In our technologically savvy age, online advertising is simply the quickest, most efficient means to connect with potential clients. When in need of a specific product or service, most people turn to the Internet to locate the most reputable business in their geographical location. Search engines have now made it even easier to find local businesses by using your current location within the search.

What does this mean for businesses? There is a three-fold method for local businesses to take advantage of the birth of the digital advertising age: Search Engine Optimization, local search, and social media.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Any business that wants to stay competitive in the digital age needs to create and maintain a solid Web presence. This begins with your Web site; however, a cookie-cutter design and sparse content will not grab your audience’s attention.

Search Engine Optimization is a process developed to increase your site’s visibility by raising it through the natural (organic) listings on search engine results pages (SERPs). By achieving a rank within the top three spots on the most popular search engines—Google, Bing, Yahoo!—more potential clients will be able to find you and become your paying customers.

Local Listings
Search engines like Google and Bing have created local listing pages that give you another opportunity, in addition to your site, to reach out to your customers. Local listings present your clients with quick bits of crucial information about your business—name, location, business hours—along with a link to your site.

Obtaining a local listing is simple and can give you more of the attention your business craves. Consider the local listings as gateways to your site and, by clicking the link, customers are traveling the digital driveway to your home(page).

Social Media
With the advent of social media outlets, people are becoming more and more accustomed to interacting with friends, family, and businesses through the Internet. Your potential clients enjoy this interaction and expect to find your presence through Facebook updates and Twitter tweets. Whether they have already concluded their business with you or are just beginning their search, your social media profile can help you connect with and retain a relationship with customers.

Social media outlets are also excellent ways to promote your business by simply existing. In other words, through word-of-text advertising, previous clients can easily direct their friends—your future clients—to your profile, and you’ll be instantly connected. And best of all, it’s free!

The ways of traditional marketing campaigns have fallen to the wayside and online marketing has taken its place. With so many people using the Internet to find the products and services they need in their local area, businesses need to invest their time and money into the digital age. Solidify your online presence with SEO, local listings, and social media.

Becky Raichur
V.P. SonicSEO.com
Albuquerque SEO and Internet Markerting

Albuquerque Independent Business Alliance (AIBA) is working hard to improve the economy for you our Locally Owned business members.

First the BAD NEWS:
According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Albuquerque area lost 2,800 jobs during the last year (Jan. 2010 to Jan 2011). That places us in the bottom 100 metro areas nationally.

A total of 266 metropolitan areas showed gains in employment. "Losing jobs" is not a statewide phenomenon however. Both Santa Fe and Farmington are increasing employment. So what is happening in Albuquerque?

Now for the GOOD News:
Part 1 - New Mexico was the No. 1 ranked state in average income increase. Our income grew by 4.2% during 2010.
Part 2 - AIBA is launching a program to blast Albuquerque out of the economy doldrums.

AIBA is creating some BIG things for you our Locally Owned Business members. We are launching a massive consumer campaign and you can help. You are going to see billboards, ads in local print advertising and radio and TV announcing our new Buy Local, Grow Local, Thrive Local consumer awareness campaign.

We call it our 50 + 50 = $42 Million Project. AND you can help us spread the word.

Albuquerque area consumers and businesses are spending too much of their money on businesses with ownership in other states and the MONEY IS FLOODING OUT OF NEW MEXICO. It's filling the pockets of out of state internet businesses and national companies whose profits leave the state and never return.

Let's keep more of our money and wealth right here in ALBUQUERQUE. We are asking you and every consumer in Albuquerque to change their buying habits.

Find just TWO (2) Locally owned businesses to spend $50 on products or services from each that would have gone to a company owned in another state. (AIBA members would be a great place to start.)

If just half the households in Albuquerque joined in our $50 +$50 = $42 Million Project, that would equal $42 Million in new business revenue for you our locally owned businesses.

THAT would create a ton of new jobs and we could thumb our collective noses at this never ending BAD economy news.

Will you help? Tell everyone you know. Tell every locally owned business owner you know to join us and HELP US Make This Happen.
1. Go to www.KeepItQuerque.org/memberform and download the AIBA application and get your friends to join AIBA.

2. Tell all of your friends to help us activate the 50 +50 = $42 Million Project in every home.

We ARE going to MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Wayne Story
AIBA - VP Communications & Marketing
Dr. of Direct Results Marketing
MarketingStrategiesRx.com

Usually when you think about buying local, you think about those old-fashioned Ma and Pa stores on Main Street. There’s a lot more to it than just that. Ma and Pa doesn’t generally open up stores across the country and become Ma and Pa, Inc. They remain local and give their store that unique touch that makes them stand out from generic, big chain stores. These personal touches, supported by locals, literally create the identity of the community.

Buying Local Creates Identity
Albuquerque once centered around the local stores that line Historic Route 66. These stores created the iconic image of Old Albuquerque. Many of these local businesses still operate along Central Avenue and in Nob Hill. These businesses give that area of Albuquerque their unique identity for both people from New Mexico and tourists from around the world.

