Owning a local business comes with its own set of added challenges. With your target audience being strictly limited to your geographical area of business, there’s only so much you can do to sustain or even further – increase your business. Well, that is one school of thought, no doubt about that but that’s certainly neither the perspective we yield and nor one that we preach. Today, the scenario of local businesses is seeing rapid growth both in terms of the number of participants and their respective sizes.
Here, we are going to be talking about the weapons of the modern-day online platforms — Digital marketing, and If you yourself own a local business, and are looking to add some volume to your clientele, you are at the right place. One marketing avenue that many local businesses simply ignore is hunting for clients over the internet. The online marketplace is one golden lamp that eagerly waits to be rubbed. As a business owner, you need to cultivate this field since this is one of the major sources for local businesses to maximize their output as well as efficiency. That is exactly why online support and digital marketing are crucial for your goal.
Here are 10 strategies which you can and should implement to gain local clients and be a bigger name in your locality:
1. Get a good website
Many local business owners still believe in sticking to traditional marketing methods like flyers, newspaper & magazine advertisements, etc. In most cases, this mindset persists as an attribute of a very common misconception among local business owners that digital marketing is a highly draining activity in terms of expenses as well as efforts. Thus, they doubt the worth of going through all that for what is ‘just a local business’.
This is where most local businesses are wrong. They’re wrong to think that because the online marketplace provides small and/or local businesses with the same opportunities as it does to large corporations and big companies. On the internet, it is your content and the service that is taken into account in order to take you higher in your field.
Acquiring a domain and setting up a website is the first step towards tapping into the online marketplace. The website is your virtual shopfront which will be visited by people and will be used by your prospective & current customers to interact and do business with you. The quality and appeal of your website play a major role in attracting clients & customers.
2. Equip it with features & functionality – A Responsive & Dynamic web design
Since we established the importance of a good website in the previous point, there are some aspects of a website that can take it a long way ahead, if implemented effectively. A responsive website is one that opens and functions beautifully on all types of screen sizes and devices.
A responsive website is easy to read, easy to navigate through, and easy to interact with while maintaining its visual appeal.
Responsive websites make a big difference in favor of businesses. Since more than half of transactions on the internet take place on smartphones, and more than 70% of internet users use smartphones to access the internet, it is really necessary that you cater to your local audiences as per their suiting and reach them at the convenience of their fingertips through their smartphones.
3. Local Search Optimization – Local business listings, Citations, Directories — Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc
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Directory listings appear routinely on front-page search returns.
- Many of these directory sites allow consumers to rate, write reviews and make comments about businesses and there is no actual way for you to interact with or respond to them unless you claim your listing.
Local Search Optimization is a component of digital marketing that focuses on acquiring new customers from around you. It is the marketing avenue that you just cannot afford to miss out on. If you seriously want new customers for your local business, leaving out local search optimization for your business website would be, in our frank opinion, really obnoxious.
What Local Search Optimization does is that it grants your business a highly amplified visibility in search results when a search related to your business is performed in your very geographical proximity. Almost all the search engines facilitate local search optimization, with Google being the best at it.
Local search optimization primarily consists of optimizing your business website’s content according to your business location and then registering/confirming/claiming your business on various online business directories. Now there are a handful of business directory websites that prepare business listings. However, they function more or less in the same way, being listed in multiple lists and/or directories greatly increases your web presence and it’s also what you need to aim for. You need to register your business separately on each of them unless they feed on information from Google; in which case, you will only have to register on Google My Business – the leading online listings provider.
Websites that prepare Online Listings:
There exist a good number of such online listings. The most prominent of which are — Google My Business with Google Maps, Yahoo! Small Business, Facebook, Bing Places for Business. Try to get your business listed on as many as possible, including any other small local directories. Nowadays, there are dozens of blogging and travel-planning sites that cover and list local businesses in an area. You must try and get in touch with them too.
The major benefit of online business listings also known as citations is that they appear on the first page of search results and present all the necessary information about a business in front of the customer like the name of the business, location, timings, reviews & ratings, and images.
Although to remain on top of your game and in order to make the most of this strategy, you need to make sure that whenever you update or change your information, you immediately update that in your listing. This is really very important for your SEO and online presence.
4. Release and exhibit testimonials
Testimonials go a long way in any kind of business. They speak for your credibility, competence, and reliability. A large number of people (more than 50%) go through the reviews and ratings of a business before making up their minds to engage in business with anyone. Naturally, a testimonial index provides your prospective customers with unmatched reassurance.
Since people love reading reviews and feedback from their fellow customers, placing a testimonial page on your business website is a very effective idea. This instills a firm sense of trust & comfort in your prospective clients as well as existing clients.
5. Video marketing or YouTube
This strategy is catching pace rather rapidly in the marketing sphere. Video marketing has always been a marketing-facet for big brands, but that has changed today with the advent of video content marketing, through YouTube. YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine and the largest online video sharing platform and most importantly, it’s accessible to anyone & everyone. Coherently, it makes for an excellent marketing medium for all kinds & sizes of businesses.
Video marketing is pretty much what it sounds like. It involves the production of videos based on products & services and using them to market a business or a brand. The main reason behind the major success of video marketing is that it provides information using audio-visual means. Most people would prefer to look at & listen about a product over reading about it on a website, or much less, a brochure. Reaching to customers is as simple as that.
