In this blog, I’m going to be discussing marketing strategies for local businesses.
To find out more check out my video below or keep reading for the full blog.
Now what I mean by that is, if you’ve got a business, which only serves your local community. In other words, they are typically within what say four miles of where you physically operate from, or maybe within like 30 minutes, whatever your definition is of a local business.
In other words that you know how, how far are people willing to travel to use your services. So whether you’re a dentist, a physiotherapist, or a chiropractor, what does your service?
If you’re offering a local service, then this video is absolutely for you where I will be teaching you some of the top strategies that you can be used to market your local business.
In no particular order, implement that local SEO strategy.
So what I mean by that is to optimize your website. It’s good on-page optimization. And what we do is we’ll optimize things like your title tag, make sure your title and labels on various pages are relevant to whatever keyword you want your website to be listed for.
Make sure you’ve got the H tags in place.
So your header one, make sure your content is adequately suited for the keyword you’re trying to optimize. If you’re trying to create a page for dentists in London, make sure you’ve got the word dentist in London mentioned in your title tags in your age tags in your body content. When Google does come onto your page, it knows pretty much this page is about dentists in London.
But please don’t start spamming your page with keywords; otherwise, that will go against you. Use consistent local citations. In other words, you’re the cording naps that we’ve sent or name, address and phone number.
What you need to do you need to be so listing your businesses within local directories, local newspapers, local blogs, and so on. But when you do, make sure that the format of your company name, address, and phone number is consistent with all these throughout all these directories or platforms that you must be advertising on.
So when the engine says Google looks at them, they know that this is all part of one business. Use structured data or schema markups. So with schema markups, you can tell Google you know things like your address, your phone number, the services you provide, and so much more.
Again, you’re helping Google to understand your business and what your website is all about.
So the world’s on the subject of local SEO, get your website listed within local business directories. So if you notice, take a look around.
Well, what are the businesses or platforms that you can advertise on, and make sure that your business is listed within them with quality content, and ideally, with a backlink back to your website again? In other words that wherever you list your business, if it’s got a link pointing from that directory to your website, that’s going to help you as long as where your listing is a quality source and is of a relevant industry sector to your business.
Claim your local business listing.
So what I mean by that is essential that you go to places like Google, my business, bank, places, Apple places, and make sure that you create an account and add your business to these platforms.
What these will do is that on the Google page, your business can be listed just below the Google Ads section. And the beauty about getting your business listed within this section is that each time somebody clicks on them, it will be free. It won’t cost you a single penny.
Every single click is actually free. But do remember that once you’ve, you know, created an account and your account has been verified, or your business has been verified, don’t just neglect to go there and maintain it on a regular basis.
You know, get people to review your listings or your business, contract, you know, make common comments, regular updates, stock photos, regular offers, and so on. And this will keep your profile maintained, and the more you look after your profile, the more these platforms such as Google will look after you create a paid search account with Google ads.
Now, this is by far the fastest way you can start marketing your local business because, in other platforms, it’s SEO and Google My Business, it could take a while Before your business construct to get shown on the Google page, with Google ads, you can get your business listed at the top of the Google page within 24 hours.
And don’t forget, over 63% of people will click on the top listings on the Google page. And we go to Google now. To type in whatever keyword that people might use to find your business. And wherever that keyword is to see if your business appears in that section.
And you’ll be able to see what the Google Ads listings are because a simple ad will denote them. And what that means is that’s a Google Ads listing.
So if your business is locked there, it means that the companies that are being shown that they are, are potentially taking away customers from you by keyword.
I mean, like, for example, you know, you might be a physiotherapist, or you might be a dentist based in, in Birmingham. So that would be a keyword dentist in Birmingham, we could be operating a martial arts school, so type in martial arts near me, and so on.
These are the businesses that take away potential customers from, you know, don’t forget, you know, getting your business listed within Google, at a relatively small budget can be complicated.
So you know, seek help from an expert, who does this day in day out where you focus on what you’re good at, in your own business, Facebook ads.
Now Facebook ads, you know, we also call it disruptive marketing.
What that means is that you know, people go into Facebook, not to search for your products or services, but it’s more to see what people around or the community or their friends and families are doing.
What you’re doing is by showing an ad on Facebook is you’re technically disrupting their behaviour. So the great thing about Facebook is that you can do something called interest-based targeting. So in other words, that if you’re a mortgage broker, you could target people who are willing to or who are in the market for selling their homes, or they might have an interest in estate agents or letting agencies.
You might have a service, which applies to parents. So you might have a claim, or you might choose a stake to cause your parents with children, or you know, maybe if you might be a therapist, so you might type in an interest called anxiety.
Anxiety could be an interest that you could, you could target so people with that interest will see your ads. So it’s actually brilliant for Facebook advertising because, with Facebook advertising, you can also very much restrict where the ads are appearing geographically.
Last but not least, local service ads, or local service ads,.
Even though they’ve been around for a few years, they are still relatively new. In places such as the UK at the moment, they are only available for specific industries. Now, what local service ads do is allow you to pay Google but on a per lead basis, as opposed to per click ground.
And the other thing is that, in order for your business to be listed within the Google Local Service ads section, you need to have something called the Google guarantee badge. What that essentially means is, is that you have to go through a process whereby Google review you, then check your business and so on, to make sure you’re a genuine business and you’re looking at your customers.
At the moment if you are a based the in the UK. And if you’re in the home improvement industry, that is brilliant for you. But depending on which part of the world you’re based in, you might like to check to see which industries local service ads are available within your country.
And again, you know, creating a local service ad can get complicated. It’s straightforward to set up. But to get to it properly, it could take you to know some expertise. So sequel help for someone who might be doing this.
On a day to day type of basis, you’ll get your ROI a lot quicker.
Need help with your Google Ads? Or just want an independent review of your Google Ads/SEO? Contact us or call 07866 555 555