local marketing

How to avoid pitfalls and reap the rewards – a ‘how to’ guide for local websites

10th April 2015 by Alan Leave a Comment

With the marriage of Twitter and Foursquare on the cards, it has, once again, thrown light on a sticky patch that many local businesses encounter, especially when creating their presence online; just HOW do you reach the local populace whilst using global online platforms? What is the point? And why, oh why, do you need a website…?

In our mooching around the Internet, as well as our growing customer base of local, national and global businesses, we have come up with 10 pitfalls in to which local, online businesses can tumble.

Flailing about in the dark is no fun, especially when everyone else on the top side is winning new customers, and seeing old ones return.

Now is the time to grasp the mettle, and understand what is undermining your online, local presence…

#1 It is not ALL about YOU…

Commissioning your website is very exciting but, it can place some businesses in a position whereby they think their online presence is only about them. Although your brand is important, but when it comes to social media, more is a distinct advantage.

Link with other businesses, blogs and the like that are in harmony with yours. If you sell sea salt, for example, look to food based social media shares and the like. Think beyond your own brand bubble!

#2 It is not just about what you sell…

Yes your products and services are the very thing that makes you a business; yup, we all need or want things in our lives, and you have one of those things. But, following on from point 1, think outside the box – who, what or how else can your product be linked to other business, news events and so on?

Take care – linking with news events is great BUT, makes sure you are not pushing the boundaries or sensitive material. It can back fire and, unless you have a suave, fast-acting PR department then you could be sunk without a trace.

#3 Not all people will know what they want…

Some businesses will tell you that people come to them when they know they want their product or service.

Mmmm… might be true but, you could be alienating a group of buyers early on in the process who are in the market for a product like yours but, they miss your site because your SEO etc. is all geared toward the ‘sure-thing-buyer’.

#4 Local signals can reap rewards

We have touched on this many times in recent blogs and, it seems we are not wrong!

Various data-crunching companies and agencies have been analysing 2014 data from various search engines and it seems that local signals are slowly beginning to emerge as the must-have search term.

If your business has a local presence, then you need this somewhere on your website, social media profiles and so forth. If not, you could be missing a trick.

#5 Local signals go beyond your website!

It pays to spend some time checking out pages such as Yell.com and other local listing sites as all these combined create a stronger force when people search for a business, product or service in a certain area.

The Google My Business page might be worth a look at too, or Bing Places for Business.

#6 Your Home Page

Go to it now. Is it really doing its job?

Just it give a clear, succinct paragraph or two about what it is you do, and why the customer needs YOUR business to do these things? Do you have a tagline that explains what it is you do?

Are you sure it is cutting the mustard?

Mini quiz; which websites are these from?

‘live a life less ordinary’
‘Think different’
‘melts in your mouth, not in your hands’

*scroll to the bottom of the page for the answers!

#7 The rest of your pages

Think value.

With this in mind, go to page that talks about your window cleaning service… does ‘call for more information’ really give the customer any value? Nope. They will navigate away to another competitor who will tell them that they “are in the area of so-and-so on Tuesday and a 3 bedroomed semi-detached costs £12 to have windows and doors cleaned”.

#8 One mention of a city, town or village is not enough…

If you determined to win the local business title online then you need to mention your location, county etc. more than once… and this just not mean putting your address on there.

Don’t go too far the other way and over stuff pages but, if your location is key to your business then this is priority information to be included on pages, metatags etc.

#9 Title tags should be 65-70 characters…

…. Or they don’t fit. So, when you search the Internet and you get the business heading, the tag line underneath falls off the end of the gap the search engine has to display results. Looks messy and people are missing key information. Guess what they do?

Yup, that’s right. They hit the next listing down.

#10 Update key information

Just like you don’t use old business card with the old phone number on, you would be amazed at the number of websites that do not have current, up-to-date contact information, addresses etc. on them. Hence, if you are a local business, then you need to ensure that they key information is right (and don’t forget all those other places where your address, phone number etc. is registered too!)

Local businesses are thriving in the global place that is the Internet – are you?

Mini-quiz answers… how many did you get right?

‘live a life less ordinary’ – Not on the High Street.com
‘Think different’ – Apple
‘melts in your mouth, not in your hands’ – M&Ms in the US, or Minstrels here in the UK

10 steps for better search results local businesses – Part 2

16th March 2015 by Alan Leave a Comment

In the first instalment of optimising your website for a local audience, we looked at 5 steps: keywords, optimisation, Google Local, local business listing websites and consistency.

