10 Inbound Marketing Services Publishers Can Offer Local Businesses

The final part of this 6 part series on driving revenue for publishers is finally here but before we get started let’s recap what we’ve already covered. In parts 1-5 we talked about 5 different ways in which publishers can drive revenue, both in print and online, including:

• Digital Advertising Opportunities for Businesses
• Digital Revenue Opportunities Targeting your Audience (Readers)
• Traditional Print Advertising Opportunities
• Offline Revenue Opportunities
• Revenue Opportunities from Marketing Tools for Local Businesses

Today, in part 6, we’ll cover revenue opportunities for selling marketing services for local businesses. Let’s get started.

For publishers who choose to offer marketing services to their advertisers, they typically do so for one of two reasons. Either they see an opportunity to capture a larger percentage of the advertisers business by expanding their services or they see it as a way to avoid losing advertisers when business choose to work with an agency that is “all digital” or “not doing print”. Regardless of your reason, it should be about leveraging the relationship you already have with an advertiser and helping them grow their business – a complete local marketing solution. Let’s take a look at 10 ways you can help your advertisers be better marketers.

1) Social Media Marketing

While many businesses are lured into social media marketing with the promise of cheaper customer acquisition, they quickly realize that they need help. Should I really have a Facebook page? How do I get people to engage with my page? How do I make money from all of this? These are question that a lot of local business owners have and that you can help them answer. Social media marketing is an essential part of the local business marketing strategy but it’s time consuming and businesses are willing to pay to help maximize their efforts and free up their time.

2) Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to generate new or returning business but even with all the great tools out there, crafting an effective and good looking campaign isn’t as easy as it appears. Then there’s the part where you have to continue to build your list. As a publisher, you are already equipped to help them build their email lists through social promotions, business blogging and your directory so why not also help them craft and send emails as well?

3) Reputation Management Services

Once a business begins marketing itself online, the need to manage their brands reputation becomes more critical. How do I respond to negative reviews or what if someone posts something that isn’t accurate? Reputation management services can handle all this and is an important part of the marketing service ecosystem. Offering reputation management services is also a good way to allay any fears a business owner may have about jumping into to internet marketing or to simply put their mind at ease.

4) SEO/PPC

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the “process of affecting the visibility of a website or web page in a search engines natural or un-paid search results (Source: Wikipedia)”. It may be tempting to think of this as a set it and forget it type of activity but the truth of the matter is it’s a moving target that needs to be constantly improved over time. Alternatively, pay-per-click (PPC) is used to drive additional traffic to your sites/offers through paid placement in search results. Both of these practices can have a significant impact on a business if done effectively and consistently. As a publisher, whether you know it or not, you’re competing with 100s of SEO firms for local business and by offering these services you can better serve your existing advertisers while retaining their other business.

5) Web Design

We talked about how some business just need a simple site in part 5 of this series, but for those businesses that have more complex needs offering web design services is a good way to influence their overall marketing strategy. In many cases, working with them on a new website will also help you better understand their goals which will only serve to improve your relationship.

6) Consulting/Strategy

From time to time, you’ll run into a business that simply wants someone to hold their hand through a difficult decision, a new process or a new project. When those things involve marketing, offering a consulting package can be the difference between them continuing to advertise with you and them seeking advise from someone who may or may not have your business in their own best interests. Of course some topics should simply be covered during the sales process but for more complex projects this is a good way to make sure you are both well aligned.

7) PR

PR, or public relations, is not what it used to be but for larger businesses it’s still a part of the marketing puzzle. As a publisher, you can already offer a lot on the PR front including helping to promote events through your calendar and by covering local people and events on your website. For those businesses that need more, you can also help them in that regard.

8) Graphic Design

Most business owners know someone who is a “graphic designer” but often times the quality of work doesn’t meet their expectations. As a publisher, you work with your designers every day and have a strong sense of how to manage the design process so that things get done right the first time. Offering graphic design services is a good way to help businesses create effective ads and graphics for other related projects.

9) Lead Generation

Lead generation, or lead gen for short, is the art and science of taking the traffic you’ve driven to your website through social media, email, SEO, etc. and converting that into paying customers. This can take on many forms but a solid lead gen strategy is an integral part of any inbound marketing campaign. As a publisher, you can help businesses with lead gen in several ways such as through your directory. You can also help them optimize their own websites for better conversion.

10) Content Marketing

Content marketing is closely related to many of the services we’ve already talked about today. When you put together social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, SEO, PR and lead generation, you’re left with a mountain of content to be created!  Let’s be honest, creating remarkable content for your website is hard work but this is what publishers do all day long. So it makes sense to extend those skills to help businesses create content that will attract new business.

Providing marketing services may or may not be the right move for your publication, but before you decide consider the fact that providing these services doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be the ones to fulfill them. One alternative is to partner with local agencies, designers and marketers to sell their services. In this scenario, you leverage your existing relationships to sell their marketing services and charge a fee for securing them new businesses. Of course, the other way to go is to hire internally and be more of an agency in your own right. Which direction you choose is largely up to you but the publisher who is able to simplify the marketing equation for local business will enjoy a significant competitive advantage.

Have a question about how to get started? Leave a comment.