If you find yourself puzzled as to what should be the topic of your videos, then that’s not really an area of worry. Your YouTube video can cover a wide range of aspects. For reference, you can make introductory and explanatory videos regarding your products & services, educational/informative videos (even on topics related to your business, products, or services), demonstrative videos – tutorials, etc. It goes without saying that you need to relate or associate your video to your business in one way or the other. And one undisguised objective of YouTube videos, obviously, is smart & effective direct marketing from the creator’s end.
6. Social Media
We just cannot stop talking about the benefits of Social media marketing for small businesses exclusively. Social media engagement gives you access to mobile-users in your area through location-based marketing. Social media platforms provide unparalleled ways to market your business in a highly refined & effective way. Most social media platforms today pack biggies like big data and machine learning which help you with better targeting, high customer engagement, greater sales & leads generation, and overall brand-growth. However, most of these benefits are attributes of paid social media marketing, you must realize that it’s a really cost-effective activity, and costs you only for the results it drives.
To talk about finer details, social media marketing is an excellent marketing tool for local businesses since it allows you to connect with your customers in a more personalized and informal way which leads to very promising customer relationships.
Social media platforms are an excellent medium for content marketing. You can display your products, services, procedures, etc through pictures and videos on your social media pages.
Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. provide tag & mention features, which allow your customers to refer your business to their friends or followers on Instagram. You can encourage them to post/write about your business in the form of feedback or just share their experience of doing business with you, with their friends & followers.
Social media has the power to relentlessly spread the word of mouth. Of course, digitally. This leads to community building, and you can gain more and more customers in your area through this.
Social media also helps you greatly in maintaining relevance and the buzz about your business among the audience.
7. Get A Mobile App
As a local business, getting your mobile app developed is perceived as an impressive move in the marketplace. It naturally does give you a considerable edge over your competition too. Getting an app developed for your local business is not much of a costly or a time-consuming process.
An app rewards you with superior brand image & increased brand recognition. It works in harmony with your website. While your website widens your reach, your app facilitates sales.
A mobile app for your business provides unparalleled customer engagement and builds lasting customer loyalty. Apart from this, there is a multitude of features & benefits that you can avail from an app of your own.
8. Start Blogging or Vlogging
Blogging is a too essential practice to miss out on. As a small/local business owner, including a blog on your website rewards you with numerous benefits. A blog page on your website really differentiates your website from others who do not run a blog on their website. When you post desirable content on your blog, many people will find themselves on your page, satisfying their curiosity or interests. It enhances your website’s SEO, bringing your website to the top of the google search results and brings considerably higher traffic to your website.
The merits of a blog
The major up-side regarding blogging about your local business is that it can really help you increase your visibility among your local prospective customers since the blogs take decent advantage of local search optimization, that is, area-based search optimization. Also, the interested visitors will share blog links with their family & friends, thus leading to community building!
If you run a blog, the regular blog-posts help in maintaining your brand’s relevance and clout in your audience and even further increases your reach. Consequently, with the increasing number of visitors on your website through the blog, you get more new customers. A blog is an extremely effective way of building your customer base online and creating long-lasting customer loyalty. The blog signifies your prominence as a participant in the market since you can publish informative, educational, or just engaging content related to your business through your blog. This establishes the perception as you know about what you do, you take your business seriously, and are actually capable of helping your customers out.
Vlogging
Vlogs or video blogs are just as popular nowadays, however, they demand a bit more effort and skill. You can start vlogging for your business on YouTube although that gets covered under video-content marketing to an extent. In some cases, vlogs find it easier to gain an audience depending on the type of business and the quality of the content you are creating.
9. Solicit Referrals
In order to acquire new customers or explore your market to look for customers, asking for referrals is the oldest yet one of the most effective practices. The only difference being that now the referrals are solicited online.
Referrals from your satisfied customers work soothingly well in order to gain new customers for your local business. Your target audience is closely knit, referrals help you in growing your customer base with ease & convenience.
You can implement email marketing to solicit referrals from your existing customers, in exchange for some benefits offered from your side.
10. Adopt a localized touch
Last but definitely not least, you can implement a localized look and feel to your website. By localized, we mean orient your content according to your area. Get your website designed or optimized in a way that your local customers (prospective as well as existing) feel closer and comfortable with you because of your shared locality.
While this can be a bit hard to achieve, it will make a fair bit of a difference. This will reward you by establishing your brand’s ingenuity, dominance, and superiority over your competitors. Although only you will be knowing the best approach to this as you’re the business owner, a general suggestion is to relate your website content to the area/locality in which you provide your services, in a creative & interesting way.
CONCLUSION
By following these tips with adequate sincerity, you can actually get the desired improvement in your numbers. It is a fact that local businesses face a tremendous amount of competition in today’s business scenario. A great many local business owners have a rather unreceptive perception towards the modern-day methods of running a business. Whereas, it has been widely observed that it’s the small & local businesses that can benefit the most from these digital marketing strategies. The reason behind this being – digital marketing gives the same opportunities and privileges to small businesses as it does to larger companies. Therefore, you can adopt the aforementioned strategies to gain new clients for your local business comfortably as all this goes easy on your pocket too.