Back to Basics #11: 5 Small Business Marketing Ideas Anyone Can Do

Small business marketing is a tricky thing to get the hang of: Small business owners often struggle knowing when or how often to post updates on social media; what to post about or how to gather content ideas; or even when to start blogging or how to connect with potential readers. It can be overwhelming, to be sure, especially when you are strapped for time and have a limited budget. So in this article, we’re going to talk a bit about a few small business marketing ideas that anyone can do easily and cheaply—whether you’re completely new to online advertising or you’ve been trying your hand at it for a while and just aren’t seeing the results that you want.

1. Develop a PR Strategy. As this article from Entrepreneur suggests, it’s important for all companies, particularly small businesses, to make sure that they have a PR strategy in place. Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to have a large budget or spend a ton of time on it—in fact, small businesses can implement great PR campaigns into their social media strategies. Take the Kleenex example cited in the article: In 2011, Kleenex searched Facebook to find fifty people who posted about being sick. After getting into contact with friends and family members, they sent care packages to the ailing cold-sufferers. The recipients were so pleased that they posted happy pictures of their care packages. Great PR and usage of social media in one shot—and a very cheap maneuver.
2. Start a podcast. Have you ever subscribed to a podcast? They’re great to listen to on the commute to work or in the morning while getting ready to head out for the day. And they’re also easy to make! As Inc.com suggests, you might want to try interviewing other business owners for their point of view on marketing or advertising. Or maybe you’d like to put together a podcast series of how-to’s—for example, plumbers or electrical contractors do very well with these types of podcasts. You can teach people how to do things they want to learn more about, while still drawing attention to your company. It’s a win-win situation!
3. Forget advertising like the big brand names. While it’s perfectly fine to draw inspiration from popular advertising campaigns, you have to remember who the big companies are marketing to. They can reach far more people than you are able to, and they have the budget to pull it off. Don’t waste your time trying to dissect everything a large company does---instead, focus on how you can connect with your local customers in the best way possible. You could try hosting a photo captioning contest on Facebook where the winner gets a coupon. You could try running a “special offer” for a day if one of your tweets gets 50 retweets. Maybe sending out a postcard to your loyal customers is a good idea. Think about these types of marketing techniques and choose one that works for you.
4. Networking with other small business owners. Nowadays, you can easily network online through sites such as LinkedIn. But nothing will ever replace the face-to-face value of networking in person. To meet other people in your industry, attend local seminars. Offer to speak at colleges or other events. If there are conventions in your area, look into speaking on a panel—or if not speaking, attend and ask questions. You could even try going to a book club or submit a press release to your local newspaper. By connecting with other small business owners, you’ll be able to better navigate the local scene and make yourself a go-to brand name in the town.
5. Claim your online listings. Believe it or not, your business could already be listed on places like Google and Bing. The problem is that you haven’t claimed the listings yet. By claiming your own listings, you let your customers know that you exist, and you provide consistent information so that no matter which search engine they use to find you, your information will always be correct. Furthermore, claiming listings helps with online rankings, and once you are listed consistently across the internet, you’ll see more traffic being driven to your site!

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWi7OXDW1Y]

Back to Basics #10: 3 Things You Need to Know About Local Marketing for Small Businesses

Welcome back to another Back to Basics post! In this article, we’re going to talk a bit about a few simple things small businesses need to know about local marketing success.

When a brand is competing on a local level, it doesn’t need to focus on the same things that a national brand does. This much is probably obvious, but let's go over an example to make sure everything is clear. So let's say you’re an auto repair mechanic working in Wheelsville. (Hey, it could happen.) When people search for an auto mechanic, they might just type in “auto mechanic”--a simple, straight-forward query. Google is smart enough that they’ll bring up nearby results based on the searcher’s location, which could be one of a few cities in the area. But if the searcher is in a particularly small area or needs to find a service in a very specific location, they might type in “mechanic in Wheelsville,” and this time, Google will bring up all the most relevant results specific to Wheelsville.

What does this mean for you?

Simple: You need your address and listing optimized in order to get the best placement on search engine result pages. And to help you do this, here are 3 things you need to know about local marketing for small businesses—and they’re easier to get the hang of than you think!

3 Tips for Local Marketing Success!

1. Check and cross-check listings for accuracy. You won’t believe the number of business owners who are completely unaware of the status of their listings. Thousands and thousands of unclaimed listings exist on the internet—from listings on popular sites such as Google Places, to directories you’ve never even heard of (but that should still be used correctly). Use our scanner here to see if your site is listed correctly. (We promise, it won’t bite. Or lead you to a scary abyss.)

2. Local marketing is all about reviews. So get them from as many customers as possible! Offer an incentive for those who want to leave a kind review—a coupon, a complimentary treat, or a free tune-up. Whatever you feel you can offer to a customer for a review is a great way to get them to participate. Search engines derive relevancy from fresh content. For local businesses, some of the best signals you can give to the search engines are great ratings for your locally-listed business. Not to mention, when other customers stop by and read your ratings and reviews, they’ll be pleased with what they find, and of course, enticed to stop in and experience it for themselves.

3. The people who understand local marketing the best are the people who connect with customers. How can you easily (and cheaply) do this? You can pick a few social media sites to join and update regularly. By connecting with your customers via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform of your choice, you can be sure that customers will always be able to find you. This way, when people search for your business online, they’ll have a good chance of finding your social media sites as well. Basically, the more places you’re listed, the better—people will find you instead of your competitors.

What if you don't have the time to invest in learning or implementing local marketing techniques?

