25 Local Online Marketing Tips for Small Business
Local businesses have a unique opportunity to drive conversions via online tools.
If you apply a generic social media marketing strategy to your brick-and-mortar model, you may not see the results you want!
Today, we’re sharing 25 tips that are specifically for local online marketing for small business. Make sure to read through our complete guide!
Let’s jump right in!
25 Local Online Marketing For Small Business
1. Optimize Your Instagram Bio
People often scope out local businesses on Instagram before visiting.
Whether it’s a restaurant they want to try or a new shop in town, people want to check it out on this social network first: especially Gen X, Millennials, and younger.
For this reason, you want your Instagram to be prepared to receive them.
You’ll want to have an aesthetically pleasing feed that positively showcases your business.
In addition to this, you’ll need to optimize your bio.
Your bio should have your address, and it wouldn’t hurt to include your hours as well.
You’ll also want to make sure you include other keywords in the bio that are relevant to your neck of the woods. So, make sure you do your keyword research!
For instance, this bio includes the region “North, GA” in their bio. Research shows that this will help them rank when people type in “North GA restaurants” in the Instagram search bar.
You’ll also want to make sure you choose an action button best suited for your local, small business, such as “order food, book now, or reserve.”
If it makes sense to do so, you’ll also want to add your business’s email and/or phone number so that customers can reach you easily.
These are quick changes you can make to your Instagram bio that will make a world of difference in your local business online marketing.
2. Add or Claim Your Business Listing on Apple Maps
You’ll need to go to the Apple Business Register and log in with your Apple ID.
If you don’t already have an Apple ID you’ll need to create one. From there, you’ll fill out the prompts to complete the form, answering questions about your business.
Once you’ve submitted the form online, it should take 1 week or less for your business to appear on Apple Maps.
The goal is to make it so your business appears on Apple Maps if someone searches your name within that app.
Rest assured, the Apple Maps app is not just used for directions. People often use Apple Maps to find pertinent information about your business.
If a potential customer types in your business name and doesn’t find you on Apple Maps? That’s an immediate sign that your business is outdated.
You don’t want that.
So make sure you either add or claim your business listing on Apple Maps.
3. Set Up Your Google My Business Profile
While you’re at it, make sure you set up your Google My Business profile so that you appear on Google Maps and Google searches too.
If someone types your business name into Google’s search bar, they should see an entire snippet about your business on the left-hand side.
If you don’t see that for your business, it means you need to complete your Google My Business Profile.
Google Maps pulls its information from the same profile, so you’ll kill two birds with one stone.
There are a little more than 60 million Apple Maps users and over 118 million Google Maps users,
Getting your business listed on the two apps will set your business up for success in the way of being accessible to all of your potential customers.
4. Post in Facebook Neighborhoods
Facebook Neighborhoods are Facebook’s version of the NextDoor app.
Facebook Neighborhoods are pages within the Facebook app that are solely dedicated to different residential neighborhoods.
You can opt-in to join your Neighborhood to connect with your neighbors, share updates, or local events.
What you post there will remain posted on the Neighborhood landing page, not your business page or your personal profile.
As far as local online marketing for small business goes, it’s a great space to lightly share about your business with the locals.
Part of Facebook’s description of Neighborhoods includes the ability for locals to discover new, nearby places.
In the NextDoor app, neighbors share everything from town events to local updates, questions, and more.
So as long as you’re not spamming all your neighbors with posts about your business over and over again, this can be an effective, free tool used to organically promote your business.
5. Local Facebook Groups
In addition to Facebook Neighborhoods, you can also utilize Facebook Groups for a similar purpose.
Facebook Neighborhoods are not quite available to all Facebook users yet. As a result, many have joined Facebook Groups that are community-centric.
These Facebook Groups can be town-specific, or some are county-wide and regional.
Therefore, some of these Facebook Groups can contain several thousand members.
You’ll need to test out whether the bigger groups are effective in promoting your business or not.
They may be so big that your posts just get lost in the noise between everybody else’s posts about where to get their nails done, roadwork and construction updates, and the like.
Or, the size may help put your business in front of a wide enough audience that it helps you generate some real foot traffic.
You will need to post a few times to determine if the size of the group is working for you or not.
If not, there are usually smaller, more niche local Facebook Groups you can join.
If your business lives in a tiny town (like one stop light in your town kind of tiny!)…
…and your town doesn’t have a local Facebook Group that you know of, then you can be the new one to start one!
Being the creator and therefore admin of the Group will give you even more of an advantage to promote your business.
You’ll have an admin badge next to all of your posts which will make your posts stand out from the others.
Either way, whether you join a local Facebook Group or create one, they give you access to put your brand in front of a local audience organically.
6. Local Keyword-Based Blogs
In the world of SEO (search engine optimization), businesses usually write blogs to help them rank for certain keywords.
When someone searches something on Google, businesses want their blogs about that keyword to be in the top search results.
Local businesses can tap into search engine marketing with local keywords.
For instance, we’ve created service pages for some of the major cities we serve, such as Atlanta Social Media Company.
Whether you’re writing pages for your main site, or for your blog, either way, you can optimize them to revolve around local keywords.
When someone types in your city + the product or service you offer, you want your website to appear in the search results!
You want your website to be what they see and click on first.
Optimizing your website to include those keywords will help you organically rank for those keywords.
7. Local Keyword-Based PPC
In addition to organically ranking for local keywords, you can also pay to rank immediately for those local keywords.
PPC stands for pay per click, and it’s the process of paying Google directly in ad spend to rank in the top ad spots for any given organic search query. You will want to make sure you have good PPC conversion rates.
PPC results appear at the top of the search results with an “ad” symbol next to them, whereas the SEO results appear beneath that with no “ad” symbol.
