Many businesses that market in a specific geographic area or region are often mystified when it comes to digital marketing. More often than not, these are small to medium size business that focus only on their home region. The question becomes how can they tap new digital marketing channels like social media and SEO when they market to a relatively small set of customers? Add on to this the many new digital channels that local businesses are confronted against and you can see why it’s difficult to determine where to start, what’s the best mix of advertising dollars and which ones will deliver the highest return to their locally-based business. According to a great deal of research conducted by Google as well as many others, customers who use the internet to do local searches turn into local shoppers and many of these searches are now being done via mobile phone. Roughly 37% of customers who searched for a local business wound up going to the store in person and about half of all local searches are being done by cell phone — you can quickly see why developing a localized strategy for digital marketing is becoming increasingly important. But do not fear, MarketingModo, an expert in local marketing, is here with 6 strategies that local businesses can use to capitalize on these online-to-offline strategies and drive traffic to a geographically-based business:
1. Use paid search and search engine optimization on localized key words (e.g. Italian Food Pittston)
2. Give social media marketing a shot. Twitter allows geo-targeting of customers and Facebook paid ads can be targeted on where a consumer lives. Both of these are excellent ways to target your social media locally.
3. Use marketing analytics to identify customers that live close to certain places or locations and then increase bids on paid search keywords that are geared at those customers most likely to buy. Isn’t technology wonderful?
4. Try digital coupon sites such as Groupon which provide users with certain codes that are good for discounts. These are some of the most popular tools of online shoppers so make use of them.
5. Make sure your business and products are listed on comparative shopping engines that allow users to look at a variety of products side-by-side.
6. Make use of user-generated review sites which give customers handy word-of-mouth references that are as applicable to business-to-business marketers as they are to consumer marketers. User-generated content is also great for SEO! Experiment with some of these digital strategies on a localized basis and see if they are a cost-effective use of your marketing dollars. We know this can be confusing but don”t think you have to do this yourself. MarketingModo provides a full suite of local marketing.