9 Ways to Promote Your Local Business Online

Local online advertising for businesses has been a red-hot topic for a while now, and it is something your business can no longer afford to ignore. It takes time to create a strong local advertising presence online, but the tools available to get your business message out to local consumers have grown considerably. An experienced digital advertising firm can show you how to promote your business locally online and even how to advertise your business online for free.

Pay Per Click

If you want to promote your local business to a large audience, then a PPC program with Google is going to do the job. When the numbers were counted in April 2017, it was discovered that Google owned 77 percent of the online search engine market. That means that nearly eight out of every 10 people searching on the Internet are using Google. That is a huge part of the local market just waiting to be taken by an aggressive and smart business owner. If you are going to do pay per click, you should hire an expert PPC agency vs doing it in-house. It can save you a lot of money in the long run.

Blogging

There are several benefits to using blogging as part of your local marketing plan. They include:

• You can run a blog for free.
• You can interact with your client base and prospects in the comments section of your blog about specific topics of interest to your audience.
• You can put your company in a position to not only be considered a local expert in your field but also as a valuable resource to your clients.

In the business world, blogs are critically important to reputation management and establishing a positive public image. When you look at your local advertising needs, your blog becomes the way in which you speak to your entire audience at once. In a blog, you can use local vernacular and common terms to give your online presence a more local feel.

Social Media

Social media can be a very strong counterpart to the other components of your local advertising tools. You can post content on Facebook to your local audience and then target the consumers who show interest in that content with focused ads. Twitter is also a strong platform you can use to enhance your local advertising by announcing pricing specials and other customer related information.

The key to properly utilizing social media is to understand the audience for each platform. Your local Twitter users expect to get regular updates from your company, while Facebook users are more interested in resourceful information they can absorb and use in their lives. Since you are targeting your local market, you can reach out directly to your clients to understand how and why they use each social media platform and create the appropriate advertising programs.

Yelp

Yelp is an online rating service that can be a treasure trove of referrals for your business. You should encourage every satisfied customer to leave a review on Yelp, and then make sure that your desktop and mobile website always point visitors to your Yelp ratings. These types of referral websites are as powerful as word-of-mouth advertising for getting more customers to come to your business.

Waze

Waze is a phone-based app that provides GPS services for local areas. Advertising on an app like Waze is just like having someone people trust recommend your business as they are driving or walking around your local area. If you own a hotel and put your business on Waze, drivers will automatically see your hotel as a recommended destination when they ask for places to stay.

Email List

Emails are still very powerful advertising components, especially for local audiences. You should make sure that all of the people on your email list have opted in to receiving your emails, and then use your emails as weekly reminders of the pricing specials and other events your company has coming up.

Text Messaging Marketing

Text messaging for local advertising is rapidly becoming popular because of its convenience and simplicity. Consumers sign up to get text messages from local companies about pricing specials, promotions, and other important information. Group texting is effective because it puts your promotional information in the hands of people who are already on the road and looking to buy.

Google My Business

If you are looking for a great way to get free online advertising for small business, then you need to fill in your Google My Business profile immediately. This is a service offered by Google that puts local businesses at the top of relevant search results, often ahead of larger businesses. To take advantage of this program, you simply register your business with Google and fill in a complete profile.

Your Web Content

Local SEO practices include writing content that appeals to your local audience, using vocabulary that local consumers are used to, and telling stories local people can relate to. If your target is to increase your local revenue, then you need to start optimizing your website content to speak to the local audience.

The consumers in your local area are online all day buying products and looking for vendors. The more you can do to optimize your local presence online, the more local revenue you will start to see.