According to a survey by brightlocal, 97% of consumers used the internet to find a local business. However, according to fundera, 1 in 5 businesses do not utilize digital marketing and only 64% of small or local businesses have a website. We are living in the digital age and your customers expect a digital presence for your business to stay relevant. Are you capitalizing on social media and digital tactics to drive business and capture your local audience? If not, then it’s time to start!
Here are a few tips to get your business from the stone age to the digital age:
1. Invest in a mobile-friendly website. Because 70% of internet traffic comes from mobile phones, you’ll want to make sure your website is user-friendly and legible on a smartphone or tablet. Most are searching on the go as they are planning to visit your brick and mortar, so make it easy for them to view your products or services and find your contact information quickly.
2. Claim your presence on Google My Business. If someone is going to search for your business, chances are the first place they will look to is Google. Be prepared and fill out your Google My Business profile with your contact information, location, hours of operation, services and/or product offerings, and photos of your logo and building so they can quickly identify your building location. Remember to log in and update your profile for holiday hours and respond to any customer reviews on your profile.
3. Sign up for a Facebook Business page. Just like with your Google My Business page, make sure that your Facebook page conveys your contact information, location, hours of operation, services and/or product offerings, and photos of your logo and building. Take this a step further and update the about section to really tell your story to appeal to a local audience. Utilizing Facebook events to create an event surrounding your products or services and invite your customers to attend. These events populate in the events tab or on the Facebook Local App.
4. Depending on your business, you’ll want to sign up for at least one other social media platform to hit your target audience. That platform depends on the type of local business you run. If you are targeting local business professionals, LinkedIn could be a good choice, or if you have visually appealing products and your target audience is Generation X/Millennials, perhaps Instagram is your platform of choice. Remember to utilize local hashtags on each post to hit your target audience. Whatever it may be, make sure your profile is filled out in its entirety so that you are getting the most from the platforms. These all help with Google search, so the more information the better!
5. The above tactics help with direct Google Searches of your business name, but what if someone local has never heard of your business and only searches your industry key terms? That’s where blogging comes into play! Utilize your website and organic search engine optimization (SEO) tactics by writing blogs about your industry and publishing those to your website. With each post, you’ll want to make sure you are covering various industry-related terms to cast a wide net. You’ll also want to make sure you have an SEO-friendly plugin available to do the back end work for you! Once you have a library of blogs established, your website will be discoverable via a Google search only using those industry terms that you have blogged about.
6. And finally, utilize your website to capture customer emails to start a weekly or monthly newsletter. Email newsletters are one of the best ways to get in front of your customers to showcase any specials or events happening at your business. Use this opportunity to be of value to them and ensure a high newsletter opening rate with special offerings only for email subscribers or industry-related tips and tricks.
Are you ready to get digitized? We are ready to help! Get started with our free, no obligation consultation that takes you through our service offerings and what will be the best fit for your business. Things change daily in our world, so don’t wait another day to get even further behind your competition. Talk to you soon!