Get these 5 steps right and in place, and your website could feature more prominently in local search engine results, perfect if people through the door is part of your business.

Is buying local becoming more important?

Buying locally source food is something that, in recent years, has become not only trendy but also more genuine; consumers are realising that food that has not been in plastic packaging on a plane for 13 hours before it hits the supermarkets, is not the only good quality, well-priced produce on offer.

And it seems that consumers are not just looking at local food but local retailers of other items too. Finally, it seems, we are getting fed up of the ‘same old-same old’ from the hyper stores, and once again looking for the unique, quality items are a great price from local businesses.

And so yes, NOW is the time, with campaigns like ‘small business Saturday’, to trade on the local-ness of your business. You could gain more customers, more fans. more shares, more success – and we all want and need a bit of this kind of action.

Like everything, it takes effort and a smattering of know-how, this in this instalment we cover from steps 6 to 10, the remaining 5 steps that consolidate your presence online, in a local sense.

Step 6: ‘genuine’ reviews

We hinted at this with the local website listings etc. as some of these sites will be review based. However, to expand this point a little further, Google along with other major search engines have hinted in the long and distant past, that genuine reviews are welcome, forming a positive basis for some nice social signals.

However, bribery is not a good idea. On your website, simply ask people to ‘tell us what you think’ or rate it with stars. For WordPress, there are all kinds of review plug-ins and what-not that make it easy for customers to leave a review. If you think people can’t or won’t be bothered (because you can’t be when you shop!), then you really need to change this view.

We are all connected, every second of the day (or so it seems) with the online world, thus people can and do leave reviews, good ones as well as the not so good. So, ask people to rate their shopping experience etc. – if nothing else, it proves your website is alive!

Step 7: social profiles

We have talked about social media a lot, and how, if done right and used well can add value to your website. But, you need to make sure you are not only taking full advantage of them but have also created the right kind of social profile.

What can happen, is that we are faced with “yet another” profile form to fill in; bit bored of writing the same stuff, we skip a few boxes, promising that we will come back and fill them in… but we never do.

So, you know the ‘edit profile’ tab on various platforms? Go back NOW, and open it and fill it in and remember: complete the bit that says where your business is. For those that are on the high street, naming the village/town/city is an obvious one to complete.

(And don’t forget step 5 Consistency)

Step 8: start building local links

Before you scuttle off and buy links, you need to know this is no-no. It is such as a no-no, it deserves to be shouted from the tallest building in your town – do NOT do it. Search engines can spot them a mile off, sniff them as soon as they hit your pages and your website is blacklisted, doomed to the bin from which it is very, very difficult to escape.

In this sense, we are talking about building local links. A great way of doing this is to get involved in some of the local groups of social media, as well as other similar businesses.

If you have great content on your website, that you are updating regularly, and that it of interest to them, then you could have a fruitful relationship beginning to form.

Try this: type in {your location} + blog, and you will have a list of blogs all linked to your town or local area. This could be a great start to some local links…

Step 9: Go mobile!

This doesn’t mean hitching up a caravan on going on tour but, is something we have talked about many times before… and we think it is worth going over old ground. It really is that important.

There are 1 million more mobile devices activated EVERY DAY across the world than there are babies born. This may seem an unbelievable statistic and we have no idea where it came – genuinely, we found it on the internet, so it must be true – but, regardless of its authenticity, it does spell out something we have long suspected: more people are using smart phones and other mobile devices, and this figure is growing.

Whether mobile phone ownership gazumps the daily birth rate is neither here nor there. If your website is NOT mobile ready, then you are missing a huge chunk of the population…

If you are already mobile-optimised, then take another look and make sure all those local contact details are obvious; pay close attention to the ‘contact us’ page.

Step 10: get analysing

Now that you have done all this, you need to monitor, assess and review if this is having an impact and, if so, how much. Of course, being flooded with more enquiries and an increase in custom is all well and good, but as with all things internet, the effects are not always immediate or obvious.

When we are busy, the hard/boring/uninteresting stuff can be shoved aside. We all do it, with different things.

