What Is The Best Way To Get Your Location In A Directory Without Having Control Over Your Website?

Hi

I'm doing marketing for a local tax franchise. we just opened our first location. Although our franchise as a whole is well-established, we need to get our name out there.

I'm wondering what the best way to get into directories would be for us.

Here is our situation. Our franchise as a whole does have a webpage however, we do not have any control over it. So by putting ourselves in directories they would just be promoting our physical location. Most of our business comes within a 10 mile radius of our location.

Any advice on how to proceed given the constraints of our situation would be appreciated.

 

I'm guessing here but it sounds like you have a single page on the larger company's site?

I would see if they allow franchisees to create their own site or blog. Any promotion you do currently will do more to promote the larger company than yourself.

Even if you can't blog as "Big Company Name in YourTown" perhaps you could blog as "Tax Advice for People in YourTown" or YourCity.

 

This is not what you asked, but may be helpful anyway. Since you are a local tax franchise... and if you are in the US then you are really trying to drive business for the next couple months maybe some offline marketing would work better for you.

I know the US post office has some services where they will send mailings to people within a certain geographical distance from your location. So basically, you could effectively send a mailer to everyone within a 10 mile radius of your local tax franchise. It seems like something like that would be way more effective than trying to promote online.

I think this is the page describing the service: https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm

 

not having control over the website is something I wanted to mention because typically search engine optimization goes along with directories but, since we don't control the website search engine optimization is out of the question.

Being part of a franchise it gets kind of complicated as to what you are allowed to do. Sometimes it seems the rules are simply arbitrary. But having our own online presence is probably something we should avoid at the moment.

Yeah, off-line marketing is definitely what we need to focus on. I did want to make sure that if people were looking for tax preparation franchises in their area we were doing what we could to be present in that search.
Thanks for the tip about the program with the post office. That is definitely something we should take a look at. I will run that by my boss. I think that could be incredibly successful for us.

 

if you want to go International you must promote your business, using Advertise or something. but if you won't you just can advertise it using broadside

 

I just want to make sure I'm going about this correctly. When I want to do is have our store, near the top when people type in something like tax preparation 63385 (ZIP Code) or tax preparation, Wentzville. Since they are franchise we can only operate within our area.



It's my understanding that one of the best ways to do this is to add your business to several directory sites such as Google places etc. Is my understanding of this correct?

 

Wheelstb, I've worked with a number of fantastic SEO professionals over the years in various capacities. One thing they have noted is that to rank locally, you need to provide search engines the right signals. These signals are provided both on and off site in the form of citations.

What are citations? Citations include references to your company name, address, phone number, etc. Obviously to rank locally you will need to reference your address and phone number in your listings. This is a feature we added to VMOptions at the beginning of this year, for qualified business listings, and it is properly coded with microformat markup so that there is no confusion with the search engines. This is covered in more detail here, in case you want to better understand our take on its benefit to local businesses.

My suggestion would be to submit descriptions to web directories that include a reference to your state, county, city, street address and/or phone number. If you have a toll free number, submit your local number with area code instead. Believe it or not, search engines are doing a good job of interpreting area codes, and toll free numbers just don't give the search engines any local signals. While not all directories have separate fields for contact information, the description you submit can provide almost the same benefits.

One of the best places to launch your local campaign at is at citygrid.com. Many directories pull data from them and is a first stop for SEOs optimizing locally, or so I am told. Some of the citations you get will contain links and others won't. Regardless, don't pass up an opportunity to leave your local contact information in a reputable directory. Not only will it help with the search engines, but users that make use of those directories may find your client's site as well.

Best of success to you and your client's business!

 

Snowbird, thank you for the advice and your wishes of success. I will have to read through the links and information you have provided me to make sure I fully digest everything properly. Thanks again for the advice, I truly do appreciate the help.

 

One more quick thing. NAP Citations (name, address, phone number) are generally pulled from Local Directories (like your local yellow pages) as a source for Google Places. This can also be a good way to get that address listed.

