Local online marketing is the perfect way for small businesses to get their products and services in front of their target market. Too many companies think bigger than necessary. They forget about their local market altogether, and it’s a tremendous mistake.
Why is it a mistake? Focusing too broadly means wasting your efforts on the wrong audience. It’s targeting too many visitors outside of the local niche. Instead, it’s best to target actual potential customers in your community. These people live, work, and shop in your coverage areas.
9 Undeniable Reasons to Love Local Online Marketing
1. Local Search Engine Traffic = Paying Customers
What is a better option? Driving thousands of random visitors to your homepage from untargeted banner ads or dozens of targeted local visitors that found you on Google, Yahoo, or Bing search engines?
Getting thousands of visitors is appealing to our pride, which is the reason many consider traffic numbers a vanity metric. Receiving thousands of untargeted website visitors doesn’t always equate to too much revenue, however. In fact, you’ll have an easier time hitting a grand slam in Yankee Stadium than getting a lead from an untargeted banner ad traffic.
Search engine marketing is relatively new, but it’s effective. Local search engines deliver targeted results to the proper audience. When someone living in Milwaukee looks for a plumber, Google shares links to plumber websites in their local search results. As a business owner, you want to dominate the results for your targeted keyword phrases.
2. Local Online Marketing Converts Better Than National Marketing
People mostly still prefer to shop in their local community. They enjoy doing business with local service providers, and they enjoy supporting businesses in their hometown and the surrounding area. They want to make their community a better place and recognize the value of frequenting local establishments.
For a local business owner, this is the ideal scenario. They aren’t trying to conquer the world. They just want to attract enough customer attention to create a thriving business. And that’s exactly what local marketing delivers in spades.
National companies like Amazon and eBay have to rank for millions of keywords to get massive traffic. But this traffic converts on a minuscule scale, believe it or not. It’s mainly effective because they offer millions of products to billions of people.
3. Local Marketing Is an Affordable Choice
To hit it big on the national scale, businesses need a vast marketing budget to compete against the big industry mainstays. Companies like Amazon, Target, Walmart, Roto-Rooter, and more have unlimited budgets because they’re multibillion-dollar corporations with the best and brightest creating their ad campaigns.
Local marketing is much more affordable. While not necessarily cheap, it’s much less expensive when compared to the marketing efforts of the biggest corporations.
This makes perfect sense on the surface. Local marketing campaigns target much smaller audiences. Plus, there’s less competition on the local level. So it doesn’t cost much to tackle the competition and get your marketing message in front of the local community.
4. Local Marketing Creates Strategic Partnerships & Other Opportunities
Local businesses thrive when they create strategic partnerships and work closely together. Not only does it get the word out about their local business, but it also helps develop a strong presence in the community.
Other local vendors label your company as trustworthy after working with you. They’ll recommend your company to their customers because of your strong community standing and support. Even better, other local businesses love standing behind partners that want the community to grow, thrive, and succeed.
Strategic partnerships work because they create recommendations from trusted sources. As an example, if a plumber partners with a local auto body shop, they can recommend each other to their customers. If their customers are happy with their prices and service, they’ll gladly hire the suggested businesses because of the strong recommendation from a trustworthy pillar of the community.
5. Local Marketing Targets the Most Relevant Audience
By focusing their marketing efforts locally, businesses can reach their most relevant audience. Create social media accounts, webpages, and blog posts designed to reach local readers and social media users.
This approach will lead to more customers over the long run. Companies can post updates to their social media pages and tell their local community about upcoming discounts, special promotions, and sales.
Even better, capturing the email addresses of members of the community means instant customers at the push of a button. Send out a weekly or monthly newsletter focused on happenings going on in the community and mention your upcoming sale, special promotion, or other important events.
6. It Creates Goodwill Within the Community
Folks enjoy spending money on the local level. They consider it an investment in their community. With the recent economic fallout, it’s even more crucial for businesses to create goodwill within their community. As an example, look at local credit unions. In the past, people did most of their banking with large national banks like J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America.
Recently, there has been a rise in customers switching from national banks to local credit unions. Why did they make the switch? Local credit unions pay higher interest, offer a lower interest rate for credit, and charge fewer fees.
All local business owners need to change their thinking. They need to offer their community bigger discounts, better prices, and a better overall experience. This creates much-needed goodwill within the community.
7. It Provides More Chances for Word-of-Mouth Advertising
It seems like social media dominates the marketing space. Many believe that word-of-mouth advertising plays second fiddle to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Believe it or not, word-of-mouth marketing is still effective. It’s alive, well, and kicking. Its effectiveness is obvious, as we’ll see.
What seems more trustworthy? Getting a recommendation from a parent, sibling, coworker, or friend, or reading a review from a random person on a popular social media website?
Recommendations from family members and friends are far more effective than social media mentions. Businesses need word-of-mouth advertising to spread. This helps the local community get to know and trust them. It really works.
8. It Builds Trust Within the Community
As companies market on the local level, they become a trustworthy authority. Even more importantly, as people use their services, they’ll share testimonials about their experiences.
These testimonials are critical to generating new business. They help companies attract more customers because they prove the business knows what they’re doing.
9. It Creates Networking Opportunities
Finally, local marketing is great because of the networking capabilities. Other business owners want to grow and expand. Meeting one another in networking groups creates opportunities to discover different ways to attract new customers together.
Bottom Line
Every small or local business owner should love local online marketing. It provides unique opportunities to network with other local business owners. It creates trust in the community, helps businesses dominate the local search engines, and much more.
For business owners struggling to reach their target market, hiring a local marketing company focused on delivering affordable, high-quality promotions to small business owners is a great idea. Contact Wren Interactive to find out more about our services.
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