A Small Business Guide to Local Marketing

May 12, 2022

The most accessible customers for your small business to get are the ones that are in your area, and local marketing helps you do just that. These strategies will help your business become discoverable online, helping to expand your customer base.

Don’t Underestimate Web Design

What your small business needs are a marketing-activated website. Your entire website should be designed to bring in leads and grow your business. A quality website should bring in multiple disciplines under the same roof. Instead of just optimizing SEO, a marketing-activated website will have SEM, branding, conversion optimization, persuasive copy, great design, and code that brings everything together. Every part of your website should be working hard to market your business and increase your bottom line.

Web design includes more than just choosing key colors and using keywords. You need a website that will market your business for you. The goal is to ensure your website has high conversion rates and low bounce rates, increasing your bottom line. Unfortunately, if you are working with an SEO agency or a web designer, there’s a good chance that you’re not getting a marketing-activated website, which means you’re wasting your money.

Invest In SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, tends to be so confusing. You know it’s essential, but how do you make it work for you? Have you ever tried claiming your profile on Google My Business? It’s hard to keep everything straight – after all, Google can be a mind-boggling and complex monster.

It’s important to work with a professional who understands that SEO isn’t all about keywords. SEO is the overarching discipline of innovative online marketing. While an SEO marketer is intelligent and has a lot to offer, these individuals may not understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business. They may not understand how to best position your business in search engines. You want to work with a digital marketing consultant that understands SEO and how your business works.

Manage Your Reputation

If prospective local customers search for your business name or prime keywords associated with your business, what perception will they have of your local business? Will they find no trace at all of your business? Are they going to find bad reviews? The good news is that you can manage your reputation to control somewhat the perception prospective customers get of your business. 

By building a full-fledged reputation marketing strategy for your company, you can harness the power of what your happiest customers have to say on your behalf. Getting great reviews and knowing how to use them is how you leverage your good reputation and help more prospects get to know, like, and trust you – and ultimately recommend you to their friends and neighbors. Online reputation management ensures that you stay on top of your reputation, getting your name out there in positive ways and dealing with any negative reviews as they show up to minimize their damage.

Beef Up Localized Content

The best type of content your business can create is community-focused content. Get involved in your community with your content marketing strategy. Provide local media with great news, and get involved with local organizations and businesses that your community already loves. Invest in your community and earn traffic and powerful links.

As you get involved locally, quality content will follow. You’ll be able to retain your current customers, increase brand awareness, and strengthen your local perception, making the most of your content marketing dollars.

Work With Professionals

Local marketing can be a confusing and time-consuming process with everything else to do as a small business owner. Are you ready to get serious about continuity, consistency, and results in your marketing? If so, you need an experienced professional to help you build and deploy a marketing system to land your new best customers. 

Free up your time and lower your overall costs with one of our marketing packages. We combine effective marketing tactics into practical, proven marketing systems — contact us today to get started!

Forecasting the Next Ten Years of Marketing

10 Apr, 2024
Marketing is gearing up for significant changes as we enter the new decade. With new technologies, shifts in buyer behavior, and changes in consumption culture, the way businesses reach out to customers will look very different in the coming years. While we can't say what marketing will look like in 10 years, we can examine emerging trends and strategies to forecast its future. Here are some predictions experts are suggesting could take shape moving forward. Increasing Personalized Advertising Personalized marketing should undergo even more profound transformations in the coming decade, leveraging advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and data analytics to forge deeper customer connections. With the ability to glean insights from vast amounts of data, companies will craft highly tailored ads and messages that resonate with individual preferences and behaviors, fostering stronger brand-consumer relationships. From dynamic content customization to predictive marketing algorithms, the era of hyper-personalization will redefine how businesses engage with their target audiences on a one-to-one level. Advanced Device Communication The proliferation of voice-enabled devices and virtual assistants heralds a new era in consumer engagement, requiring marketers to adapt their strategies to communicate effectively through these mediums. As voice technology continues to gain traction, companies must anticipate the rise of voice commerce and tailor their approaches to accommodate this emerging trend. By leveraging conversational AI and natural language processing, brands can deliver seamless, personalized experiences that resonate with consumers, whether shopping, seeking information, or interacting with digital assistants. Wider Use of Virtual Reality Virtual reality (VR) is poised to become a ubiquitous tool in the marketer's arsenal, offering immersive experiences that transcend traditional advertising methods. With VR, brands can transport consumers into captivating virtual environments where they can interact with products and services unprecedentedly, fostering deeper engagement and brand loyalty. As VR technology becomes more accessible and sophisticated, expect to see a proliferation of immersive marketing campaigns that leverage the power of virtual experiences to captivate audiences and drive conversions.

