I am a small business owner with a local customer base. I know how important local internet advertising is for a business whose customers are local.
I embraced the internet to grow my business offline a couple of years ago. The best decision I’ve ever made.
Fortunately, the Internet, in my opinion, is the great equalizer when it comes to small businesses competing with larger companies.
Any small business can get great results from local internet advertising by learning a few techniques and applying them consistently.
1. Post to article directories
I’m not kidding. For my small business, I have published several articles on article directories like this one and have received 445 clicks to my business website to date. That’s just under 40 visitors a month, possibly for years…for just 10 articles.
The key is in your articles’ keywords for your location. I’ve had some difficulty with this with some articles, but as long as your article content discusses your location, then you should be fine.
In other words, you can’t use a keyword for a location and then have nothing about the town or city you’re going to.
2. Start creating and posting videos now
I’m in the middle of a video marketing campaign for my small business as we speak. I have a couple of videos on YouTube, but I plan to post at least 10 in the next month.
Check out YouTube for your industry/market for any competitor. I bet on a lot of small business industries, there is very little competition.
The key is not to do a commercial. Make videos that are informative or entertaining.
You don’t need to spend a fortune. My approach is extremely simple. I make a clever PowerPoint slideshow that informs, usually by answering a question a potential client might have. Use screen recording software to capture the video. Buy some music. Create a simple title page (not necessary, but can improve the look) and then upload it to YouTube and other video hosting websites (check out TubeMogul for distributing videos across the web).
I avoid making videos longer than 1 minute. 30 seconds is perfect. Use lots of bullet points (my slides are almost all bullet points).
Here is the key. When you title your YouTube video and write your description, be sure to include your target city and then your keyword. Make sure your city and keyword are in your video content so YouTube doesn’t think your video is spam.
Don’t forget to include your company’s website URL on all slides and in your YouTube description. When you enter your YouTube description URL, include the full URL so it looks something like: “http://www.yourwebsite.com”.
3. Set up a local mapping profile… correctly
My business is in the top 4 map listings on major search engines for my city. This drives a lot of traffic to my small business website. And it’s free.
One technique I use to improve my local map ranking is to give search engines what they want, and that’s content. In your local mapping account you can add images, details about your business, video, coupons and more. I do all this: photos, videos, coupons, everything works. Upload as much as you are allowed.