When it comes to advertising campaigns for nationwide and international campaigns, most digital marketers know what to expect and how to run the show. However, when the targeted audience gets smaller, knowing how to get their attention and turn them into clients can be a little trickier.
Brick and mortar businesses have been working hard for years to maintain a steady flow of reliable and constant customers, and knowing which local business marketing strategies work the best in order to get foot traffic in the door on a constant basis is important when you’re a small business owner.
Luckily, that’s where Dr. Ben Adkins comes in. Ben started the very popular company, Closers Cafe, an agency that specializes in local Facebook marketing, and bringing in traffic and leads to local businesses.
There’s a lot of ways that traditional storefront marketing can differ from the digital marketing we’ve all become accustomed to, and making sure that you’re doing everything you can to connect with that smaller, more focused audience can make or break your business. We’ll go over the top tips and tricks you need to know about local business marketing strategies, and what to do to make sure that you’re building up the best possible reputation with people you get in the front door.
Local Business Marketing Strategies and The CLICK Technique: “C” for “Curiosity”
Before we can get into the specifics of the best local business marketing strategies, however, we have to talk about The CLICK Technique! A five-day crash course of my own invention, The CLICK Technique is designed to help those who find themselves and their websites sitting dead in the water, in need of a boost in traffic and leads.
Each letter in the word “CLICK” stands for a different step you should be taking in order to give your business the kickstart it needs to get on the map. And, as if this deal couldn’t get any better, The CLICK Technique is now a book! That’s right—you can get all the tips and trips you need in-depth and up close!
When it comes to the best local business marketing strategies, we’ll be focusing on the first “C” in the word “CLICK”, which stands for curiousity. Before you drive people towards a landing page, you need to make sure that they’re interested in what you have to offer.
By creating an advertisement that piques their curiosity, you can generate traffic organically through deals and offers that make your target audience interested in what you have to offer and what you can do to help them with whatever they’re looking for.
Local business marketing strategies work in the very same vein. By making sure that we’re giving people an idea of what we can do for them and by making them curious, you’re separating yourself from your competitors in an already smaller pond.
Traditional storefronts have to run their advertisement campaigns differently due to the smaller size of their audience, but by making that audience interested and curious in what you have to offer, you’re ensuring a strong and quality lead that will continue to visit your business day in and day out! For brick and mortar stores, that’s the end all you want from a customer.
Local Business Marketing Strategies: 4 Tips to Get You on Top
Now that we know what to focus on, coming up with the best local business marketing strategies becomes a little easier and a little less of a guessing game. It’s easy to figure out what to target and who you’re trying to aim with the advertising campaigns that you run when you’re working with a bigger company on a larger, national scale.
However, with a traditional storefront of a small business, targeting people within your area is a little restricting, as well as tricky to manage with knowing how to reach out to them effectively and what will bring them through the door on that first, initial visit.
In order to figure out the best local business marketing strategies, we need to think about the kind of audience we’re dealing with, the kind of things that will bring foot traffic to the storefront, and what kind of content you can be sharing in order to gain people’s interest in what the business is doing, and what will make them stick around as well.
Additionally, by learning to leverage Facebook and Google to make your pages seem busier than they might actually be, you can get new leads in the door with your social media presence.
1: Learning to Filter By the Ad
Usually when you’re creating an ad campaign nationwide, you have the ability to be able to niche down by business. Being able to pick out specifics of a demographic that you’re trying to engage with your service is a lot easier when the base of the target audience is large and can span out over the size of a state, or even a country.
However, when creating local business marketing strategies, you don’t have the ideal group size that you want to do those things. You have to do what’s called “filter by the ad,” a process that means that instead of filtering by the audience, you instead cater the advertisements that you make towards what you think is your core target audience. By creating those ads specifically for people who will enjoy them, you can narrow down the kind of people that will bring traffic to the store.
Additionally, when you’re filtering by the ad, you want to focus on something that’s called a “jaw-dropping offer”. A jaw-dropping offer is something that if people saw it, they’d have to do a double take because they cannot believe it’s being given away for free or at a very low price. If you’re targeting a specific demographic, you have to think about what is that one thing that would make them react like that.
This method can open up doors to new customers with offers that pique their interests and get them in the door with free offers and free trials of services that they might not have considered before. When you filter by the ad, you don’t have the luxury of filtering by the interest most of the time. You have to really get good at using the offer to create the filter that influences your local business marketing strategies.
2: Utilizing Free Content
We’ve talked about the use of free content before and how it can affect or damage your local business marketing strategies. The key here is making sure that you use free content to your advantage and make sure that whatever you’re offering can be turned into a potential sale or a new client. When thinking about free content, you want to think about the sort of things that people who sign up for Groupon are looking for: freebies and discounts.
When you’re going after a Facebook audience, you’re going for people who live outside of that realm. Therefore, you’re ensuring that people won’t be trying to take advantage of loopholes to avoid giving your company business.
