Start on a New Marketing Trajectory Today
Are you a local business owner feeling squeezed by astronomical advertising costs? Do you see competitors with seemingly endless marketing budgets and wonder how you can possibly keep up? You are not alone. Many small and medium-sized businesses struggle with the misconception that effective marketing requires deep pockets.
The good news? You absolutely can build significant local awareness and attract new customers without breaking the bank. This guide will reveal powerful, free, and low-cost strategies that leverage your local advantage and implement smart tactics over massive spending. The many tools available to small to medium-sized businesses include Google Business Profiles, local SEO, Money Mailer, social media platforms, community engagement, customer leverage, and more.
Welcome to Your Free Online Billboard: Mastering Google Business Profile (GBP)
One of the most effective ways of marketing locally involves setting up and utilizing a free Google Business Profile. With almost half of Google searches for restaurants, hair salons, auto parts stores, and other businesses involving “near me,” searches, local businesses should optimize their Google Business Profiles by taking the time and thought it takes to set your business up so people will be able to easily find you. While setting up your GBP isn’t difficult, it’s crucial to make sure you follow the step-by-step process Google provides in order to Claim & Verify your business. It’s also important that you:
Complete Every Field
The more information you provide to potential visitors, the better. For instance, your GBP is prime real estate on Google, so be sure to accurately state your address for Google Map purposes, your hours of operation and your phone number, along with the services you provide, or the products you offer.
Give Potential Customers a Feel for Your Business
Including high quality images can sway visitors to try out your business. Showcasing your storefront can help highlight your products, such as apparel, eyeglasses, gifts, and others. People are attracted to viewing the happiness quotient of your customers, either through high quality still photography or, even more so through videos that introduce your team, capture the atmosphere of your business or highlight activities and events you are involved in, in your community. Giving potential customers more about your products, services, or your brand’s culture on your GBP helps visitors decide to come check your business out.
Interact with Your GPB
Use your GBP like a social media feed, encouraging reviews from satisfied customers, as many potential customers read customer reviews before trying out a business they’re interested in, and unbiased endorsements are the key to growing your local business. Keep an active eye on your posts, thanking customers for their reviews, and especially taking the time and care to address negative reviews, with the goal of resolving issues with unhappy customers.
Local SEO for the Win: Make it Easy for People to Find Your Business
Search Engine Optimization can help Google and other search engines understand your business. It’s important to create Name Address and Phone or NAP consistency across your GBP and your websites, as well as online directories, such as Trip Advisor, Yelp and other industry-specific sites. Also, local keywords, such as ‘best coffee shop in Wilmington, NC’ or ‘car parts near me’ helps people understand that you are a local business. Other steps you can take to make your GBP attract more traffic include:
- Writing blogs about local community events, that feature businesses forming partnerships with other community businesses.
- Adding schema markup, aka structured data, which is a type of code added to your website to help search engines understand your content better. Adding this code makes your content eligible to show extra details in search results, such as star ratings, pricing, and the status of in-stock products. Known as “rich snippets,” this valuable information can help users find enhanced data directly in search results.
Engage and Connect with your Local Community
Setting your business up as a community fixture involves engaging and connecting with other members of your community. This means networking with other business owners and customers whenever you can. Local awareness means you show up for community events, becoming an active visual part of your community, building goodwill and organic word-of-mouth referrals. The more you represent your local business in community events, the more established your brand will become.
- Sponsoring local teams, as well as events. Get your brand’s name on low-cost sponsorships, such as jerseys, banners, and programs
- Participating in local fairs and markets, such as setting up a booth at your farmers’ market, local craft fairs or street festivals to showcase your goods
- Hosting small in-store events, such as cooking workshops, wine tasting events, or hosting a local book club
Make sure you choose activities relevant to your business that bring people in. You can also promote your local business by:
- Partnering with other local businesses to cross-promote with non-competing businesses, such as offering a discount for fitness center members to a local health food cafe.
- Supporting local causes, such as donating a percentage of your sales to a local charity, or participating in food drives around the holidays, or supplying branded t-shirts to volunteers and participants in 5k runs and bicycle races
Also, develop your hyper-local social media platforms to connect with more of your immediate community, focusing on the platforms your audience uses. If that means your audience is mostly on Facebook and NextDoor, focusing on these platforms will serve you well, instead of trying to be everywhere on social media platforms.
Sharing Local Content
- Post about local news, weather, events, or other local businesses on your social media platforms
- Engage with local groups, by joining community Facebook groups
- Develop user-generated content, by encouraging customers to tag you, then reshare their posts
- Showcase short, authentic videos, revealing your brand s personality, behind-the-scenes work, or quick tips
Leveraging existing customers turns them into champions for your brand
Your best marketers are happy customers that act as your most effective marketing team by spreading your message through word-of-mouth. Build your brand further with:
- Referral Programs offering an incentive for both the referrer and your new customers.
- Loyalty Programs rewarding repeat business to keep customers coming back and feeling valued
- Excellent Customer Service is crucial, because as the saying goes, satisfied customers tell others and unhappy customers tell everyone.
- Email Marketing targets your customers, sending regular newsletters with special offers, news, and exclusive content to your base
- Actively asking for testimonials to use on your website and social media platforms
Effective Low-Cost Marketing Techniques
While the above marketing techniques offer free advertising, there are several low-cost paid options that can prove effective in growing your business. Some of these include:
- USPS Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) that uses this postal service for saturation mailings to specific routes without a mailing list
- Local Print Ads provide small ads in community newspapers or niche local magazines, if your target audience is known to read these publications
- Local Social Media Ads focus your ad spend on very specific geographic areas and demographics within those areas on platforms like Facebook or Nextdoor for maximum efficiency
- Direct Mail Postcards target your ideal customer using custom demographics at a much lower cost than other traditional advertising, such as radio, TV, and billboards.
- Shared Direct Mail or Coupon Mailers Hyper local targeting options like Money Mailer reduce local marketing costs by sharing postage and reaching targeted local households with tangible offers. Money Mailer advertisers use shared direct mail to springboard their offerings that are enhanced by digital components that include a free digital business profile on MoneyMailer.com and the Money Mailer App.
Additionally, when you work with Money Mailer, your business benefits because your Money Mailer consultant is also a member of your local business community and readily available to offer additional support for your marketing needs, should you feel like you need it.
As it turns out, you don’t need a massive advertising budget to market your local business. It’s a good idea to start by working with one or two strategies, then measuring your results and iterating. Are you ready to explore cost-effective ways to deliver your message directly into the hands of potential local customers? Learn more about how targeted direct mail can fit into your shoestring budget strategy! See how Money Mailer can work to grow your local business!
