Online Local Business Marketing Tips and Strategies
Marketing hasn’t changed as much as you think over the years. But technology sure has.
One of the keys to success of local business marketing today is to be every place where your customer is. In the past, this was easy. You could put up a website or a blog, announce to your customers where they could find it, and you could have your message in a position to be seen where people who were interested could easily find it.
However, that’s not nearly as easy now, as consumers no longer wait for messages to be sent to them when they need information. They seek to find solutions to their problems, by going to the Internet and using the search engines.
The companies that make sure that their solution is present when a consumer is looking to solve a problem, will have their message heard. The old forms of “announcing” it, are less and less effective (newspapers, Yellow Pages). By the time a consumer is hearing an announcement in the old form, they’ve likely already solved their problem and have little to no use for it.
That means that if you want to market your business effectively. You need to be found in search engines at the same point that consumers are looking for their solution. You want to make sure that your website, is the one they see with the information they are looking for.
This involves a couple of steps. The first one is knowing the keywords that your customers type into the search engines when they are looking to solve their problem. In fact, search engine company Google provides this information to help businesses determine how best to reach their customers. You’ll want to take the information that Google provides and prioritize the keywords that will provide you the most impactful advantage if you were to be visible to consumers that were typing it in.
This then moves you into the second step. You want to make sure that your website is structured properly, so that it will appear in the search engines for the keywords that your customers are typing in. This structuring process is called optimization.
In fact, there is an entire profession and branch of marketing consultants, that focus on nothing but this optimization process. More than likely, if you have competition in your local area, they are being assisted by consultants that know how to structure their website properly so that it appears at the exact moment when consumers are having their problem.
Of course, the third step, is making sure that when consumers actually find your website in the search engines they click through to land on a page where you have the right message that makes them want to take the action that’s favorable to your business. Many times, this will take the form of collecting their contact information. In other cases, it will mean inviting them to purchase one or some of your products and services.
The language that a company uses, is called copywriting. This is the language that is necessary to guide customers toward making the right decision. It is a key part of this process that you’ll want to make sure that you have thought through consistently across your website. Contact us today to get more information on how that process can work for you.
