There are a variety of ways to drive visitors to your website and I’ll cover a handful of them in this article so you can choose the best local business marketing strategy for your website. I will also break them down into two categories… Offline Methods and Online Methods.
Offline Methods
Offline methods, like the use of direct mail, are greatly overlooked by many business owners and marketers. Still, there are many great ways to drive targeted website traffic that don’t require SEO or Pay-Per-Click ads.
Here are a few:
1. Direct Mail – You can rent a targeted mailing list and mail your promotional piece directly to your prospects. If you create a custom “url” for the campaign or use a trackable phone number, you can track the effectiveness of your campaign and measure your return on investment.
2. Newspaper Classifieds – While newspaper circulations are on the decline, a well-crafted classified ad can still work for many business types… especially those that cater to those 50 and older.
If you decide to place a classified ad make sure to negotiate for the best ad rate possible. Most newspapers are struggling to find advertisers and are willing to come down in price if asked.
Make sure you track your campaign for effectiveness. Any local business marketing strategy that is not measured is futile at best.
3. Co-op Mailings – If you partner with several other business owners you can share the cost of advertising. If you choose businesses that offer complimentary, but not competitive products/services, you can all benefit.
Online Methods
1. Social Media Marketing – When you think about social media marketing you probably think about sites like Facebook and Twitter, but there are many other places you can engage your market in a “social” way.
Generally speaking, any site that allows users to generate content can be considered a social site. This includes websites that have some sort of comment or review area, like Amazon.com as well as your own blog.
The more you can engage your customers on a social level, the more they will get to know, like and trust you. Once your use this local business marketing strategy, you will find that sales increase and your customers will begin to promote you (and your message) without asking anything in return.
2. Search Engine Optimization – Search engine optimization, aka SEO, is the process of getting your website (web pages, really) found for terms you believe to be relevant to your business.
So, if you own an auto repair shop, you may want to be found for terms like… auto repair, car repair, smog check, oil change, tune up, etc.
To improve your chances of being found, you should see that these terms appear somewhere on a relevant page of your site AND you should try to get other websites to link to your site as well.
It’s best if the links that point to your sites are “anchor text” links that link the desired phrases back to your site. This local business marketing strategy will give your web pages extra “authority” in the eyes of the search engines for the keyword phrases used in the links.
3. Pay Per Click Advertising – Whenever someone talks about Pay Per Click Ads they naturally think of the Adwords program run by Google. After all, it’s the “800 lb. gorilla” in the world of PPC Advertising.
While Adwords offers many great opportunities to advertisers, they’re not the only game in town. Don’t forget to look into Facebook Ads as Facebook offers a number of features that will allow you to target your market in ways not possible on Adwords, making it an even better local business marketing strategy.
As Facebook collects a lot of user data, this data can be used by advertisers when creating their ad campaigns. If you have an offer that is specific to a geographic area or only appeals to members of one particular sex, you can create a campaign that is tailored specifically to their needs.
At the end of the day, it’s important that you seek to drive the most targeted traffic you can to your website and do your best to track your results. Using this local business marketing strategy will help you improve your efforts over time and will ensure that your return on investment will continue to grow.
David Carleton is a San Diego Local Business Marketing Consultant who specializes in showing small business owners how to spend less and get more from their marketing and advertising using low cost strategies in local business marketing, lead generation and conversion, Internet marketing and social media. To download a copy of the free report, “7 Steps to Website Success”, go to http://LocalBusinessMarketingSuccess.com
Did you like this post? If so, click the Facebook “like” or Google “+1? button below and share it with your friends!
Click Here to Add me to Your Google Plus Circles Google Plus
Topic: Local Business Marketing Strategy
