Local search was perfect for the task of finding affordable whiteboards since finding a local supplier meant avoiding the prohibitive cost of shipping two large whiteboards. In fact, the shipping costs in almost all quotes received were more expensive than the purchase price of the whiteboards themselve. The only relief from the shipping cost is to buy wholesale and pick up your shipment off the back of a truck. Since eBiz ROI only needed two whiteboards for the office, wholesale purchasing was not an option.

To provide the reader some persepctive, the eBiz ROI procurement team is comprised of determined web surfers from back in the days when Archie, Gopher and FTP where the hottest things since Commadore Commuters, Atari and 1400 baud dial-up bulletin boards. They searched way beyond local product search engines including searching the three biggest search engines and then proceeding to navigate directly to the websites of several national retailers who with comprehensive websites and robust ecommerce functionality and a local brick and motar presence. Surely these large national office supply retailers, with stores serving local markets in the 100 of thousands of consumers would have large whiteboards in stock locally. For heavens sake, eBiz ROI operates in the Capital District of New York State with faily substantial population centers in – Albany, Schenectady, Saratoga, Troy not to mention New York State government offices.

Long story short, local product search yielded no options for the methods employed. The eBiz ROI whiteboards were purchased at a brick and mortar store of one of the national office supply retailers who has several stores in the Albany, Schenectady, Saratoga, Troy sales district. The whiteboards were found only during a visit to one of the physical stores. Whiteboards that were not found usling local product search. The opportunity stems for the fact that this company has a great website and tons of qualified traffic, but there is no doubt that they would move more whiteboards in their stores nationwide if they could somehow integrate that large ticket item with their website and local product search strategy.

Granted, no one, including eBiz ROI, expects there to be a run on large whiteboards in the Capital District anytime soon, but with a fresh crop of entreprenuers popping up everyday, who knows? If you are going to invest in shelf space to inventory large whiteboards which are a medium to large ticket item among your available inventory, whny not efficiently market to your thousands of loyal Internet customers searching for your products online. Sounds like there is a local product search pony in there somewhere.

Local Product Search 2010 Opportunity for Capital District Retailers is a post from: Internet Marketing Blog | Online Marketing Blog |

Related posts:

1. eBiz ROI, Inc. – In the News – January 2010 Issue of Saratoga Business Journal
2. Internet Marketing Rational for Local SMBs
3. Search Share Grows in 2009, CPA Steals from CPM