The Easy, Free Internet Lead Generator No One’s Telling You About 

We know that your advertising options include the newspaper, church and association newsletters, Yellow Pages, and billboards. Oh, and, of course, there are always blimps and skywriters to reach those who look upward, and crop circles to reach those who look downward. The more Internet-savvy among us may also know about paid search, where we pay search engines to place our URL in front of people who enter specific search terms.

Internet marketing, however, presents a twofold problem for locally focused businesses such as insurance practices. One is that the Internet has no borders, so most people who run across your Web site are probably not within reasonable driving distance of your services. In addition, the time, knowledge, and effort required to manage an Internet marketing campaign is above and beyond what most insurance agents say they are willing to do.

Good news here: There is an Internet solution available that conquers both of these problems. It’s called Google Local Search. It’s free, it’s easy to set up, and it reaches people searching for your services in your area, not in Timbuktu (unless, of course, you are actually located in Timbuktu).

The image on this page shows you what people see on their screen when they search at Google. To obtain these results, I entered the search terms “life insurance agent, Kansas City, Missouri.” (For an even better understanding of how this works, you can visit www.google.com and conduct your own search, using your particular product/service, town, and state.) Here, the first three results and the results in the right hand column are identified as sponsored links, meaning that those companies paid to have their links listed. The first non-paid search result (these results are commonly called “organic” in the Internet marketing world) is the Google Local Search result — “Local business results for life insurance agent near Kansas City, MO.” Companies that have signed up for Google Local Search will show up here.

Here’s how to set up your business on Google Local Search:

• If you don’t already have one, you will need to create a free Google account. To do this, visit www.google.com/local/add.
  
• When you log in to your account, you will be asked if you are a business owner and if you’d like to add your business to Google local maps and listings. To do this, click on the “add new business” button.
  
• Follow the instructions, making sure that whoever answers the automated telephone call from Google to verify your listing is aware of what you are doing.
  

This service isn’t new. It has been around in one format or another since 2004, but it’s just now becoming more widely used. In the old days, people searched for insurance agents primarily through the Yellow Pages. Now, people are much more likely to search online.

The telephone directory companies for years tried to maintain their dominance in the “I’m searching for a vendor” game by selling online listings at their Web sites. But why bother with that, when approximately two-thirds of all people searching on the Internet use Google to do so — and when, for now at least, Google offers this service for free. Who do you think Google will serve up to searchers — their own site, or a Yellow Pages site? If you guessed Google, you’re right.

Now, when local prospects let their fingers do the walking on their computer keys, you’ve stacked the deck in your business’ favor.

Marilee Driscoll is a professional speaker and consultant, the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Long-Term Care Planning,” and a principal in FollowUpSystems LLC. She can be reached at 508-830-9975 or through www.marileedriscoll.com.