Local businesses face a unique issue when it comes down to marketing. Although you may think local business marketing is easier since they are located in smaller spaces, the reality tends to differ.
Local businesses don’t just need to identify their ideal customers just like everybody else; they must also accomplish this in smaller sizes. This can make it challenging to find the exact audience they would like while having enough of a market to reach.
Here are some strategies local businesses can take advantage of regional online advertising opportunities to step up their marketing efforts!
Optimize Your Google Business Profile Listing
Check out your Maps listings and ensure they’re optimized and fully complete. You can fill in the “About” section, hours, contact details, and other information! Your listing should be comprehensive, including reviews and pictures.
In Semrush’s Listing Management tool, You can add your business’s details and be evaluated on your local listing’s visibility. It can also assist you to determine areas where your business appears elsewhere!
Geofencing Campaigns
Geofencing campaigns let you target an extremely small, custom-defined boundary around specific areas that you would like.
Consider using geofencing campaigns to use your prospects’ location and any information you can draw from it. Geofencing offers a myriad of possibilities to reach your potential customers.
For instance, you could focus on people in your competitors’ locations to determine potential buyers.
You could also look up a potential customer’s location — even if it’s outside a competitor’s storefront to find out more about the person they are. For example, you could go after a stadium for sporting events if your audience was likely to be attending these events. You can also target stores for home improvement if you want to target people who might have their own homes.
Geotargeted Search Campaigns
If you don’t like geofencing (or even if it’s! ), Geotargeted, tightly targeted campaigns are also possible.
The distinction between geofencing and geotargeted ads is that every geofenced campaign is geotargeted. However, not all geotargeted campaigns use geofencing.
Geofencing campaigns need an agency or platform to create customized perimeters around specific places. Top media will only allow advertisers to target up to one mile of a particular coordinate on a map. This targeting could still benefit advertisers, but geofencing ads could be more specific.
Geotargeted campaigns let you focus on a specific region so that you’re not contacting potential clients who are distant.
It is possible to take that step further by adopting the geotargeting method sequentially based on the user’s search habits. For instance, a person searching for a non-brand brand will likely travel a short distance as they don’t have a particular brand in mind and could prefer convenience. Individuals searching for a specific brand are likely to have a higher likelihood of traveling farther.
If the keyword is a part of the geographic location and location, you could focus on a larger area, considering that they are likely to be in your local location based on the keyword search.
If, for instance, you were a real estate agent in Chicago and would like to target people looking for homes and homes, you’d likely use the Chicago-based geotargeting option for people searching for non-brand “houses for sale” phrases. But, you could also reach the entire nation in search of people searching for things such as “houses for sale in Chicago,” as it demonstrates a desire to purchase a home in Chicago; however, they’re not currently located in the area.
In addition, if the Google Business Profile location is set up and connected as an extension for your ad, you may be eligible to show ads within the map when potential customers are looking for it.
It is possible to use this Keyword Magic tool to find keyword ideas and estimate competitive Density or level of competition for advertisers for the keyword.
In addition, you can look up this Keyword Gap instrument to find out the areas where you may be missing keywords that your rivals are bidding on, and as a bonus, find out what they’re ranking organically!
Google Ads Local Campaigns
Google offers a type of campaign known as “Local Campaigns,” which generates local conversions, including directions, store visits, and many other things. These types of campaigns are more automated than standard search ads, but they can be helpful to experiment with alongside your regular search ads.
Local Inventory Ads
Google allows local businesses to use Local Inventory Ads, which are a lot like advertising for shopping, as they are feed-based ads and appear at the very top of SERP, alongside other ads for shopping.
They also include reviews, images prices, images, and other information! The advantage of local inventory advertisements is that they highlight items in stock locally and in the store and encourage people to visit the store from those who are interested.
Utilize Semrush’s tools in PLA research tool in Semrush to investigate the types of terms that trigger the shopping campaigns of your competitors for suggestions on how to improve your feed. You can also look at what your competitors’ ads appear to be!
Google Display and Remarketing
Google Display and Remarketing campaigns can be utilized to increase awareness of your brand on a local scale. It is possible to target geographic areas and use other goals such as demographics, lists of remarketing topics, affinity groups, and audience in-market to determine those who are relevant to view your ad.
Utilize Semrush’s Display advertising tool to generate ideas for advertisements and keep track of the actions of your competition.
Paid Social Campaigns
Like Google Display and Remarketing, paid social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, YouTube, Twitter, and more let you place advertisements on the front page of your targeted market while keeping the localization of your business.
To determine your company’s best social media platform, look at your ideal customer and what platform they’re most likely to be engaged on. Try different ad formats and goals to determine the most effective for you!
A tip to follow: Visit Semrush’s Social Media Ads to create ads, track their performance, and learn how to improve their effectiveness.
Local SEO for Your Website Other Than Maps Listings
Beyond your map listings, it is essential to ensure that you’re constantly working towards improving the local SEO of your site so you can get a high ranking for your product or service when local users are looking for them.
I’ll first state that local SEO isn’t my expertise. However, Semrush provides a wide range of tools to assist you in your Local SEO efforts.
If you want to know how your site performs, get a free site audit by contacting Semrush. There are only 100 pages that can be crawled each month with a free account, which means you’ll require a paid version for an even more thorough audit.
Collect Email Addresses & Keep in Touch
Marketing via email is a simple and efficient method to generate more sales. Many websites for email marketing are inexpensive (or, in some cases, free) for people who are just beginning and have a small list of subscribers.
Ask people to supply their email addresses whenever they interact with your company. This allows you to contact them for no cost or at a price in the future when you’re ready to announce sales or new services or products.
In the meantime, the email marketing program also lets you impart your knowledge frequently to ensure that you remain at the top of your list. Send a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter filled with valuable information to keep your customers engaged with your company, even if they’re outside the market to purchase. This way, when they’re in the market to purchase when they are ready to buy, they think of you!
Reputation Management
Reputation management is a broad area of marketing strategies. That is to say, you know how people speak about your brand’s image in the marketplace (positive and negative), and you are striving to make the most of it.
The most significant aspect of managing reputation is collecting information, analyzing, and reacting to feedback. Be aware that reviews written about your company are one of the first impressions potential customers get of your business. If they read negative thoughts that aren’t positive, they’ll be hesitant about whether they’d like to do business with you.
React to reviews, even negative ones, and upbeat manners. Furthermore, make use of those reviews to enhance your business processes.
Using Semrush’s Listing Management tool, you can react directly to Facebook and Google Business Profile reviews through your Semrush interface! You must choose a Premium location within the device to utilize this feature.