What Is Local Marketing?

On the internet, you can find websites for international conglomerations, major online retailers and local mom-and-pop stores. Sometimes, the difference is stark, since international businesses have the resources to create a website using the latest, fanciest technology, while small local businesses are often cash-strapped.

But even if you own a local business that has a brick-and-mortar, walk-in location, you can still use the power of the internet to market your business. Even if you want to attract just the potential customers in your region, city or neighborhood, the internet is still the best way to get your message across. The tactics are called local marketing or local SEO (search engine optimization).

In space, no one can hear you scream because it’s a vacuum.
On the internet, no one can tell the size of your company for the same reason.

How Do You Attract Your Audience?

Every store in every city used to use tried-and-true local marketing and advertising to attract customers. Some of these strategies still work: local TV and radio ads, local newspaper ads, billboards and even direct-mail flyers. With more and more people looking online for local products and services, you need a way to attract them.

Fortunately, there are effective ways to optimize your website so that your local customers can find you. Your customers’ mobile phones become a helpful asset in this attempt, for two reasons:

1. Most people now use their mobile devices to search the internet
2. Most phones are sensitive to the current location

What Are Local Marketing Tips and Tricks?

Just as no one knows how big your business is online unless you tell them, no one knows where you are unless you do the same. So, if you’re trying to attract local customers, let them know where you are. This is, without a doubt, the simplest trick. Modify the content on your existing website pages to include your location. For example:

• Instead of writing: “We’re a local content writing firm,” include your location: “Ray Access is a content writing firm in Asheville, NC.”
• Instead of using a generic keyword phrase like “web developer,” include the place: “web developer in Atlanta.”

This trick, if done extensively throughout your site, cements your business to a particular place, where local customers, who are searching for local businesses, can find you. Other local marketing tips include:

• Google My Business. Claim and complete your “Google My Business” listing. Besides helping locals find your business, it also contains your address, hours, ratings and reviews, photos and other business-related information. It’s free, and it works.
• Google Maps. Develop positive ratings for Google Maps. Another Google product, this one includes your business on local maps that customers use for local searching. But you need ratings that are positive and authentic to crack the Maps app. Google has to know that you’re a quality, reliable local business.
• Google Reviews. Get your existing customers to leave Google reviews. The more and better your ratings, the more Google can trust you. Then the giant search engine becomes an ally, listing your business on maps and relevant searches.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.