How to Boost your Local Business Marketing to digitally attract customers to any local business
Did you know that 97% of consumers search online for local businesses, yet over 60% of small businesses still don’t have an optimized online presence? This means countless potential customers are searching for exactly what you offer, but they’re finding your competitors instead.
The reality is harsh: without effective local business marketing, you’re essentially invisible to the customers who need you most. While word-of-mouth and traditional advertising still have their place, today’s consumers expect to find, research, and connect with local businesses online before making purchasing decisions.
The good news? You don’t need a massive marketing budget or complex strategies to succeed online. Local business marketing can be straightforward, cost-effective, and incredibly powerful when you focus on the right fundamentals.
In this guide, you’ll learn the four essential components every local business needs: a professional website that converts visitors into customers, advanced helper website strategies to expand your reach, Google My Business optimization that puts you on the map, and NAP consistency that builds trust with search engines.
By the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap to attract more local customers and grow your business online.
Four key requirements for attracting Local Business marketing.
- Website
- Helper website
- Google My Business Profile
- NAP
Website
Perfection procrastination, the single most disabling factor affecting so many local businesses. You need a website, you need a presence, your website can grow with you, it will evolve, it will go through iterations as your business develops. To wait until it’s perfect is like trying to run a sub 3 hour marathon at your first attempt.
Don’t let your search for perfection stop you from getting your website live! We offer a fast, affordable website creation service you can find details by clicking on the above link.
Top requirements for your website:
Brand
Congruency, align your website to your brand, let your brand colours shine through. Use your logo and overtime your logo becomes recognisable as your brand.
Trust
Reviews, if you have some reviews from your customers, let your potential customers see them. If you are a brand new business, use your qualifications. You want to impart a sense of trust to your website viewers.
Relevant
Make sure your content is relevant, if your business is a plumbing business, keep it on point and talk about plumbing. We suggest properly researched metadata to position your pages correctly. Something we do naturally and can do for you as a one off service, just click a ‘Schedule a Free Consultation’ button and let’s have a conversation about improving what you already have.
Easy to navigate
Make it easy for your website visitors can find what they want, keep click depth to a minimum. Introduce your topic, inform, and provide a clear call to action.
Fast
A slow website will hurt your conversions and your rankings. In this digital age, no one has patience if your pages take too long to load. Your visitors will leave and find an alternative provider.
Fresh
Adding new content regularly gives you access to more search points and shows the search engines that you are developing as a business. New content could be a simple as a new post every month about a new product, method or service. Content should be structured around topics, be there for a reason and be relevant. Take a look at our content offer here.
Performance matters! If you have a current website, check its performance score by visiting https://pagespeed.web.dev/ and entering your website details. Our affordable small business websites aim for scores similar to the above.
Helper Website
It’s very likely you’ve never heard of a Helper Website. Simply put a helper website takes your prominent services and places them on locally optimised pages for your surrounding area. This is a very powerful technique to broaden your websites search reach. To enable your helper website all you need is access to your DNS and add in two simple entries.
Imagine you have a local business based in Peterborough, it’s possible that you will be found for searches immediately around your precise location. But when you want to attract more searches from the general area this is where a helper Website comes in. Think of it as an advert into every local village magazine only it’s where people are searching for services near me on search engines.
The primary aim of your helper website is to rank for local search terms for your core business offerings in a defined radius around your business location. We have a very powerful Local Business Domination strategy, which you can find by clicking the link.
Google My Business Profile
You will be able to set up a Google My Business profile as either a physical business premises where customers come to you. Or as a service area business where you visit customers in their homes.
As a general rule of thumb, if customers can visit a showroom or a dedicated office, you are a physical business, if customers do not regularly visit your premises, you are a service area business.
Creating a GMB is free, simple and absolutely essential for online success.
NAP
Name, Address, Phone Number. three simple things that you really have to get right from the get go. Every place your business NAP is listed needs to be identical.
For instance, .
- ACME Ltd and ACME Limited are two variations of the same thing, but digitally different.
- 123 The Street and 123 The St, mean the same but are digitally different.
- 01234 567890 and +44 1234 567890 again they are the same but digitally different.
Make sure your NAP is the same everywhere it is listed and over time the search engines will recognise it as one entity and therefore boost the credibility of it and the rankings of it.
How can we help you?
A free strategy call may help, we can discuss what you have in mind, we’ll review what you have in place and suggest ways to improve (only if there are any!).
Costs
Everyone, and rightly so, wants to know to what the costs are, so rather than hiding behind an enquiry generating irresistible offer, we’d rather be upfront. Our standard hourly rate is £60.
Consultation
Initial strategy call 30 mins, Free
Website
Hourly work over and above our monthly rate for any chargeable work is at our standard rate.
Helper websites
4-mile radius, 4 key services £95 per month
Each extra 2 miles of radius, £40 per month
Each extra service, £40 per month
Please note the radius and additional services can be added after the initial build and it’s better to increase slowly in any event.
Google My Business
Free, you can setup your GMB, but if you want us to do it for you, we’ll charge you for one hour of consultation ie £60
NAP
This is something for you to manage, we can provide a detailed report on your current NAP listings and what you need to change if anything. Again we charge by the hour and a NAP report normally takes an hour to research and produce.
Is there a contract?
No, we don’t believe in them. We do what we do, it works, and in general, you will see our costs as an investment as your business grows with us.
How long does it take?
Depending on what we need to do for you, a helper website can be live within a week. A full website build depends on what we need to do but generally a good starting point website can be built and deployed in a couple of weeks.
Contact us today so we can help you grow your local business
