All Politics is Local. So is SEO

“All politics is local” is a common phrase in the political world. When the voters back home have concerns, they don’t much care if their senator or congressman is a national figure—they just want their worries addressed.  Our congressional representatives can talk all they want about banking reform and the environment—they’re important—but when they don’t keep the bridges and highways fixed and instead squabble all the time, we vote against them.

When Native Rank first started out, we had two problems. The first was that while we knew our product was good, we weren’t quite sure how to distribute it. The second was the not-so-great reputation of SEO sales people, because there were—and are—a lot of them out there claiming to deliver great search results but not coming through.

The online world is over-populated and underserved, and we began marketing the product to users with a large, even national presence. We met with success, but it was less than we felt was possible, so we added local SEO. General Motors might be a great customer to have, but the Chevy dealer in downtown Chicago and the wellness clinic owner in Colorado Springs understand what search engine keywords motivate their customers and drive them to do business.

When you talk with local business owners, you’re talking with the people in the trenches, the ones who make it all work. By adding a local focus, we also mitigated the reputation problem by delivering a product that works at a price business owners want to pay. We also learned to appreciate more of their online advertising needs and added additional services, such as pay-per-click, search engine marketing programs, social media management, and several others not previously available at an affordable price.

The reason Native Rank will be opening offices in other American cities is so we can stay local and make any main street business look as good to the world as any Fortune 500 company by taking the power of the internet and making it useful for main street businesses.

It's All Local

I guess I can’t fault Amazon and all the other online companies for bombarding me with emails on the tech bazaar out there of things to buy, nor could I criticize booking a flight on Travelocity. But what I will say is that selling this way would never work for Native Rank. The product we deliver isn’t for a statistical user out there someplace. It’s for real people whose business or profession has unique needs.

I can’t count the number of times older people in sales have told me, “It’s all about relationships, Kid,” but you know what? It really is. Allstate Insurance is a great company, but what makes it work are the thousands of agents from Chicago to Chico, all of whom have their own clients with their homes and their cars with distinctly personal needs. The relationship between the agent and the client makes the whole company tick.

Sometimes, it seems as though face-to-face meetings has become a lost art. Make a presentation online or as an email attachment, and not only does the customer lose the opportunity to ask questions, but you lose out on the ability to tailor the product.  It becomes too easy for the customer to say no by hitting the delete button, and you both lose. My grandfather said that salesmanship begins when the customer says no, and if they say it by email, the door to discussion is closed.

Face-to-face meetings are even more critical when the marketing problems you’re trying to solve are local. We have a good-sized, busy office in Denver, CO, but what does that mean to a Chevrolet dealer in Plano, TX? Their customers are local, their problems are unique to them, and so are their solutions. How can you ever know unless you sit across the table and ask? The only way to build a sustainable relationship is to be there and show up.

Through LinkedIn, among others, we’ve developed a promising network in Denver Metro that gets larger every week, and we couldn’t have done it without meeting and talking to people in person.  Native Rank’s customer base has grown right along with it, and it’s safe to say that if we saw future customers as statistics or averages, we wouldn’t be where we are, and more important, where we’re going.