Are you running a Local Business and not getting deserve money from that? Are you looking for the ways to promote your Local Business? Promoting a business is an ongoing challenge for Local Businesses.
Advertising can be expensive in most of the cases and way out of your budget if you’re just starting out as a freelancer or small local business. But with some clever thought, there are a few cheap ways to promote your local business.
Every business owner wants to show their products or services in front of their potential customers. However, few years back TV ads was the traditional ways of promoting local business. Now the way of promoting has changed and it’s much more cheaper.
This article will give you the idea, how to promote your business in the community,how to advertise your business for free,how to promote your business on social media, cheap ways to promote your business, free local business advertising and how to promote your business on facebook.
Promote Your Local Business
Here are some ways to promote your local business online that won’t cost you a dime:
1. Create a Google business listing on Google My Business
If you’re just starting out online, you’ll want to create your Google business listing on a Google My Business page. The platform will help your business with SEO, and is crucial if you plan to focus on promote your local business in search results.
Creating a Google business listing on Google My Business account means that your business will show up on Search, Maps and Google+. A Google My Business account means that reviews of your business will show up on the right-hand side of Google search results – letting your customers know at a glance how others have rated your products.
Compared with Google’s other offers Google My Business is very user-friendly. You will get six categories: My Business, Reviews, Business Insights, AdWords Express, Google+ and YouTube.
If you don’t know, how to start with Google My Business, let’s have a quick look of the steps.
Sign up or sign in
You’ll require a Google account to create your Google business listing on Google My Business, so if you don’t have, it’s time to get one. Go to https://www.google.com/business/ and click ‘Get on Google’ or ‘Sign in’ if you already have an account.
Find your business
Once you’ve signed up or logged in, you’ll be prompted to ‘Find your business’. Just type your business name and address to find it. If your business doesn’t already have a profile, but wants to show up in the results list, you’ll need to tick a checkbox to confirm that you have authorization to claim it.
Verify your business
Google will now send you a verification postcard to the address you’ve given for your business. This postcard will take one to two weeks to arrive; once it does, it will contain instructions on how to verify that you are authorized to claim your business.
Set up your profile
Now you have to set up your profile, add photos, a contact number, a website, your opening hours, and edit any details you need to.
Connect your accounts
If you click on the grid of squares on the top-right corner, you’ll get access to all the categories. This is where you’ll connect your YouTube account, Analytics, Google+ page and so on. It will also give you access to your reviews and allow you to respond to them.
Create a Brand Page
You’ll need to create a ‘Brand Page’ just go to http://business.google.com, and click the ‘Not a local business?’ link on the top-right corner of the page. Under ‘Choose business type’ click ‘Brand’. You’ll be prompted to create a name for your brand’s page, and to enter your website address. Once you’ve done that, you can edit your profile, just like the same way as described for the local business pages above.
Now your google my business listing will have all your information:
- address
- phone number
- hours
- directions
- link to website
Customers will also be able to add photos and write reviews about your local business for other people to see, which will have a major impact on your success.
2. Start Blogging
The key to being recognized as an authority in your industry is to create a successful blog for your business. Blogging is another way to promote your local business.
Valuable blog content helps gain trust and loyalty to potential customers for your brand.
With the right blog article content, you can stand out from the competition as a knowledgeable expert in your niche products.
Blogging or content writing gets three times the leads over paid search advertising.
According to this infographic, 70% people would rather learn about a company through blog articles rather than an ad.
According to the infographic above:
- 20% of internet users’ online time is spent on content
- 68% of people spend time reading about brands that interest them
- 57% read content marketing titles at least once a month
- 80% of people appreciate learning about a company through custom content
Content marketing or blogging is about telling a story that connects with a consumer. It’s less about selling products or services and more about relationship building through sharing information which solves a pain point.
A blog is the perfect way to do this!
Blogging will also help you tremendously with your SEO strategy.
