5 Ways To Dominate Your Local Market

Local Marketing is an essential component of your marketing strategy. The vast majority of small businesses do not have a marketing strategy, let alone place an emphasis on local marketing. The average small businesses focuses on local publications like a Visitor Guide, Travel Guide, Newspaper Advertising, Radio Advertising, and posting organic post to their social media accounts.

Why Is Local Marketing Important?

Local Marketing is about placing a strong emphasis on an omni-presence in their local marketplace.

What does that mean?

Let's explore. The first step in finding an answer to a question for most people is they turn to Google. They Google a problem or challenge they're experiencing. This comes in the form of a "commonly asked question" and Google supplies a list of commonly asked questions for you to choose form to serve up possible "best answers" to your question. This is a location of low hanging fruit for any local business. Let's use the question, "24/7 Towing Company in (Insert city)." If we're using Hayward Wisconsin as an example, we could google, "24/7 Towing in Hayward Wisconsin"

You will find the following:

Google Map or Google Business Profile(s)
Websites
Social Media Pages (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc)
Directory Sites (YellowPages, Manta, Yelp, etc)
Search Ads (ads in the top or bottom margin)

If you are focused on Local Marketing, you will find your business in the Google Maps section, your website will appear in the 1st or 2nd position, your social media pages will appear, and a couple of directory sites will appear. There are 7 total listings on "page 1" and if you can take up 4 of 7, you officially dominate "Page 1" of that particular search result. It's really that simple.

This is why targeting local markets can be much more beneficial.

Benefits of Local Marketing

To start with, there will be less investment as you’re a local resident. You’re attending the same school functions as your customers, you’re going to the same gyms, you’re eating at the same restaurants, and you’re speaking to the same people your competition is speaking to.

Secondly, any business that can dominate the local market has a better probability of scaling out to regional and national accounts - should your business have the capacity to scale out.

The real question is what should be done to dominate local markets?

Here are a few important steps to jump-start your local marketing strategy.

1. Claiming Directories and Listings

It is a well-known fact that the people have moved onto the digital world and for every small to large business, it has become a necessity to appear on the top result pages of local searches. To improve your chances to appear on these searches you need to list your business on various local directories popular in Wisconsin including YellowPages, SuperPages, Manta, Yelp, and most importantly on Google My Business. The key to ace your local presence is to provide accurate details on each platform, list your business to all the popular directory sites, and obtain good ratings on your listings.

The importance of these online directories, is that they’re very popular and well trusted by Google. Google is more apt to show results from sites that have a high trust score within google, also known as Domain Authority.

These online directories can be claimed and popular the first page of Google when someone searches for your product or service.

A secondary benefit is that each of these high trust and authority sites is that they produce a “backlink” to your website. Backlinks are very important for getting your website ranked in Google, Bing and Yahoo. The more backlinks from sites and directories with high trust scores helps boost your Local SEO scores and Google will show your images, videos, articles, website, and business listings.

2. Optimize your Website

It is wildly advantageous to have an optimized website. A website that comes complete with information about your business, your products and services, as well as some of the benefits of doing business with you. A website is no longer just a digital version of your brochure. A website should be a sales automation tool. You should be able to get people to click on your website, and when they click they want to learn more by entering their name, email, phone number and potential challenge they're trying to solve. Whether they’re stranded roadside and need a tow truck, have an overflowing toilet that will just not stop, or provide a vegan friendly entree selection on your menu. Your website should include this information so Google knows to show your website to potential customers.

Another must-have for your website is one that is mobile-friendly. A mobile-friendly website will look great whether on a laptop/PC, tablet or phone. The screen will adjust to the device they’re using, automatically. You will want to include a button for mobile phone visitors so they can call you, include a button so they can ask for directions, and a button so they can enter their information for a free offer, discounted offer, special offers, or to secure an exclusive spot in an upcoming event.

Your website must include specific keywords associated with your business. If you provide Tree Service and are located in Hayward Wisconsin, then your website should include the term, “Tree Service Hayward Wisconsin.” Where you put these need to be carefully placed, otherwise Google will recognize this as an attempt to spam your website with keywords, also known as “Keyword Stuffing.”

Google tends to penalize sites that utilize keyword stuffing and the visitors are not taking any action on the site, leaving after the first page, and aren’t clicking on other pages.

The visitor activity drives a lot of results in Google. If you’re getting a lot of visitors, people reading your articles, watching your videos, and “clicking around” Google will reward you.
These are all some basic elemental steps to optimize your website.

3. Make Use of Videos

One of the most neglected forms of dominating your local market, is the usage of video. Did you know Google owns YouTube? When you upload a video to YouTube related to the products and services your business offers along with the city listed in the video title, you’re more likely to show up in Google when someone searches for the products and services you provide.

