Hey Sarah!

I’m glad to hear that you had a good experience. It’s nice to have you on the Coffs Harbour patch. Let me know if you need any help with anything.

Cheers, Mark

Have you noticed that more and more people are using the Internet to find businesses, services, information and products? In fact, when people want to find something locally they only use their Yellow Pages directory after they haven’t found what they wanted to find on Google, Yahoo!, MSN or their favourite search engine.

Let’s say you are in the market for a plumber. Where do you start? If you know someone, or know someone who knows someone who knows a plumber you can trust you will likely go to that plumber. That’s most likely your preferred choice. Why is this?

Word of mouth advertising works because we want to be able to trust the person or business we do business with.

And so we look to referrals first. That’s easy.

But what if we don’t know of a plumber? What do you do first. You might pick up the Coffs Harbour Advocate, or the Independent and go to their classifieds listings. Or you might get the Yellow Pages phone book out of the cupboard. Or, if you are like the majority of people around Australia, you walk over to your computer and type in something like: “plumbers in Coffs Harbour” in the Google search bar.

The reality is that more and more of us are “Googling” when we want to find something. Anything. Really, it is incredible what we are able to find and learn with Google. And yet, how many of us know how to get our businesses found on Google? Have you tried to? It can be very expensive and time consuming to get a good search engine ranking on Google. Even if you get on there in the first few pages, most people won’t look that far. Do you? When you “Googled” last time, how many pages did you look through? Chances are you picked a listing on the first or maybe the second page.

But back to our search for a plumber.

How will you pick from all of the options that come up? There are many choices. It’s much the same as looking at Yellow Pages ads. How do you know who to trust? What are their specialities? Do they do jobs as far away as Woolgoolga?

All you have is lists of names and numbers. Sometimes you’ll find a web site. For something like plumbers tho, usually not. You’ll likely not have a lot to go on.

That’s where OurPatch comes in.

OurPatch is exceptionally good at getting your business found on Google and other major search engines. What’s more, OurPatch is focused on Regional Australia. OurPatch gives your business in Coffs Harbour a way to be found by locals looking for your services.

But how is OurPatch different than Yellow Pages Directory listings?

Well, with OurPatch you are able to change your listing at any time. You aren’t locked in for a year. And your listing is live within 24 hours. Usually, your listing will be live within hours. Also, OurPatch knows the Internet. Everything about OurPatch.com.au is focused on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

If you are a business owner, you don’t need to know anything about how all this works. You now have a way to get your business found on the Internet, and quickly. We are able to get your business found for far less than most other options.

For as little as $540 per year you will get your business found on the Internet by potential customers who are looking for you from your own community.

But there’s something else that makes OurPatch even more effective. Think back to the word of mouth referral idea that we considered before. OurPatch incorporates a Reviews feature so that your customers have a chance to share their experiences after doing business with you. When you have a paid listing with us we provide you with review cards for you to give out to your satisfied customers, giving them easy to follow instructions for placing a review on your listing.

This is great for the person looking for a new business to do business with. If I come to the lists of plumbers that I find on OurPatch and see a glowing review come up for one of them, who will I tend to call first? I will still want to suss them out, but I will certainly call them to get my own impressions.

But what if your listing gets a bad review? Well, either you did wrong by a customer or there was a misunderstanding. In any case you have a great opportunity to respond, publicly, directly addressing the matter so that anyone who reads the review is able to see that you do care about your customers and you will do what you can to meet their requirements. If the review is slanderous, however, it is our job to monitor reviews on OurPatch so that we are able to remove unreasonably slanderous comments.

Having said that, it’s your business to do right by your customers and word of mouth advertising will help you if you do good business. It’s no different with OurPatch. If you have happy customers then encourage them to place reviews on your OurPatch listing and you’ll be in good shape. It doesn’t take but 2 or 3 good reviews for you to stick out from the crowd.

So, if you’re wondering, “How do I list my business on Google?” or “How do I promote my business online?” OurPatch.com.au is ready to make the hard work easy for you.

If you want to find out more about how we might help your specific business, call me and I’ll either talk with you over the phone or I will come to you to show you what your options are. I live here in Coffs Harbour and I am here to work with local businesses.

Cheers, Mark Hoza

159 Dairyville Rd Upper Orara, NSW 2450 Home phone: (02) 6653 8755 Mobile: 0411 952 071 or 0438 115 660

I’ve been the Coffs Harbour Patch Regional Manager since the beginning of August 2008. As each week goes by we are seeing more Coffs Harbour area businesses being found better on the Internet.

If you want to make sure that your business is able to be found on the Internet in Google searches from people looking for you here in regional Australia, you’re in the right place!

Give me a call, text or email and I will help you get started.

Cheers,
Mark Hoza

(02) 8256 5858 or 0438 115 660
markho@ourpatch.com.au