Member Article

Devising a marketing strategy for your local business

Getting the word out about your brand is the key to growing and maintaining both your existing and target audience. However unlike big companies, small local businesses generally do not have large marketing budgets to work with. Marketing your business locally online is a great way to make the most of your time and money. Here we go through some simple, yet effective local digital marketing strategies for your business.

One of your key priorities should be to get your business listed on Google’s free local business page. Having a solid Google My Business listing is a great way to position your company as a leader in your business niche in a particular location. This is free to sign up to and allows you to list the exact location and address of your business on Google maps, which in turn enables potential customers to view your business in search results when they search for related services or products. If properly optimized, this can show up high in search results. It also has the added bonus of allowing customers to read and post reviews of your business helping to create trust. Simply being listed can give you a boost in rankings for your main website and therefore lead to more traffic.

Although many small businesses don’t want to spend a lot of money online, the opportunity to reach more leads through paid search like Google AdWords is huge. In the past, paid listings were ranked purely based on how much you were willing to pay per click. This made it very difficult for local businesses to compete with nationwide firms with much larger budgets. However, Google now ranks paid listings on quality as well as cost meaning that small businesses can be listed for local search terms without having to spend large amounts of money.

For example, a local business like SureStore Self Storage in Langtoft, just outside Peterborough, cannot hope to be listed very high for a search term like “self storage” as they don’t have the budget to compete with the big players. However, for a search term like “self storage Peterborough”, they will already have a great quality score because they are a self storage facility in Peterborough. This means their advert is more relevant to the person searching for this term and is consequently listed higher.

Creating a local AdWords campaign like this ensures that you are not missing out on potential traffic and helps you focus your advertising on the areas where you’ll find the right customers and restrict it in areas where you don’t – which could help increase your return on investment as a result. There are also ways to change your AdWords settings so that you are only targeting users who are physically located within the location you are targeting or are a certain distance from your business.

Local search terms will also form an important part of your SEO strategy. Small businesses often don’t have the resources required to compete for highly competitive keywords in Google search rankings. However, local business can easily rank for specific local search terms. Create a list of keywords that are important to your business and aim to publish content on your website which targets local, specific keywords. Focus on clear Meta Titles, headings and text that include your service and the location it’s in.

A lot of customers today spend a considerable amount of time on social media not only with friends and family, but increasingly with brands as well. Setting up a profile for your business on social media helps to generate awareness and helps you to communicate quickly and effectively with local customers. Consumers view your social media channels as an extension of your digital presence and expect you to respond to questions, comments and other enquiries, so it’s important to engage with them through these channels.

Digital marketing is essential for most businesses from the nationwide chains to the tiny corner shops. Therefore, it’s important to have an effective digital marketing strategy in place to help build brand awareness and drive local customers to you instead of your online competitors. The key is to make sure your business is appearing in all the right places so that your local customers can find you online and to then use that online presence to drive leads to your business.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by victoria .