How to Create a Local Marketing Strategy – A Quick Starter Guide

Local Marketing Strategy Convert Calls to LeadsAre you just starting a new business and don’t know where to begin?

Or are you an existing business owner discouraged with the lack of new business from your website and social pages?

If you’re ready to create the results you need and deserve, let me tell you what we do to generate thousands of leads every month.

Small Business Local Marketing: Where Do We Start?

Our first action is to develop a marketing strategy, and then we always follow the steps below.

The level of your success online is subject to your strategy.

Our local business marketing strategies start with 7 basic questions:

  1. What is the value of your customer (Life Time Value)?
  2. Who is your customer?
  3. Where is your customer?
  4. What does your ideal customer/patient need?
  5. What services do you provide and what is each worth?
  6. How many customers can you handle?
  7. How much would you pay to get a customer?

local marketing strategy - Lifetime Value of Customers

What Is the Lifetime Value (LTV) of Your Customer: What Does This Mean?

Below I use an example of a dentist and a commercial roofer to show you how LTV compare. You can apply the exact same formula to your business.

Local Marketing Examples: The Dental Practice Example

Let’s say you are a dentist. If your ideal new customer is a young family of 4 and each family member spends an average of $500 per year, then the value per year is $2,000.

If the family sticks with your practice for 10 years, the value is $20,000.

If the dental practice attracts one (1) new family of 4 per month, then in year 1 (12 months), the practice creates $24,000 of income in year 1 or revenue of $240,000 over 10 years. If each family refers one (1) new family over 10 years, the income jumps exponentially.

The Commercial Roofer Example

The commercial roofer follows a very different strategy than a dentist. Where a family of 4 could be worth $2,000 per year to a dentist, a commercial roofing project could be $200,000 or more.

marketing strategyWhere Is Your Customer Located?

For many dental practices, their patients are likely within a 5-mile radius of their office.

The commercial roofer’s geographic target may be a 100-mile radius or more.

What Services Do You Provide and What Is Each Worth?

People search for their problems, needs or as I call them, niches within their business.

Generally, these are specific services. For a dentist. it could be teeth cleaning, teeth whitening, clear braces, toothaches, dentures or crowns.

Each of these services provides a different value. Teeth whitening could be $200 whereas, dentures could be $10,000.

For a commercial roofer, their customers might be searching for installers, contractors or companies for flat roofs, asphalt roofs, metal roofs, single-ply roofs or many others. The value of each roof differs.

How Many Clients Can You Handle?

When you implement the right marketing strategy, the internet will consistently deliver many new clients.

I’ve seen leads come in for $100 to over $1 million depending on the type of business.

It’s important to be realistic about what you can handle. Can you handle 1 new client per month or 10? The answer to this question is subject to your offline fulfillment capabilities.

Keep in mind, if a dental receptionist misses a phone call or email lead from a client worth $20,000, that’s an expensive missed call.

If a commercial roofer misses a call from a lead worth $200,000, well, that’s really expensive! Unfortunately, I see this happen all the time.

How Much Would You Pay to Acquire Your Ideal Customer?

If you’re serious about growing your business, this is an important question.

One of the myths about the internet is that it’s free. Five to 10 years ago it was less expensive than it is today.

Due to the extraordinary results business can achieve, online competition is driving up the costs for search engine optimization, Google AdWords and Facebook ads.

However, the right strategies implemented properly continue to produce extraordinary returns on investment of both time and money.

Extremely inexpensive and free channels are still available to promote your business.

Your Blueprint for Building a Customer-Generating Marketing Strategy

marketing strategyWe follow these steps for every project whether for our own lead-generating websites or for clients.

  1. Strategy – Your plan starts with “What Is Your Client Worth?”
  2. Keyword Research – After you outline your strategy, keyword research is the next step.
  3. Content – You will need content for your website.
  4. Website – Websites with 3 actions for your visitor to take including clear links to click thru website, subscribe or contact form, Call feature easy to find on desktop and mobile,
  5. Mobile – 57% of visitors search via mobile. Your website needs a mobile-friendly version.
  6. Google My Business – At the very least, you should have a GMB listing with relevant categories, images, videos and optimization.
  7. Social Pages – Set up your social business pages including Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.
  8. Reviews – Prospects will check out what others say about you.
  9. SEO,  Search Engine Optimization – strategic rankings for Google search is still the best source of new customers for local businesses.
  10. Paid Advertising – Paid advertising is available via Google AdWords, Facebook Ads and Display Ads. Without a solid strategy, you can easily overpay with zero results. I know, I’ve done it.

Tip: 20% of your efforts will produce 80% of your results. Keep this in mind as you implement your strategy.

How to Create a Local Marketing Strategy: Summary

Google My BusinessAfter building hundreds of websites and online advertising & marketing strategies for both small and large businesses, we discovered that simple steps, systems and cheat sheets are critical to online success.

If you spend a few minutes to develop your strategy, you’ll have a long-term plan for not just your website, but Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, YouTube and your offline sales.

It always starts with the development of a simple marketing strategy based on the value of your client.

Need help developing a successful online strategy? Give us a call or send an email here.

SEO Experts in Fairfield County CT: Need Leads?

SEO for photograhers

Your Local SEO Guide in Connecticut and Nationwide

Search Engine Optimization is all about one thing…leads.

Getting ranked on Google page one or even #1 on page one is easy. Anyone can do it with a little training, but one keyword is not enough.

The key to generating a steady flow of targeted leads from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for local businesses is ranking on Google for hundreds of keywords. And not just any keywords, but keywords that are in demand by your customers.

