Local Marketing – Starter Guide.

Hi guys

I haven’t posted in such a long time as I’ve been so busy with my own sites, and indeed I only set up this blog to vent my frustration at the SEO crowd.  I am now back with my research complete I am now eager to get stuck in and help out with some open minded Local businesses.

So while I sit here with my cuppa trying to stay awake, please read my blog post and please try to be open minded to some of the things on here.

I have been doing lots of research on local marketing over the last year in the hope I would be able to help out some local businesses promote themselves online, you would think this would be easy, actually I have found it pretty hard going, things are tight for some businesses now but the ones that are flush have failed to grasp even the basics of online marketing.

It seems most people think marketing online is just Google Ad words and well we tried that and it was expensive, so that’s the end of that.

As a guy who’s been within SEO and ranking websites for the last 6 years I am constantly baffled by peoples reluctance to optimise and promote their websites effectively, while it can be expensive, it is effective and frankly gives you a way to find new leads, that come to find you.

The move is now towards local search, you should notice when you do various searches on Google it brings up Google places pages, showing local listings, I will talk more about this later.

Marketing – What’s your strategy?

When you own a business you MUST have a marketing strategy and a budget ideally, I do not say this lightly, if you run a business and you want to get new leads you MUST market and get your name out there, if I speak to someone whose business is failing and they don’t market, I will reply well what do you expect!

Marketing is an on-going process!

The problem with marketing is sometimes it takes time for the message to get across, people market this website or business and if they don’t get leads in the first month, they give up and say well that was a waste of money, you MUST have a long term strategy try different things and try them consistently, and gauge the success if you put an advert somewhere, when a new customer phones your business ask them how they found you, how else you going to gauge if it works!

Track your online traffic, using Google Analytics, use the PPC tracker if you use Google Adwords.

When I market my websites sometimes I do it a month in advance to make sure that some kind of new marketing is appearing in the next month, this is indeed hard work and can be expensive in some cases.

But it so Expensive!

There are lots of ways to promote your site effectively for free, but for the most part yes marketing is very expensive, at the beginning of your year you should plan your marketing budget, this might be nothing, this could be £1000s it really does depend on your niche or market.

Think about all the marketing people do on the TV, think of the famous ones at the moment, Go Compare is a good one, very effective marketing.

Then think about the adverts that were pants and instantly forgettable, if you can !

They cost around the same, just one caught on and one didn’t.

Now I am not suggesting, you go create and advert for the TV, I merely am just pointing out marketing can be hit and miss.

When you have a marketing plan you should be coming at it from many angles, as many as you have time for and you must persist with them, even if sometimes it seems pointless, when I first started my websites they all had 0 hits, 6 years later most of them sit at the top of the search engines and create over 100,000 hits a day, I did this via marketing, persistent constant marketing, and it costs me a lot of £££, I hate spending it but it’s part of being a business owner it’s an expense that is part of owning a business, you MUST market your website/business.

Starting Point.

If you have a local business and you need leads there are lots of ways to market, depending on what kind of business you have really here are some free ideas to get you started.

Face Book – Create a Facebook business page, they are the same as fans pages, get involved online and invite people to your page.

Create a blog – Get people to subscribe to your blog and keep them updated.

Twitter –If you have a twitter account and lots of contacts, get people to tweet your business, or any offers you might have, Twitter is hard to use for marketing as it all depends on what kind of business you have, but it can be good for getting offers out there.

Gumtree – Go to gum tree post a free advert, what it says on the tin.

Craigslist – Same as above but mainly for Americans lol

Groupon – Groupon is a good way to get customers; you create a coupon or offer and get people to buy into this offer.

Vivastreet – Vivastreet is like gumtree, not quite as popular but its free why not post there anyway.

Loot – Same as above

Targro – Same as above, post for free.

Google Places listing – Google has created a free business page for every business owner, have you claimed it, if you haven’t then why not, please click and read how to claim your listing.

So there are 9 ways to market your site, there isn’t any reason why after reading this blog, you can’t go and set up all of these now, it’s all free and all work, however all of them take time, creating a Facebook business page is easy, working on it for 20 mins a day and building up a following takes a long time, but that is generally how marketing works.

Imagine if you built up a list of say 1000 followers on your Facebook Business page and emailing them say once every 2 month about your latest offers, if say 1 % or 2% of those people become long term customers, your marketing has succeeded.

ADVANCED MARKETING – Please read my posts on Advanced marketing below.

GOOGLE PLACES – Have you claimed your FREE Google business Local listing? If not why not?

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

PPC – Pay Per Click Marketing.

Hope this wasnt too painful for some people to read and please do not hesitate to contact me or post to let me know your views.

Ste