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2 5 Super-Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for LOCAL Businesses Contents: 1. Manage Your Reputation - It is being eroded online without you even knowing it! 2. Harness the Local Internet - Use the internet to generate leads and customers in your area. 3. Google+ Local Pages - Google has already created a mini-website for most local businesses! 4. Employ Mobile Technology - Your local customers are using the mobile internet, so should you! 5. Using Social Media Effectively - You've heard this buzzword, now it's time to use it properly.

3 1. Manage Your Reputation Did you know that your customers are leaving reviews for local businesses on countless review sites all over the internet? These reviews tend to rank highly in the search engine (such as Google), but what does that mean for your business? When prospective customers are looking for a type of product or service locally, they go to Google and search for businesses in their areas that can provide what they are looking for. If you have a website, you want those people to find it by searching in this manner, but if review websites rank better than your website then you may have a major PR problem on your hands. This means that prospective customers are reading the reviews of your past customers, before making a purchase decision. The fact is that this type of social proof is one of the most powerful influencing factors for prospects' making up their minds. You no-doubt run a very well-managed business, and keep most of your customers happy most of the time. But as you know, mistakes do happen when dealing with customers, and it is extremely difficult to keep everyone 100% satisfied at all times. The big problem is the fact that unhappy customers are far more likely to go out of their way to write a bad review than happy customers are to take the time to give you a good review. This is a big flaw in the public review system, which is largely anonymous. What this means is that your online reputation can be heavily eroded by a very small minority of your past customers. This is your hard-earned reputation, but if you have no control over it then it can easily be damaged, and unfairly cost you new customers, without you even knowing. One strategy that can go a long way to improving your online reputation is to respond to your reviews. Respond to all of them, not just the bad reviews. Thank the good reviewers for their kind words and ask them to call again. People reading the reviews will see this.

4 But most important is to respond to the bad reviews and attempt to make it right. Apologise directly for whatever they are complaining about, and avoid confrontational language. Also offer to rectify the issue: for example a restaurant could tell the unhappy customer that they had new staff on that day, and that if the person came in again they would get preferential treatment and a free dessert from the menu. You need to be creative, but most importantly be honest and open in your attempt to respond to the review. It is an open, public forum. People are reading the reviews anyway, you can't help that, so you need to make a showing as the business representative. What you will find is that the public reading the reviews will now likely remember your kind and caring response more than they will remember the bad review. They will also be made to feel as if the complainant's experience is a very rare occurrence, and that the business now knows about the problem, making it much less likely to happen to them if they visit. Another important thing to do is to fill in your online profiles. Perform a Google search for your business and find all of the online reviews that you can, then fill in your missing information on the sites, wherever possible - your business name, description, upload images, add contact details, etc. This will improve your online presence and will actually increase the search engine rankings of your main website as well, as these "citations" tend to do. Remember to ask your customers for reviews, so that you can also increase the number of good reviews online. A good local marketing consultant can help you to structure your reputation improvement and management strategies, so that you can ensure the best return for your investment of time. They can also manage your reputation for you, and use a number of other strategies not mentioned, to improve your online reputation, which will result in more prospects becoming customers.

5 2. Harness the Local Internet The internet is a mystery to many local businesses, when it comes to trying to use it to generate more leads and paying customers. The truth is, when you use the internet correctly for lead generation, you are able to just focus on prospective customers in your area who are actually searching for your specific product or service. In fact, people performing local online searchers are far more likely to make a purchase decision. Here is an example: A person searching for "accountants" could just be looking for general information about accountants. But someone searching for "accountants in Sydney" are far more likely to be looking for a local accountant in order to make an enquiry or use their services. When you look at it this way, the prospect of using the internet to generate local customers is a lot more manageable and not so daunting. You probably already have a website, but do you know how many customers it has generated for you over the last month? 6 months? year? Most businesses have websites but do not know how to use them as effective online customer-generation tools. A local business website should generate more customers for that business as its primary function. This can be ensured in two main ways. Firstly the website should be effective in turning prospects (web users) into paying customers. Then secondly the website should be easily found on search engines through effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), which means that more prospects will find you and become customers. One tip to get found on search engines is to optimise your website better. Here's a brief guide to doing so. When Google decides which websites to present to online searchers, it used "bots" to scan the title and content of the websites. By optimising the text and title of your website you can let Google know that your website is highly-relevant to certain search terms. For example: when people are searching for accountants in Sydney they do not search for businesses by their names. They will search for "accountants in sydney" instead of "smith and associates". New customers do not yet know your business' name. So what that accountant could do is change their website name from "Smith and Associates" to something like: "Smith and associates, accountants in Sydney". They should update their text in the website to include those types of local phrases as well.

