How brick and mortar businesses can benefit from online marketing

We’re going to dig deep into how brick and mortar businesses can benefit from online marketing strategies that will help you dominate your city.

If you run a local business, you might think you have a disadvantage to global companies. You’re limited to a locale and they can sell to the entire world, but here’s the deal. With local business comes less competition and with less competition means greater probability of dominating your niche. People look online for information. If they want to find a restaurant, then they type in restaurants near me, or they hop onto Yelp. They want to find a dentist, so they searched for best dentist in city. The fact is that searching online is a lot more convenient than looking through the yellow pages or aimlessly driving around. So as a local business owner, you need to make yourself discoverable where your customers are searching (whether it be through online marketing or buying leads with someone like Appliance Repair Leads). And in today’s article I want to go over four simple strategies that you can use to get more people through your doors.

So, How is it done? Interview transcribed below:

Speaker 1: The first is to build social proof where your customers are already looking. The best social proof for a business is not a listing in the local paper. It’s to be highly reviewed on websites where your customers already are. If you’re a restaurant owner, then ask your happy customers to leave a review on Yelp. If you’re a medical professional, then look to rate mds or if you have a google local listing, then ask them to leave a review there because when the next person comes looking for your business, they are going to instantly see that other people trusted and they should too.

Next is local SEO. Doing search engine optimization for a local business is much easier because of the lack of competition, and it’s bizarre because there are more and more businesses opening, but the level of competition online isn’t really rising with that growth.

Now with SEO, a large part of the ranking factors has to do with the quantity and quality of backlinks that are pointing to a page, and you’ll see that most local business websites two have a meager amount of referring domains pointing to it, and if you dig even more profound, the quality of these links are mostly garbage or from those directories that anyone can create. Compare this link profile to the top rank page for the keyword phrase online marketing. Now you can skyrocket your SEO by building quality links through guest blogging or by simple outreach. Try and go for relevant links that are within your niche and an even more powerful ranking signal will be getting links from domains that are in your city or country.

Facebook advertising is arguably the most powerful paid advertising channel.

You can target people based on demographics and psychographics and what makes it absolutely mind-blowing is that you can target people based on their freaking zip codes. I tell real estate agents all the time to stop knocking on doors because people don’t want to answer it. Instead, throw up some Facebook ads and farm their computers and mobile devices opposed to the people who live next to you and around you.

It’s possible that you are in the situation where you have attempted ads on Facebook, but you were disappointed to find out that the results you got back are not what you were expecting, and it’s probably because you were doing them all wrong. People don’t log into Facebook looking for a chiropractor. They don’t log into Facebook hoping to buy a new home. They log in with the intention of finding something interesting, helpful or socializing with others. Just take a look at what your friends are sharing. If you’re a local business, then A you want to target people who are willing to commute to your location or B, they have a need for your product or services.

Targeting location is easy. You type in a city named town name, multiple city and town names, or add various zip codes within your area. Take a look through your customer’s list and use their zip codes as a way to create a locational boundary. Now, create ads that fulfill the intent of why someone logs into Facebook. If you’re a real estate agent, build a lead magnet like a report on undervalued neighborhoods in the area. Make it exciting and educational. Ask them to opt in, and then you can start communicating with them through email. Use that as your way to nurture your audience and sell to them later. Whatever you do, don’t send them to your homepage that has information on your clinic. I can guarantee you that you’ll burn more money than you make. The last strategy is local networking. All right Sure. It’s not exactly an online strategy, but I want you to take this seriously.

Speaker 1: Gary Vaynerchuk preaches about this all the time. It’s called Biz Dev. The concept is simple. You find noncompeting businesses in your area and you guys cross-promote each other’s businesses.

Taking an afternoon to walk into local stores in your area. Let’s say you’re a florist in a busy part of town. Go to the chiropractor across the street and just say to them: Hey, I’m Sam and I owned the flower shop across the street. I personally would like to introduce myself now that we are going to be living by each other. I thought we could actually help each other out. Would you mind if I left some business cards here for your front desk I’d be happy to do the same for you with any promotional material you have.

Now, you might think this is a dumb idea but look at the local businesses in your area. You have probably seen these before, and it’s because people got out of their chairs in, started networking with other local businesses. Now, if you want to take this even a step farther than go to related companies where you can share customers so that flower shop might go to a wedding venue or a funeral home and you’d promote those businesses to in your shop. Now, this strategy is going to help you build relationships with other business owners in your area. That’s a good thing. Now, if you take action on these four strategies, I promise you that your tiny little boutique will grow to be the next big thing in town.

Now I want to hear from you, which of these local business marketing techniques are you going to use? They’re all equally compelling, and all you have to do is commit to doing it, and I hope you will.

Steps to Being Successful in the World of E-Com

E-commerce is now worth over $200 billion dollars per year in the United States, and it is because of this success that more and more entrepreneurs are heading online to seek their fortunes. Unfortunately, over 80% of those who start out end up failing within the first 18 months. In this post, we are going to discuss tips and tricks for making an e-commerce business not only run effectively, but also successfully. Depending on the success of this post, we may turn it into a mini series and go into a lot more detail on each point. For now however, it will just be a broad overview.

Choosing a Product

Choosing the right product is the foundation upon-which your empire will be created. Pick a bad one, and you could find yourself in trouble down the line. To pick the right product you will need to know what sells and, to know what sells, you will need to do research. Look into all the areas your chosen product is selling online and, more importantly, how built up your competition is. Does their website suck? Do they write poorly? Are their images bad? All of these are cracks in the armor that you should be looking for that, when exploited, will make you stand out above your competitors.

Sourcing a Product

Once you have figured out what product you want to sell and taken a look at your competitors, you will need to figure out a way to create the product itself. There are a number of resources for finding product suppliers you can check out online, but that is not all you will need to do. You will also have to find a way to move your product to the shipping warehouses where it will be stored before being sent to customers. The best way to do this is through a customs clearance and import company, which you can find plenty of online as well.

Setting up a Shop

Once you have found a product, a supplier, and a way to ship it into the country, you will need to create a place for customers to buy it. One of the best online platforms for selling digital goods and creating super simple, great looking websites is the Shopify platform. We recommend getting your brand set up on there, adding your products, and then proceeding on to the last step.

Getting Traffic

Generating traffic is one of the most difficult things internet marketers must do, but is crucial to any success online. You could be the next Ferarri, but with nobody to see your products, it does not mean anything. Traffic is a huge category in and of itself, so we recommend checking out this blog, who have dedicated an immense amount of time discussing different exposure gaining methods for Shopify stores.