It’s no surprise that the online world is incredibly effective for many businesses that use it in the right way. Locally, there’s a lot of opportunity for a business to find and nurture leads within its own community.
For many independent and small businesses, local customers are the backbone of the company. That’s why it’s important to explore the opportunities that the online world can provide so that your business drives more profit and gains a wider reputation locally and beyond.
When a user is online after a service or product, they’re doing so through search engines. The results that appear are often influenced by the algorithm in place, which many businesses are constantly trying to target when creating content online.
There’s no luck or infinite budget that helps you appear on those results pages; it’s a deliberate strategy known as ‘multi-touchpoint marketing’.
In order for companies to make full use of their online presence, a roadmap is helpful for you to build a compounding digital footprint. But what does that roadmap look like?
Psychology of Familiarity
Humans will naturally trust what they recognise, and so repeated exposure will often build credibility before the customer even clicks on a link.
Appearing in Google’s map results provides instant social proof and a genuineness that helps establish legitimacy in the minds of local customers.
Many customers won’t end up buying on their first encounter. They may need five or six interactions or visual prompts to help build their confidence in your brand. That’s why being everywhere, both online and offline, is crucial to getting sales across the line more frequently.
The Foundation of Your Online Presence
So, where do you get started when it comes to building a presence with locals online? The digital front door owns a Google Business Profile. GBP is the single most important tool for local visibility, likely due to the presence that Google has online. For many, Google is the internet, and so it’s trusted by many who go online, whether they’re new to it or not.
To get the most out of a Google Business Profile, you’ll want to keep it consistent. Every space on the internet that features your business should have the same and accurate details. Keep your name, address, and phone number identical across the web, as this helps to build search engine trust, which you need to help appear on top.
The use of high-quality photos, whether that’s your physical storefront, examples of your products or services, or results, is all super effective for increasing direction requests online.
Be mindful of the engagement you’re delivering to all those who leave reviews or make comments on your online content. Digital PR is something that needs to be nurtured and invested in in order to build your online presence.
While that might be something you outsource, you can make the effort of actively engaging with any interactions you have online. Be aware that you’ll likely have criticisms and maybe even negative reviews, so how you handle them through your responses will also be scrutinised.
Respond to everyone and everything you can to show an online presence and awareness.
Using Local SEO and Hyper-Local Content
The use of geo-targeted keywords in headers, meta tags, and URLs are all effective effort that can be made in order to improve the efficiency of content output.
By adding a local geography to any keywords used, like ‘plumber in [city]’, it instantly helps in improving your efforts to rank higher on local search results.
There’s a real power that comes from localised content. Writing about local events or providing neighbourhood guides and regional trends all signal relevance to Google’s search engine. Even more so now, when AI is being used so heavily to scour the internet for relevancy in information.
Creating unique pages for every area you serve in or provide products to is a great way to add relevancy to your site and to rank on geo-specific queries.
It’s important to ensure your site is mobile-first, seeing as many users nowadays are using their mobile phones to browse the internet and make purchases. Sites that load under three seconds are where most local searches happen to go. A slow website is always going to underperform.
Multi-Channel Reinforcement
The use of multi-channel reinforcement is beneficial to help reach nearby users. Let’s take a look at the ways in which this can be done effectively.
Social media geotagging
Using Instagram and Facebook geotags and local hashtags is a great way to meet nearby users who may be looking for something like your business.
Review management
By having a steady stream of recent reviews, it acts as a ‘visibility multiplier’ and directly impacts rankings as a result.
Local link building
Earning digital signposts through sponsorships of local charities, guest posts on neighbourhood blogs, or mentions in local newspapers are all great examples of local link building.
A Step-by-Step Implementation
To implement this effort for your own business, several steps are useful to follow:
- Claim and clean
Audit your NAP across directories like Yell or Yelp to help claim your brand and business online instead of others doing so.
- Optimise the hub
Ensure that your own website is fast and mobile-friendly, implementing all of the relevant efforts and processes to keep it functioning at its best.
- Produce local value
Publish one piece of community-focused content weekly so that you’re providing local value regularly.
- Partner up
Finally, make sure to collaborate with other businesses for cross-promotion. It’s good to see the potential that can be had mutually when working with other companies in the local area. Regardless of whether they’re bigger or smaller than you, there are always benefits to collaboration.
You don’t need to be on every single social media platform to be successful. It’s all about visibility and being present where your local customers are looking. Digital presence is a marathon, not a sprint, so be small and consistent with your signals to help build a strong brand locally online.
