Living the local life on the road

I am not a good traveler whether it’s in business or personal life. I mean this to say that I do travel, but it’s not my favorite thing to do. I don’t like being unfamiliar with my surroundings and not knowing where I can go to get things. That’s why these past two weeks have been so critical in helping to shape my understanding of the importance of local Internet marketing.

Image by PhotoJonny via Flickr

Just so you know, I have a Droid X phone which I have owned for about a month after struggling mightily with a BlackBerry Storm 1 until my contract was up and I could get a new phone for next to nothing. It was worth the wait. Here’s why:
Google is so much more than blue text search. Having an Android device that is a Google-optimized phone is great for someone who needs to be given comfort in new surroundings. Why? Because between the navigation, maps, and place pages information that I can get in the blink of an eye (which is outside the realm of classic search in many cases), I was able to function in unfamiliar places as if I was a local.
For businesses of any size, think about just how important that is. I suspect that I am not the only person who does things this way, and I was completely dependent on Google’s presentation of the businesses I needed to find while on the road. I simply rejected out of hand those businesses whose presence were not “optimized.” Did I possibly miss some of the better options using this technique? Maybe, but that’s not because I wasn’t asking for the best options. I was making decisions based on the information at hand.
Place Pages are powerful. Your customers want the combination of basic data and reviews that Google Place Pages provide. It’s that simple. Couple that with putting layers for Place Page listings over Google’s GPS Navigation service and I am a confident traveler basing my actions on these listings. Business owners MUST understand this for success in the quickly emerging mobile age.
Place Pages are extremely under-utilized by businesses. Most business have not optimized their Google Place Pages. Need I say more.
Google will rule the local search roost. They have too many add-on and value-added services connected to their already impressive location services for anyone else to really make a run at them. Oh, and they’re Google.
If it appears like I am harping on local Internet marketing as of late then you are paying attention. It’s critical for the success of business in the future. If businesses choose to continue to put opportunities like Google’s Place Pages on the back burner, they do so at their own risk. If their competitors beat them to the punch, they will be at a serious disadvantage.
Are you going to finally pay attention to local Internet marketing?