These deals you generate usually involve putting something in front of those people that typically don’t involve a primary person in the business. You’re going to be talking to someone who’s looking to get people in the door. Additionally, when working with someone, you have to make sure that they have a funnel inside of their business that’s going to take those people and make a large majority of them come back.
An example of how to make those free offers into paying customers can be as simple as offering them a discounted rate if they return. Usually, this sort of offer occurs on the way out, after the person has redeemed their free service. Through this method, some business owners have seen a 60 – 70% close rate with people who get their foot in the door by escalating the deal in a way that makes sense for the business!
The importance of that interaction for your local business marketing strategies is all about generating a customer out of what could be a one-time interaction. For most small businesses, you can generate a customer if they can get people to come through the door twice.
In order to make that permanent, you want to make sure that your staff is educated in what they need to do to avoid a Groupon situation. Advertisements are important, but the majority of the work in this step revolves around getting businesses prepped to have a funnel in place once people come through the door off the initial lead.
3: The Importance of Follow Up
The most fulfilling part of the entire sales process is being able to follow up with the people you communicate with. Additionally, having a follow-up plan in place is something that can make or break your local business marketing strategies.
When you’re creating these environments to get new leads, you need to make sure that the business is set up to close the deal once the ad has done its work. Otherwise, this person won’t be a long-term client, and you’re missing out on a new lead and sales prospect.
Additionally, when it comes to follow-up, you want to make sure that you’ve got something in place already, whether it be automatic through email or text alerts or whether a customer service representative is the one ensuring that someone is talking to the customer before and after their experience. If you can get the client to call the office, there’s a lower chance that they won’t show up.
Furthermore, if they can educate the office when a lead starts to come through the door and book them right away, the no-show percentage can rapidly drop. And if you can give a few follow-up calls before the first time they make their initial visit, the no-show rate is nearly nonexistent. If there’s a good amount of follow-up, even if the client has to cancel, there’s a larger chance that they’ll reschedule.
When it comes to follow-up for your local business marketing strategies, you want to make sure that the process is a healthy blend of tech and human interaction. Most people think that when it comes to free offers, they’re signing up for something related to a gift card or a coupon. So, when you’re generating this offer, give them the incentive and raise the stakes on said offer if they call right away to get their name on the list. It gives them the motive to get in touch and gives you a way to establish that first interaction with ease.
4: Manage Your Content Strategy
Maybe the most important thing for your local business marketing strategies is making sure that your online presence, including your content, is constant and engaging. It helps businesses to appear as if they’re active, and the content that they share on their website and their Facebook pages have to serve a purpose of educating people.
When someone first hears about a business by name, they immediately go to Google to search that business. If your website is anything less than up-to-date and aesthetically pleasing, that person will immediately leave, and you’re out of luck. Make sure your website is functional as well as modern in terms of design.
Secondly, people will also use the Facebook search function to look up local businesses. The worst thing a business can do is leave their Facebook page unattended, and if your last post was from over a month ago, it doesn’t read well to the potential customer.
Instead, it sends a message that the business is dead and that the business is not on top of things in the way that they should be. Those thoughts about your page can then reflect how people view your business as a whole, and that doesn’t give you a good head start on getting new leads.
Instead, make sure you’re posting regularly on that page—two posts a day should be enough to keep you engaged and active. That way, when people search for your business, they’ll see that you’re constantly being active and on top of things. Additionally, people will not run funnel leads if the Facebook page or the website isn’t up to snuff.
These days, people will go to the initial lead page and have it open in one window while they use another one to browse through your businesses website and Facebook. If they don’t like what they see on both or either of these pages, you won’t get the lead. These two things must be in place for your local business marketing strategies or else your lead pages aren’t working as efficiently as they should.
The content you post should be educating people about the things in your business that interest them. If you cannot create or curate this content yourself, it’s good to hire someone who can be on top of social media management, as well as graphic design to create these eye-popping headers that grab people’s attention. Having something to show that you’re alive and thriving is the key.
Local Business Marketing Strategies: Know Your Audience
Overall, it’s important to know that your local business marketing strategies are a game of endurance. When you’re actually posting these offers and generating interest on social media, it’s not about just one thing. It’s about the body of work and what you can offer as a whole to your local area. It’s about showing people that you’re paying attention, you care, and you’re willing to work with your target audience in order to gain their trust and their patronage.
It’s also important to note that trying to be perfect on the first try can only hinder your experiences. Part of the appeal of younger business owners is the fact that they can accept that things can and will be imperfect when you present them to the world. So long as you’re willing to show people your growth and what you’re thinking, be willing to let go of the perfection. Focus on putting content out there that will bring people in, work with your jaw-dropping offers to bring people to your door, and make sure that your local business marketing strategies are working for you and not against you.
