Do you run a local retail store? Or perhaps, you’re a hairstylist who wants to grow her business by offering more services to local clients?
Growing a local business is exciting and encouraging, especially if you enjoy the support of a vibrant community. Local business owners are vital forces of economic growth and bring a positive change within their communities.
However, like all business owners, they turn to digital marketing and social media to drive revenues and growth.
First and foremost, it’s essential to define your goals. Do you wish to increase walk-in traffic for your store? Or perhaps, you want to acquire new customers by rising above the noise of your more robust, local competitors?
Either way, digital marketing won’t serve any purpose without breaking down your goals and milestones. Business owners who regard paid campaigns and PPC ads as magic wands are grossly disappointed after spending an enormous sum.
In 2021, search engine algorithms are increasingly sophisticated with a high-tech ranking system.
Appeasing these algorithms requires creativity, consistency, and commitment. Keep reading to explore powerful digital marketing strategies to grow your local business.
Building Trust & Authority
Community members connect with local businesses because they trust them to deliver quality services or products. Local businesses leverage their community presence and trust to build lasting client relationships and acquire new clients. How can you build trust and authority to boost your revenues and enjoy robust growth?
It takes a combination of offline and online marketing strategies to build trust within a community. Experts from the top rated link building agency in USA advise local businesses to create a comprehensive digital PR strategy.
Connecting with local bloggers, influencers and securing external links from leading publishers will help ensure authority and higher SEO rankings.
As a business owner, you must do your part to uplift your community and channel social change. You can create opportunities for people of color or focus on fighting discrimination with an inclusive workspace culture.
It’s essential to pursue your goals with a mix of community-building strategies and digital marketing initiatives.
As a local business, you experience more scrutiny than large conglomerates with a global audience. You must win over local customers by adding value to their community and engaging them through digital mediums.
Local SEO & Keywords
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most effective strategy to boost search engine rankings and attract local customers.
Remember what we discussed about winning over highly sophisticated ranking algorithms and high-tech search engine bots? Well, this is where SEO comes into play to help generate organic traffic and higher search engine rankings.
Incorporate local keywords into your website content, blog, images, and all other forms of content is instrumental. Local keywords refer to neighborhoods, cities, specific communities, nearby landmarks, tourist spots, and famous destinations. Linking your content and website with particular locations will help you generate traffic from these locations.
Curating local keywords will connect you with audiences actively searching for your products or services. Generating and converting leads is much easier when you connect with potential customers looking to make buying decisions. You can grab their attention with higher search engine rankings and persuade them with your content.
Social Media Engagement
Local businesses cannot afford to miss out on the engagement and advertisement potential of social media platforms. However, before you start promoting random posts and images on Facebook, it’s crucial to create a solid game plan.
First, you must discover the right platform to engage with your audience. What’s the most popular platform in your local community?
If you’re targeting families, homeowners, and business owners, Facebook and YouTube are integral to your campaign. If your target audience comprises millennials, you must build a presence on Instagram, TikTok, and other youth-friendly platforms.
Social media offers local businesses a plethora of opportunities to build a powerful presence and connect with their audience.
You can create a Facebook group to build a supportive community with special offers and discounts that offer loyalty. It’s wise to use your social media platforms to promote your local store or business venue.
Online Business Directories
How many of us rely on Google My Business listings to skim contact information and addresses? How many of us read all the reviews of Yelp before buying from a local food joint or hiring a local handyman?
Online business directories play an instrumental role in building a vibrant and respectable local presence. Most business owners don’t pay much attention to these listings, but in 2021, they deserve all your attention.
Your presence on online directories adds to your overall digital presence, SEO rankings, and authority as a brand. Business directories enjoy trust and authority as your target consumers turn to their help in connecting with reliable businesses.
It’s essential to create your listings with close attention to aesthetics and audience engagement. We advise adding high-definition pictures of your store-front and venue to attract walk-in traffic.
Listing your website, contact information, address, and other relevant details will help build authority. Consumers associate trust with well-prepared listings and are more likely to connect with interactive business listings.
Creativity & Relevance
Digital marketing is a game of aesthetics, and your target audience is flooded with content from all directions. The second a potential customer opens Instagram, he/she is inundated with aesthetics, creativity, and content. How can your content stand out and command attention?
As a local business attracting a local audience, it’s wise to incorporate issues, challenges, and opportunities specific to your area. Touch upon the problems and concerns within your community, and find ways to fix them. The simple act of using your platform to raise awareness or address your community’s concerns will work wonders at building trust.
Your content must reflect creativity, with a blend of appealing aesthetics. It’s crucial to create a mix of content compromising blogs, videos, imagery, panel discussions, podcasts, and more. As a local entrepreneur, you have a responsibility towards your community, and you cannot stay aloof. Large corporations don’t have to respond to local events, but small community businesses do not have this luxury.
Use your content, creativity, and aesthetics to connect with your community on a deeper, more profound level.
Conclusion
Building a strong community presence, social media engagement, and local search rankings will help your business grow. When it comes to digital marketing, consistency and creativity are of the utmost significance. A strategy only works when it is practiced with consistency. The results won’t appear overnight. But with time and consistent digital marketing efforts, you can cement your presence within your community. Building loyalty is all about consumer engagement and a vibrant community presence.