Navigating Local Marketing Amid Economic Pressures
Given the current economic conditions, marketing teams are being stretched thin and are expected to do more with less. If you’re a marketer focused on generating revenue from local areas, then you know fierce competition is waiting for you to slow down your local marketing initiatives. In times like these, it’s essential to maintain a consistent framework of outputs that will allow you to stand out in local search results.
Here is a checklist of five areas for you to focus on if you only have 30 minutes a week or less to devote to local marketing efforts.
1. Optimize Your Google Business Profile and Social Profiles
A complete and verified Google Business Profile (GBP) listing is one of the cornerstones of local SEO. One of the biggest mistakes marketers make in local SEO is simply uploading a minimal amount of information to GBP and then putting it on autopilot. A powerful lever to elevate your business in local SEO listings is fully completing your name, address, and phone number (NAP) information, as well as adding pictures, categories, hours of operation, and more.
Once your GBP listing is filled out, ensure it is verified through phone, text, email, or video. Once verified, pay attention to your listing by responding to reviews or questions from customers. Check in at least monthly (if not more frequently) to upload new images and monitor performance.
Follow this same process for your main social media profiles. Local search queries on social media have increased drastically in the last decade, and you want to ensure you can be found on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
2. Complete A Job, Ask For A Review
Generating five-star reviews is one of the most impactful ways to increase your presence in local search engine results pages (SERPs). By increasing your average rating and volume of ratings, local SERPs tend to float those results higher. Additionally, the social proof from five-star reviews is invaluable for building customer trust in your brand.
Before making concerted efforts to generate reviews, be cautious in how you request them. Platforms like Yelp have review filters that may omit certain reviews or penalize your business listing if they appear unnaturally solicited.
Two effective ways to generate more reviews (without getting them filtered) are:
- Manual Requests: After completing a job or delivering a product/service, ask for a review and provide a link (on the invoice) where customers can leave their feedback.
- Automated Tools: Services like GradeUs, Birdeye, and GatherUp offer automated solutions for encouraging customers to leave reviews on your social profiles. This is particularly useful if your business has three to five new customers each week.
3. Create Localized Blog or Website Content
Your business needs localized content to rank in local searches. Without local signals on your site, search engines are less likely to associate you with your targeted geography.
Ways to localize your content include:
- Product/Service Pages: Include localized modifiers within the text and image descriptions to help your audience make a localized connection.
- Galleries: Showcase images of your work with descriptions that include localized terms.
- Branch/Franchise Pages: If your business has multiple locations, each should have its own dedicated page with NAP, hours of operation, a description of the location, and images.
4. Build Backlinks From Your Network
In local SEO, you typically do not need to build thousands of links. Often, you only need a few more than your local competitors to boost your SEO positioning.
Generate backlinks from businesses you have relationships with. Examples include:
- Professional Connections: If you have a professional relationship with a local realtor, you could receive a backlink from their ‘trusted local providers’ section.
- Community Sponsorships: If you sponsor a booth at a local fair, ensure your business is listed on the fair’s website.
Create a list of business connections and identify reasons they’d link to you.
5. Generate Local Citations
Citations are mentions of your business NAP on a website. Citations are found in local directories (like Google Maps) and niche-specific directories. They don’t need to include a link to provide value; Google considers mentions as a signal of local authority.
Grow your citations by:
- Manual Listings: Start with major platforms like Google Maps, Yelp, Bing, and Facebook. Ensure consistency in your business information across listings.
- Automated Tools: Use services from Moz, BrightLocal, and Semrush to automate listing creation. However, automated tools might not fill out every field or verify profiles completely.
A blend of both methods—manual and automated—can be effective.
Conclusion
Even with limited time for local SEO, you can generate impressive results by being strategic regarding where you focus your efforts. Devoting 30 minutes a week to these five areas can lead to more traffic, leads, and customers for your business within a few months.
More resources:
- 21 Web Directories You’ll Still Want To Use
- Top 10 SEO Priorities For Your First Week As A New Marketing Manager
- A Guide to Local SEO
Featured Image: Production Perig/Shutterstock
