Top 10 Strategies for Local Business

The average business owner and entrepreneur struggles with SEO. There are too many tasks in a full Local Marketing Campaign for a single business owner to execute successfully. Something will suffer. Either the business will suffer or the marketing campaign will suffer.

1. Create a Plan

Do not try to do everything. Delegate the tasks you cannot do well. Focus on selling. Your marketing company can bring traffic to your website. They can build a marketing platform. But when it comes down to sales, this is the business owner’s responsibility. Your marketing company cannot sell for you.

2. Content Quality

If you had never read your website, if you were a new visitor to your website, would you be impressed with the content in your blog? What message does your blog give your potential customers?

• Am I trustworthy ?
• I am the ‘go to’ person in my local community?
• Will I give you good customer service?
• Am I interested in my customers – or only my own gain?
• Is my business a passion, or am I only in it for money?
• Do I care about my business, or is it just a way to make money?
• Is my business my passion, my life?
• Do I care about my business and my customers?

3. Be Unique

Do not blog about the same information everyone else is publishing. Customers want three things:

• Solutions to their problems
• Knowledge, information, tips and advice
• Entertainment, relationship, and fun

4. Cross Marketing

In today’s market small business should invest 25% of their marketing campaign in geo-targeting, another 25% in SEO, 25% in building your reputation as a brand, and 25% in print.

5. Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is different than any other type of marketing. Its importance and the revenue opportunities are increasing monthly – so are the scammers hoping to make money off small business owners.  Learn everything you can about mobile marketing before buying a low cost ‘we will get you to the top’ scheme.

6. Chase Leads not SERPS

Ranking #1 on Google is worthless if your consumers are not searching your keywords. Find local keywords and market locally. Find your local market then expand once you have a solid local marketing foundation.

7. Create Easy Contact Tools

Can your customers contact you? They are not going to click through to other pages. Make sure they can contact you on any page of your website.  It is amazing how many businesses make customers chase them to make a sale.

Make buying easy. The same ‘one click’ contact rule should apply to making a purchase. Marketers and SEO’s have one job – to bring people to your website. Once there it is important that you make it easy to buy.

8. Don’t Let Customers Leave

One of the best local marketing strategies is to keep the leads you’ve already attracted to your website. Most websites are ‘one hit’ brochures. There is nothing there for the customer. Instead of creating a static website make a website that attracts and keeps potential customers.

• Newsletters
• Useful user interfaces
• Free information
• Member sites
• Giveaways
• Contests
• News
• Solutions to the consumer’s problems

9. Talk To Your Customers

When you talk to customers you can learn:

• What are they buying?
• Why are they not buying your product?
• What do they want?
• What do they need?
• Why are they dissatisfied with your product/service?
• What experience do the customers want?

This last one is most important. Most sales are not started by the need for something. They are started by an experience that meets a consumer’s emotional needs. What experience are you giving your customers?

10. Study the Competition

This is most important with local marketing. Where are their citations? Where are their maps? What do they blog about? How are they geo-targeted. What KML files do they use? What SEO strategies and tools do they use?