Colorado Secretary of State Weekly Reporting Service

While the primary focus of this blog is to help Denver small businesses market their services online - small business owners need to use all tools available to them - both online and offline. If you market your services directly to Denver businesses (as opposed to consumers) - you may wish to check out the Colorado Secretary of State's Weekly Reporting Service. It costs $200 for a 12 month subscription. You'll get a weekly e-mail listing of all Colorado business filings that were entered into the Secretary of State's business database within the previous week. Information provided includes helpful information like:

• Business Name
• Registered Agent's Name and Address
• Type of Business
• Filing Date
• Business Formation Date

Notably missing from the data provided by the secretary of state are business phone numbers for the businesses listed. That said, there is still a treasure trove of information available to allow you to market to Denver Businesses.

It Helps to Be Technically Inclined

The reports are huge (usually 1,000+ Colorado business records each week), and it helps to be technically oriented to sift through the data to find what you need. You can import the data into excel each week and sort it. An even better option would be to import the data into a database where you can run queries to get the data you need.

Small Business Data You Can Use

Once you are able to sort for the data, you can find some particularly useful information. You can see the formation date of businesses - which will allow you to identify all of the brand new businesses that have just filed with the Colorado Secretary of State. You can also - if you're willing to work hard at it - derive what type of business you're looking at by the business name or the entity type. For instance, if you market your services to dentists, you can run a query to just return records that have "DDS" as part of the business name.

Helpful Links for the Secretary of State Weekly Reporting Service:

• Signup Form (Provides Good Information)
• Colorado Secretary of State

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

For a relatively small investment, you get access to all of the business filings. The nice thing about these lists when compared to the large, expensive business directories is that you know this data is current - never more than a week old. If your Denver small business services other businesses within the metro area - the Colorado Secretary of State Weekly Reporting Service is worth a look.

Bing Search Engine Gaining Market Share

According to Nielsen, Bing's search market share rose 22.1 percent from August to September. This brings Bing to a total of 10.7% of all searches - well behind the market share of its biggest rival Google.

How to Advertise on Search Results Pages

If you wish to market your Denver business on search engine results pages, you need to go directly to the search engine advertising platforms:
Bing - Microsoft's AdCenter
Google - Google AdWords

When you sign up for one of these advertising services, you can purchase ads on search engine results pages that are related to your business. When people search for services that your Denver business offers, your ads will appear. Both search engines allow you to target to the local level. So, if you run a business in Denver, you can make sure that your ads only appear to people who are in Denver.

What Does this Mean for Marketing My Denver Small Business?

The smart path for marketing a Denver small business - or any small business that wishes to advertise on a local level - is to start out by trying online advertising with Google AdWords. Google will give you access to a much larger audience. This means that you'll get feedback much more quickly on what is working and what isn't. Starting with Google AdWords will give you the opportunity to fine tune your campaign prior to bringing it over to other advertising platforms.

When to Advertise on Microsoft AdCenter

After you've learned what you can from Google AdWords - the time is right to bring the small business marketing campaigns over to Microsoft's AdCenter. While it reaches a smaller audience, Microsoft AdCenter has some advantages over Google. There is generally less competition - especially at a local level. What this means is that your cost per lead for your Denver Marketing efforts will likely be significantly less when advertising with Microsoft AdCenter than it is when Google AdWords is used.

Denver Marketing Plans Should Probably Avoid Mobile Advertising

The main two reasons according to a recent study are:

The Mobile Marketing Study

A mobile advertising study by Chitika - an online advertising network - shows that mobile users are much less likely to click on text ads than mobile users. The study collected data from 92 million total text ad impressions only a little over 1% of which appeared on mobile devices.

Highlights from the study:

What this means
In a nutshell - for every 1000 times your ad appears to a computer user, you're going to get 8 clicks. When this goes to the mobile platform, you could expect maybe 4 or 5 clicks for every 1000 times your ad appears.

Am I Advertising on the Mobile Network Right Now?

You might be if you are using Google AdWords.

Under the Settings section for your campaign in AdWords, you'll notice a section called "Networks, Devices, and Extensions". Here you have the option to advertise on "IPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet Browsers". If this option is selected, Iphone users will see your ads - as will other mobile users with full browser capabilities.

You may already be advertising on some mobile devices if
"IPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet Browsers" (highlighted) is checked.

What does "Full Browser Capabilities" Mean?

A mobile device that has full browser capability will provide you with what is essentially the same website that you'll see on your computer. So if you go to weather.com on an IPhone, it will look basically the same as weather.com does on your home computer.

However, many mobile devices don't have full browser capability. Many website owners make a different version of their website for these mobile devices that don't have full browser capability. As an example - take a look at the home page of weather.com below - along with the home page of weather.com that mobile users will see if their mobile device doesn't have full browser capability.

The weather.com home page as it looks when viewed on a computer (left) vs. how it looks when viewed on many mobile devices (right). Weather.com has designed the website on the right specifically for mobile devices that don't have full browser capability.

Is There a way to Specifically Target Denver Mobile Users in AdWords?

Yes, but do you want to? The good news is that non IPhone users are just as likely to click on text ads as a typical computer user - .83% by my calculations derived from the study. Google has the capability to advertise to mobile devices and it even includes great features like click-to-call. Someone sees your ad, clicks on it, and it calls your business phone. Keep in mind though, that you're dealing with a very small audience (just 1% of computer user ad impressions) if you choose to go through the effort of implementing mobile advertising.

What Does This Mean for My Denver Small Business?

Focus on the advertising platforms that are likely to give you the most bang for your buck. I would recommend that most Denver small businesses continue to focus on text ads. This means AdWords in Google, Microsoft AdCenter, and Yahoo search marketing. Once you've achieved success using these ad platforms, depending on your business, you may wish to expand into other areas like the content networks of these ad platforms - or even mobile advertising.