Small local businesses are in need to sell their products in the local area. The top businesses in your area won’t spend thousands of dollars on marketing, because the reality is they don’t have to. They will reap the rewards of well-known brands in the community, while you may be struggling to even be heard. That doesn’t mean you can’t advertise your small business locally. This article will focus on building strong relationships within your community for free, and helping you generate more sales.
Paid Search Marketing
Google AdWords and Bing Ads can bring in traffic to the website and help your business feature prominently when people search for relevant phrases. The key is to focus on long-tail keywords that are industry specific. This will get your campaign the highest possible click-through rate and conversions.
The best part about PPC campaigns is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get traffic. Instead, a targeted campaign with a budget of $20 to $30 a day can generate traffic and qualified leads for your business.
Social Media Advertising
Advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to target specific demographics and pinpoints you to the people you’ve not reached out to. This eliminates the extemporaneous clicks from consumers browsing or searching for information.
With a small budget, you can target specific customers by their age, gender, education and interests similar to your product/service categories.
Even when people don’t make an immediate purchase, they may end up liking and sharing your business. This helps in building a database of potential customers.
Join the conversation
Look for discussions and forums related to your business or industry — your customers may even already be discussing your business online!
Remember that you don’t want to just push in with a link and an obvious advertisement. Instead, try to add value by answering questions, sharing your expertise, or, in cases where a customer is unhappy, making a good faith effort to help. Forum threads tend to remain searchable for years, so a single post can generate passive income for a long time.
Flyers and Brochures
Flyers and brochures are a simple, inexpensive and great way to create a buzz about your business. By offer incentives or discounts to people who bring in your flyer, you can not only generate business but also informally track how many people are coming in just because they saw your flyer.
Start blogging
As you’ve just seen, consumers use the Internet to find local businesses.
That means you need to understand the basic principles of SEO if you want to increase your chances of getting ranked as a top result.
Roughly 47% of clicks go to the top three positions of Google search results.
Blogging will help you tremendously with your SEO strategy. Just look at these numbers:
More website traffic, more followers, and more leads will ultimately translate to increased profits.
Publishing new blog posts means your website will be updated more frequently with fresh content, which will increase your chances of getting a higher search ranking.
Plus, your posts are a great place to add keywords prospective customers may be searching for when browsing online.
Once you’re able to establish a steady group of readers for your blog, they’ll visit your website on a regular basis. The more they visit your site, the greater the chances you’ll have of getting them to convert.
Comment on blogs and articles
Likewise, look for blog posts and articles by thought leaders or businesses that are related to yours, but not direct competitors. Leave thoughtful comments (avoid appearing spammy!) sharing your perspective on the topic.
Optimize for Local Search
Optimize your business website in order to get found by local search users. A large percentage of Google queries are location based. This gives your business much more visibility and adds more depth to local search results.
To optimize for local search, you should:
- Get a physical address
- Create Google My Business profile with clear business description, business hours, modes of payment etc.
- Get listed on business directories such as Yelp, Citysearch etc.
- Focus on attracting positive reviews and responding to negative comments
- Add schema markup to your website code
Get Involved in Local Community Events
Small businesses should focus on getting involved in local events You can contribute money toward local charities or an in-kind product donation. Not only will it help you get in front of your prospective customers but also give you the satisfaction of supporting worthy, local initiatives.
You can also host events or giveaways to collect customer information and follow up with customers for repeat businesses and referrals
Partner with Other Small Businesses
Reach out to other small business owners who are marketing goods and services that complement yours. Look for opportunities to create a cross-promotional deal with them so that you can tap each other’s client bases and advertise for free.
Get a website
Every business needs a website, no matter how old-fashioned your business or clients may be. Your website is the go-to for current and prospective customers. Even if they find you on social media or Google, they will want to go to your website and, like your Google listing, it serves to promote your business around the clock.
A good business website not only serves as a promotional tool in and of itself—it tells the story of your business and what you offer, provides contact information, and reflects your brand’s personality and distinguishing characteristics—but it is also essential for measuring and improving the success of your other promotional tactics.
Speak at an event
Look for opportunities to share your expertise by speaking at a conference or event or participating on a panel. By choosing an event that’s closely aligned with your business or industry, you’re positioning yourself as a thought leader and getting in front of an audience that’s (hopefully) a good fit for your business or product.
Run geo-targeted Facebook ads.
Facebook has more targeted advertising capability than any other platform. In addition to being able to advertise to a certain type of consumer based on interests or job description, you can target people who fit that criteria in a certain location.
By putting a few dollars per day behind a geo-targeted Facebook campaign, you’ll build up a local following over time. Be sure to continue posting great content as well to keep this new audience engaged.
Publish content on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a platform to connect with professionals, which is why it’s also a great place to share business-related content. LinkedIn’s blogging platform lets you demonstrate your expertise within your industry.
Your connections and other LinkedIn members will engage with your posts and share them, doing the free promotion for you. With almost half of all social media traffic coming to B2B company sites from LinkedIn, it’s a missed opportunity if you don’t publish and promote content on LinkedIn.
Implement search engine optimization
It’s one thing for you to promote your business; it’s another thing for Google to promote your business. SEO is a set of practices that align your business with Google’s ranking algorithm. But because this algorithm has evolved to use machine learning and user behavior to produce the most accurate and quality results for searchers, optimizing for search engines is really just optimizing for searchers—particularly those searching for what you have to offer.
SEO isn’t just one tactic, but many tactics that collectively work together to improve your rank. Also, because Google has superb location-based results, you have just as much of a chance as big retailers to show up on the first page of Google— without spending a dime! (With the exception of the costs to get a website, of course).
SEO tactics to promote your business include:
- Adding relevant (industry- and location-based) keywords to specific places on your website.
- Producing original, high-quality content regularly, with tagged images.
- Maintaining high page load speeds and security.
For more SEO tips, check out this post on The Top 10 Google Ranking Factors of 2020 (+How to Optimize for Them).
When your business is ranking high in results, Google is basically promoting your business for you—and not just to anyone, but to the people searching for what you have to offer. Doesn’t get much better than that.
Give back to the community
Being part of a local community also means you need to give back.
If you’re charitable, don’t be shy about your involvement. Consumers want to hear about how your local business supports charitable causes.
Research shows 91% of customers say they are willing to switch brands if it means supporting one associated with a charitable cause.
And 85% of consumers will have a more positive image of your local business if you support a charity they care about.
You can even ask your community and customers which charities you should support. Studies show 39% of people want to help decide on the charities a business supports by a voting system.
It’s a safe bet to associate with local charities.
This will definitely help you and your business become closer to your community.
You can approach this in many ways.
For starters, you can make an annual contribution to a charity.
You can also run special promotions with a certain percentage of sales on a particular day or week goes to a cause.
Giving back to your community doesn’t always mean donating to a charity.
For example, let’s say you own a local restaurant. You can provide food for a public high school graduation event. These types of parties run by the school are intended to keep students safe and sober on the night of their graduation.
Conclusion
There are a plethora of options when it comes to promoting your business, no matter your budget.
I’m not expecting you to implement all these strategies overnight. But go through the list, and prioritize some of these tactics based on the needs of your business.