You’ve finally started your new business. After possibly years of dreaming, planning, and developing, your new business is off and ready to serve the local community. 

Now you just need to get people in through your physical or virtual doors. But where do you start? 

That’s where your marketing and website SEO comes in. Whether you’re completely new or a long-established local business, marketing helps keep you known, liked, and trusted by your local community. 

Unfortunately, most people don’t have years of marketing knowledge and experience to work with. Sure, you’ve heard a few tips and tricks over the years, but now it’s time to start, and it’s hard to know where to focus your already limited energies. 

A Quick Word on Word of Mouth Marketing

Many businesses start with this notion that they’ll get some good word-of-mouth marketing going, and that will take care of everything else. Of course, what company wouldn’t want its customers doing all the marketing for them? But you can’t always depend on it because it ebbs and flows and is completely out of your control. You could do everything right, but some other new hotness captures all the local attention and press. 

Word of mouth results from successful marketing (and a bit of luck), but it can’t be the entirety of your marketing plan. Besides, what good are people talking about you if they can’t find you once they’ve heard of you from a friend? 

There are a few vital details you need to take care of first. These will help you when you’re just starting out and get you ready for when the positive talk about your business starts. 

Have a Professional Business Website Built

You would think this would be obvious, but many companies still neglect to have a proper web presence online. 

But when we say proper presence, we mean an actual marketing website built with SEO and customer conversions in mind. 

Today, too many try to skip this step and head straight to social media. Or maybe they have someone in the company’s kid slap together a quick website for free. They don’t give their website the attention and respect it deserves, which will cost them down the line with their customers. 

Your business’s website is one of the first places your customers will come to get a feel for your products and services. These days, customers make quick decisions based on what they see, and you often don’t get a second chance. If you have a website that looks like it was made in the early 00s, doesn’t work on mobile, or has difficulty finding information, they’ll move on. 

Your website should be filled with all the essential information your customers expect – your products and services, contact information, location, etc. That’s the minimum. It should also be built for a specific purpose like converting prospects into sales, prompting a call, or getting visitors to sign up for your newsletter. Your website shouldn’t just be sitting there passively waiting on customers to view and move on. It should be actively working for your business. 

Don’t neglect or quickly slap something together. Either spend significant time internally working on your website or entrust professionals to do it for you. 

Setup Your Google My Business

The first thing any potential customer will do when they hear about your business is to go online and run a little research of their own. This is almost always with Google. 

Thankfully, Google simplifies the process of confirming all your important information through its platform. After your website, your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the most critical thing you can create online for a small business. 

Setting up your Google Business Profile allows you to turn up in Google searches and on their maps (which is crucial for a local business since many will be searching for how to reach your business). 

You can also use your Google Business Profile to reach and connect with your customers, post business updates, and check your feedback. 

You cannot overlook your Google Business Profile. Thankfully, it’s free and pretty easy to set up right but still delivers solid help for your local business. 

Get an Email List Going

One of the most vital assets you can create, build, and leverage for your small business is the email marketing list. 

Before the internet, businesses would have paid large sums of money for the chance to have a dedicated list of vetted and interested customers. Today, many companies take this technology for granted. 

With an email marketing list, your customers have come to you and said, “send me more information about your products and services.” They’ve asked you to market to them. For free. All you have to do is keep it relevant and exciting, so they don’t opt-out. 

You get the opportunity to let your customers know about special offers and deals, new products you’ve developed, and stories to help them relate more to your brand. It’s a low-cost, super-effective way to stay top of mind with your customers. 

Need Help Marketing Your Local Business?

These are just a few first steps you need to take to start marketing your local business. With digital technologies, there are so many ways to reach your customers that we never had access to before. But knowing which is the right for your business requires experience. 

There’s an old saying that you need to learn to walk before you can run that definitely applies to digital marketing. For example, if you haven’t taken care of the above tips, there’s little point in doing paid advertising as you’ll be throwing money down the drain. Why drive people to a poorly designed or performing website? 

If you struggle with any of the above or on the next steps after these, please reach out to us. We love helping small, local businesses reach their target audience so they can thrive. It’s what we do. We’d love to hear from you and either help you out or point you in the right direction. 

Please get in touch with us today about your local business marketing needs.