Do you want to know how to get more customers for your local business?
In my 10+ years of working with local business owners, we found many factors to getting more customers.
Here are the top nine ways that local companies could drive more customers online and also dominate their local market:
- Google My Business, or GMB – I would put at the top of the list. GMB was formally called the Google Maps listing.
- Reputation and reviews – how to look good online; with as many positive reviews as possible.
- Press releases.
- Paid advertising – through places like Facebook and Google.
- Unpaid traffic – or we also call our organic listings.
- Fresh and relevant content – such items written blogs and videos on your website
- Social signals – which are postings on the major social network channels like Facebook and Twitter.
- Retargeting or remarketing – those terms mean the same thing, and I love that when that makes all of the marketing that you’re doing better.
- Website performance – having your website optimized is critical.
To learn more about these nine and get our checklist on the things that businesses can do to get more customers from the internet, visit https://ChampionOnlineMarketing.com/local.
Google My Business (GMB) Listing
What is your Google My Business listing?
Your Google My Business listing also called your GMB listing, is your online business card.
It’s a place where you put all the information about your business, hours, location, pictures, products, and services.
It used to be called the Google Maps listing.
And, you can tell it’s a Google My Business listing, Google will put the listings next to the map, or sometimes they’ll put a large map up on the right-hand side of the screen, and that’s what your Google My Business listing is.
Why does a local company need a “Google My Business” listing?
A business needs a “Google My Business,” or GMB, local listing. They have to have one if they’re a local business.
GMB is like your online business card, and Google is going to put this as one of the top search results.
They’re gonna list the “Google My Business” listings as one of the top search results when people are looking for a local product or service.
And these are listings next to the map. They are going to be able to showcase your hours, products, services.
There are a lot of things that you can do to optimize these and make sure that your business is showing up near the top of these.
One of the most important things along with these is also having a lot of reviews in there so you can showcase what people are saying about your business.
Reputation and Reviews
What is online reputation management?
A lot of people refer to online reputation management as just reputation or reputation management.
It’s a way of monitoring what people are saying about you online, and these are reviews, Google reviews being the most popular. There’s also Yelp and Yellow Pages.
Other people, places people can leave reviews about your business.
It’s essential to track this.
It’s a huge conversion tool for local businesses because people will search for the product or service that you offer.
If you show up, terrific!
If you don’t have any reviews or bad reviews, and somebody next to you has a ton of great ones, they’re going to get a lot more of your customers.
Online Reviews are a must-have for all local businesses.
And then you want to take those reviews and announce them to the world and make sure you’re sharing them.
What I find is a big frustration a lot of times for people that have been in business for 10, 20, 30 years, that spent all this time, expense, and all these years becoming experts in their industry, have an impeccable reputation offline, aren’t getting them transferred online.
You want to make sure you get those transferred online, so the people that find you on the internet know what kind of person you are, and you can convert more of your visitors and Google searchers into customers.
Press Releases
What is a press release and should a local business be doing press releases?
Yes, local businesses should be doing press releases. They’re great for visibility, credibility, SEO, getting more visits to your website, and helping you get more customers.
What is a press release, or PR?
A press release is a written document about some important information about your business, such as:
– a new employee or
– a new office or division that you open
– a new product
What are the best places to submit press releases?
You then distribute that press release to televisions, radio and newspaper sites. Putting the PR onto high authority sites to get the best possible Google rankings.
And the best places to get these press releases out to are:
– TV stations and there regional or affiliate locations
– radio stations and their affiliates
– newspapers and their affiliates, including local newspapers
We recently had a customer, a locksmith, in our local market that had their press release picked up by the local newspaper.
Lots of local people saw this, and it drove business directly to him because he got picked up by a local news outlet.
To learn more about this and get our free nine-point checklist on the things that businesses can do to get more customers from the internet, visit https://ChampionOnlineMarketing.com/local.
Paid Advertising
Is paid advertising worth it?
Yes, absolutely, paid advertising is worth it?
Paid advertising is ads that you can put online on places like Google and Facebook.
