Business Newsletter - January 2010 www.goinlocal.co.uk - the community website and business directory for postal district LS25 Garforth, Kippax, Aberford, Micklefield, Sherburn, South Milford, Hillam, Monk Fryston, Burton Salmon, Newthorpe, Peckfield, Biggin Goinlocal.co.uk, the community website and local business directory for postal district LS25, is now over five years old. In that time it has grown its readership from zero to 6,000 visitors a month. A monumental achievement when you consider that our website is only promoted in LS25 and only uses search engine keywords relevant to the communities making up this postal district. Six thousand families actually read the content of our pages instead of picking up a flyer or business directory from the letter box and dropping it straight in the bin unopened. Our website is packed with useful local information, telling everyone everything they want to know about LS25 and what is going on there, whilst at the same time letting them quickly reach the internet via a built in Google browser and links to the most popular websites. So make it your homepage, a meaningful gateway to the internet and the way to find out about your business when they go in local. Why Use the Internet to Promote your Business? According to the National Statistics Omnibus Survey published in August 2009:- - 70 percent of households (18.3 million households) had internet access in 2009
- 37.4 million adults (76 percent of the UK adult population) accessed the internet in the 3 months prior to this survey
- 27.3 million adults access the internet regularly on a daily basis
- 26 million people made a purchase via the internet in the 3 months prior to this survey
The number of people using the internet grows significantly year after year. It is not a flash in the pan, it is not the future, it is the now...The internet is where most people go to find out things. If your business is not represented on the internet then your customers will find someone else who is and you will lose a sale. “Advertising with ‘goinlocal’ made a measurable impact on our business” Mathew Pike, Pikes Water Lilies Why Use goinlocal.co.uk to promote your business? - 71,821 local visitors in 2009
- Annual increases in readers every year since launch in 2004
- Our adverts are cheaper than the smallest ones in the local business directory yet bigger and better than their most expensive ones
Why is goinlocal important to your business, what do they offer? Well there were over 6,000 good reasons in December. Local people, your potential customers, are visiting this website in ever increasing numbers to see what’s going on locally. If your business is not listed here how will they know about the excellent service you are offering? - Do you have your own website? Have you spent hundreds of pounds on it and then found that people don’t even know you’ve got one? The secret of a successful website is to tell your customers you have one. You can do this by linking your website to goinlocal so that your potential, local customers can easily find it . Nearly 72,000 of your potential customers would have seen the link to your website if you had advertised with goinlocal in 2009.
- Do you want to be on the internet? If you don’t have your own website the next best way to promote your business to the people of LS25 is with a TraderPage. This is a single page website, hosted by goinlocal on your behalf. On it you can list all the details about your business that local people want to see – where you are located, when you are open, how you can be contacted, what you specialise in, how experienced you are - all in a single, full colour page available to view 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year . Our graphic designers will create a Traderpage for you at an amazing value-for-money price. Here are a few examples A B
- Do you use Coupons/Special Offers to attract customers? Are you running a ‘one off’ promotion to attract customers to your shop? Advertise it on our Offers page for up to 3 months. Don’t rely on passing trade to read that small notice in the corner of your shop window. Don’t print flyers and pay someone to stick them through thousands of letterboxes, they will go straight to the bin! Don’t place an ad in the local press and expect people to remember it for 3 months. A coupon on our website will be visible to your local potential customers 24 hours a day. Place an ad in the Offers section of goinlocal - reach out to your local customers in their own homes, continuously for up to 3 months for a small fee. If you also have a TraderPage, you receive a discount on this price
Why do your customers visit our website? In our first full year 2005 we had 18,640 visitors to our site. In 2009 this has grown to 71,821 visitors. In the last 6 months over thirty seven thousand households have visited our website. In January 2010 alone we expect over 6,700 visitors. These are not readers scattered all over the world who will never buy anything from you, they are overwhelmingly local people, your potential customers. The promotion of the site and the content is aimed at local people. Our readership continues to grow by thousands each new year. Many visitors have, at the click of a button, made goinlocal their permanent homepage or simply added it to their favourites list. The news, events, ads and business listings are all local. The news pages are updated as and when local news happens. The event listings are up to date and for local events. The job vacancies are for local shops, factories and offices. The site is interactive. People write to our letters page with views about local issues. They recommend local businesses, qualifying them to appear on our ‘Recommended’ list. They submit local news and events information for inclusion on the website. They list new clubs and societies or update the details of existing ones. Local community leaders regularly write for the website, giving their views on the issues that matter to the community. In addition the site is packed with useful information - local telephone numbers, popular websites, links to local websites, timetables, maps, weather reports, puzzles, how to contact your MP or councillor, in fact everything local and more….. Goinlocal is a community website, full of local information that your customers look at and find useful. It is so much more than a business directory built from a purchased list of names and addresses, it has ‘added value’. It is updated daily and it is promoted to the community via local advertising, popular browsers and links from other local websites. If your customer has access to a computer he is likely to visit goinlocal.co.uk again and again Take a look round www.goinlocal.co.uk today and see why so many people visit it. | 
