Go Local!
Local Partners
One of the easiest ways to localize your site is by taking
advantage of the variety of local services available. For example,
aside from helping companies set up Web sites and offering to place
banner ads, many local newspapers now also feature online shopping
malls. StarNet, the Web
version of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona, for
example, offers this option. For an initial setup fee of $3,800 and
monthly fees starting at $99, entrepreneurs can establish their Web
sites and also be prominently featured on StarNet's shopping
mall, eshoptucson.com. The home page of each participator is linked
directly to the online mall, which is viewed by a whopping 248,000
visitors every month. Koz, a Durham, North Carolina,
company that creates and empowers online communities and
marketplaces, also partners with newspapers to build local shopping
portals that in turn allow merchants to build co-branded Web sites.
Koz's paradigm, which is being used by more than 400 local
newspapers, works like this: Koz sets up an online marketplace or
mall for the local newspaper, and then the newspaper's
adverstising sales force resells Koz's Web-site-creation
services to local advertisers and companies. Koz then establishes a
Web site dedicated to local entrepreneurs. The cost to those
business owners? Less than $100 per month. You can also reach local customers via local portal sites, which
consumers use to find community information. Ticketmaster's
Citysearch Inc.'s Citysearch site, for example,
offers local guides to major cites worldwide, focusing on
entertainment, restaurants, services and shopping. It also provides
companies a way to target local customers. For example,
entrepreneurs can be listed on Citysearch's Yellow Pages for
about $35 per month or work with the company to build their own
comprehensive Web sites-costs start at $1,000, plus a monthly fee
of $500. Other local portals include Yahoo! Get Local and Digital City, a unit of AOL. Content Continues Below
"Intelligent entrepreneurs are doing everything they can to
meet the needs of their local customers," says Polachek.
"They're launching promotions on their Web sites to reach
local customers, doing e-mail marketing and even allowing their
customers to set up appointments for their services on their Web
sites." In other words, succeeding locally depends highly on
how effectively you get the word out to customers. No big surprise
there.
Melissa
Campanelli is a marketing and technology writer in Brooklyn,
New York.
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