5 Top Internet Marketing Tips to Ensure Success for Local Businesses

If you have a local business, you’ll definitely want other people to know about it. The Internet can be a huge help to your local business success.

More than eighty percent of consumers use information they find online to evaluate a local business before they make a purchase. If you tap into successful Internet marketing strategies, you can spread the word about your business and establish a place for yourself online so those 80% looking online will see your business.

The biggest problem is that many business owners don’t understand the nuances of online marketing for their local business. However, once you get some of the basic ideas down, you can get a leg up on your competition with a great internet presence for your local business.

These five tips can help you get started:

1. Your Website Must Be Simple To Navigate

To start, you must get a website published online. Consumers frequently head to a company’s website before they visit the establishment. At a minimum, they are searching for contact information, hours of operation and directions.

It is important to create a professional website that visitors to your site can easily navigate to get the right information about your company’s products and services.

If a website is too complicated, your conversion rate is going to suffer.

Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to go over budget to create an incredible website. There are some free and inexpensive templates that you can use if you don’t have the budget for a professional website yet.

If the idea of setting up your own website is overwhelming, think about working with a professional. In the end, the one of the most pressing requirements is that the site is simple to navigate.

2. Your Domain Name Should Be Relevant

The domain name you choose should be relevant to your local business niche and relate well to your business overall. You’ll have to decide if branding your company is more important to you by having a domain name similar to your company name, or will your domain name reflect local search keywords in your city – www.yourcityhousepainters.com.

For example, our local moving company, Moving Day has the domain movingday.net which is good for branding our company and is relevant with local searches because of the word “moving.”

Either way, your domain name choice should be a common-sense choice that lets customers know about your business even before they visit your website.3. Remember That SEO Is Important

3. Remember That SEO Is Important

Search engines are important to this entire process. Make sure you include plenty of content using relevant keywords on your website, so that people who need your goods or services are able to find your site because it ranks well with search engines. Think about what someone would search for if they needed your products or services. Those are your keywords or phrases.

This is an important part of the entire process, so take your time and really think through your selections. Also, be careful not to put in so many keywords that your readers think your content is gibberish – that’s called keyword stuffing. Ideally you’d like to have one page per product or service using one keyword.

Search engines can also penalize you down if you use excessive keywords, and you won’t show up as high in the rankings.

Finally, sign up for a Google Business page. It doesn’t cost anything and you pretty much can’t build a business these days without Google.

4. Email Is Your Friend

If your Internet marketing plan is solid, you could generate a lot of attention. If you want to make money, you must have an email list. This may not be something that you’ve heard of before, but email marketing provides a very high return on your investment, more so than anything else you do on the Internet.

Emailing is one way to show potential customers a little more about who you are and what you do. It’s similar to word of mouth advertising, which is a time tested method of getting attention for your business.

5. Establish A Presence On Social Media

So many people are on social media sites, and it is important that you are, too. For example, Snapchat and Facebook are two platforms that you need to look into. Set up a free business page and start garnering likes and follows.

If you do this along with setting up a blog, you can really get a lot of information out about what you are doing. Also, with social media, you can develop a rapport with your customers, which leads to loyalty. Just make sure that you interact positively with your community and that you do so often. You don’t want to set up a page and just let it sit.

These simple tips for using the internet to promote your local business online can provide a solid foundation for building your business for years to come.

In addition to delighting your customers so they’ll give you great reviews online, promoting your local business on the internet is key to your success.