You can pay to rank for local keywords, so that if someone types in your city name + the product or service you offer, your website will appear in those top ad spots.
There are benefits of PPC advertising that you don’t find with SEO and vice versa.
Usually, PPC is a great short-term strategy to implement while you get your SEO strategy up and running. The reason being that PPC requires a constant ad budget to fuel its success.
You’ll need to determine based on your ad budget if and for how long PPC can work for you.
Lead magnets are a great way to build your email list and generate leads.
You offer something for free in exchange for their contact information
In terms of local online marketing for small businesses, your lead magnet needs to be locally specific.
Normally, a lead magnet could include a free eBook, coupon code, webinar, calculator, printable, quiz, and so on.
Think about what you could offer that your local audience would care about.
A free guide to the local area? A free drink coupon to your restaurant or discount to your store?
Creating a lead magnet that is relevant to your local area will help you with your lead generation that much faster than if you were to use a generic lead magnet.
9. Run a Giveaway with Local Incentive to Enter
Host a giveaway on your social media accounts, or wherever you see the most online traffic. You could also take advantage of affiliate marketing and hire an affiliate to promote your giveaway. This may increase overall traffic.
You’ll want to determine the requirements to enter your giveaway based on the goal you’re trying to achieve.
For instance, if you want more Instagram followers, the requirements to enter your giveaway will need to be:
- to follow you on Instagram,
- like your post regarding the giveaway and
- tag a friend in the comments.
This will give you maximum exposure and better results from your giveaway.
The giveaway prize needs to be something that your specific, local audience would want and relevant to your business.
While an Amazon gift card may be something everybody wants, it’s probably not related to your business offerings.
As a result, everyone who follows you to win that prize will likely unfollow you as soon as the giveaway is over.
Picking a prize that is both desirable and related to your business will help ensure that whoever follows you to win the prize will continue to follow you afterwards.
The reason is that they’ll have a real interest in your business.
The easiest giveaway prize to give in this kind of scenario is a gift card to your business. This satisfies both criteria in choosing a giveaway prize.
10. Facebook Marketplace Ads
Facebook Marketplace is another space on the Facebook platform that is conducive to a target audience.
People look at Facebook Marketplace to buy and sell things locally for the most part, but Facebook also offers shipping so people can buy and sell nationwide as well.
You can launch an ad promoting your business on Marketplace.
This means in Ads Manager, you would set your placement to Facebook Marketplace, and in the detailed targeting section, you would still set the location to the area of your choosing.
Facebook Marketplace ads put your brand in front of a local audience that’s likely already in a buying mindset.
Plus, keep in mind that organically, people also list cars and houses on Facebook Marketplace- not just small furniture and clothes.
So not only are people often in a buying mindset on the platform, but they’re often ready to spend a larger amount of money at that.
This is what makes Facebook Marketplace ads a feasible tool when it comes to local online marketing for small business.
11. Solicit Positive Google Reviews
Small businesses often face the issue of not having many (or many positive) Google Reviews.
Sadly, a large percentage of customers only think to go online and leave a review if they are unsatisfied with their experience, not when they are satisfied.
As a result, you need to make an effort to solicit positive reviews from happy customers.
It’s easiest to do that if you ask them immediately after they’ve had a positive experience with you.
A lot of businesses do this by having a card at checkout for customers to take home with instructions on how to leave a review or by having it printed at the bottom of their receipt.
However, there is a better (and cheaper) way to ask for reviews that doesn’t cost anything in physical materials.
Emailing your customers after they’ve had a positive interaction with you does 3 things:
- It catches them when they’re already on their computer or mobile device (they have to be, to be reading the email, right?)
- It allows you to give them a direct link they can click on that’ll take them right to where they can leave the review (more convenient, less instructions)
- It doesn’t cost you anything (unless you’re paying for an email software, in which case you’d start using it for multiple purposes so in a way, it’d be paying for itself)
You can still let them know in person that they’ll be receiving an email asking for a positive review if you want to be personable and friendly right after their interaction with you.
But ultimately, emailing to ask for positive Google Reviews is the easiest and most effective way to obtain them.
12. Get Listed on Any Local Directories
Google Reviews are not the only reviews customers look at.
If you have any local online directories in your area, you can bet your customers are looking at them.
Local directories include extremely important information in regards to your business and others…
…that help customers make a decision as to where they’re going to purchase their goods and services from.
Sometimes, customers use them to compare you to your competitors and vice versa.
For this reason, you need to not only be aware of local directors, but specifically, you need to be listed on them.
Different directories will have different rules and regulations about how to get listed and how to manage your listing.
So, you will need to do your market research regarding the directories in your area.
13. Run Local Facebook Ads
When launching a Facebook ad, you can include the location in which you want your target market to reside.
You can set your location to be by city, country, or zip code, and you can set up a mile radius within or around that location.
This allows you to have full control over who is seeing your ads.
It wouldn’t make sense for you to pay Facebook to show your ads to people in Idaho if you operate a local business in California.
Running local Facebook ads prevents you from wasting ad dollars on people who physically can’t purchase from you.
This way, you get all the brand exposure, foot traffic and increased sales from Facebook Ads from the right people.
14. Incentivize a Referral Program
One of the easiest ways to obtain new customers is via word-of-mouth.
Hopefully, your product or service is so great that your customers speak highly of it to their friends and family on their own.
However, even the best of businesses often need to give their customers a little push, or an incentive.
Offering a reward program of some kind is a great way to get referrals.
It motivates your existing customers to sell their friends on your brand because they want the discount or reward.
When our existing clients refer new clients to us, they get a 10% recurring commission for the life of their service if the lead becomes a client for us.
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