The pandemic has changed the marketing strategies for many businesses. Most businesses have switched from traditional marketing methods to digital marketing approaches to stay afloat. The increase in online data consumption has made it crucial for local businesses to adopt digital marketing as a mainstream technique for marketing, promotion, and branding.
Online paid advertising has helped many local businesses to scale up and connect with their target audience. There are many ways local businesses can embrace digital marketing to boost sales and create organic traffic.
If you have a local business and want it to grow, switching to digital marketing increases local target audience reach and is affordable. Here are some effective tips for growing local businesses using digital marketing strategies.
1. Local SEO optimization
SEO optimization is the backbone for website reach, traffic, leads, and conversion. However, as a local business, it is crucial to use local SEO to increase engagement with local customers. Create a Google My Business listing to help customers find the business. As users search for a service offered by your business, the name of your business appears on Google listing along with other similar businesses. This lists the business on Google Maps to help customers find the location. Here are a few tips to optimize Google Listing:
- The first step involves creating a Google My Business account and adding a business name and relevant information like address, timing, and business category.
- Work on a positive review strategy by asking customers to review your business. The businesses with good reviews rank better on search engines.
- Keep the business listing updated with necessary information.
2. Leverage the power of video marketing
Video marketing is one segment of digital marketing that has helped many businesses scale up. Be it creating videos for social media or YouTube or integrating video ads through PPC (pay-per-click) strategy, it helps get better leads due to the higher video engagement. Nowadays a video maker has made it easy to create videos for marketing without much technical expertise. Here’s how you can use videos for local businesses.
- Create target audience-based Facebook ads for local businesses and add video content to increase engagement. Facebook ads can be an excellent way to create sales funnel for local businesses.
- Be active on social media and plan out quality video content for different platforms. Create the posts, schedule, and keep an eye on analytics to understand the content performance.
- Focus on creating informative, creative, and interesting short-form video content to market local business for the target audience.
- Create SEO-optimized blogs, content, and social media posts and supplement an engaging video.
Digital marketing campaigns require strategic planning, and one of the key elements is adding a call-to-action (CTA) button with the post. Whether it is a social media post or an advertisement on the search engine, the CTA button redirects customers to the next step. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, add a “Buy Now” button to redirect customers to the online store. If the goal is to increase website traffic, add CTA like “Know More”.
Social media has billions of followers across the globe and is starting to become a marketplace. Many local and small businesses have scaled up by being active on social media and connecting with the relevant audience. Do not use social media to pitch or make sales or promote a product or service but as a tool to engage with local target audiences. Invest in social media content creation as a part of a digital marketing campaign. Create informative, interesting, and attractive posts for social media and use the right hashtags. Use captivating graphics, videos, and infographic posts to establish brand relevance. Make sure that you respond to the customer comments to build a positive reputation.
5. Develop custom landing pages
Creating a custom landing page is one of the best ways to redirect the customers exactly to the product or service or information. As a part of the digital marketing strategy for local businesses, social media posts or paid advertisements are affordable. However, building custom landing pages makes it more relevant for the audience, giving the customers exactly what they are looking for through custom page redirects.
6. Maintain a good customer relation
The purpose of digital marketing is to acquire new customers and even focus on customer retention. A report by Bain & Company states that increasing customer retention by 5% helps in scaling up profits by up to 95%. Local businesses can use the following ways to build a lasting relationship with existing customers through digital marketing.
- Send newsletters and take advantage of email marketing offering special discounts, coupons, promotional information, and offers.
- Capture reviews from the existing customers and respond to the feedback.
- Create user-generated content by encouraging existing customers to create content and feature on the official social media page.
- Come live for a Q&A session to engage and connect with the audience in real-time.
7. Focus on website content and blogs
The SEO optimization of the website and informative blogs is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies for local businesses to drive traffic from the audience. Use keywords with location name, backlinks, and other SEO elements for optimizing the website for higher search engine indexing. Create SEO-optimized blogs to increase organic traffic from the target audience. It helps create leads and hence, maximize the conversion of leads into sales.
Conclusion
Local businesses have used digital marketing to gain traffic from local audiences and higher visibility. Digital marketing is an affordable way to promote and market brands and create a niche in the local market. Consistency is the most critical aspect when it comes to promoting local business. Plan a digital marketing campaign, create content, schedule posts, and target local audiences through strategies like paid advertisements. Using simple but effective tips can help create a strong online presence increasing brand awareness and customer engagement.
