is quite a new platform to the scene. It actually launched probably, I would hazard a guess, three/four months ago and has been having great success already. It has a very different interface to most. It's very fun/visual, and it's actually just released its app in the last couple of days as well. So things are moving very fast for Posse. But, yeah, I encourage you to have a look at that one and also list your business on there. So if you are interested this getting started with these location based apps, the easiest thing to do is to pick up your phone, jump into your app store and start downloading them. As mentioned before, some of them will allow you to list your business; whereas others will require you to claim your business, assuming that people have already commented on it. So say, for example, someone on Yelp, may already will be talking about your business and have listed it proactively because they are quite a frequent customer. What you can then do is go onto Yelp and claim your business and add additional information, such as your opening hours and maybe a couple of photos of your favourite products or services or whatever you have to offer. So I would encourage you to download Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp and Posse on your phone and have a look at how you can to start set up your businesses on each of those. Now, there are a couple of other local search marketing channels that are worth looking into and these are the directories. These are a bit more of a traditional style of local search marketing and the way I like to relate these is to Yellow Pages. Yellow Pages these days is used a lot more online than the physical book, but you will notice that there are a number of other directories that exist, some more generic and some more targeted to specific industries. I have listed a few of those on here. Those include True Local, Hotfrog, Yellow Pages, which I mentioned and Aussie Web. So you can go and list your businesses on those; some of them are free and some of them are paid listings, and you will get additional exposure from those as well. Another thing I would recommend doing is encouraging citations and reviews. So the difference between a citation and a review: Citation is more of a one dimensional description of your business; usually it just lists the business and the address and maybe a couple of facts. So think of a citation as something that's similar to being listed in a directory, but it's any other site that is not a directory. Whereas the review, it's something that's more emotive and it describes a customer experience. So that is the difference between a citation and a review. Now, the places that you can seek out getting citations and reviews are obviously on Google Plus Local. Now, I mentioned how to set up your page on Google Plus Local before but I didn't mention that there is an ability for your customers to love reviews. So what I would recommend, once you get that presence on there, is to actually start encouraging your clients to be leaving reviews. So whether it's verbally, you know, once you have completed a transaction/job, just to mention to them, "Did you know we are on Google Plus and you can leave a review about us?", or even mention it on a flyer or on a chalkboard or something like that. But start to encourage your customers to leave reviews because this will really work in your favour as Google Plus continues to kick in. Similarly, directories may also be of assistance for you, for getting those citations and reviews. Some directories allow reviews, whereas others are those one dimensional citation type directories. So do your research and work out which ones are going to work best for your business. But a couple that I would recommend looking at are True Local and Hotfrog. Now, there's also industry specific directories/review sites. So a good example of one of those is Trip Advisor, if you are in the tourism or even the café/restaurant industry. Trip Advisor is a site that a lot of people use these days to go and do research when they are visiting new countries/areas; and what people do, particularly those who are in independent hotels, is offer some you can't offer an incentive per se, but offer the opportunity for people to leave a review on their specific establishment. Now, one particular establishment that I saw do this really well said, "You are welcome to use our Internet, our Internet is free, but one thing we do ask is for you to provide a Trip Advisor review". So there is tactics around that to really encourage it; also add value to your clients at the same time. And the final thing I would recommend on this page is to have a hunt around and get ideas from your competitors. So do a Google search, search through Google Local and some of those other directories and just see what your competitors are up to and you will get a few ideas from those. So I have got a review on screen at the moment just as an example and it's from urbanspoon.com which I have highlighted from my mouse pointer right now. And this is just one of many, many sites that you can get access to reviews on. This one is for a restaurant in Maroochydore. So, yes, it's quite important to be getting those reviews because not only are they testimonials for your business