Analysing who is coming to your website and from where, along with other useful information is not too difficult to come by, providing you know what you are looking at, once you have the data in front of you. No one is an expert on everything, so if you need help, just ask.

There are various options online, as you would expect, some that you pay for and some that are free. You can also take advantage of Google Analytics, but again, it all seems a little complicated. However, once you become accustomed to it, know what you are looking at (sort of), what you are looking to see improve (sort of), Google Analytics can be quite helpful.

Paid for software can be easier to fathom, but when money is tight, you may not want an additional monthly fee.

And so there we are, 10 steps to making your website appear in local listings, near the top. For many businesses, this is important to them and, increasingly for customers, it seems that local is beginning to outweigh ‘cheapness’ too, with more people taking time to find the right product at the right price… and if it is just down the road, all the better.

Let us know how you get on… [email protected]

Learning from Tony Bennett and Elmo: unconventional partnerships that reap rewards…

24th October 2014 by Alan Leave a Comment

Brandscaping – the latest buzzword

There is a new buzzword that describes a concept that could take off… in fact, depending on which angle you look at it from, it may already be in full swing, it’s just that we, as consumers, haven’t quite cottoned on yet.

So, what is it and is it something that online, local business could find useful OR, is it just another great big waste of time? And where do Tony Bennett and Elmo come in to it? Find out here…

What is brandscaping?

Sounds almost painful, but actually it isn’t. The concept is quite a nice one; brandscaping is about your online, local business joining with another relevant company, business, sole trader etc. to, and we quote, “drive consideration, increase demand and add revenue”.

A classic case, we think you would agree, on ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. But, it is slightly more complex than that as we are talking about the online world of content sharing.

It is about identifying another company who holds or shares the same ‘audience’ as you; you not only link content, but pool financial sources too. Maybe you both agree to outsource to the same agency or writer to create blogs and content that links together.

It might be that you link with a company who you feel has your next customers. Andrew Davies believes so much in the power of online partnerships that he had written a whole book on the subject!

Content as we know is key to getting your website recognised, as well as up there in the rankings. Creating partnership with someone else gives you brand scope – as it does theirs. There is a constant flow of information and, you can be part of a whole new crazy world where people like your content… and start buying for you.

Mmmm… still not sure?

Neither were we until you realise what this could mean for some smaller businesses out there who battle on a daily basis to get their company or business in on the action. Big corporate bodies not only have the budget, but the people to work solely, day and night, on content.

For the local, online small business, this is not an option. You spend your day earning the money, the evenings doing your books and, at some point, you also squeeze in time to blog, bath the kids and visit your mum.

It is a busy world.

How could this work in practice?

OK, let’s take a really obvious example…

‘Bride and Grooms’ is a wedding dress and suit hire emporium. They have 3 shops dotted about over two counties. They are becoming known as THE place to go for wedding dresses, from budget to bespoke, as well as a range of wedding suits for hire.

‘Sally’s Flowers’ is a small florist with big ambitions; she would like to physically expand her florist shop into new, bigger premises as well as look at opening another shop in the next town. To do this, Sally realises she needs more of a ‘brand identity’; people need to look and feel confident that she can deliver modern, sassy, cutting edge designed flowers… and weddings are big business.

These two businesses could ‘brandscape’; they could pool a financial amount each months and really start to plug their services via blogs that link; these links could then be forged via the social media platforms they both use.

Likewise, they could then become a force in the local wedding fairs, the season that starts in the autumns and takes them through to spring. By summer, they could both be knee deep in flowers, customers and wedding parties.

Win-win

Right so the message is this – you are looking to create demand for your mutual services by creating content with the maximum hit, with the lowest cost.

Partnership is perhaps a mis-leading term as you could, technically have more than partner, but the expense would be shared equally.

Your ‘audience’ needs to overlap, which clearly in our illustrative case above, clearly does – brides and dresses, then brides and flowers. You may have a local company that does wedding favours, table settings and the like… they could partner too. And then maybe there is a wedding planner; they could come on board too.

Why brandscaping? Why now?

Suggestions are that there is content overload; the web is an increasingly busy place and we everyone competing to get on to page 1 of the search engine results, it is no wonder. And so, suggest strategists, companies need to start working together to get genuinely brilliant results; return of investment (what you spend on content creation) should be maximised.

Does the idea have legs?

Possibly. For local businesses, it really could propel some smaller businesses into a far stronger position on the web.