7 Local Marketing Tips That Will Help Businesses Get Seen By Their Target Audience
Small businesses should consider local marketing as part of their bigger marketing plan to ensure people interested in their services/products will see and can recognize their brand. As an entrepreneur, this may seem difficult to do. Not really, though. There are seven tips that small business owners can use that will garner them the attention they want and improve their local marketing tactic.
A Look At Local Marketing
Local marketing focuses on an audience of a particular area (be it town, state or region). Its focus is on people who live in a particular radius of your business’ location who may buy your product or need your service.
For instance, a beauty salon in Jonesboro, Ark. may have traffic from North Dakota, but does the business no good because residents of North Dakota may not have a desire to drive down to Arkansas to visit that store. With local marketing, you can ensure your target audience is nearby and can drive to your beauty shop.
The key to local marketing success is for a company to understand who their target audience is, what benefit will they have from the product/service and how to convey that message to the audience.
While all three issues are essential, it’s crucial with local marketing. You want to make sure that your audience knows where your business can be found.
The premise of a local marketing strategy is to spend the advertising budget in an efficient way. Digital marketing is useful for all companies, but if a local business fails to get noticed by their local audience, then their money is spent with nothing to show for it. Remember, all traffic isn’t equal, so you need a local marketing plan that focuses on the audience who will actually come to your business.
Local Marketing Can Benefit All Businesses
Any business can benefit from local marketing, but some business types can benefit even more so. For example, restaurants benefit because of being an actual location that provides dine-in, take out or delivery. Retail stores can benefit from local marketing, even though they can set up an e-commerce store. Local marketing can boost traffic to the store and raise brand awareness (which can help boutique or smaller stores).
Local marketing can also help doctors, accountants and attorneys to reach out to their target audience. While they can help others not in their immediate area, nothing is more impactful to a business than in-person shopping/services.
Many businesses can take advantage of a local marketing strategy. If it’s not a part of your marketing strategy, the benefits of targeting an audience in the area where you have a business can be astronomical and should be considered.
7 Local Marketing Tactics That Can Easily Be Set Up
There are several easy-to-setup tools to make local marketing a part of your marketing strategy. What can you do?
Optimize and Localize Your Website
If you’re going to bring traffic to your website, you need to optimize it. While most people understand that concept, business owners may overlook the need for local optimization.
It’s imperative to know and follow search engine optimization, such as keyword research, but you need to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly if you are to be found. Remember, more and more people are using mobile devices to visit websites. Therefore, if your website is easy-to-read with easy-to-click-on buttons, then getting the attention of local businesses is much easier.
A part of your digital marketing strategy needs to include keywords that focus on local SEO. For example, if a restaurant in Jonesboro wants to be found, it needs to consider what people will search for in the local area. For instance, a person looking for a Mexican restaurant to eat in Jonesboro, Ark. may type in “local Mexican restaurant near me or near Jonesboro Arkansas.”
The key is to mention, as often as possible, your community. If you’re targeting a regional audience, make sure you add language to the site that designates that you’re doing this.
Use keyword research tools such as Google Trends, Google Analytics and Google Search Console to help you find the best local SEO keywords. The more optimized the site, the easier it will be for your target audience to find you.
Do Update To Your Meta Descriptions and Title Tags
Something else to be mindful of is your website metadata and title tags. While metadata consists of various things, the two issues to be aware of is the meta description and title tag.
- Meta Description – This helps in increasing the click-through rate because it lets potential people visitors know what the site is about.
- Title Tag – Search engine users see 60 characters on the results page, which is why you need to focus on your location and brand.
Make sure both are edited through the website hosting platform you are using for your site such as WordPress.
Create Local Landing Pages For Every Business Location
If you have more than one business location in your town, be sure to have more than one landing page. Create a landing page for each location that includes information about that particular location, such as contact information, store hours, directions to the location, etc.
Make sure the content is specified for each particular location. For instance, an attorney from Memphis shouldn’t just say that they are a real estate agent on the website. They need to include words that designate where they are attorney, that they are an attorney and that’s they are one of the best in the area. This helps search engine route people to the right websites.
Make Use Of The Google My Business Listing
A fundamental way to benefit from your local marketing strategy is to use Google My Business listing. This helps search engine users find you, where you’re located at, your store hours, directions to your place of business, contact information, etc. Always keep this information up to date.
You also want to look at claiming local listings on third-party sites like Yelp. The more places your business is listed, the easier it’ll be for your target audience and customers to find you.
Optimize Your Social Media Pages
It’s imperative not to overlook social media marketing. More and more people are on social media and look for information on businesses on them. Be sure to optimize and localize your sites. Provide current information like business location, store hours, contact information, etc.
You also want to be active on these sites to keep up interest. You can use sites such as Hootsuite to set up posts to be uploaded to the pages.
Reach Out To Customers To Leave Feedback
You want satisfied customers to leave feedback about their experiences with your business, regardless of where they post it. If you must, give them a reason to leave positive reviews such as discounts on products or future service, etc. Be sure to respond to their reviews online. Do not use generic copy/paste responses because it’s bad for your image.
People want to know they are dealing with honest companies; those are who are genuine and humble to be in business. Be sure to spend an hour each day going through the reviews and responding with something unique.
Sponsor or Participate In Local Events
It’s great to be doing digital marketing, but you still need to get out in the local public and let them know that you are there for them. Be sure to host a community event or sponsor one. For instance, a gyro’s food truck in Jonesboro holds a community event every six or so months that features different things and brings notice to it and other food trucks in a business’ parking lot.
This helps to give them and other food truck press while also bringing the community together for some food and fun.
Focus On Your Local Marketplace, Not Just The Worldwide One
There isn’t much of a cost to localize your website. You just need to create a localized, optimized website and social media pages and claim your Google My Business listing. Once you do that, you can spend time reaching out to your local market both in the real world and online. Always respond to positive and negative feedback without resorting to cookie-cutter responses.
The key is to boost your visibility and ensure your customers will recognize your brand. No matter why you want to use local marketing, it’s important to remember that it’s easy to do and highly effective.
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