10 LOCAL SEARCH MARKETING TRICKS TO GET MORE CUSTOMERS

One of the best ways to build brand awareness and grow your business is to market to local customers.

You want to make sure you attract them, connect with them, and make it easy for them to find you.

Today we’ll cover 10 effective local search marketing tricks you can use to reach local customers, improve visibility, increase your conversion rates, and take your business to the next level.

1. GET YOUR BUSINESS LISTED ON GMB

Get listed on Google My Business and claim your listing to start ranking in local searches. Google My business helps improve online visibility and ensures you appear on top of local searches. Making it easy for your customers to find you and engage with your brand.

So, list your business. Simply sign in to your Google account, go to ‘Business Profile’, and set up your account.

Add your business name, category, location, and contact information. Verify your account and start advertising.

One of the best things about Google My Business is that it’s free. You get to market your products or services, build brand awareness, reach your customers, and boost sales without paying.

The information you add to your profile will appear on Google Shopping, Google Maps, and Google Search. That means more visibility and higher chances of success.

All you have to do is remain consistent. Make sure your business details match across all platforms. That means your business website, GMB account, social media pages, and other relevant pages. This makes it easy for your potential customers to connect with your brand and trust doing business with you.

Your GMB account also makes it easy for you to control your online information, provide social proof, and prove credibility.

2. OPTIMIZE YOUR GMB ACCOUNT

Optimize our account to rank high on search results pages. Find high-ranking keywords in your niche and add them to your descriptions and content.

Identify phrases that potential customers normally use to find services or products related to yours and incorporate them into your strategy.

Use SEMrush or Google Keyword Planner to find popular keywords.

Use meta keywords and meta descriptions throughout your content to improve rankings and make sure your audience finds you.

Add at least three high-ranking keywords to your business description and posts. Avoid keyword stuffing because you can get penalized for it.

Choose a profile picture that represents your business right. One that makes it easy for customers to identify you or understand what you’re selling. You can use your company logo, for example.

The most important thing is to use the same image on all your business pages. Including your social media pages.

When selecting your category, make sure you choose one relevant to your business. Doing this ensures your business gets advertised to the right people and allows you to reach your customers.

Make sure you enter all your profile information to improve your rankings.

3. CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

Avoid over-promoting your product and failing to interact with your customers. Prioritize forming relations with them and connecting with them so they’ll easily favor your business above the competition. That means responding to comments, sending timely responses to questions, thanking them for choosing your brand, and so on.

Create content that’s relevant to your audience to boost engagement and encourage them to do business with you.

Create local content that attracts the attention of your local customers. For example, talk about interesting and relevant local events. Create region-specific offers and use promotions and massive discounts to attract sales.

Use quality images and videos for your posts to capture attention, raise interest, and inspire action. Add calls to action to direct prospects to your business website, product page, and other desired pages.

Have a Frequently Asked Questions section to address customer needs and make it easy for them to easily find the information they need.

Another option is to get involved with your local community to get the attention you need. For example, volunteer, donate, sponsor, or support a community project. Doing this shows you care for the community and aren’t only interested in making money.

When people see you are a huge part of the community and you do what you can to build it up, they’ll be happy to do business with you.

4. GET REVIEWS

One of the most effective ways to attract sales and get people to trust you is to show how others have benefitted from your offer.

So, get reviews and add them to your GMB account, business website, and other business pages.

Customer reviews improve your Google rankings and increase your chances of success. So, prioritize them.

Add a review button to your autoresponder email or online receipts to ask customers to share their opinion about your product or service.

Provide great service to attract positive reviews.

When you get negative reviews, respond professionally. Address the issue at hand and provide a solution. If the review is inappropriate, report it.

Respond to all reviews to connect with your customers better and establish meaningful relations. Appreciate positive reviews and thank your customers for sharing their experiences.

5. LEVERAGE LOCAL REVIEW SITES

Use the best local review sites like Yelp, Bing Places, Angie’s List, and Google Places. These sites have lots of monthly traffic and can, therefore, help you get more conversions and sales. So, make sure your business appears on them.

Ask your existing customers and new customers to leave honest reviews on review sites and share their experiences with other people. This is a great way to provide social proof and accelerate buying decisions.

When potential customers see that your product or service provides the solution it promises and how others have benefitted from it, they’ll buy from you.

Constantly monitor your listings to make sure you respond to customer reviews and comments. This is a great way to show appreciation and encourage other customers to leave reviews.

6. FOCUS ON LOCAL LINK BUILDING

Have an effective link-building strategy to increase traffic, boost engagement, and get more sales.

Work with local businesses to reach your audience and build brand awareness. Target businesses relevant to your industry. Especially ones that offer complementary services to increase your chances of success.

For example, if you have a computer repairs company, you can work with companies that sell computer parts. That way, you’ll refer your clients to them for certain equipment and they’ll refer their customers to your business as well.

If you offer web design services, target companies that offer web hosting services and partner with them.

Identify 10 companies you can work with and approach them. Ask them to share a link to your site on their business website. If the company has lots of traffic or decent users, you’ll get your business in front of a bigger audience.

Make sure your link is added on a page that your target audience frequents or one they are likely to read.

If the company has a ‘Recommended Companies or Products’ page, that’s where your link should go.

You can also work with contractors, suppliers, and distributors to reach an even bigger audience and speed up the process.

The most important thing is to ensure you also help them reach their audience. So, recommend their products or services as well to your customers. Add links to their business websites or specific offers on your site.

