Business Local Search Marketing

How to Put Together a Killer Local Marketing Strategy

While navigating the sometimes turbulent seas of the marketing world, it is important for business owners and marketers not to neglect their local market. There are many benefits to reaching out to customers close to your business, but it will take some strategies in target marketing to reach this local audience.

Identify Key Questions and Answers

Every journey worth taking should begin with a detailed roadmap. There is no exception to this principle when it comes to local marketing. According to Business 2 Community, you begin the process of formulating your local marketing plan by making a list of questions regarding what products your business will sell, who they will sell them to, and where these customers can be found. Questions every marketing plan should contain include: What do I want to accomplish? Who are my main competitors? What is my target audience? What interest do members of my target audience have?

Utilize Online Listings

Online business listings are essential to local marketing efforts. This is because 46 percent of all Google searches are people looking for local businesses and services, according to Podium. Many of these queries are mobile searches that take place when people are on the move and looking for a product or service quickly. Claiming your online listing on sites like Google My Business, Yelp, and Angie’s list is a great way to introduce your business to local customers who are not yet familiar with your business name. Other benefits of online listings include increased customer engagement, brand awareness, and supplementation of your SEO efforts. You will also have a better chance of reaching the first page of Google if you utilize the online listing sites available to you.

Community Involvement

According to Red Canoe Media, businesses that participate in local community events often do well with their local marketing efforts. Business owners and employees can volunteer at a community event and wear T-shirts alerting community members of where they work. You can also engage the audience with contests and competitions that allow them to win prizes. This will promote goodwill in the community and encourage the people present to visit your business.

Gather Positive Testimonials

Most people will leave negative reviews more often than one describing a positive experience. This makes it important to gather positive reviews that are left about your business and to post them where new and old customers will see them. Ask customers who have a positive experience with you or your employees to take a moment to write a review.

Make Use of Social Media

Social media can be used as a vehicle to engage with new and existing customers in a professional manner. According to Pixel Productions, you should create pages for your business that allows you to communicate with customers on the social media platforms they already interact with. Social media is also a great place for direct conversation to take place between your business and your customers. You cannot talk about social media without discussing the power of Facebook. Presently there are more than 200 million users of Facebook in the United States. This means two out of three Americans interact at some level with the platform. 

Chances are, the customers you desire to add to your business can be found on the world’s largest social media platform.

SEO Campaigns

The goal of any digital marketing campaign is to rank at the top of the Google search results. This is especially important with local marketing campaigns due to the fact that customers looking for service are usually looking for those services immediately. It is unlikely they will make it to the second page of search results. There are a number of methods to increase the effectiveness of SEO campaigns. A few of these methods you should familiarize yourself with immediately are the optimization of your website for local searches, the implementation of schema markup tags, and obtaining links from other credible websites.

Brand Yourself as an Authority

People love to interact with people who they feel are experts at what they do. And customers love to spend their money with businesses that are established as authorities in their industry. According to Rebekah Radice, one way to establish yourself as an authority in your industry is to provide useful content on your company website. The content you deliver should provide value to your customers and be relevant to subjects that are pertinent to your industry. You can further your development as an authority figure in your field by making guest appearances on the blogs of others in the industry. This will expose you and your message to a group of customers you have not yet penetrated.

Business owners and other people responsible for marketing a business can easily become overwhelmed with the feeling they are being pulled in too many directions at once. In the midst of it all, it is important to remember that local marketing is still an effective way to introduce customers to your business. Fortunately, the elements necessary to design a local marketing strategy are extremely effective and easy to implement.

About the author

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Eileen O'Shanassy

Eileen O'Shanassy is a freelance writer and blogger based out of Flagstaff, AZ. She writes on a variety of topics and loves to research and write. She enjoys baking, biking, and kayaking. Check out her Twitter @eileenoshanassy.