Can customers right around the corner find you?

Imagine this, you’re on a road trip trip to St. Augustine with the family, and the others in the car are starting to get hungry. You’re still a few hours away from the hotel, but you’re in a town you’ve never visited. Do you settle for what’s advertised on the exit signs? Are there even any restaurants on the exit signs?

If you’re like many people today with a GPS device, you’re going to punch in a request for nearby restaurants. Or, you’ll use a web-enabled smartphone to run a similar search on Google maps. You might even be specific and look for a Greek or Italian spot. Regardless, you’ve got a car full of people to feed who will welcome a 30 minute escape from their car seats, and you need somewhere convenient, comfortable and within everyone’s budget.

Now, flip that around, if you’re an Italian spot 2 miles off the interstate, you’ve got prime prospects speeding past you. Reaching these customers is considerably more valuable than reaching 100 customers who already have a favorite Italian spot on the other side of town. And that car has about $100 of business in it, ready to spend.

Now that many GPS devices are including local search engine results, combined with the fact that few businesses have invested in pumping up their local search results listings, maintaining a current profile in search engines can have quite an impact. In other words, you are ignoring an amazing opportunity should you choose not to invest in managing your local search results profiles.

Some examples of local search profiles are:

• local.yahoo.com
• Google Local Business Center
• Yelp

More people are turning to these databases to make local and immediate buying decisions. And, as the information in these databases becomes more robust, they will likely be integrated into more devices and applications. Put as much effort in your online reputation as you do offline, no matter how local your customer focus is.