What Does Your Local Marketing Plan Look Like?
What does your online marketing strategy looking like? If you're a local business, the local marketing game is set to become an increasingly crowded place.
With the search engines going heavy on providing a localized experience for searchers (most searches have local intent), a local search engine optimization (SEO) and Social Media strategy is a must for your business.
While the local scene used to be left to local businesses, national brands have seen the rise of local SEO and are increasing their budgets when it comes to all things local.
A survey conducted by Balihoo (they provide marketing automation software) showed that national brands are going local in 2013.
- 90% of brands said they will be increasing their online marketing, with a focus on local SEO and mobile marketing
- 31% of national brands surveyed said they will be creating local blogging and local review initiatives to boost their local presence
- 90% of national brands think assisting their local affiliates will help increase their local presence
So what does this mean for local businesses?
Increased competition. With the focus on local marketing, national brands and franchise chains will be placing a higher focus on optimizing their local presence in markets they serve. Look for optimized Google+ pages, local customer reviews, and even localized blogs created with the intent to drive local customers to their websites.
Social media is the realm for small business. Medium to small sized businesses lean more heavily on social media to reach their local markets, something the bigger brands have a harder time doing. Maintaining relationships with your current and potential customers will help keep your local ties stronger than the big brands.
Reviews and mobile are big. Customer reviews are the cornerstone of any good local marketing strategy. Places like Google Plus and Yelp are important when it comes to customer reviews, the trick is getting your customers to leave them. Mobile marketing is growing faster than other online marketing platforms as consumers are using their smart phones more and more to find what they need. Making it easy for consumers to reach you through a mobile device is crucial to taking advantage of this trend.
The marketing shift is towards online. The big brands have the data and research to see where consumer trends are heading. They are heading online, and in a big way. If your local business is still stuck on door hangers as an effective means of marketing, you're in trouble. This isn't to say traditional marketing doesn't work, it just needs to become a piece in a much bigger marketing plan…..a marketing plan that sees the internet as the future.
So How Do You Go Local?
Localizing your marketing efforts to your specific market can create greater focus and help you directly reach your target audience. So what should you do to localize your marketing efforts?
Localize your web content. Whether it's a blog, your service pages, or a thought leadership piece (think white papers and case studies), focus your content on your specific market. Talk about local topics, interview local people, and link to other local websites to “localize” your website in the eyes of the search engines.
Get customer reviews. Figure out a system where you ask happy customers to leave a review for your business. 3rd party review sites like Yelp and Google Plus garner more trust from consumers (and the search engines) than simply adding the reviews directly to your website. Testimonials are important for any website, but independent reviews garner more trust.
Get local links. From local directories to local blogs, seek to build links and relationships from other local websites. While links from bigger, national websites are important, creating a local link profile will help the search engines see your business as a locally focused one.
Optimize your Google+ local page. When a local search query is made in your market (eg; pizza in Charlotte), it often triggers a local search result where the Google map and local business listings appear above the regular search results. This is your Google+ local page (formerly your Google Places page). It will often rank higher than your regular website in the local search results. Be sure to regularly add customer reviews, images, and regular updates to keep it ranking high.
Consider Pay Per Click marketing. Targeted Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns can help you laser target your marketing efforts and help support your organic local marketing initiatives. Search marketing, remarketing campaigns, and display advertising are all areas that can increase your local presence online.
So what your online marketing strategy look like?
In a small business survey conducted last year by Att&t, 60% of small businesses planned on increasing their online marketing budget, compared to 90% of national brands surveyed through the Balihoo survey. In addition, only 2/3rd's of small business owners surveyed currently used their website to market their business (what's the other third doing??).
As you can see, national brands see the marketing opportunities online, especially when it comes to local search and mobile marketing. They're increasing their online budgets at a faster rate than small business and are encroaching on an area that used to only be the domain of the local business.
So what's your local marketing strategy look like?
Gary
Latest posts by Gary (see all)
- Top Local SEO Strategies for Flooring Companies: Building Reputation and Driving Traffic - October 31, 2024
- How To Conduct a Competitor Analysis for Local SEO - December 11, 2023
- The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO: Optimize Your Webpages Like a Pro - October 15, 2023
Comments are closed.