As a service business owner, you know that effective local marketing is essential to your business’s success. Your landscaping, pest control, or cleaning business runs much more smoothly when you have a steady stream of customers in your geographic area.
But, you’re probably so focused on serving your current customers that it’s hard to even think about putting strategies into place to attract new ones. With all the things you have to manage at once, it’s easy to neglect your local marketing.
So, you have two options. You can continue to focus on the day-to-day of running your business and hope that new customers find you. Or, you can automate or optimize your day-to-day tasks so that you have time to invest in local marketing and ensure that new customers find you.
Making time for local marketing pays off. With that in mind, here are some local marketing tips that can land you more sales.
Use Google My Business effectively
Did you know that 88% of online searches for local businesses lead to customer contact within one day? When you use Google My Business effectively, you make sure that your business is one of the top results when a potential customer searches for your service.
Google My Business is a free online marketing tool that is incredibly useful for local businesses. Registering your business and completing the profile information helps your business show up higher in local search results.
Completing your profile is also a great way to tell the public more about what you do. You can provide a short description of your business alongside your location, hours, and contact information. Adding photos and customer reviews really makes your listing stand out from the pack.
Using Google My Business for local marketing is especially important if your business does not have a website yet. Your listing can take the place of a website for now. If you do have a website, you can drive traffic to it by linking to it in the GMB listing.
Add your business to local business directories
Other online business directories should have a place in your local marketing strategy, as well. Having many different online pages linking to your business website helps your website appear higher in Google. It is also an important way to increase the visibility of your brand and services.
Some online directories you might want to target include:
- Angie’s List
- Yelp
- Foursquare
- Yahoo! Local
- Better Business Bureau
If your neighborhood or community has a hyperlocal directory, such as a town business directory, make sure that your business’s information is included, too.
Use Facebook and Google Ads to target your intended audience
Digital ads are effective for local marketing because you can set them up to only target people in the areas where you provide service. In fact, you can specialize them even further by targeting people in a specific age range or range of household income. Of course, for these ads to be effective you have to know your target audience
An additional benefit to using Facebook and Google Ads is that they provide you with a significant amount of potential customer data. You can learn the average amount of time someone stays on your website and the average number of pages viewed per visit, among other things.
Show up to local events
Help people in your area find out about your services by bringing your business to them. When you hear about a local event like a festival or community market, find out if you can set up a table for your business.
Some events may require that you pay for a sponsorship in order to promote your company. Paying to sponsor often comes with additional marketing opportunities such as the inclusion of your name on t-shirts and flyers.
You can also build trust and name recognition through volunteer work. If there’s a need in your community that you see a possibility to fill through your service, consider doing so for free. You could ask for the opportunity to pass out flyers or business cards in exchange for your work.
Form mutually beneficial partnerships with other local businesses
Keep your eye out for local businesses that you might want to collaborate with. For example, a landscaping or cleaning business might want to partner with a real estate agent or moving company. In a fair partnership, you’ll recommend each other’s businesses and trade referrals.
You could also partner up to host an event. An event with both your names on it will attract a wider range of customers. Customers of one business will be encouraged to seek out services with the other partner business, and you can sweeten the deal with special discounts and referral cards.
Produce locally-focused content to attract local visitors to your website
The content on your website drives your website traffic. Be strategic in your local marketing by producing content specific to your local area. For example, if you own a landscaping business, you could write an article about “The Best Plants to Survive the Winter in [where you live].” A pest control company could write about “The Critters You DON’T Want to See in your House in [where you live].”
When people in your area search for your topic, they’ll be more likely to come across an article on your website. Local content also has a good chance of being shared on social media, as people want to inform others where they live.
To keep your business healthy, don’t forget about your local marketing. You can get started on many of the tips in this article today. Some, such as #1 and #2, will only take a few hours to set up and then will continually reward you with new customers.
If you’re struggling to find time to work on your local marketing, think about using a platform such as ServiceWorks to take tasks off your hands. ServiceWorks can schedule jobs, manage leads, and track your employees in the field. You can try ServiceWorks for free for 14 days to see the difference it makes for you.