 

It looks like citygrid.com is something I would need to pay for. Basically the marketing budget is zero dollars. Can anyone recommend a free resource that might be able to allow me to accomplish something of similar results.

 

Wheelstb,what you describe is almost like an auto company that builds cars but has no funds for fuel to drive them off the lot and onto a transport truck to a dealership to sell. I know the feeling!

Is this your business or do you have someone higher up that you can request a marketing budget from? If you want to rank local, you really can't ignore citygrid.com. Acxiom (databyacxiom.com) provides some data that appears in local directories as well, and their fee is is rather affordable for businesses. You may want to check them out too.

I'd do my best to request a monthly marketing budget, even if its small. People are still getting their tax info from their employers, 1099s, etc. Getting into City Grid and Acxiom now, when combined with a well ranked Google local listing, may yield a quick positive return on your first months marketing budget. Also, the amount of labor it will take you to accomplish the same goals for "free," will end up costing the company much more in man hours.

Good luck!

 

There's a couple of things working against me here. Firstly, it's a Liberty Tax Service franchise the branch I work for has just been recently started (this December). They basically opened about three weeks ago and when 14 April rolls around I will be finished.They're not really a high and tax return type of place. They basically for people who just need to get their return than simply and quickly. In fact the people preparing the returns are not certified accountants or attorneys. They have simply work their way through several online tests. So we don't have a diverse market of individuals to target. There is no shot at getting a monthly budget because there is basically no budget at all to work with. The marketing budget has been spent on corporate office marketing recommendations which include, having wavers outside in costume, paying people to canvas with flyers and do business-to-business marketing as well as doing direct-mail supplied by the corporate office.

It is costing them more in man-hours. I am there from 9 to 5 with very little to do. I spend my day trying to think of creative ways to make something out of nothing. Normally I am a big fan of the idea of making something out of nothing. However, you can only go to that well so many times.

 

I have had in our business to several directories over the past couple days probably more than five or six. We have not been added to Google
places as of yet. I am still waiting on a postcard that confirms our location. I have Benson searching and our business is not coming up on any
of my local searches. I was kind of thinking this would not happen overnight but, how long should I expected to take before we find ourselves in
search results?

Here are the directories I have submitted our location to. If anyone else has any other directories to recommend I would gladly like to hear
them.

Supermedia
yp.com
yelp
Kudzu
merchant circle
Google places-pending

 

It can take a while for Google to crawl the listings you just created and include them in their index. Then the impact it has on your site's ranks will take some time too. It's not a fast process by any means. I'll send you some more sites/info off the forum.

 

Thanks for the help. I truly appreciate it. On one hand I feel like my hands are tied on the other hand I feel like if I am being paid I should do everything I can possibly do to deliver customers to the door.

 

Be mindful of the terms of service for the directories you are submitting to. Many do not allow "deep linking". They may simply delete your submissions outright or change them to the homepage of the corporate site.

We have a Liberty franchise here for several years. I don't know what else they do, but they frequently have a waver wearing a Lady Liberty costume. Can't say whether it's effective or not but then again, the office has been here for years.

 

It sounds like you have a good work ethic. This leads me to believe your company hired the right person for the job.

 

We have people who wave in costume's as well. Actually seems to be fairly effective. A lot of people are saying they saw our waver and they decided to stop by. So it must work to a certain extent. Then again I think the people we are targeting are in the lower income bracket and simply looking to get a refund as quickly as possible.

I'm also in charge of scheduling the people who wave and pass out flyers. I continuously screw up there. But I am trying to work hard and get something done but, it almost seems like my hands are tied. I don't want to use that as an excuse for writing off the job and not doing anything, sometimes you need to have resources to be able to accomplish anything of substance.




I thank everybody very much for their help on this forum. My questions are pretty basic but the knowledge I've obtained here will serve me well for years to come. And I might even accomplish something at this job, doubtful but possible

I would be open to hearing any other marketing ideas someone has.