Using Internet Information Effectively in Marketing Floyd Memorial Library Greenport, NY Nov. 7, 2011

Who visits your business The Internet has a lot of sources of information regarding potential customers and visitors to your business area. The Internet is the absolute least expensive way to connect.

A good exercise - Take a minute and describe the next person who you would expect would come through your front door or call you on the phone to use your business. This is “any business” from a restaurant to a law firm. age, sex, education, $, local or distance, etc.

You don’t have to have a website…… There are a number of options open to you short of having your own website to connect with customers. The fact is, though, that in our area we are about 80% Internet connected and that vehicle is the most used tool in finding and researching a business to visit.

Non-Website Options These are all FREE!!!

Just a word on free v. paid advertising The unit of measure for advertising is Cost per Thousand views (CPM). If you spend $10 for an ad that might (key word) have 1,000 viewers, then your CPM = $10. But who sees the ad? Are they the same people who come in your store or contact you for business?

Getting noticed by the right people If you have a shop full of women’s accessories, the number of men who see your ad likely isn’t as important to you. If your merchandise is for women 50+, then it might not matter so much that women 35 and under see your ad. The more specific your store offerings are the few people – statistically – you care about if they see your ad. General “advertising” is just that – it reaches a general audience and you are interested in just a small percentage of that total.

The Internet reaches nearly everyone BUT is very specific in what it shows When a person searches for a product or service on the Internet, the search engine automatically narrows the results based on where you live and what the search engine knows about you. It then shows you mainly the results that it expects you want to see.

The more of this stuff is “out there” The more you will be noticed by search engines and the more you will be paired up in search engine results. You will become “visible” to those looking for your store, goods, and services. This is generally called “social media” and “strategic media”. It takes a while to develop a following or a presence large enough to be noticed.

1.Having a website or a page on a website helps things along very quickly. 2.You have an opportunity to say a great deal about your business or service and the “search engines” will find you and pair you up with searches a lot faster. 3.Websites or pages ALSO give you a great deal of marketing information about “visitors” and in a very subtle way, tell you if your message is right or wrong. 4.All this brings us to the subject of ANALYTICS which is just a term that describes how people find you and who those people are.

This is the “alexa.com” site. It gives you information on a few million websites. Just go to and then type in the website you want to know about

We typed in LIWines.com and got these results. Note the “Queries” at the bottom. This tells me what people are searching for generally. If I hit the “get details” button, it tells me “who” is doing the searching.

We typed in LIWines.com and got these results. Note the “Queries” at the bottom. This tells me what people are searching for generally. If I hit the “get details” button, it tells me “who” is doing the searching.

We can find out a lot about who is searching for information on local wineries. This relates to your local business DIRECTLY. This starts to profile people who are interested in coming into the area. Advertising or making an alliance with LI Wines is most beneficial if you are seeking W, 45+ with college educations, with children and are employed…and there is much more detail available

If you advertise anywhere that has a “website” and you can probably find information about the site a Alexa.com. If alexa doesn’t carry information, just type in “website rankings” in your search and there are a number of alternatives. Also, if you want to see who visits your area generally via the Internet, you can do the same thing and look at “big sites” and see the information.

There is also something called Google Analytics – the main topic here – and the Greenportvillage.com site has the code embedded in the construction of the site. Access to Google Analytics is very straightforward. Go to: Click here

To sign in: In the box type: Greenportvillagebid In the password type: redfly10

Click here to enter our site And then click here to view the Analytics

Just click “view report”and here you are:

The menu on the left “opens” and the overview changes. You can then start to dig into the data that the site has collected.

This is the section that gives the individual page results so you can see who goes where when they visit the site

And you can explore to your heart’s content And we will go live and explore from here.

Summary You don’t have to have a website but it helps and if you have one put analytics on it. It is free. Use social and free Internet Services whenever you can (facebook, blog, etc.) Use them in conjunction with your website when at all possible Use pictures as often as you can Learn from the analytics (google and alexa type sites) These are free resources that give you significant information about who is visiting your area.