And you can get excellent tracking and determine for getting an outstanding ROI on this.
Now which one’s right depends on what type of business you have.
For example, we work with a veterinary office that has seen over a 33% increase in customers with Google ads.
On the other hand, we work with several franchises in largest fitness studio company in the country, and they’re blowing it out of the water with Facebook ads, with getting over a hundred new leads at their locations on Facebook ads.
So they’re both viable, they can work fantastic and help businesses grow in scale and increase their sales.
It just depends on which one’s right for you.
What is Google paid advertising options?
Well, most people know that you can run ads on Google.
And there’s a couple of different ways that you can do that.
The first way I want to discuss for Google advertisements that we call pay per click.
What this means is you only pay when somebody clicks on your ad.
So these ads typically show up when you do a Google search.
For example, if you went and searched for a local dentist right now, there’s going to be some advertisements at the top and the bottom of the page.
Those are paid, and the dentist would only pay on that is if somebody clicked on the ad.
So it’s a great way to show up on Google when somebody’s searching for your product or service to show up in front of them, but that yet, you only pay when somebody clicks on it.
The other way to advertise on Google is what we call display advertising.
Now they have a display network. These are going to be what we call display ads that are going to show up on websites.
For example, if you were a veterinarian, you could show up on websites that were about cat lovers or dog lovers or animal trainers or pet trainers.
If you were in the fitness industry, you could show up on sites that talked about fitness like fitness magazines, their online websites.
You can get very targeted on the places that you place those ads.
But those ads, you’re going to pay for every thousand ad views that you get. It’s also referred to as CPM, or Cost Per Million.
So that is the two ways that you can advertise on Google.
What is Facebook Advertising?
How can you advertise on Facebook?
Because Facebook owns Instagram, I’m going to use the word Facebook, but everything I’m talking about you can do on Facebook and Instagram.
So there’s two top ways or two top ways that you’ve narrowed down where your ads are going to show and who they’re going to show in front of.
Number one is geographic targeting.
So if you’re a local business and all of your customers come within one mile, excuse me, 10 miles of your business, you can show ads only within a 10-mile radius around your business.
Or, for example, let’s say you’re a real estate agent in a large metropolitan area, and you have a variety of different zip codes around town that you sell homes in, you can target just those zip codes.
The second part of this equation is going to be your demographics.
You can target by gender, age, and then you can get into some things like interests or job title.
It’s compelling on how you can target people geographically and demographically.
One tip is that Facebook Ads is it’s very visual. There’s something called ad fatigue.
You want to make sure that you’re switching up your images, videos, and/or offers regularly, especially when you start to see a drop off in the response rates and the effectiveness of your ads.
To learn more about this and get our free nine-point checklist on the things that businesses can do to get more customers from the internet, visit https://ChampionOnlineMarketing.com/local.
What is YouTube advertising, and how do you advertise on YouTube?
YouTube is the second most used search engine after Google.
So it’s an excellent place for businesses to advertise.
Now when you advertise on YouTube, it’s typically a video that shows before the video plays that you want to watch, or if it’s a longer video, there’ll also be advertisements throughout the video in places you can advertise.
What I love about video advertising is you can do things in a video ad that you can’t do in a text or display ad.
So there’s a lot of also studies out there that show how powerful video is about connecting with people and driving more clients or customers to your business.
There’s a couple of ways that you can target your ads on Facebook.
Number one is looking for specific channels or videos.
For example, if you were a local auto parts store, you want to show ads in front of channels that dealt with, or videos that dealt with car enthusiasts.
If you were a local veterinarian, maybe you want to get in front of ads, or excuse me, videos that have to do with pet grooming or pet training, for example.
You could also target via keyword:
– Either specify the videos that you want to show up in front of
– Specify the keywords that you want to show up in front of
In either case, YouTube will show them in videos that have those keywords.
For instance, if we were looking at a veterinarian, they could put in the keywords pet training.
Google will then go out and find ads, videos that talk about pet training on your behalf and place the ads there.
So it’s a great, great place to advertise.
