When you’re a small business owner, marketing your business is one of the most important things you can do. Big business has serious marketing heft; corporations can pay teams of marketing executives to carry out lengthy, impactful campaigns across multiple platforms.
You might not have access to those resources or that kind of personnel, so every single decision you make regarding marketing could prove crucial to your survival. That’s why you need to consider each marketing decision as carefully as possible. Here are some of the best ways you can market your new local business website.
Consider a Human-Edited Web Directory
Let’s say you’re thinking “how can I most effectively promote my business website?”. You want to think outside the box and not necessarily opt for the most obvious promotional method, because those might not be the decisions that yield the most fruit in terms of conversions. One option you might want to consider is a human-edited web directory.
These directories aren’t created by AI; they’re hand-picked websites chosen by people who want other humans to see high-quality sites and not just the kind of randomly-picked platforms AI can often opt for. If you have a presence on a human-edited web directory, it speaks to a certain pedigree, so it’s worth checking out.
Use Social Media
It might sound obvious, but you really need to be formulating a social media strategy if you’re looking to market your small business website. This means building and maintaining a presence on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, as well as Twitter, Snapchat, and any other social media platform that’s currently trending (as these things can sometimes be fluid).
Keep an eye on your core demographic and find out what social network they use most often. Whatever that network is, your business needs to have a presence, but it might not be enough to just post regularly, so also consider boosting your business with a paid campaign.
Startup A Blog
One of the best ways to promote a local business – and by extension, its website – is to start up a blog. Write engaging, innovative content for the blog and then publicise it.
You should start to see it being shared by enthusiast platforms working within the same industry as you. If you manage to make your blog informative and authoritative, you’ll build awareness and respect for your brand, thus making people more likely to come to you when they need whatever you’re offering. You could also consider getting guest writers to write for your blog; if you aren’t particularly well-versed in blogging etiquette, this could be a great way to begin.
Join Local Groups and Be Active
Local businesses thrive on local exposure and patronage, which is why it’s important to be active in your community. As a local business, a lot of your sales or conversions will come from people within a certain radius.
Trying to shoot for the moon and publicise yourself too widely will only result in people feeling you’ve lost touch with your customer base. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to expand your business, of course. It simply means you should join up with local business groups and stay active in your community by talking regularly with people who live in your catchment area.
Host Competitions
People love competitions and giveaways. There’s something about the innately competitive yet friendly spirit of a good competition that makes people want to engage and interact.
If you’re looking to publicise your business, why not host a giveaway or a competition? You don’t need to be too elitist with it; simply ask a basic question or request signups to a newsletter in order for customers to potentially be eligible to win some fun freebies. Make sure you’re not giving away your entire stock, of course, but if you never host competitions, you run the risk of your strategy becoming stale.
Look for Local Influencers
If you want to encourage organic traffic to your website, then one of the best ways to accomplish that is to look for local influencers on social media.
Try and find influencers who operate within the same communities or areas as you and reach out to them. It’s important to make sure you’re talking to the right influencers, of course; they should match your brand values and synergise well with the product you’re looking to sell.
Once you’ve established a connection, make sure that the ensuing collaboration isn’t too promotional; it should feel natural, and while a certain level of promotion is necessary, it needs to feel as close to regular content as possible for the influencer to remain respected.
Keep Customer Service at the Top of Your Priority List
Good customer service is the difference between a respected company and one that has a dubious reputation. This goes double for a company that has a local focus. After all, if you’re not approachable with a smaller staff or more narrow mission statement, then how could anybody trust you once you start to expand?
No matter what a customer’s complaint or request might be, it’s very important as a local business to honour it and pay attention to it. Your website traffic will increase tenfold if customers are continually streaming in because they’ve heard you offer top-notch customer service. This is especially important if you’re looking to go head-to-head with a bigger company in your chosen field.