6 A good local marketing consultant can optimise your website for the complicated issue of SEO, as well as help it be able to convert prospects into customers much more effectively.

7 3. Google+ Local Pages You may or may not be aware that Google is very active in helping local businesses to find more customers online. They have created many tools, and given many advantages, in order to help local businesses specifically to improve their online presence. The most exciting benefit that Google has given to local business are Google+ Local pages. These are content- and media-rich online business listing, which act more like mini websites. They are complete with customer reviews (where many customers are already leaving reviews), photos, videos, map listing and other information about the business such as a short description, operating hours, etc. These pages are integrated with the Google+ social network, and they rank very highly on Google's search engine, which means that they can add a lot more SEO value to any business who uses their Google+ Local Page. Here is the big opportunity for local businesses: Google has already created these pages for most businesses, but only a relative handful of business know this. In fact, over 95% of these listings remain completely unclaimed, the businesses completely unaware that they exist, or that their customers are already leaving reviews on these listings that are being read by countless other web users. So what is the benefit of claiming your Google+ Local page? Once claimed you can respond to reviews, the benefits of which have already been explained. You can upload your own multimedia and correct, or improve, the business information. You can also link it to your website and increase the number of website visitors that your website receives. A good local business marketing consultant can not only help you claim your listing, but also optimise it for the search results, so that more local customers find it. They can also help you manage the listing and link it to various other aspects of your online marketing.

8 4. Employ Mobile Technology One of the biggest advantages that local businesses have is the fact that they are locationbased. This gives them an opportunity to employ mobile marketing strategies, because of the inherent mobile/location-based nature of this kind of marketing. This technology can seem daunting to many, but here are a few examples of how it can not only be easy to use, but also completely free to implement. By 2013 more than half of internet users will access the internet though mobile devices. If your website does not display correctly on a mobile device, you are excluding over half of your prospective customers. It is best to ensure that you have a mobile-optimised website, in order to future-proof your business. In fact, mobile internet users spend more time using apps than mobile websites, so it also makes a lot of sense for all businesses to consider having their own mobile application. 5. Using Social Media Effectively Social media is a big buzzword in recent years. You may have heard that your business NEEDS to be using Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Google+, etc. The truth is, not every business needs to be using social media, but local businesses specifically can benefit from social media marketing. By garnering a loyal fan base, you can

9 use it to promote your business by word of mouth and amplify your sales message, all with little or no expense. As a business owner you know all too well that loyal customers are worth their weight in gold. Different types of business can benefit from each of the major social media platforms. Facebook and Twitter work well for businesses with a high customer turnover, while businesses with a high customer value benefit more from LinkedIn and blogging. Although it is true that all businesses can benefit from blogging and YouTube, in terms of the exposure and SEO advantage that they can provide. There are many marketing "tricks" that social media can be used for to encourage referrals and keep your fan base engaged. One example is Facebook apps. A business wanting to promote a special offer can issue a digital coupon through Facebook, which can also be advertised on Twitter or the business' website. When customers want to redeem the coupon (which they can do on their mobile phone, thereby employing mobile marketing as well), the app can force them to share it with all of their own social media connections, or "friends". This ensure that you get repeat customers, and free word-of-mouth marketing at the same time. That is just one example! A good local marketing consultant can evaluate you specific business' actual marketing needs, and assess whether or not social media is the right strategy.

10 For more information, or a demonstration of how local marketing strategies could benefit your specific business, please contact me at any time. Initial consultations are always free of any cost or obligation. Zuzana Hajachova St. George Web Design zuzana@stgeorgewebdesign.com.au Phone: (02)