[box type=”info”] Consider this: a local contractor gets 2,000 visits per month to his website. The site delivers 100 leads in a month. That’s more prospects than he can handle. But how many times was the most searched keyword searched?[/box]

The answer is 10. The most searched keyword brought 10 visitors to the site out of 2,000. In fact, 1,960 of those visitors each searched something different before clicking through to the website.

The reality is you won’t get enough traffic or leads from one good-ranking keyword. You need keyword diversity as well as geographic diversity.

There are exceptions.

Some businesses can get leads for keywords such as Plumber, Nail Salon, Wine Store, Dumpster, Florist. But they are missing out if that’s all they target in one town.

The key to Local SEO ranking starts with a demand-driven SEO strategy based on your business model, value of your customer, the number of customers your business can handle and how far you are willing to travel to a client or the distance they will travel to you.

Let’s not forget your competitors. Is it easy to get lots of exposure on Google or is the online competition fierce?

Good news! There’s always an edge even in the most competitive markets.

 

How to Create an SEO Strategy

Connecticut SEO strategyResults from Google search are like fireworks. They go up with anticipation, then blossom if you build the right foundation.

Strategy #1 – Google Suggest: Before you start, or even if you have already started, the first step is to visit Google Suggest. Without even knowing, you’ve already used Google Suggest. Any time you visit Google and search, you see suggested words. You likely haven’t thought about it.

You see these words that relate to your search. If they don’t help you, just plow right through them. If they do, you go in that direction.

If you want to capitalize on your efforts, try searching the general keywords that relate to your business. Then type in the letter A. Google will suggest relevant words.

For example: If you search the term “Florist,” you may also see the suggestions:

“Florist near me”
“Florist NYC” or
“Florist definition”

The “near me” and “NYC” results indicate that people search locally or hyperlocally.

Next, you add the letter A to the phrase like so: “florist a”

In my results, it displays local town names. So I’ll move on to the letter B and the letter C. I’m trying to find what people want so I just keep digging through the alphabet.

When I come to the letter D, I find “delivery.” Florist Delivery then becomes an interesting keyword phrase that might offer an edge over the competition.

Pressing on further, I get to the letter F and discover another new term, “florist for wedding.” Now, it’s getting interesting. By combining key phrases, I now have a new one: “a florist for weddings that delivers.” That could potentially provide a new demand-driven income stream. Nice!

So I keep going through the alphabet, and mainly I find geographic towns and state names. I need more ideas.

Wait.

I go back and search “Florist For” followed by the letter “a” and then each letter of the alphabet in order. Here’s a sample of what I found:

  • Google suggest search strategy
    Image of Google suggest search for florist terms

    Florist for cheap

  • Florist cost for wedding
  • Best Florist For Delivery
  • Florist For Events (hmm…what kind of events I wonder?)
  • Florist For Funeral
  • Florist For Graduation, for Grand Opening, for hire,
  • Florist For Indian Wedding (good one)
  • Florist For New Baby
  • Florist For All Occasions – gotta think about that.
  • Florist Questions for Bride, Wedding (wonder about other questions)
  • Florist For Corporate Events

You see, it never ends. This is the fun part of SEO. It’s like being a treasure hunter.

Now let’s find more ideas to get more clients.

Strategy #2 – Amazon:  You will make an amazing discovery for your business with a few simple steps by searching books on Amazon. Now that I think of it, you might even find some interesting ideas in Amazon products too. For now, let’s stick with books.

The idea is to find books for your business niche. Since we’re on the florist niche, we’ll stick with that one.

Keep in Mind:

EVERY BUSINESS CAN FIND NEW INCOME STREAMS WITH THIS METHOD

 

Amazon Step 1: Search Florists under Books on Amazon

SEO Strategy Amazon search

 

Amazon Step 2: Search Books

Look for books with highest amount of reviews. Reviews indicate an engaged following.

Amazon SEO strategy tips

 

Amazon Step 3: Click the Book

You will be taken to a summary of the book. You can scroll down and find other books people have purchased.

You can also scroll back to the book, and click to find the table of contents. Now you know what is in demand that people are willing to pay for.

It’s all done for you. This is how you build a Local SEO strategy by starting with demand.

Using Amazon as a strategy for search engine optimization

 

Step 4: Look at Reviews and Best Sellers Rank

Already you are formulating an amazing Local SEO strategy for Your Fairfield County Customers. It doesn’t stop there. If you want to build a brand that dominates your market, you now know what people search and what’s in demand.

You’ll also have discovered tons of keywords that you likely had never thought about.

You are on your way to an amazing ride, all made possible by the internet.

 

 

Strategy #4 – YouTube:

As if you didn’t already have a ton of amazing data at your fingertips, let’s now take a stroll over to YouTube.

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine after Google, and it’s owned by Google – another demand driven channel.

You can start the process of searching with the keywords you found.

In the image below, you can see I searched “florists.” As you now know, you can search deeper long tail keywords and find more videos.

You can see the titles, who created them, the amounts of views and time of each video. But most important, you will learn more about the demand for your niche business.

 

Summary

This is the start of a Local SEO Strategy. It doesn’t take long to go through this process if you follow the steps.

Search Engine Optimization is really just sales with results achieved by meeting demand. It’s not hard, but it does take work and a desire to succeed.

NicheQuest is a local SEO Agency located in the heart of Fairfield County, Connecticut. We’re here to help. Call us at (203) 762-1366 for assistance with your website, SEO and keyword strategy.