3 Proven Ways to Market Your Local Business Online – How to Find Local Customers Online

It’s been said that 63% of people research a company online before they do business with them. This means traditional ways of advertising such as yellow book, TV commercials and classified ads are becoming less effective.

This article was written to give you three proven ways to market your local business online. But first why is online marketing more effective than offline marketing? –  It allows you to reach more people for less money.

–  You also have more flexibility when you market online.
–  You’re able to track your results easier than offline marketing
–  And you have the ability to stop and start certain ads that are working

For a local business marketing is the main source of finding new customers, but it’s also a gamble for most small business owners. Traditional advertising doesn’t give you a way to measure your results, the flexibility to stop old ads instantly or the report’s needed to truly find out which ads are  working and which ads are wasting your money. 

Here are three proven ways to marketing your business online.  

Google’s Local Business Listing: Google offers a free service called the Google local business listings. It’s basically a map of your business with detailed information about your company. This information is shown on Google for potential customers to review, rate and potentially by your services.  

Here’s how it all works. Your customer goes to Google and searches for “Austin Roofers.” Google will show the top 10 ads that are closest to the customer. No one knows how the searches work exactly, but having reviews, photos, videos and comments about your business seems to help out tremendously.

 

There is a downfall to Google’s local search. Sometimes the information may not be accurate and you may have to go in and change information about your company. This can easily be done by logging into the Google’s local search and updating your information.   

Since Google is the number one website on the Internet chances are you’ll get a lot of good traffic and some really good customers from this free ad.

When you choose to create your free Google Local Business Ad You want to go with a professional. You can’t just throw up an ad and hope it pulls in new customers.

Once you’ve created your free Google ad now it’s time to move on to

Paid Local Search Directories.
These are web sites such as super pages.com, yellow pages.com and other local search directories. The reason these are so important is because some of these sites are highly rated and rank well in the search engines.   Most of these sites allow customers to leave reviews and comments about your business. These are very powerful testimonials to have and just having these alone will increase your rankings in the search engines. When we talk about search engine rankings we are really talking about how popular your website becomes online for certain search terms. 

The more links and ads that you have online the more popular your website becomes. The last proven way to market your business online is once again through Google. 

Using Pay-Per-Click ads
is the most effective way to drive traffic to your website. With Google’s local search you now have the ability to target certain zip codes in your area in your Pay-Per-Click campaigns. This is great news because it allows you to reach more targeted people for less money. Now you’re only paying to reach people who are local to you. This increases the amount of reviews you have and the amount of testimonials that you have since local customers love to share local experiences. This article is not an introduction the Pay-Per-Click Marketing. 

That is definitely not my strong point but I do know it works. My strongest points are focusing on the free Google listings in the local searches and paid local searches.