Recently the amount of new work for your local business has declined. You’re worried you won’t be able to cover this month’s overheads. You want more business, but you don’t have a huge budget to spend on local online marketing.

So, how do you generate more business without spending the money?

Consider Your Local Online Marketing Goals

For a business it’s simple – you want to sell, you want more work. And without the right content and message throughout your site, you’ll never attract the right customers. You need a website that is going to grab customers, lead them through your site to tell them about your business and gets them exactly where they, and you, need them to be – at the point of sale.

And to do this want your site to tell your customers that you’re the best at what you do. That there is no one else who can deliver what your business can. You need to show customers why they should use you over everyone else.

Below are a few points that can help you as a small business owner get this message to potential customers and increase the outreach of your business.

Social Media Marketing

Your customers are on social media, so why isn’t your business. Social media is a great way to build awareness around your brand, make contact with people interested in your business and generally improve the reach of your company for free.

Social media is a great chance to start a conversation with people within your local community. You don’t have to be promoting to them. Getting involved with other conversations related to your local business allows you to build a presence without seeming like you a forcefully pushing your services.

This is a great tactic as the majority of people using social media aren’t actively searching for a product. They are on social media during their lunch break or when taking some time out. They don’t want to have advertising forced on them when they simply want to switch off. Building customers through social media should be no different to how you build relationships as a person. You wouldn’t walk up to someone on a night out and start trying to sell your products to someone you’ve just met. They’re not there to purchase your products, they’re there to relax and enjoy themselves. All you will do is frustrate them. It’s the same with social media. If your business is constantly spamming your services, people will skip over your post or remove your from their feed altogether.

When you engage with your community through social media it builds relationships. Customers are more likely to use a business that they know and trust.

Add Testimonials to Your Website

Talking your business up, is like talking about yourself in the third person. It’s awkward, you come off pretentious and it doesn’t do anything to help your popularity. Getting your customers to speak for your business is much more natural and may factor into the decision process of new customers thinking of using your services.

Testimonials are a great way to show people proof in what you do. It shows that there are other people out there who have used your business, are happy with the result and are willing to talk about it.

Getting testimonials from your customers can be as simple as asking. Get their email and send them a series of questions. If you have social media, ask them to leave a comment on your business page. Build up these testimonials and use the best ones on your website.

Add Award Badges

If your business has won any awards or accreditations be sure to add them to your website and social media pages. These awards will be seen as a sign of quality and will help to build trust with your audience.

Include Power Words

The use of power words throughout your websites’ content can pull the emotional strings of your readers, adding a connection to whatever you are writing about. Power words are those words that people subconsciously creates an emotional reaction, whether positive or negative. And when readers have an emotional connection with a product it lowers any potential barriers and gets them one step closer to making a purchase or taking action.

Steer Clear of Template Sites

By template sites, we are talking about those sites that have no unique aspect to them and use designs that have been pre-prepared, you simply fill specific spots with your images and text. There is nothing wrong with these sites as a very basic website for your business, but they can be notoriously hard to rank. If you choose a template for your website, makes sure you choose one that has the function to customise key sections and allows you to play with the layout.

Some template sites can become boring and whether consciously or subconsciously, a visitor to your site will recognise that the design has been copied somewhere else, making it that much harder to get your message across, because in your visitors’ mind “something here is not quite right!”

Take the time to customise your site. If possible, have a play around yourself or get a professional to do it for you. In the long run, it will be worth it. A well-designed website will help to cement the idea that you’re are a professional business that knows what it is doing.

Conclusion

With all these techniques you need to keep your end goal in mind. Tailor each of these platforms for your business, with the aim of generating more leads and more sales. And although taking on all of this can seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be. Take it one step at a time. Focus on one of these, and make it as great as you possibly can. Then move onto the next one. The end result will be something that creates more work for you in the long run. Something that can work for you in the background of your overall company’s marketing strategy.

To discover how to get more out of your local online marketing strategy, contact us here.