Are you a small business owner with a business based in a local community? This blog is for you! How to promote your business in your local community Read on to learn local business marketing strategies, whether you are established or a new business with no customers yet. I am a business and marketing coach, and my business is based in the suburbs of Atlanta. For several years now I have lived and worked in this local area. In this blog I’ll bring together my marketing knowledge with my role as a fellow small business owner.
How Do Businesses Attract Local Customers? There are two main business types to think about when we consider local businesses.
1. Retail Businesses If you are a business with a store in a local area then first, you are visible to your customers. If you are on a main street, you may have great foot traffic. People can walk past and clearly see your business. Having a retail location is one method of attracting local customers. They can see whether the products and services are what they need before they go any further. Your store promotes your business locally.
2. Service providers working in an area Another local business could be a service providing business in a local area, but you don’t have a physical location. Perhaps you are a service-based business, and you usually work from home or a workspace. For example, accountants, graphic designers, copywriters. Or maybe you are a service provider who goes into people’s homes to carry out a service. For example, lawn care, pest control, mobile pet groomers, or personal trainers. You like working with people within the local area and want to market your business to them. How to promote your local business online When you need the services of a business how do you begin your search? You might ask a friend for a recommendation “I’m looking for a great florist do you know anyone?” You might search on Google “I want a personal trainer near me” As small business owners we all know how important word of mouth is. So that first idea is important. We want the friend to suggest our business if we are the local florist. Scenario 1 Friend 1: ‘I’m looking for a great florist to do the flowers for my wedding next year, do you know anyone?’ Friend 2: ‘Oh yes, you must check out Jo’s Flowers on Main Street, she is fab. I’ll show you her Instagram’ Friend 1: ‘Great, I’m looking her up now! Her flowers are gorgeous and wow she has 50, 5-star ratings on this website too, must be good, thank you!’ Scenario 2 Someone is at home. They really want to get in shape this year, but they don’t feel they can do it alone.
They type into Google, personal trainers near me. Google shows them a map of their area with 10 businesses pinned to the map. The person hovers over one of the options, up pops a 5-star rating left by 100 people. The person clicks onto that business and is soon browsing on their website. The website lists the services that trainer provides, the areas they cover, and the prices they charge. The person sends them a quick instant message from the website, the trainer replies, and within 5 minutes an appointment is booked. If you think about the first scenario, the local florist needs to have a beautiful shop that people can see flowers in. They also need a website, social media, and to be easily found online when people look for them. In the second example, the trainer needs to be easy to find online, available for inquiries, and to offer the right price point. In both examples you will have noticed that past customer reviews were valuable to the potential new customer. What tools do you need to promote your business locally? Whether you are a store on the main street or a service provider working from home or in the local community you need to let people know you exist. Website If you don’t yet have a website, then you really might want to think about it. Having a website offers you so many opportunities to be found.
First, you can fill your website with local information that clearly shows where you are and how you are connected to your local community. You can mention familiar language such as “Gwinnett County’s Favorite.” You can list your site with services such as Yelp.com.
You can blog about your local business and what you offer to people in the area.
And you can list your business on Google My Business. Google My Business Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to promote your Business Profile and business website on Google Search and Maps. With your Google My Business account, you can see and connect with your customers, post updates to your Business Profile and see how customers are interacting with your business on Google. To claim your free listing, go to the Google My Business website and claim your business address. They will then send you a code (via mail) in return that you have to validate to proceed. It only takes a few days and then your account will be ready to set up. If you are a local store, then you can list your opening hours for your customers, any restrictions they may need to know about because of Covid 19. You can also send customers to your website for your online or local delivery options. If you are a local area business that can travel to customer homes, you can include all of that information in your ‘about us’ section. My top tip about Google My Business is to download the App once you have claimed your account and use that to interact with the tool from your phone. You can treat it like any other social media app in this way. Upload photos. Include links to events you have on, your blogs, recent press. One of the most important aspects of Google My Business is the reviews. Anyone can leave you a review using the tool. People do judge a business based on the social feedback of others, so it’s important to work on getting people to leave you a review.
(Not sure how? We can help!) If someone searches for you on Google and you come up on Map View or Search View the person can choose to rank the results on rating. For example, they may want to only see people with over a 4* rating. Even if you are the best business around, no ratings mean you are effectively out of the running without reviews. Social Media Remember our scenario above? Two friends are talking about booking a florist to do the flowers for a wedding. While the recommendation came word of mouth, the next step was to check out social media. Having a great social media account for your local business is an important marketing tool. How do you create a great social media account that showcases your business? Using our florist example, we need to see those beautiful flowers. So, great product photography is important to sell your business effectively. We need to see the florist too. People always want to buy from people. Having some great photos of you creating beautiful floral products is very important. Tell your story and connect with people looking at your profile.
To help create customer trust you should display testimonials from your happy customers. You can use free tools like Canva to make them look nice and match your branding.
(We can help with this, too!) How does all this work to help promote your business locally? First, there is your account bio, the area where you get to tell people who you are and what your business does. Be sure to include the local area you operate in. Next there are the hashtags that you use with every post. Decide on around 5-10 that relate to your local area and use them on all your posts. I would personally include your local town or your shopping area if it has a name, your business name, your postal code, and then go wider with nearby cities if relevant. For bonus points I would just like to mention engagement with other business owners. If you are a small business selling flowers and the local coffee shop also has a profile, go and say hi to them. Build a relationship. This helps them and shows your business to anyone looking at theirs. It’s a win-win! You could also try joining local Facebook groups. Help people by commenting with your knowledge and experience and promoting your business on the days that the groups allow it. Community is such a huge part of life as a small business owner! You could create late night shopping hours that work for several local businesses. You could create a loyalty package that you all offer to people who shop with your group of businesses.
(We can help with this, too!) A Supportive Network When you are a business owner operating in a local area whether a store or a service provider, you need a good network. I’d really recommend looking for networking events that you can attend either in person or online. You could volunteer to speak at an event if you like public speaking and feel you could add value. Or you could simply attend and get to know the other small business owners in your area.
Local Press
Although press, including local press has taken a hammering in recent years with the popularity of social media, it is still important. Not everyone is online, so it makes sense to build in traditional ways of targeting your customers via sources they trust.
Have a look at local papers and magazines that serve your local area. Could you contribute an article?
Summary
So, keep in mind all the ways to connect with your local community and other business owners. Reach out if you need help and keep sharing your story! We love our local businesses and are #loyaltoourlocals!