Unpaid Traffic
What’s the difference between paid and unpaid Google search results?
When you do a Google search by typing in a keyword or phrase, you’re going to get two types of results.
One of them is called paid results, and these are paid advertising.
The most common way is what we call, pay-per-click and this can also be on Facebook and other channels, but the point is, when you click on it, you’re going to pay every time somebody clicks on your ad.
The other way that you can show up on Google search results or in other places as well as what we call, unpaid or organic.
Now when somebody clicks on these results, it doesn’t cost you anything. However, it usually takes a lot of work and optimization to be able to show up in these unpaid or organic listings.
To learn more about this and get our free nine-point checklist on the things that businesses can do to get more customers from the internet, visit https://ChampionOnlineMarketing.com/local.
Fresh and Relevant Content
Why does a business need to put consistent content on their website?
Well, in short, because Google loves it.
You’re going to show up in more search results and get more people to your website.
Google loves content.
That’s why you should be putting it up on your website.
It’s going to help you rank.
I have you ever heard the term, “Content is king?”
Number two is I recommend doing this in multiple formats.
A lot of people think of content on their website as a written blog article.
Well, that is a great way. It’s not the only way that you can get content on your website.
You can also do a video, or you also can do audio recordings as well.
It’s vital to be consistent.
You’re better off, much better off doing a blog article a week or a video a week, one piece of content a week if that’s what you can do, rather than going for a few weeks, then panicking and putting six things up in one day.
The last benefit for it is credibility.
You’re going to show up higher in the Google search rankings. Also, you will be seen as an authority and an expert in your industry when you have all of these articles and information on your website, showcasing your expertise about what you do.
Social Signals
How does social media help local businesses?
It helps them with credibility, visibility, to engage with their customers or potential customers, and to get more customers.
Social media marketing can help a local business.
Social media helps small businesses with credibility.
When people look up your business, even when it’s a word of mouth referral, most people still will look at a business’s website and their social media profile.
So you want to make sure that you’re active there and you look like a credible, legitimate business when people are searching for you.
Social media helps local businesses engage with their customers.
Social media, social signals
Social media helps local businesses share updates with their customers.
Social signals are an easy way to share information about your products and services and ongoing things about your business.
Now, a word of caution, when you are posting to Facebook, for example, or any media channel, social media channel, they should not all be offers like discounts and specials.
A good rule of thumb is one out of every five, maybe even one out of every four at the most should be some offer.
Which platforms should local businesses engage use?
You want to talk about different things on social media to drive engagement, and often, the ones that aren’t your offers get the most engagement, and then that means that when you make an offer, it’s going to show up in front of more people.
So for local businesses, the top places that they should be looking at for most of them would be Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, you can post to Google My Business just like Facebook, and YouTube would be the top channels I would be focusing on if I was a local business.
Retargeting or Remarketing
Why is retargeting important?
Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a compelling way to advertise online.
It makes all of the marketing that you’re doing better.
It’s a great way to stay in front of your prospects and current customers and remind them of you and your business.
Now, how does it exactly work?
Let me give you an example.
If you were to go to Google now and do a search for mufflers, then if you go to Amazon or a website that sold mufflers, chances are you’re going to see a lot of muffler ads as you browse the internet. Retargeting or remarketing can occur for the next 30, 60 to 120 days.
That’s remarketing or retargeting.
It’s taking people that have come to your website, and maybe they got distracted:
– they were at work
– the kids came in
– they had to go to soccer practice
When they show up at their computer next time, they’re going to remember why they’re looking at your website and at your product or service/ And it doesn’t matter how they got there:
– Through a Google search
– Via networking
– TV or radio advertisement
– Networking events and handing out your business cards
Retargeting is an excellent tool for local businesses.
Website performance
Website performance plays a part in your rankings because of speed and user performance. This is a “technical” topic and we would be glad to have a call with you if you are experiencing performance issues.
To learn more about this and get our free nine-point checklist on the things that businesses can do to get more customers from the internet, visit https://ChampionOnlineMarketing.com/local.