LocalBizBits Local Search Marketing Information and Resources
Yesterday I took place part of the 2nd Annual Rocky Creek Spring Fest. It is a small business expo held outdoors, with the goal of promoting the southside of Augusta GA. There were a good number of businesses, service organizations, food vendors, music acts, and kids activities. It was a lot of fun.
I got on the planning community for the fest last year; took over the website for the fest and I am glad I did. By being on the committee, I got to meet and talk to a lot of other business owners and made a few new friends. It has been (and will be) a great networking activity. By volunteering to help out, I made a lot of good connections, I would not have otherwise.
I had not really participated in an expo like this before, so I was not sure what to expect. I shared a table with a friend. We both were promoting our .com businesses and talking about local search marketing. We tried to come up with ideas on how to get folks to come talk with us. Being a “virutal” business it is kind of hard to have stuff to show or display. We did have Wifi and a laptop but with the sun over head it was hard to see the monitor.
We decided to do the following:
- give out free water (it was 80+ degrees outside and the food vendors were charging $1.50 for it)
- give out free candy
- have a little toy on the table to interest kids, who hopefully would bring their parents.
Here is a photo of the toy. I was a small bus that ran around the posable track. My son decided to tape my business card on top of it. That got a few laughs. More pictures to follow later in the week.
The water and the toy were a big hit (got us some traffic) but not a lot of folks seemed interested in Internet marketing. When I did talk to someone, I figured out quickly that I had about 2 minutes to explain what local search marketing was before they were ready to move on. I had made a brochure on local search and many folks did take that, so I did the message out.
Most of the folks I spoke with were starting a business or had a business they were trying to get off the ground. I tried to explain to them that lcoal search would be a great thing to do to help with their visibility. They sounded very interested and stated they would call me this week. We shall see. 🙂
This fest was a great way to promote my business and a very inexpensive one! I highly recommend that if you need to get the word out, look for a local business expo like this one and participate. The networking and of course the business leads make it well worth the time.