Now, none of this information is particularly ground-breaking. It’s not going to shoot you to the top of the search results overnight. What it will do is give you a great head-start on local marketing for your small business. The sooner you get your business listed consistently, get your customers reviewing your business, and get started connecting with customers via social media, the better.

However, we understand that many small business owners don’t have the time to invest in local marketing strategies. If you’ve read through this article and decided it simply seems like it’s going to take too much of your valuable time, we hear you. Internet Local Listings has over 50 years of combined experience helping small businesses succeed at local marketing. If you feel that you need a helping hand, check out our affordable packages and join thousands of our other satisfied clients across the US and Canada!

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Back to Basics #7: Website Rank

Note: If you’re an internet marketing expert, this post will probably not be of much help to you. But you can feel free to check out our other marketing tips and tricks here, or learn about our internet marketing services here.

If you're a beginner, we welcome you to read our Back to Basics series to learn more about internet advertising and small business marketing.

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Website Rank: Which Factors Are Most Important?

At Internet Local Listings, we strive to help small businesses get more visibility on the internet. Since 2011, we’ve helped thousands of businesses learn more about website rank and the effort and strategy that goes into the process of getting your site to show up on the front page of search engines. As you probably already know, getting a website to rank on Google can be tough—there’s often a lot of competition, and if you don’t know much about running a website, it can be overwhelming to try to figure out the formula to rank—only to find out that there is no magic formula. It takes time and consistent effort.

So if you were to choose a few factors to focus on, which ones should you choose? Which factors are most important for your website rank?

Website Rank Factors

1. Getting your local listings in order. There are lots of places to list your business across the internet. As mentioned in a previous article, you can be listed on places like The Yellow Pages, WhiteSpark, Brownbook, eLocal and more. Between desktop and mobile, local listings found in searches are among the top foundational ranking factors—and seem to make the biggest difference in terms of competition. So if you have a storefront, make sure that you list your business—complete with physical address—across as many free listings sites as you can.

 Some tips to keep in mind for local listings: 

• Ensure you’re listed in the proper categories.
• Optimize your listings with keywords relating to the services your business offers.
• Make sure your physical address matches the city you want to rank in. You’d be surprised at the number of people who forget this.
• Verify your business listing wherever possible. There may already be existing listings that you can claim once you verify yourself as the business owner.

2. Updating your site frequently. We’ve also mentioned this in previous articles, but it’s so important to remember that it needs to be mentioned again. Many small business owners think that blogging is pointless and don’t bother with it. This is one of the things that hurts their website rank the most. Google looks for relevant search results. So think about it: if a site never updates, why would Google consider that relevant? It’s gathering dust, while other sites work hard to provide fresh data and content. Of course it’s going to rank those higher than it would a site that hasn’t been updated since 2007.

Some tips to keep in mind:

• You don’t need to blog every day to provide fresh content for Google. However, you should aim for at least once a week. A great way to make sure you do this is to sit down and write about 100-150 words a night. By the end of the week, you’ll have 500-750 words to put into a blog post. When you break it down like this, it becomes a much more feasible task.
• Talk about topics relevant to your business. Many business owners give personal status updates—their new puppy, their Easter dinner, etc. And while it’s important to give your customers that personal connection, it’s not going to help your business rank. If you’re a pet groomer, talk about the Westminster Dog Show. Ask people to send in pictures of their pets after visiting your store. There are plenty of ways to get creative and still help your website rank higher!
• Posts with images tend to do better. Make sure you include a nice featured image at the top of your post and name it something descriptive—Google prefers posts like this.

3. On-page SEO is still relevant. There’s been a lot of debate on whether or not on-page SEO will matter in the future. Skeptics say Google will always try to shut down efforts to game its algorithms; fatalists claim SEO is dead and there’s nothing that can be done about it. As long as search engines try to return relevant results, SEO will not die. The rules will change, and the game will get tougher, but there’s always going to be ways that improve your chances of being placed higher in search results. Everyone wants their website rank to improve—that is something that will stick around for years to come.

You can do on-page SEO by updating content, ensuring the “about us” and other static pages (i.e., “products and services”, image galleries, etc.) are optimized, and your site is easy to use and easy to navigate. Make sure your site loads quickly and that your customers can always find a way to contact you, whether by email, phone, or a contact form.

Some tips to consider:

• Define your keywords before you even begin building your website. Know what your services are and how you’re going to advertise them. Consistency is key to getting your website rank higher.
• Develop a plan B in case your first attempt doesn’t turn out well. Many times, you simply won’t see results for a specific keyword. SEO isn’t magic. There’s no way to guarantee results. Instead, switch to another option and try again.
• Remember to include links on your site—to your other pages, to helpful sources, to your sponsors and suppliers. This is an important part of on-site SEO because Google wants to see sites that contribute valuable information. The whole point of the internet is to find and follow links!

No matter where you are in your website marketing process, the most important thing to remember is this:

You must have patience.

If an SEO company tells you that you’ll be ranked overnight if you use their services, they’re lying. If a friend tells you they got their site to rank in a week, they’re using illegitimate tactics. Google rewards sites that use honest, consistent, and quality SEO practices. Your site should be among them. You owe yourself that.

Furthermore, Google changes its algorithm often. Even if you rank highly right now, you need to stay caught up with the algorithm changes and make adjustments when needed to keep your website rank secured.

As always, we hope this has been helpful to you. Remember that Internet Local Listings offers a wide range of internet marketing services, from free websites with the purchase of an SEO package, to directory mega-boosts and social media management services. Feel free to browse our site or contact us here for more information. We look forward to helping you make your site the very best it can be!