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Local Advertising for Your Home Business Using Online Ads

by Jean Murray on February 17th, 2009

If your home business sells locally, there are a number of online sources you can use to reach your local market. Except for the first one, which is a phone call service, they charge in one of two ways:

CPC - cost per click - you pay for each time someone clicks on your ad.

OR, CPM - cost per thousand - cost per thousand page views. You get charged for every thousand times that your ad is viewed.

I don’t know which is better, but it makes sense to me that CPC is more meaningful, since you only get changed if someone expresses interest by clicking on your site.


1800FREE411 Here is how it works: Someone calls the number and asks for “flower shops” “Scottsdale, AZ” - they hear your ad - when they call, you get billed.

Yelp reviews businesses in an area. If your business is rated highly(over 3.5) yo9u can buy “premium” service.

Google Adwords allows you to create a short ad and display it for specific search results. For example, if you have a quilting business, you could put an ad on every search for “quilt shop” and your city name.

Citysearch.com also allows you to place an ad on a page with ads, including video and photos.

Local.com (the same as yahoo.local ? ) is an interesting site. When I went to the site, it already had the information on the city I lived in, with ads for restaurants and other local recommendations. Their Local Promote service says it also includes ads on other search sites.

Ask.com sponsored listings has two levels of service. The cheaper level of service, for small businesses, works on a CPC (cost per click) basis.

Each of these services says they will provide you with the widest audience and the most exposure for your clicks. You certainly can’t afford to sign up with all of these services.

Tags: online advertising, search keywords, sponsored listings

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1 opinion for Local Advertising for Your Home Business Using Online Ads

  • Biplob Kishore Deb
    Feb 19, 2009 at 6:17 am

    Thanks for your informative article.
    It is really very important to let people know about your product, even if you sell it locally. Whatever the way one chooses to give AD, he/she must be aware of the key word by which the target customers search in the net and ad should be given for those key words.

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