How to Market Your Local Business

If you own a local business and your offering is limited to where you are located, then read on.

The following are 10 things you can do to market your local business online.

1. Local SEO

When a user searches for “pizzas near me”, they want recommendations.

When local SEO is done right, you can appear in the 3 pack (the list that features the local businesses, directions, and reviews)

Read up on sites such as Moz about local SEO.

One of the major authorities on the subject is David Mihm. You can find him at DavidMihm.com.

2. Facebook Ads

I have heard from some business owners that this method alone singlehandedly made up majority of their customers.

Create Facebook ads and boost them in the target areas you want to reach with the target demographic and interests you have in mind.

For example, if you are a hair salon, you can target young women within a 5km radius of your salon with interests in style or a particular celebrity.

3. Try out tools such as Moz Local

Tools such as these help you get listed in sites such as Yelp and CitySearch.

In the process of getting listed, make sure you have the best (and I mean, the most flattering) pictures of your store.

Imagine as though you are browsing on TripAdvisor – pictures matter.

4. Track your most effective channels

When marketing your local business, it’s important to figure out which platform or channel gives you the best results.

One of the ways to track is create specific coupon codes or custom URLs for them to click through e.g. domain.com/tuesdayfun.

5. Build links with local domains

Every city has localized websites, it can either be in the form of .com or .de (country specific).

Building links with local sites give you more credibility in Google’s eyes as your links are geographically mapped in a certain location.

Obtaining links from .gov and .edu sites help a lot as well.

6. Get more reviews
Reviews play a huge role in the consumers eyes if you are a trustworthy business or not.

Get people to leave reviews on your Google profile to drive more click throughs to your site.

7. Leverage the AMP framework

The AMP framework allows you to access a site much quicker by stripping away most of the site and showing only the content.

Google currently favours this framework and you are more likely to rank higher if you have the framework in place.

8. Make your phone numbers clickable

This is sometimes overlooked.

Making sure your number is clickable allows the user to either call you directly to ask what your operating hours are or to leave you a text.

9. Have just a few form fields

If you are already collecting information from your visitors in the form of lead forms, try to lower of the amount of form fields as much as possible.

A cold lead may be put off by having to leave too much information in the beginning since the relationship has yet to be built.

Ask for the essentials such as name, e-mail and phone number.

10. Consider Waze Local

Waze is a navigation app owned by Google.

Whenever users use the app and they reach a certain location, geo-specific ads would pop-up and suggest they try out a particular promotion nearby.

In conclusion, the ways to market your local business are:

1. Local SEO
2. Facebook Ads
3. Try out tools such as Moz Local
4. Track your most effective channels
5. Build links with local domains
6. Get more reviews
7. Leverage the AMP framework
8. Make your phone numbers clickable
9. Have just a few form fields
10. Consider Waze Local.