but it's also dynamic content around your web properties, which helps to boost up your local search rankings. So now I am up to the summary page. On the left, there I have just got some key points. So in summary: it is important to know your options when it comes to local search marketing and I hope I have provided you with a few in this webinar today. It's also very important to have a strategy. So before you even start putting pen to paper or mouse pointed to screen or whatever you like to say, make sure you map out a strategy first because it's important to have some goal posts before you start toying with all of this technology. Once you have implemented them, make sure that you monitor your results to work out what is working for you and what's not working for you and really start to focus on the stuff that's working for you and repeat it. And remember, there are many resources out there available to help you. So jump onto forums, Google searches and whatnot, and you will find there's plenty of the information related to the technology that I have outlined to you. Now, I have got a lost here of a few key things for you to do as well. First of those is obviously to jump onto Google Plus and set up your free listing. I see that as a huge opportunity for businesses to jump ahead of their competitors at this point in time, simply because not everyone knows about it yet. So use that opportunity to your advantage. Secondly, encourage check ins and sharings. As I mentioned before, whether you use Facebook or whether you use Foursquare or any other technology, start trying to build a culture of people checking into your business or checking into your establishment, when they get there, if viable for you. Thirdly, encourage reviews and citations, again using similar techniques. Just prompt your customers to go and leave a review if they had a good response. Fourth, is to make sure you measure and track and verify everything. So I always recommend using Google Analytics because that will help you to track the source of a lot of your traffic back to your website; but also use other platforms as well. Fifth, consider your local search marketing company policy. There will be instances where some of the advice I have provided here may not be suitable for some businesses because of existing policies. So just make sure you are aware of any of those policies before you start going and implementing any of these techniques. And sixth, go mobile friendly and please don't forget mobile. As we saw from some of the stats, mobile is really taking off these days. People are starting to search on mobiles as much or in some cases more than they do on desktops. So keep that in mind with your local search marketing efforts. If you are after any further information, there's a number of resources available and I have listed those on screen at the moment. So these are the Queensland Government's business and industry portals as well as the Facebook page, Twitter page, You Tube channel and more. So I would now like to open up for questions and I will now hand back over to Helen to send those over to me. HELEN HUTCHINGS: Thank you, Jake, that was a really great presentation. Very informative. Thank you to everybody for your questions and tweets throughout the presentation. We have had a lot of questions and I have been grouping them and we will try and get through all of them or as many as we can in the remaining time. But please don't forget that there is a workbook available for this webinar. So if you haven't received the workbook, please let us know via the question panel and we will make sure that one of those workbooks gets out to you because there's a lot more detail in the workbook than we were able to cover today. Anyway, Jake, we have had a lot of questions about Google Plus, and particularly: what do companies do if they are an online or a mobile business? So if they don't actually have a physical address that they want to display for example, someone working from home doesn't necessarily want to put up their home address in Google Plus and, likewise, people who run an online business, they might just have a warehouse rather than an actual shopfront so can these online mobile businesses use Google Plus; is that going to be effective for them? JAKE FALKINDER: Yes, that's a very good question, Helen. In terms of Google Plus, itself, by all means it's very much possible to set up a Google Plus page that is not location specific. So I think there was a screen shot that I had in there of the set up page of the first step of the process of setting up Google Plus. You will probably recall there was a "local business" option and then there was "a company/brand" option and there were a number of other options there. So there's obviously an option to suit all different set ups of business there. The thing to remember is: in terms of local search marketing, it's all about searches or search queries based on a service at a specific location. So if you can't promote a specific location for your business, then it makes it that bit harder to utilise things like taking advantage of Google Maps, obviously because you can't pinpoint your business. So you probably won't get the maximum amount of benefits that you would, if you don't have a physical