In short, if you’re putting up a how-to video, a promotional video, a new product announcement or video customer testimonials, these are all things Google will recognize as useful for people searching for what it is you offer.

Another major benefit of using video is that you can embed YouTube videos into your website. When visitors arrive to your website, they can view a video to learn more about your products and services, as well as get a feel for what it is like to do business with you.

Videos are extremely inexpensive to produce, and YouTube also offers a free video editor tool called YouTube Studio, whereas you can upload video from your phone or camera and edit the video with music, text, transitions and much more. These basics can go a long way in your local market and provide more content for your local customers to consume.

If you provide 5 core services, then you should have 5 videos to associate with those services. If you have 20 products, make sure you have 20 videos for those specific products and place them on your website. Google loves websites that have YouTube videos.

4. Write Articles and Display Your Expertise

Another one of the most neglected areas of dominating your local market include writing of blog posts and articles. Consider this for a moment, someone clicks on your website, and your website is a single page, it shows the business information, maybe 2 pictures, a big bold text that says, “Call us Today (XXX) XXX-XXXX” with no real reason for them to call.

Why should they call? Why should they consider you over the competitors? Why is it your business they should choose?

The simple answer. They shouldn’t. Here is why. Writing articles is also known as Content Marketing. Content Marketing is the act of producing articles on your products, services, solutions, case studies, and how-to guides, to name a few. Keep in mind, Google rankings are still 100% content driven.

The more content you have on your website, the most probable it is for Google to share your website with people searching for solutions. If you’re a roofer, you should have numerous articles on reasons how to choose a roofer. Some article ideas can include “Top 5 questions to ask a contractor”, “What to look for in a roofing contractor?”, “What does a roofing contractor do?”, to name a few. These are basic articles you can write to help you educate your prospects when they’re coming to your website to conduct their research before making a buying decision.

As an example, I was deeply interested in learning how to rank Google Maps for my clients. I downloaded a PDF from an expert in this field. I received emails every day for the next 21 days. Those emails contained articles on topics related to the importance of ranking Google Maps. I purchased the course based on one of the articles that helped me clarify the need for my clients to have a Google Map that ranks well for specific keywords. That was an example of strong Content Marketing that inspired a buying decision to a captive audience. I first had to download the PDF by giving them my email address, then they sent me numerous forms of content for 21 days, at which that date, I made a purchase to learn the specifics of ranking Google Maps.

5. Using Digital Ads to Target and Retarget

The beauty of digital advertising is that you can use them to target individuals, as well as retarget.

Let me explain.

When you run an advertisement in Facebook for your business, using your address and a 10 mile radius. Anyone using the Facebook App within a 10 mile radius will see your advertisement in their newsfeed. Facebook will track those views and call them impressions. Impressions are not as important as the clicks produced.

Google works the same way. When you run ads in Google Adwords, your advertisement will show to anyone searching for those specific products and services in your geographic location. When someone clicks on those ads, they’re now getting tracked by Google in their web browser. This is called “Tracking” by way of tracking cookies.

The beauty of these tracking mechanisms comes when you want to retarget previous visitors. Consider the last time you visited a website, then you noticed that product in your newsfeed, on other websites in the ads section and so on -- it was “following you around.” Right? Correct! They’re retargeting you based on you clicking on those ads.

The biggest difference between digital advertising and traditional advertising -- you cannot retarget with traditional advertising. You do not know who saw your ad in the newspaper, you do not know who heard your ad on the radio, and you do not know who wanted to learn more information because calling would be too early in their buying cycle. If there was a website they could visit to learn more, do some research and make a potential buying decision -- they would have done that.
It is passive, non-committal, and allows them to find the information they need to make a buying decision.

Conversely, with digital advertising you can see who viewed your ad, you now who clicked on your ad, you know who visited your website, which pages they viewed, and which information they wanted to access to learn more. If they want to see your PDF guide, you can place a form on your site that allows them to enter their name, phone number, and email address to view that PDF.
This process is also passive and non-committal, but allows you to use that information to show them more ads. These ads can be specific to the product they viewed on your website, you can send them ads for specials by buying today, and so on.

Digital Ads are super powerful when compounded with Local Marketing.

Final Thoughts

Local Marketing can be extremely beneficial in a small or medium sized town. The reason is that you can plaster google with all of your business information; videos, images, articles, web pages, and directory listings you claimed for a specific product or service. When you combine Local Marketing with Local Advertising, you can truly dominate your local market.  These 5 steps are relatively simple and can be accomplished with little to no expertise. If you want expertise, we at Superior Marketing would love the opportunity to assist you in dominating your local marketing through digital marketing solutions. Use the button below to schedule a time to chat to truly understand how Local Marketing can help your business dominate your local market.

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