A company called PaperG has two new services – Flyerboard and PlaceLocal – to let advertisers and publishers automatically generate online ads and flyers and place them online.

Flyerboard is a virtual bulletin board that contains clickable flyers. Upon clicking, the flyer is expanded and more detailed copy is revealed (if it exists). The company claims a click-through rate (CTR) of up to three times higher than traditional banner ads.

Create your flyer using any existing image without having to fiddle with file size, pixel, or format specs. Your flyer will automatically include email sharing, integration to social media and a local built-in map.

You will get real-time impression and click stats for your Flyerboard ad. See what the virtual bulletin board looks like in an actual website.

PlaceLocal automatically builds your custom rich-media online display ad by scraping information, reviews, logos, awards and photos that are relevant to your product, service or company from the web. It’s as simple as entering your business name and location. In seconds, you see the display ad it creates for you.

Your ad includes a map and a way for viewers to refer friends to the ad. You can easily edit your ad once it is ready. If the business doesn’t have a website, PlaceLocal will automatically generate one.

In all, these are two great services to help local businesses advertise online and help publishers such as newspapers and TV stations provide an online advertising service for their local business clients.

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Groupon is a popular new website that sends subscribers in each city a daily e-mail that contains one heavily discounted bargain from a local business.

Launched in 2008, Groupon has more than 3.7 million subscribers who receive their daily e-mail offers. More than 3,000 businesses have signed on to offer these deals.

Groupon works a lot differently than just sending out your own coupons or putting your coupon in the newspaper.

1. Your business doesn’t send Groupon a dime. If Groupon subscribers want an offer, they must pay for it in advance on Groupon’s website. Groupon then takes a cut of this payment, typically 50% – and you get the other 50%.

2. The offer isn’t valid unless a predetermined number of coupons are sold in a 24-hour period. In addition to email, Groupon also uses social media like Twitter and Facebook to get the word out about your offer.

Businesses that have used Groupon have reported a very large influx of business, not only on the day of the offer, but with repeat business from Groupon offer redeemers who then come back.

Here is an example of a Groupon offer that ran in Tampa.

It shows you the deal, the discount, the savings, the time left to buy and how many people have bought it. It lists highlights of the offer and shows a photo of the business.

Groupon also writes a description of your business.

Some tips for using Groupon successfully and preventing the experience from becoming too costly or overwhelming.

Do the math. It’s typical for businesses to offer discounts of 50 percent or more to Groupon customers. Then Groupon takes about half of what you make from the offer. Can you afford to sell a product or service at this discount? (It can be worth it to get new customers to try out your business.)

Set a limit. You may want to specify the maximum number of coupons you want to sell. Your Groupon offer may lead to more business than you can handle.

Be careful about including your phone number. If you give a phone number in your Groupon offer, you may be swamped with phone calls. You might want to use an online reservation system instead.

Use sparingly. Offering coupons too often can cause customers to shop only when they have one.

Groupon has some informative videos about how your business can get more customers.

As of this writing, Groupon is in these cities

Albuquerque Atlanta Austin Baltimore Boston Charlotte Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Columbus Dallas Denver Detroit Fort Worth Fresno Houston Indianapolis Jacksonville Kansas City Las Vegas LA LA-Inland LA-Orange County Louisville Memphis Miami Milwaukee Minneapolis / St Paul Nashville New York New Orleans Oklahoma City Omaha Orlando Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh Portland Providence Raleigh/Durham Salt Lake City San Antonio San Diego San Francisco / East Bay San Jose Seattle Sioux Falls St. Louis Tacoma Tampa Toronto Tucson Virginia Beach/Norfolk Washington DC Washington DC- NoVa Washington DC- Montgomery County

credits:
inc.com
groupon.com

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Want more customers to find you? Add your free map-based listing at Google Local Listings.

With all of the major search engines now skewing search results toward local, this and other online listings should be part of your small business’s online strategy.

It’s free to publish your listing with all the basic information: Your business name, address, e-mail and phone and location (enter your address; no map skills needed to set this up).

You can also include a 200-character summary of your business and then assign the listing to up to five categories that best describe your business.

You can also customize your listing with photos, videos, payment options, hours, customer reviews and more.

Your review material will be listed as “from the owner.” As your listing is supplemented by user content, including reviews, tips, and photographs, the user content will be labeled as such.

One caveat: with user-generated content, you may receive both positive and negative feedback. Thinking positively, though, negative feedback allows you to improve your business.

credit: inc.com

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It’s time for your business to tap into the power of mobile marketing, a discipline that is rapidly gaining in popularity and acceptance.

Businesses using mobile coupons have reported much better results than sending coupons by direct mail or by flyers in the Sunday paper.

Here are some mobile coupon apps that make the process fast and easy. Some are free, and some require a sign-up or monthly fee.

Yowza
725,000 users
Around $50/month per business location

Coupon Sherpa
80,000 users
Free

mobiQpons
100,000 users
$50 sign up, $25/month per business location

Money Mailer
Reaches as many customers as you sign up
$25-$75/mailing zone of 10,000 homes

foursquare
400,000 users
Free for now, plans to eventually charge for the service

iLoop Mobile
Reach as many customers as you sign up
$1,500 and up for one campaign, or $2,500/month for ongoing campaigns

For more details, see the slideshow from inc.com, Six Services To Help You With Mobile Marketing

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Foursquare has attracted more than 400,000 users in less than a year. It’s time for your business to jump on this bandwagon.

Foursquare can help your business promote deals, get new customers and increase loyalty and patronage among your existing customers.

Foursquare lets users check in at retail stores, restaurants, bars and other places when they arrive, then find recommendations for what to do while there and the surrounding neighborhood. When a user checks in at a nearby business, they will be alerted to your special offer, too.

