9 Fruitful Digital Marketing Ideas for Local Small Business

Do you know that 90% of people identify more about local firms online? Also, 81% of searches are performed from mobile devices and this results in a store visit or a call within a day. If your business caters to a local audience, has several service areas, and has a brick and mortar location then doing local digital marketing is a must for the business’s success. In this article, we will focus on key factors that should be performed for local digital marketing.

First, let’s understand what is local digital marketing?

Local digital marketing is a strategy in which you target your local audiences who are based in the same town or place and reside within a certain radius of the physical location of the business. It is also known as local store marketing. For example: If you are running an Interior Design Studio in Austin, driving website traffic from New York is not going to generate business for you. These visitors will never turn into paying customers. You should focus on generating traffic from Austin and within the radius of your physical store. The key to successful local digital marketing is precisely outlining your buyer personas. This process helps you better decide your target audience’s demographic and psychographic information and this also includes their geographic location. With this data, you can funnel and channel your marketing strategy. If the local digital marketing strategies are applied correctly then it can also turn out to be the largest viral marketing campaign.

Here are the 9 digital marketing strategies for local business

1. Make your website mobile friendly
2. Make your website local
3. Keep targeted title tags and description
4. List your business locally
5. Invest in local SEO and paid marketing
6. Optimize your social media pages
7. Create landing pages with local business locations
8. Get customer reviews
9. Create affiliate programs

Let’s understand all these strategies in detail.

1. Make your website mobile-friendly

In today’s era, more than 70% of people perform searches from their mobile devices. If your website does not load perfectly on small devices then you are likely to lose the customers as well as the brand identity. Conversion rate optimization service providing agencies focuses more on the mobile-friendliness of the website. Mobile-friendly sites load fast and stag accurately when accessed on a mobile device. They show bigger text, form fields, menus, and buttons, making it easier to browse site information on the go and navigate easily. If your website is mobile-friendly then it loads fast and performs seamlessly. We get a better user experience which helps generate leads. Google has raised its ranking standards and now introduced AMP ranking which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. The content of the web page should be as per AMP standard which means the button should be larger, the text font size is large, form and its fields should show properly and within the margin, keeping breadcrumbs for easier navigation. If you are not aware of your website is mobile-friendly or not, then you can check on Google’s Mobile Responsive Test tool.

2. Make your website local

Localize your website. All the information and content present on your website must be relevant to your local audience and customer base. This way, your customer can gain more information and relate themselves to it. There are several things you can do like making content more local. For example: On your homepage instead of keeping “Women’s boutique” you can keep “best women’s boutique in Austin”. If you are into the confectionery and bakery business then instead of “Chocolate Cakes” you can keep “Best Chocolate Cakes in Austin” You can also update your contact information with the accurate address shown on the map. A map helps users find the business accurately. Henceforth localize the content and information on all pages as needed and make it more relevant.

3. Keep targeted title tags and description

Another key aspect of marketing is keeping title tags consistent and informative. CRO experts of marketing agencies work precisely on meta titles and descriptions of the pages. Each page should have a title and description of that page and it must be relevant to the page.  Title tags should not be more than 60 characters and that’s the thumb rule of it. Keep your title tag relevant to the brand and your location.  The description is what it shows in the SERP result and it should not exceed 160 characters. Hence it is important because users can find the information and relate it to their needs. If it’s what they are looking for that they click on the website and if it’s not then you will not get a click from the user. More site visitors increase the chance of generating leads and inquiries. Meta description helps in increasing the click-through rate. If you are running a restaurant business, keeping a phone number in the description is a huge factor.  You can easily edit the meta title and description from the admin panel of your website if you use WordPress or Shopify as a platform.

4. List your business locally

The easiest marketing strategy is listing your business locally. There are plenty of local business listing sites and directories that help customers where to go and shop locally. It is also important for SEO and search engines.  When you list your business on such sites, make sure you keep the name, address, and phone number consistent on all sites. This is referred to as the term NAP and it’s of utmost importance that you keep this information consistent. The best local listing is on Google My Business and you should also claim it. It will show your business information correctly on Google Maps when people search for a name or industry of your business.

5. Invest in local SEO and paid marketing

It is true that most of the local searches are performed from mobile devices within 24 hours but only if local SEO is done. Local SEO means improving the website with local search terms and trends. You can use Google trends to identify the trending and best keyword for your local business as per your industry. Hiring an award-winning conversion rate optimization agency to provide you with local SEO and marketing strategy is a one-time investment. In addition to making the website locally available, you should also improve the visibility of the website locally by promoting it to local events, paid listing, paid ads, and social media ads.

6. Optimize your social media pages

Nowadays social media is booming and almost everyone uses social media tools for updates and activities going on surrounding them. Social media tools like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tiktok help in getting a lot of visitors and increase the brand identity. Your business social media accounts and pages should be optimized and have accurate information like it is on your website. By keeping information consistent, social media profiles not only increase visitors’ trust but also acts as reputation management. Users tend to put reviews on social profiles so you should be up to respond to them and help them with any questions they might have.

7. Create landing pages with local business locations

It is important to create fantastic and user-friendly landing page’s web designs to boost conversion rate. Landing pages help a lot in local digital marketing. If your business has more than one physical address and is in multiple cities then creating a landing page for individual cities helps gain more visitors and inquiries. You should create a location-specific landing page that has all the service details you provide in that location including contact details too. This helps users find your physical store in their city. Moreover, location-specific landing pages are also useful when you want to run special discounts and promotions.

8. Get customer reviews

Reviews not just help in building trust but also have the power to manipulate customers’ decisions and it also increases brand value. Every day a lot of businesses come into existence hence the competition is always high. In such scenarios, reviews help users to build a narrative and make decisions about the brand. Hence always try to get reviews from your customer and post it on your social media pages and even on Google my business profile. In the U.S 72% of users tend to engage with businesses that have positive reviews while 89% of users determine whether a business has a good reputation in the market or not based on the available reviews. Reviews play an important role in a user’s buying decision. After-sales customer service businesses develop trust and, as per the BrightLocal report, positive reviews make 65% of consumers trust a local business more.

9. Create affiliate programs

Affiliate marketing is one type of cold marketing. It allows companies to effectively market their product with a low budget and less effort. It guarantees a high result with low risk. You don’t have to invest heavily in affiliate programs hence they are less costly than traditional paid marketing. It normally consists of hiring people to promote your product and business while in return rewarding them for their efforts in the form of commission. It usually involves a partnership between a company and the affiliate to help increase the sales of the business.

Conclusion

Digital marketing for local businesses helps you reach more audiences and grow your business within your area. It boosts the ROI and sales of your business. It is necessary to increase website traffic but at the same time, it is also necessary that the traffic should be relevant. Targeted and relevant traffic will increase the sales of the business.  No one wants to kick a ball without any goalpost. If you just target to only increase traffic then it’s like shooting in the air without any aim. CRO Agencies like Corbit Digital help you set up local digital marketing strategies and increase your sales. Contact us now to improve your local presence.