office location, because you can't leverage off those search engine results that we saw above the natural search engine results, but you can still definitely set up a Google Plus page. HELEN HUTCHINGS: And then people at least searching for that, for example, if you had a mobile handyman type business, at least people searching could still see that business and be aware of its offering? JAKE FALKINDER: Yes, most definitely. Something that I didn't touch on so much today is the Pay Per Click advertising side of things and also the search engine optimisation side of things. So you can still use those techniques to hone in on specific locations. So if you are a mobile handyman for Aspley in Brisbane, for example, you can use Pay Per Click advertising and search engine optimisation to target that phrase rather than Google Plus, as such. So I would probably recommend using other techniques in that instance. HELEN HUTCHINGS: We have also had a couple of questions about the Google Plus postcard verification. One of the key ones we have been ask is: can you put in a PO box address for that verification postcard? JAKE FALKINDER: You are really testing me on the Google terms and conditions. It is my belief that you cannot use a PO box because this isn't a representative of your physical business address. I guess the whole way that Google Plus Local is set up is based around physical addresses and physical business locations. To my knowledge, no, you can't use a PO box. HELEN HUTCHINGS: Some more general questions around Google Plus: with having to have a personal page with Google, creating a Google Plus business page, how does a business deal with that? What happens if the original person who set up the Google Plus page leaves? JAKE FALKINDER: Yes, a very good question. It is possible to set up additional administrators for a Google Plus page. I wouldn't see that as a huge risk. What I would recommend doing is if you are using, you know, for example, an administrative assistant to set up that page, that you immediately get them to share the administrative rights of the page with the business owner and a few other key people, just in case they do move on. And also, obviously, if they do move on, it's important to restrict their rights as well to contribute, so they can't do any damage to your page in the future. But, yes, there's a number of administrative options within the set up that allow for additional administrators of your page. HELEN HUTCHINGS: We have also had a question someone's asked, they haven't finished their website, they have just bought the domain: would you recommend they set up the Google Plus page first or set up the web page first, if they are going to prioritise, which one to focus on? JAKE FALKINDER: Yes, it's a very interesting question. It really depends on the service. You will notice that some industries are very highly competitive in terms of the web space and SEO space. So it may be more beneficial for you to set up a Google Plus page first because you know the results are going to be quite immediate. Now, having said that, you may not appear in the Google Plus results for at least three weeks, considering there's a verification process and whatnot. So I would probably recommend at least setting up a holding page, so a landing page, or a one page website on the domain that's been purchased, at the least, and setting up Google Plus. But ideally, set up both in parallel. HELEN HUTCHINGS: Just moving off Google Plus for the moment and looking at Foursquare and Facebook and the other platforms that you spoke about, we do have a number of people who work from home, or run home based businesses, and don't have a walk in shop, so is Facebook Place as relevant for them? JAKE FALKINDER: Ah, I am struggling to think of instances where Facebook Place check ins would be relevant for those guys because again it is very location specific. I am sure there would be cases where it would be relevant, but I would say for the most part, no. Having said that, you can still obviously use the Facebook brand and company functionality. You probably just wouldn't be focussing so much on the location specific side of things. So you can still build engagement and whatnot around your brands but, yes, I would say in more cases you probably wouldn't be using Facebook Places in those scenarios. HELEN HUTCHINGS: So they can still have a Facebook page for their business and drive the engagement through the page but the actual place's functionality is not really relevant, if you don't have a physical location? JAKE FALKINDER: No. Facebook Place is generally used for people who visit a location and would like to announce to their friends that they are there. From a user's point of view, it's almost a gloating thing to go and check in, using Facebook Places. So if that kind of behaviour from a user's point of view isn't really going to benefit your business, then there's probably no reason to try and set it up. HELEN HUTCHINGS: With Foursquare, Yelp and Posse, are they relevant for purely online retail businesses; can people use those to sort of check in, you know, businesses that are purely online? JAKE FALKINDER: That is a good question. Collectively, not all them will suit the need. Foursquare for one is definitely a location based