More website traffic, more followers, and more leads will ultimately translate to increase profits.
Publishing new blog articles means your website will be updated more frequently with fresh content, which will increase your chances of getting a higher google search ranking.
Plus, your articles are a great place to add keywords prospective customers may be searching for when browsing online.
Once you’re able to establish a group of readers for your blog, they’ll visit your website on a regular basis. The more they visit your site, the greater the chances you’ll have of getting them to convert to your potential customers.
3. Join a relevant online community
Every niche has communities online that you can sign up to get involve. Customers want to hear about how your local business supports charitable causes.
According to research, 91% of customers say they are willing to switch brands if it means supporting one associated with a charitable cause.
And 85% of customers will have a more positive image of your local business if you support a community they care about.
You can even ask your community and customers which business you should support.
This will definitely help to promote your local business become closer to your community.
You can also run special promotions offers with a certain percentage of sales on a particular day or week goes to a cause.
4. Be active on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest
To start with, you should set up profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin. This will not only help you get more customers but you can engage them and get feedback from them about your products or services.
Be sure that your business profile includes a good description, keywords and a link to your website. Look for conversations that talk about your type of products or services and participate in the conversations, but don’t spam them with constant promos for what you sell.
5. Showcase Your Product on YouTube and Flickr
Sharing product or services videos on YouTube is another way to promote your local business. Over 4 million videos are playing daily on YouTube. This number is growing everyday. So, it makes a lot of sense to upload a video about your product or service right away. This video will appear in search results as well as giving your product more visibility.
How to start? At first you have to decide what you are going to create. For a product, 2 to 3 minutes demo will work great whereas, for services, you can create a testimonial by your customers and upload it.
YouTube has some built-in tools to edit the uploaded video. For example, you can add narration or music, trim video and do much more.
Remember to use product name or related keywords in the title and elaborate description. Once you have uploaded multiple videos, you can create a channel.
Or you can host an online seminar and share it on your website and via social media networks – a perfect opportunity to gain exposure.
A Flickr profile can also help by giving you one place to compile all the photos for your local business, and allows you to link back to your website.
6. Offer on Groupon
Groupon is an amazing resource to promote your local business. You can offer on Groupon to attract millions of users to their portals. So, if you can come up with a moon at hand type deal, you can get good number of buyers at no cost.
This is how it works – Once you will contact to Groupon, their executives will meet you at your office. Then, you have to agree on a good discount and commission percentage that will go to Groupon. Once this is done, Groupon will run the promotion for you. They have a huge database of registered users. As soon as user logs on to Groupon, they will see a variety of different deals based on the distance from their current location.
7. Attend local networking events/meetups
Events/Meetups are the great places to promote your local business and find new customers. Make a point of attending events and meet-ups focused on your local business topic, and participate in conversations by asking questions or volunteer to speak at a live blog conference. Just search for business events in your city and Google will come up with list of upcoming events.
Don’t know where and how to find local events? Just search for business events in your city and Google will come up with list of upcoming events. You can also look for networking events specifically for women, as well as workshops, seminars and local business shows.
8. Improve your customer service by answering questions
How does good customer service help to promote your local business?
Potential customers will use a number of different tools and platforms to research your business. They’ll read products reviews online, check social media, and take advice from their friends and family.
If you’re able to provide high-quality customer service, it will guide them to expand your local business. As a result, your current customers will keep returning back, and you’ll get new customers walking through your doors as well.
You can put your answer on Yahoo Answers and Linkedin Groups. All these networks are very influential. Best part is, these sites are indexed by Google. So, your answers will appear in Google search whenever anyone searches for it.
Promote Your Local Business: Conclusion
There can be more than just 8 free ways of promoting your local business. All you have to do is to be creative. Some of the tactics mentioned above will give results instantly and some of them might take weeks or months before you get the results.
If you don’t have big bucks to spend on marketing, you have to invest your time to promote your local business.
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