Foursquare users publicly share recommendations of the businesses they visit. Foursquare uses this data to recommend local businesses based on targeted geolocation.

Businesses can link a discount to a check-in listing and reward users who check in repeatedly by giving points and titles such as ‘mayor’ and ‘deputy mayor.’

Your “mayor” is a regular customer whose loyalty you’ll want to keep. You can see who that person is on the Foursquare site. Businesses often offer VIP perks to their mayor, from a discount to a free beer.

Other businesses promote mayor’s specials. Anything goes – show your mayor that he or she matters to you in a way that reflects the personality of your business.

Read more in the informative article, How to Make Money on Foursquare from inc.com

See a list of businesses currently offering promotions on Foursquare’s webpage for businesses

Foursquare is available in these cities:

North America: US: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City (MO), Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville, New Haven, New York City, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Orlando, Park City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Raleigh-Durham, Richmond, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Tucson, Washington D.C. Canada: Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver. Mexico: Mexico City

Europe: Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham (UK), Bristol, Brighton, Brussels, Cologne, Copenhagen, Dublin, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hamburg, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Munich, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Reykjavik, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna, Zurich

South America: Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo

Africa: Johannesburg

Middle East: Dubai, Tel Aviv

Asia: Beijing, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo

Australia: Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney

New Zealand: Wellington

A link for updates on Foursquare’s city list or to request that your city is added.

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Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster

There are several sites that let you search all Craigslist listings simultaneously. Try them out and see which you like best.

1. The first one, allofcraigs.com, lets you refine your Craigslist search by region or category. You can specify exact words or unwanted words. You can use search values like price, year, size, salary or mileage.

Plus you can also search all of other sites including backpage, kijiji, oodle, gumtree, eBay and Amazon. There is a Twitter link on their page – click it and see real-time tweets related to Craigslist. It also has a mobile app.

It has a clean layout similar-looking to the Google search page. Try it now: search all craigslists simultaneously

2. A second site, craiglook.com, lets you search listings within 250 miles. As an added bonus, it gives you picture previews if the ads contain images.

3. A third site, searchallcraigs.com has a clean page, similar to allofcraigs.com.

4. A fourth site, Search Tempest, lets you search all craigslist listings PLUS eBay results. You can sort cities by distance, size or state. It displays each Craigslist city in a separate box, as it does for eBay listings. The eBay listings here even include the photos and the time remaining on each auction.

5. A fifth site, craigz.com, has tabs for ‘For Sale’, Housing, Services, Gigs, Resumes and Jobs.

6. spific.com lets you search all craigslist listings in real time. (Other sites that use Google custom search for your craigslist search won’t give you real-time listings since they have to be indexed by Google first)

Or you can just search Craigslist by using Google search directly, as explained nicely by linkmoney.org

Want your Craigslist search to be done automatically for you?

AdNotifier lets you receive new ad notifications as they post to Craigslist . You can have these notifications sent to your PC desktop, SMS text message and/or your email.

It’s a valuable tool if you’re hunting for bargains, selling on ebay and searching for a job or a new relationship. You can demo AdNotifier for free here.

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Consider these facts:

• 40% of searches have local intent
• 5% of searches use city or state names (e.g. Tampa, Florida)
• 2% of searches use neighborhood names (e.g. South Tampa, West Tampa)
• .5% of searches use zip codes (e.g. 33606)

That’s a huge potential source of customers when you consider that more than 10 billion unique searches are made every month. It has been estimated that there are half a billion local searches on Google every month.

One important local search tip

Make sure your business title is consistent on the Internet. For example, if you are listed as Tampa Pizza on one site and Tampa Gourmet Pizza on another, Google and other search engines might think this is two different businesses and thus fracture your search engine rankings.

Other great local search tips

See how your business is listed on Google and other top local search engines at GetListed.org

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I came across this free local search tool. You simply type in your keyword or phrase that relates to your business, for example, ‘dog grooming’. Then you type in your zip code and the radius around your store (in miles) that you would like to get business from.

Hit ‘submit’ and the free local search tool generates your keyword paired with every city and zip code within your chosen radius.

By using your keyword together with surrounding areas and zip codes in AdWords, you will encounter less competition among advertisers.

For example, instead of ‘dog grooming in Tampa’, you could have ‘dog grooming in Brandon’ and ‘dog grooming in South Tampa’ (areas within Tampa). This can save you money per click and help you rank higher on the results list.

Combine this with dynamic keyword insertion and you can target every niche market in every surrounding city automatically.

Try out the free local search tool
–
Adding a personal observation today:

I did a search for movie times and moviefone was the top result. Then I did a search for movie times tampa and moviefone was nowhere to be seen. They completely missed out on the local search market!

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Today, Google and Yahoo are making their local search results more relevant than ever before.

And when you consider that 70% of buyers go to the Internet before they buy and that 80% of purchases are made locally, you can see how lucrative these search results can be.

Get more helpful tips from Dr. Lynelia Grant

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I am working on an ad campaign for a retailer in Sarasota and St. Petersburg named Local Coffee + Tea. Their mantra and philosophy is to support ( and be supported by) local business.

According to their website, “Local Coffee + Tea is committed to promoting local products, services and businesses, protecting local environments and celebrating local treasures. These three guiding principles influence all aspects of our operation and every interaction with our vendors, neighbors, customers and team members.”

I did a little checking around the web and discovered that this ‘buy local’ concept really can invigorate local businesses.

A 2003 study by Civic Economics, a consulting and research firm, looked at what happened to every $100 spent at a national chain bookstore versus a locally owned bookstore in Austin, Texas. The survey revealed that at the chain, only $13 went back into the local economy. At the local bookstore, it was $45.

That’s something for local business owners to think about. And the rest of us as well

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