So, you're looking to get more local customers and grow your business. I love
it. There's actually a bunch of great marketing things that you can do locally
today to bring more customers into your business and grow. Stay tuned.
I love marketing and have a true appreciation for marketing. In order to
grow your business, you need to understand marketing. So, I'm really happy
to hear that you're trying to figure this out. A few things that I would like
to go over priority you start spending money on all these different marketing
ideas that I'm going to share with you in this video is I want you to make sure
that your website looks good is modern up-to-date. Really be honest with
yourself here. Look at that website, ask some other people, get some thoughts. But
before you start spending money on your marketing, your website really has become
your new storefront today. So, if you're going to do anything
and that website's not up to par, you're probably just going to be wasting dollars.
On top of that, what you don't realize is before people come into your business,
they're looking at your website. Along with your website, you want to make sure
that you have all of your social media set up. And you've got some cool images
and pictures and things that are going on in your business there. People prior
to coming into your business, they're searching or finding you either on
social media or on the web to your website. And if your social media in your
website, they don't line up, they're not up to par and they don't show all the
good things that you got going on in your business, people may get this weird
feeling and not want to do business with you. It sounds silly but it's so
important today. So, before you spend dollars on any of this stuff, make sure
that you have your website and your social media in check. Another important
thing before I get started is what is the value of your customer. What is the
immediate value if you drive someone into your business and they complete a
transaction or a sale. What's that immediate value? How much money do you
make immediately? But more importantly, what's the long-term value of that
customer. If you're a local retail business and you're looking to bring in
new customers that become long-term customers, it's really important that you
do this so you get a really good understanding of your ROI. But it'll help
you make better marketing decisions. And I'll explain what I mean by that by this
next idea for marketing locally. One of the first ideas to market locally is
trying and utilizing GroupOn. You know you may have heard of Groupon, you may
not understand what it is. Groupon is just a way that you can put out a number
of offers to drive people into your business. Why I mentioned that it's so
important to understand the lifetime value of your customer is you may be
able to utilize Groupon to get new people in but that first time they come
into your business, you may just break even or even be a little bit negative.
But if you're looking to gain long-term customers and repeat customers order
come back into your business, if you could understand what the value of a
customer is, then you just want to drive new people in and you want to ensure
that when those new customers come into your business you deliver a great
experience. If you do your job and deliver a great experience and now
you've just created a repeat customer, you have to look past that initial ROI
and the long term ROI may be awesome. So maybe look at your business in a
little bit of a different way. And is it just that you need to drive people in to
at least give them and show them the experience and all the great things that
you do in your business and give them reasons to come back. The second thing is
pay-per-click. You might be saying, "Well, I don't know how to do any of this stuff."
Don't worry, I'm going to share a link that can help with all this stuff.
So, pay-per-click is something that you can utilize to advertise on Google.
Anytime we do a search in Google, those 3 to 5 ads that come up at the
top, those are paid advertisements. That's why it's I said it's super important to
make sure your website's in check. So when someone clicks on that link, they're
going to land on your website. You want to make sure your website looks good and
gets the message and point across so you can get that customer to come in and do
business with you. The third is if your local business a service provider. A
contract you have to check out you need to be on Angie's List. You have to look
at homeadvisor and there's a few others that are like it now. I can't tell you
how important this is. Your customers are looking on Angie's List and home
advisors. What's important when you sign up for these is when you complete a job
or a service. You want to make sure that your customers are writing reviews on
Angie's List or homeadvisor. People are looking at those reviews. It's
super, super important. Think about this: When you're an Amazon today purchasing
something that costs 10 or 20 bucks, you're making your decision on reviews.
So, I don't know what your product or service is. But if it's expensive and
people need to trust you especially if you're doing service on their home or
their car or anything else that's important, then they're going to judge you
by your reviews. So, it's really important that you put focus on those reviews. I'm
sure that you know that you do good business. But if I'm a customer and I
don't know you, the only way I can tell is by your reviews. So, which leads me to
the fourth thing is reviews. You really need to work on your reviews. Your google
reviews, your Trustpilot reviews, the Consumer Affairs. There's all these
different review platforms. You need to get on them. You need to get your
customers to start leaving your reviews. You need to get your Google
setup. It's so important. Your customers. I know if you're trying to market and
drive customers in but if you're going to spend money in marketing and you don't
have good reviews about your product or service or your business, then people may
not come in. If they can't find reviews about you, you may be the best business
in town but right now, if there's no reviews, people aren't coming into your
business. The fifth thing is social media marketing. You can do ads on social media
and you can market to people locally in your town. You can pick the areas. You can
pick exactly who you want to target. It's definitely something that you should be
considering if you're looking to drive in local people to your business. And a
bonus thing that I'll give you is something that's been out for a while
that a lot of people don't utilize. And that's called Every Door Direct Mail.
It's actually something that you can do right through the post office. You're
able to pick local routes and I don't know if you ever realized this but when
you get your mail and there's like a giant postcard that's in there, usually
there's not postage on that. That's because it was done through every door
direct mail. Basically what that means is you're able to create these ginormous
postcard advertisements and instead of having the mail and pay the postage, the
post office literally gives it to the postman, they bring it in their truck and
they literally put each one of those postcards in throughout their whole mail
route. It's basically a way that you can pick all these local routes in your
community and hit all the people that surround your business and let them know
that you're there and put an advertisement on it or whatever you'd
like to put in that giant postcard. It's a very inexpensive way. A lot of things
are moving online in digital but some stuff in mail actually still works. And
especially if you're in a local town, it's a great way. If you're just getting
started, it's a great way to tell everybody that you're here. What you do
and what may be a new offer is. So, a few things to keep in mind with marketing:
It's always good to be testing and trying new things. But make sure if
you're spending dollars on marketing, that you're also measuring the results.
It's so important and it'll help you understand where you're getting a return
on your investment and that's where you can dump your dollars into. It's also
great to test things over a little bit of a longer period of time.
Because one month it might be horrible and the next month it might be great.
I've also found that it's good to do a number of different things and spend a
little bit of money on everything. If you find that just something just clearly
not working then drop it off and put those dollars back into things that are.
But again, what's great is over long period of time with some
consistency, you may have some ups and downs. But overall, over a three month or
a six month period and wound up being profitable. I hope you got some great
takeaways from this video. And remember, as I mentioned if you sit here and like,
"Wow, I really want to test and try all the stuff and I know I need to get my
website better or social media set up or better and I just don't know what to do."
Check out the link below. My company National Business Capital and Services
not only provides financing to small business owners all across the country.
We also provide a number of business services. And one of those services is
marketing. So, click on that link below, fill out the form, speak to one of my
team members. They'd be happy to walk you through the process. Explain what's
available and help you get marketing to win more customers locally. Please make
sure you subscribe to my channel. And more importantly I love your feedback,
make sure you comment below. I wish you nothing but the best with marketing and
growing your business. Take care and we'll talk soon.