7. GET RELEVANT BACKLINKS

Backlinks greatly improve your rankings and are key to an effective SEO strategy. They allow you to increase website traffic, get more leads, and grow your customer base.

So, build relations with influencers or reputable brands within your industry to set yourself up for success.

You can guest blog on reputable sites, become a thought leader in your industry, and build meaningful relations with businesses within your niche. Doing this helps you get quality backlinks that guarantee sales.

Find quality backlinks by spying on the competition to identify where most of their links are coming from. Approach the same people or companies and ask them to recommend your business to their followers. This is a great way to reach a bigger audience and guarantee results because you are working with people who are already interested in promoting what you’re selling.

Use competitor analysis tools like SpyFu and Similarweb to study the competition.

Recognize that link building takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to be patient, put in the work, and partner with the right people. But once you get quality backlinks, you’ll be able to grow your business and reach your goals.

8. PRIORITIZE NAP INFORMATION

NAP data is crucial to your success because Google uses it for geo-targeted searches. It helps you improve your rankings and become more visible. So, make sure you add your business name, address, and phone number.

Your NAP information should be consistent on all your pages. Including your website. So, make sure the information you display on your GMB account is the same that appears on your business website and other marketing platforms.

Run a NAP audit and check for any inconsistencies. You can check manually or use reputable citation tools like Loganix and WebFX to make things easier.

Update any outdated information and ensure everything is up-to-date.

If there are citations you can’t change, for example, mentions from specific accounts, reach out to the individual or brand and ask them to update the information. You may have changed your physical address, for example, and need them to replace the old one with the new one.

Another important step is to keep your business information up-to-date. For example, your working hours and contact information.

If your profile says you work from 7 am to 5 pm, for instance, make sure you are available during those hours. If you change your working hours, update your profile with the new information.

If your contact details change, update your profiles as well. Make it easy for customers to find you, contact you, and do business with you.

If you plan to close early on a particular day for stocktaking, post on your pages and let your customers know about it. If you plan to work during certain holidays, make it known to your customers. This is a great way to build lasting relationships and get recurring clients.

The best thing about Google My Business is that you can edit your business information whenever you need to. So, you can keep your customers informed.

9. USE ONLINE ADS

Online ads are one of the most effective marketing methods you can leverage. They allow you to reach more people, improve visibility, cater to your target audience’s needs, boost engagement, and enhance sales.

Run Local Facebook Ads and Google Ads.

Local Facebook Ads and other social media ads help you increase brand awareness, find prospects, and drive conversions and sales.

They make it easy for potential customers to familiarize themselves with your business. All you have to do is position your ads right. Choose where you want them to appear so you can reach the right audience and get more clicks.

Find local customers with pay-per-click ads like Google Ads, Google Shopping Ads, Google Service Ads, and more.

Google Ads help prospects find your business, ask about your offers, interact with your content, and become customers. They are a great way to improve brand recognition and boost sales.

Use the radius targeting feature to reach the right audience and advertise to the right people. This feature allows you to target people within a certain radius and market to them.

Create attention-grabbing ads that will get you more clicks. Build simple yet professional landing pages. Add a title, description, and clear CTA.

Your title should indicate what the ad is about and make it easy for users to click on it. Your description should get into detail about what the product or service on offer does, how it helps your customers, and why they should buy.

Have a clear and simple call to action that creates a sense of urgency and encourages clicks. For example, ‘CALL NOW’, ‘BUY NOW’, and ‘LEARN MORE.’

Add your company logo and stick to your primary colors when designing your landing page or ad to make it easy for people to identify you.

Online paid ads are a great way to speed up the marketing process. Even if you have a small budget you can afford to run them. However, if it’s costly for you or you want to try a different option, use social media groups.

Identify and post in local groups where your target audience spends most of their time. Share your content, upcoming events, interesting offers, discounts, and so on. However, don’t overdo it. Show interest in other people’s posts as well and promote some of their articles.

Other groups to join are industry-related groups and business networking groups.

Local social media groups can be a great way to reach your customers and get them to engage with your business more.

10. OPTIMIZE YOUR BUSINESS WEBSITE

Your business website is one of the most powerful marketing tools you can use to reach your audience.

A clean, simple, and professional design will get you the attention you need. So, make sure your site is easy to navigate, user-friendly, responsive, functional, and accessible to users and search engine crawlers.

Optimize your website for SEO to improve your online rankings and appear on the top 10 results of search engines.

Use one H1 heading per page and include meta keywords and meta descriptions throughout your content.

Make sure your website is responsive so you can keep mobile users on your pages and get more traffic.

Use ScreenFly or BrowserStack to check for responsiveness.

Improve your website speed and page loading times to retain your audience, improve your rankings, and increase your online visibility. Compress your website images, install the best caching plugin, minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files, improve server response time, reduce redirects, and use a CDN to improve your site speed.

Use web performance and optimization tools like WebPageTest, PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom Website Speed Test.

Make sure your site represents your business right and attracts the attention you need. Conduct a content audit to measure performance. Focus on your landing pages, blog posts, calls to action, use of images and videos, and so on.

Find out how your audience interacts with your pages to identify their needs and cater to them.

Use Google Analytics to study customer behavior and optimize your content.

Identify content that has more engagement and use it on your marketing materials.

Identify content that has little or no traffic. Find out why you are failing to attract the attention you need and make the necessary changes. If you have to promote your posts more, go ahead and do so. If you have to use images or convert text to video, do it.

The goal is to create content that’s appealing to your customers. The kind that gets them commenting and sharing with their networks.

So, don’t just build your website, publish content, and call it a day.

Monitor performance and track results to ensure ROI.

---