Are you doing every little thing that you can do to help your local marketing and SEO? Let’s take a look and see how beneficial connecting your physical marketing and digital marketing strategies can be.
First off, let’s understand that it is a challenge marketing a local business from a digital standpoint, depending on the industry and/or vertical of course. In some scenarios, you may be pinned up against giants such as Wikipedia, or another big competing entity in the online space. Not to mention in this day and age we have grocery stores selling gasoline, and gas stations selling groceries. The little mom and pop specialty shops have been run out of business due to supermarkets and franchises. It’s looking rough out there for the little guys, so you better be in shape.
When I say you better be in shape I speak more in terms of having a well-developed marketing plan that isn’t linear and trapped inside a box. Take a look around. The times have changed the consumer base has changed, how they interact, research and buy a product has completely changed over the course of time. Chances are if you have a question, Google has an answer for it.
A lot of firms and individuals who manages the local marketing efforts for a client sometimes lose the basic principles of marketing. This in turn can make all of the positive, tech savvy solutions less effective. So, let’s take a step back and take a look at how our new digital age interacts with the traditional piece of marketing to better help some of the local competition with getting a jump on the big dogs.
Assess What is Within Your Reach
I think a good starting place is to assess what is within your reach. You’re local and all of your consumers are right around you, so what’s the catch? None of them even know you’re there, or that you even exist. Now that we have accepted that, let’s take a deep breath, remember that there is hope, and continue. Let’s determine what a need and a want is, as it will help you greatly determine the tone or direction that you may need to take with your marketing journey.
For example:
Bob’s toilet could not handle the constant daily abuse and eventually it stopped working. Bob has no idea how to fix a toilet, so he determines that he needs to call a plumber come out to repair his toilet.
Little Jimmy loves to ride dirt bikes and he really wants a new dirt bike to show off to all of his friends.
The needs and wants, you can consider as your triggers (usually triggered off of some sort of ad). It’s going to make the consumer click, come in, or call. It’s planting the seed and giving them the necessary information to follow through on their end. To give you an example, everyday on my way home from work, I see this beat up truck, side mirror hanging off of it with three wheels. Spray painted on the side of the truck are the words: “I buy beat up vehicles.” So not only do you know that this guy buy’s beat up vehicles, he has proof! Haha!
It may be an eyesore for an awful long time, but who knows? Maybe that one day you’ll need that service and remember that beat up trucking on the side of the road. Now, that could be a want or a need, but for the most part it would be a want.
Online Business Profiles
Now say that interest strikes! Let’s take to the web. I operate using my internal moment of truth algorithm. There are a few things that you can gather from a basic search on Google. When you Google a business, a few key sources pop up to let you know how legit or how bad the business you’re searching for is. Usually, I’m very prone to clicking or calling on a company who has good reviews on the various review platforms. A widely known platform is Yelp.
Also if they have a social profile, those tend to come up on the search results under their brand name as well. So you can at least see how the business operates on a day-to-day basis (if they stay on top of social media of course). Oftentimes, will you find that relevance holds strong and you might find an additional service out of the company that you selected from using your moment of truth algorithm.
Some individuals like to buy blindly or impulsively. Everyone that knows me knows that I will spend weeks on end researching and comparing products until I’m blue in the face. With so many companies just a Google search away I’m happy that we can at least have a starting point with review systems and online reputations. At a quick glance, a search can point me in the right direction, so pushing reviews from consumers is incredibly important in your local marketing efforts.
Link building or backlinking is also another key factor in the performance of your local SEO marketing. The big quality update also known as the Phantom III update changed the way Google’s algorithm sees quality and relevance of a website. It is imperative that you have quality relevant links pointing back to your website. The quality update eliminated a lot of the previous poor back linking methods that were being used. In some scenarios, people would use black hat back linking methods to manipulate Google.
Overall, if you look to put a jump on your local SEO marketing efforts. I’ve laid out some good foundational points that will help you climb those rankings and convert more, going into the future. Best of luck with your efforts, and if you happen to need some help give me a call at That! Company.
– Zack Rivera, Marketing Advisor