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Marketing Your Local Business Online
Just because your business is small and
local it doesn’t mean you can’t work on building up a good online following.
After all, most people these days will look online for local services and you
want your company to be one of the first ones they come across. Otherwise
you’ll lose out to your competitors. This requires an understanding of how
online marketing works, and how your strategy should differ when you’re
targeting a very local, as opposed to a global, market.
Here are some hints:
Local Business Directories: The good old Yellow Pages and similar business directories are not a thing of the past. On the contrary, they now have a thriving online existence. If you want your business to be easily accessible to your local client base then you have to advertise in as many of these as possible. It’s kind of bridging the gap between those who still like to manually look up companies and those who do everything online.
Online Local Business Places: Sign your business up for the local business places on the main search engines such as Bing and Google. It does take a bit of time to be verified and for the listing to go live but once achieved you will appear in the local map of relevant businesses that appear alongside local searches and you don’t need to have a website.
Hire An SEO Expert: If you want high search engine rankings for your specific keywords then realistically, unless you already have a lot of knowledge in the area, you are going to need an SEO expert. A good consultant will be able to tailor a strategy specifically to target customers in your local area, if this is what you want. This requires a different approach to SEO marketing for international businesses. Also, SEO methodologies change pretty much constantly and most people running their own business would not have time to keep up with this. Far better, then, to leave it to someone whose job is to keep on top of these things.
Use Social Media: Posting news of upcoming events or special offers on Facebook and Twitter is a great way to reach out to your local customers. It also allows you to interact with them more informally so that, if they visit your business, they will already feel that you are somebody they can trust and relate to. Encourage people to comment on your posts by asking questions or discussing local news. Social media platforms have provided a welcome boost to many small companies in this way.
Use Local Papers: Most local papers and magazines will have websites these days. Why not try to get a mention in one of these? You could do this by running a promotional or charity event and sending out press releases. If these are interesting enough you may well find that the local media will want to interview you or run a short piece on their websites.