Whether you’re a real estate agent, a local restaurant or a contractor, if your business serves a specific locale, marketing is important. If you want to grow your customer base, you don’t have to use expensive marketing channels like radio, you can use digital marketing and social media to increase your visibility. There are a few effective strategies that can help you get more ROI out of your marketing dollars, and they aren’t that difficult to implement. Here are a few ways to market your local business more effectively.
Search Engine Optimization
Whatever service you provide in your town, people’s search for your business starts online. Whether someone is looking for a Mexican restaurant in Arizona, a print shop in Albany, or a real estate agent in San Diego, the majority of your customers are going to do a Google search to find you, and search engine optimization is how you can increase your visibility there. According to a car locksmith in Chicago, “SEO has been very pivotal to the growth of our customer base, and it’s how many new people find us. It has allowed us to help more people.” In order to do SEO at a high level, you really need a great strategy. It all starts with the keywords you target. Using a keyword research tool, you can find out what people in your town are searching for in relation to your service, and then you have to create a really great website where you have content that has those keywords. SEO is a long term investment, and not a quick thing, but if you do the work and do it correctly, it will definitely pay off. If you want faster results, you can do PPC where you can pay the search engine to advertise, and your search results will come up right at the top of the Google result.
Play Up Your Referrals
The second way people are going to find out about a local business is from their friends and family. Word of mouth is going to play a big role in your ability to get new customers. The question is, how do you increase the likelihood of someone recommending your business to their loved ones, peers and colleagues? First, you have to provide a really good service, a service that people will never forget. Once you’ve done that, it’s easier to ask for their referrals. Secondly, you have to stay top of mind through marketing, so make sure you have a strong social media presence, that you’re active in your community, and use an email newsletter to stay in touch. That way, people are going to remember you, and when someone is looking for someone who does what you do, you’ll be the first person they think of and mention.
Remarketing
If you want your digital marketing strategies to be more effective without spending a lot of money, remarketing is how to do it. For example, if someone has gone on your website, or watched some of your content, you can make sure your online presence follows them around the internet. If people have already seen your content, you might as well market to them again.
Set Up a Google My Business Profile
Google My Business is how you can make your business more visible on the world’s most powerful search engine. When people look for you online, this profile will appear and become the first thing they see. To get the most out of your Google Business page, treat it like a website, and upload content and photos to it. That will actually help you rank better, and give people another way to get into your world.
Increase Your Reviews
Online reviews are how businesses build up their credibility, and increasing those reviews is one of the smartest things you can do. If you have customers and clients who love what you do, ask them to give you a review. You can even incentivize them to give you a review by giving them a gift card, or if your business is food-based, a free meal. If you really invest time and effort into your reviews, you will start to bring in business just from that.
When your business is very specific to a local area, you have to make yourself a prominent part of that place, and you can do that through digital marketing. There are so many creative ways you can market your business on search engines and social media. The key thing is to make an investment in your digital marketing, because if you do, it will become a solid stream of business. Ultimately, you want to be the business people talk about at dinner parties and refer to their friends, and you can achieve that without spending a whole lot of money.