The Power of Storytelling

12 Mar, 2024
Marketing tends to focus on analytics and systems, but we sometimes forget about one powerful tool that has existed since the beginning: storytelling. From our ancestors telling ancient myths to be passed down for the generations to come to modern-day brand narratives, stories have held the power to inspire and connect in all different ways. Today, consumers face a constant bombardment of advertisements and catered content; using the power of storytelling in marketing campaigns has become critical for businesses, especially smaller firms aiming to create meaningful connections with their target clients. Why Storytelling is an Effective Strategy When a brand uses storytelling to convey its message, it connects with the audience emotionally. By telling a compelling story, marketers can create a memorable experience for consumers, making them more likely to remember and engage with the brand. Additionally, storytelling allows marketers to communicate the brand's values and personality more authentically. Instead of bombarding consumers with sales pitches, storytelling enables brands to share their stories and build trust with their audience, increasing brand loyalty and customer engagement. The Emotional Resonance of Stories At the heart of storytelling lies its ability to bring out emotions and create profound connections on a human level. Unlike traditional marketing messages focusing solely on product features or sales pitches, stories can engage the audience's imagination, stir empathy, and spark genuine interest. By weaving narratives that resonate with their target audience's hopes, dreams, and challenges, small marketing firms can create a powerful emotional bond that transcends transactional relationships. Building Brand Identity and Authenticity Storytelling is a potent tool for small businesses to authentically define and express their brand identity. Through compelling narratives that reflect their values, mission, and vision, small firms can differentiate themselves from competitors and carve out a distinct identity in the minds of consumers. Whether recounting the founder's journey, highlighting customer success stories, or showcasing the company's commitment to social responsibility, storytelling allows small businesses to humanize their brand and foster customer trust and loyalty.

A Guide to Employee-Generated Content

13 Feb, 2024
In a world of "influencer marketing" and brand deals, companies can easily overspend their marketing budgets and get caught up in the frenzy. An influencer may feature your product or brand only for their videos to perform poorly. At best, you lose out on the money spent sending the product to the influencer and whatever you spent on hiring them. At worst, your business gets a bad reputation online, and customers don't take your brand seriously. Consider that influencer marketing is just the "shiny new toy" in marketing. In that case, companies should continue to produce consistent, cost-effective outcome. One source for this? Your Employees. Employee-generated content refers to any videos, pictures, or copy that employees publicly post about their position and the company. Find out the benefits of employee-generated content (EGC), what this content can look like, and how to implement EGC into your overall strategy. What Does Employee-Generated Content Look Like? The beauty of employee-generated content is that it can take many forms. Any content your employees make that involves details about their role, the company itself, or the relationships they've developed with coworkers or customers/clients can be EGC. A simple, straightforward EGC piece can be an employee spotlight for new hires or veteran employees. You can choose to craft employee spotlights as infographics with a picture of the employee along with some fun facts about them, write a long-form piece from an interview with the employee speaking about their time at the company, or even long or short-form videos with the employee speaking on their experiences. While these methods may require the help of a graphic designer, copywriter, or videographer, the idea is that the employees generate the content by speaking about their experiences and introducing themselves. Other ideas for EGC pieces might be "day in the life" videos following a specific employee throughout their day, reflections employees have from conferences or professional development opportunities, employment milestones or recognitions, or even just pictures employees take with each other or showing what happened that day. There are limitless options and iterations for employee-generated content, and the key is to find out what works well for your business and why.
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