How to Promote Your Business Locally – Having a local business is very important for business owners. Building relationship with customers is just a small part. If you are running a small business, promoting it locally will help you to grow your customer base. You will be able to attract potential customers who are very near to your business establishments.
How to promote your business can be a big question especially when you run a small business and want to find ways to market your company in the shortest time.
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Set up your free listing with Google
How are new customers finding you?
If you’re old-school, you may be relying on word of mouth, radio promotions, print ads, and direct mailing. But last year, 97% of consumers searched the Internet for a local business.
Furthermore, positive online reviews make 73% of consumers trust local businesses.
That’s why you need to make sure your local business is listed on Google.
When people use the Internet to search for something, they start with Google.
Setting up your free Google listing makes it easy for consumers to find you when they search for terms related to your business.
Your listing will have all your information:
- address
- phone number
- hours
- directions
- link to website
You’ll be able to add photos to give people a better understanding of the way you operate.
Customers will also be able to add photos. They’ll write reviews about your local business for other people to see, which will have a major impact on your successful.
You need to learn how to get your customers to recommend your brand to others.
Your star rating is the number one factor used by consumers to determine whether they’ll buy from your local business.
In fact, 94% of customers will use businesses with a 4-star rating.
Educate & add value to your community
As a local business, you’re going to attract two types of customers:
- Those who live within your local community
- People who are visiting and looking to fill a need/want
This section is dedicated to the former group. Customers in your local community will come back to you again and again.
So, what’s the best way to capture more customers within your local community and keep them coming back?
The answer: Keep adding value beyond what you sell them.
There are many ways to do this. The first (and most obvious) is to create a blog. Here, you can share news and information about your community. You can also create how-to articles relevant to your business.
For example, a local music venue could create a guide on the best restaurants in the area. Or a local electrician could create a checklist of electrical pitfalls and hazards to look out for when buying a house.
Colorado yoga studio CorePower Yoga does a great job of adding value through their blog. They clearly know the topics that their target market is interested in, which is proven in the content they create:
The post above, “How-To Clean Your Aura,” is an example of Top-of-Funnel content. These are topics that interest your audience, but don’t necessarily talk about your business directly.
Here’s a process to follow when creating digital content for your local website:
- Know your audience: Why do your customers do business with you? What relevant challenges do they face in their lives/businesses day-to-day? Figure out ways you can add more value by talking to them.
- Plan your topics: Start brainstorming different topics based on your findings. This can include news from within your community to how-to articles like CorePower Yoga’s.
- Get writing: First, get yourself a blog. I highly recommend hosting this on your own website using WordPress. Then, create an outline of the subsections you want to cover. Then it’s just a matter of writing!
- Promote your content: Don’t make the mistake of letting your content collect dust. Share your content on your social media accounts. Reach out to other business owners in the area to get their thoughts. Send to your email list and get your content directly into your customer’s hands.
As a local business, digital content isn’t the only medium to try. You should also consider running local events and workshops that bring your customers and community together.
For example, you could run an event that brings similar (but non-competing) businesses in your area together to raise awareness around your industry.
You could even test a workshop or panel format, bringing local “thought leaders” together. For a yoga company, this could mean bringing other fitness and nutrition experts to share their advice to the local community.
Nick Trueman, founder of digital marketing agency Spec Digital, runs monthly workshops to bring his target audience together under one roof. Each session focuses on specific topics and aims to educate his audience:
Think about who you could collaborate with. Look for other local businesses, and search Instagram for local influencers in your area to work with on adding more value to your community.
Get set up with online directories.
Don’t forget to get set up with online directories. It’s perhaps one of the most important components of promoting your business locally.
This includes directories such as Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, or Bing. Tools like Moz Local can help you get this done in one place.
With data aggregator tools, your local information will be sent out to several directories. Plus, they can help keep your data consistent.
Having a different address or phone number on your Facebook and Google will confuse your audience. When audiences are confused, they stop considering your company in their purchasing decision.
That’s why it’s so important that your name, address, and phone number (NAP) is consistent online.
Additionally, your online directory listings should include reviews. Reviews are one of the main factors of a user’s purchasing decision when looking at local businesses. Just think back to my search for a personal trainer. I only considered the highly rated trainers.
Plus, all of this helps with your local SEO. Being visible on directories and in reviews can help improve your search rankings, making it easier to find you online.
Be involved in the community.
While promoting your business locally can seem like a hard task, just being involved in your community can make a big difference.
Community events are a great way to get in front of your local audience.
For example, if there’s a local fundraiser, maybe you want to become a sponsor. Or perhaps you want to get involved with local charities. Or maybe you want to become involved with the local chamber of commerce.
These tactics can help you raise brand awareness locally and promote your business to your local audience.
Create a loyalty program.
Loyalty programs are a great way to keep people coming back for more.
When you create a customer loyalty program, it should be fun, and ultimately, deliver value to your customers.
Perhaps customers can get points and redeem rewards. Maybe they have to play a game to get points. Either way, they’re more likely to keep coming back.
People like to have fun and this will help them create a connection with your brand, which is important to retaining customers.
In fact, Sophia Bernazzani says “Studies show that customers who have an emotional connection to your brand tend to have a lifetime value that’s four times higher than your average customer. These customers spend more with your business, and therefore, should be rewarded for it. After all, you need them the most.”
Whether you’re a new or established business, you should consider creating a loyalty program to incentivize repeat customers.
Make blogging a high priority
It’s important to add a blog to your website because it increases your chances of being noticed, and helps with your SEO as you can use your keywords and phrases in your blog posts. Websites get crawled quite regularly so it’s always important to have new, quality content.
Furthermore, you want to ensure your blog content is valuable and engaging for your readers. Incorporating visuals like infographics and animations is a great way to increase readership and time spent on your content.
Indeed, Now Loan, a UK loans comparison site said recently that providing useful, relatable advice about financial matters lead to a 48% increase in targeted traffic to their website.
Writing a regular blog also gives your audience an opportunity to interact with you by placing their comments about your posts. Remember to add social sharing buttons to your blog posts so readers can easily share them, and more people can discover you and your business.
Here are tips to help your blog with confidence for your business:
- Learn how to write a blog people will want to read
- Four steps to making your business blog successful
- How to take brilliant lifestyle photos for your website or blog
- The beginner’s guide to growing your blog traffic
Conclusion
As you can see, we’ve shared several ideas for you to capture new customers and entice existing ones back to your business.
Promoting your business locally can seem like a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be.