thing. So again with the same mentality that I described with Facebook Places, that applies to Foursquare. Posse is for a focus on bricks and mortar at this stage, but I would suggest keeping an eye on it because it does seem to be evolving quite quickly and because it is such a fun user experience, I expect that to take off to a point of more saturation in the future. Then in terms of Yelp, I would have to go and check the fineprint in Yelp, because I'm not 100 per cent across the set up rules but I would imagine you would probably need a physical address for that as well. But that might be one of the three that you could potentially look at, if you don't have a fixed address. HELEN HUTCHINGS: Someone's tweeted a question and I am going to apply it here, Jake, and ask you to put get out your crystal ball: will Google Plus ever become as popular as Twitter or Facebook? JAKE FALKINDER: Oh, that is the golden question, isn't it? In terms of the number of users on Google Plus, it's arguable that the number of users on Google Plus is comparable to Facebook already because it is leveraging off Gmail as the point of set up. So for those of you that have set up a Gmail account, you are 7/8ths of the way to setting up a Google Plus account already. So for that reason, it's arguable that the stats could be comparable now or in the near future. But in terms of the usage of Google Plus at the moment, it's really only used prevalently in the online marketing world and that is why I see it as such a bigger opportunity at the moment; because Google is really trying to push it. So they are appealing to that online marketing world, which means there's so many opportunities to be ranking well in Google at the moment. It's really hard to say if it will take over Facebook because I sort of see them as different platforms. I think Google will really start to go off in that local business direction, whereas Facebook will continue to be social, social, social. But rather than compare them on numbers alone, I think we should start to compare them on their benefits and I think that's where they really start to split apart. I would probably say Facebook Places might become a bit less and Google Local will start to fill that void. HELEN HUTCHINGS: And just with Google Plus again, and this postcard verification, I think it's causing some issues for people. For example, somebody doesn't get postal delivery at their business address, as it is in the country; can they get the postcard sent to PO box? And somebody else lives in a new residential community that Google Maps hasn't updated yet, therefore the location of the business isn't on the map. Can these people contact Google to resolve these issues? Is there a way of resolving these, in terms of this verification? JAKE FALKINDER: Yes. There's always a way to contact Google. I wouldn't say for small business, it's always going to be the most prompt response, but there is always a way to contact Google. What I would suggest is, if you are in one of those scenarios, just jumping into Google Plus and looking through a few of their help files because they are updated frequently; and because this is quite a new space for Google, they are going through a few of these teething problems and speaking to businesses like the ones who are listing now. So in order to get the most prompt and up to date information, I would probably encourage you to jump onto the Google help files for that. At this point in time, from my understanding, PO boxes aren't really an option. So Google is being quite adamant in saying, "If there is a physical post box on a property, that's where the postcard will be dropped at this stage". HELEN HUTCHINGS: We have had a couple of questions in regard to encouraging reviews or getting you know, if you have got a restaurant, for example, on Urbanspoon and your customers provide a review, are you able to moderate those reviews before they are posted? Can you make sure that you are happy with the review and make sure it's appropriate before it's uploaded, or do you really have no control over that? JAKE FALKINDER: For the most part, from my understanding, there isn't really an opportunity to delete a negative review. I would see it as an opportunity for your business to improve themselves, once you see the review. But, yeah, the basis of all of these sites is to provide a rounded view of your business. So if you were to delete reviews, as such, then it wouldn't be a rounded view. Some of them do allow a response and others do not. Again, if you were concerned about that and you are able to set up or not set up your business on a specific site, then go through the paces and think about whether it's going to benefit or hinderer business and take it from there. HELEN HUTCHINGS: I'm sorry, everybody, we have hit our 1.30 mark and I have tried to get through as many questions as possible, but I can see it's been a very popular topic, lots of tweets/questions, and we really do appreciate your participation in this. So we are going to be sending out an evaluation survey shortly and we very much appreciate your feedback on today's webinar. We hope you have enjoyed it and found it useful for your business. Thank you again for attending and we hope you have a lovely afternoon. Thank you, bye now.