Tourism Supports Identity
Tourism can help a unique community thrive. In the case of Albuquerque, the Balloon Fiesta, for example, draws large out of state crowds and brings large amounts of revenue to the city. If Albuquerque has more local businesses for those out-of-state dollars to be spent at, the greater the chance those dollars will stay in the local economy.

We Maintain Identity
In today’s economy, money makes the world move. Once small local identities have been built and expanded, they must be financially maintained. Albuquerque residents must support their local businesses year round or many will struggle to survive. If residents spend their money at big chains, local businesses fail to succeed. Once they fail, Albuquerque will begin to lose parts of its unique identity. Without those special, local touches, Albuquerque could become a cookie-cutter city with no special flair of its own.

There are many compelling reasons to buy local, many of them are economic. One of the more personal reasons to buy local, though, is to have an active role in shaping and creating a community. These crafted communities represent the unique cultures and tastes of an area. Quite frankly, Ma and Pa’s is a lot more special than Blah and Blah’s.

Becky Raichur
VP, SonicSEO.com
Albuquerque SEO and Internet Marketing

We in Albuquerque love our home teams. Whether it’s the Lobos’ football or basketball teams, or the Albuquerque Isotopes baseball team, we support them all. Through championship seasons and cringe-worthy seasons, we here in Lobo Land have stuck by our teams. Aside from team pride, there is another important reason to support our local teams: They help our local economy.

The University of New Mexico
That notion may seem like a stretch, but it’s not as far-fetched as it may seem. According to the University of New Mexico, sporting events brought in $49.8 million in total revenue during the 2009-2010 school year. Of this total number, $22.7 million directly impacted the local Albuquerque economy. Let’s take a look where those funds went to help the local economy:

• Roughly $4.1 million of the revenue was used to pay university employees at these events, thus supporting jobs
• $5.78 million came from tax revenue and went into the local budget
• $3.25 million was generated for local corporations
• $3.6 million was spent at local restaurants
• $1.8 million was spent at local retail shops
• $4.2 million was spent for local lodging

When looking at the overall numbers, slightly half of what the University of New Mexico generated from sporting events went directly back into the local economy. A lot of this income came from out-of-state visitors, but locals also deserve a big pat on the back for financially supporting UNM’s teams, too.

The Albuquerque Isotopes
The Albuquerque Isotopes also provide direct revenue to the city of Albuquerque in the form of an annual “rent” payment. This payment of between $1 million and $2 million, based on an income and revenue agreement, goes directly to the city. It not only repays Albuquerque for the reconstruction of the old Albuquerque Sports Stadium, but is also a return on the taxpayer’s investment.

The Impact You Have With Apparel
Finally, buying team merchandise can help the economy. If we buy our Lobo gear from the University of New Mexico bookstore, we keep our dollars right here in Albuquerque at UNM. There are also plenty of locally based stores that sell retro Albuquerque Dukes and current Albuquerque Isotopes apparel. Check out these local stores for all of your team gear and help the local economy at the same time.

Supporting Albuquerque’s teams has always been fun and exciting, but now you know that it’s also helping our local Albuquerque economy. So whether we’re cheering for a Mountain West Conference or Pacific Coast League Championship, we’re supporting our teams and our city.

In today’s world of talking (and screaming) heads, it’s pretty easy to feel pretty hopeless. Many American consumers feel that the world, national, and local economies are free-falling, completely out of control. Despite these feelings of helplessness, we as consumers can impact our economy, even here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

There are ways that individual consumers can, and should, make a change. Budget problems, cuts, and other government decisions are largely out of our control, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t work to have a positive impact on our daily lives. We can do this through supporting our local economies.

So why should consumers care about helping the local economy? Here are a few reasons why:

• It’s Our Economy: When we spend money at big business stores and they turn a profit, they generally seek to expand. Yet that doesn’t guarantee they’ll reinvest that money and expand here in Albuquerque. They can take that money and those expansion plans and open up a store somewhere else, with our money. A small, local business expands their store here, hires employees here and reinvests their money here.

• We Have a Voice: By buying local, we are using our voices to have a say in Albuquerque’s economy. The voice we use is money. When we spend our hard earned money locally, we can have an impact on our day-to-day lives. We’re saying that we support the local economy, and not bigger business that may or may not have a small, local economy’s interests at heart. By doing so, we are doing our part to keep our local economies going and to pull ourselves out of the current economic downturn.

• It’s Tough But Somebody Has To Do It: We know how easy it is to walk into a chain store because they’re everywhere and they advertise the lowest prices around. But this modern mentality of ease and laissez faire (the idea of live and let live) won’t help us fix the economy. When we start breaking old habits, and making that push for our money to get reinvested in our own communities, we take that first step on the road to putting people back to work and creating economic growth-- not only in our communities, but nationwide.

In these tough times, it seems impossible to make any sort of positive effect on the economy. Rather than worry and panic about the larger economy, which we can’t directly impact on a daily basis, we can make changes locally. We need to start small by making changes in our day-to-day lives to begin building a brighter economic tomorrow.