Internet is a great place to grow a local visibility tfor a wider audience. More and more local businesses are looking for new opportunities on the web to drive targeted audience to their physical shops. But how to develop this new visibility when you start from scratch?
Create a website
It can seem logical but many local businesses think that a presence on social media, market places or directories is enough. In fact, a website is the best solution to gather your audience around your brand identity and values, build your SEO and so drive traffic to your physical business. One of the best option is to create a website with WordPress. This CMS is quite easy to use for non-experts as it can provide a great visual for a few technical skills at a few cost. Obviously if you are looking for something efficient, I could just recommend you to work with an expert.
Create a community on social media
Social media are great tools to engage and federate a community around your local business. From your existing clients, you can extend this community to potential clients. On one hand, this is a great tool to recruit new clients, prospects and attract them to your business. On the other hand, you can also retain your actual customers by following them and offering them special offers.
Social media are about stories. Make sure to create great content that tell stories and not just share basic promotional contents. Your clients want to find your identity on these channels. You can also use Facebook Ads or Twitter Ads to boost faster your community.
Rank your business on Google Plus Local
This is great to ensure a better rankings toward a targeted audience directly on Google. These kind of pages are well ranked and offer a great visibility. You can thus push your most important informations on these pages likes hours, description, photos, reviews, etc. We have written an article about how to boost your local SEO with these local pages. Keep in mind that you have to include your most strategic keywords to optimize the power of your page.
Write content regularly
Content is the best solution to become visible and appeal an audience. You thus must define a content strategy through a blog for instance where you could share information, articles about your business, your expertises, your news and your tips. People are looking for valuable and qualitative content that can provide them extra value.
Creating content will help you to base your expertise, to boost your SEO with targeted keywords.
Maximise store-to-web
You have creating a website and a community and this is working pretty well. But have you maximise your local potential? In fact, many professionals forget to use their physical business advantages. Your local business is a great place to drive audience to your online presence. And this is pretty qualitative since it catches your existing clients! Try to push forward your website and social media accounts within your local business.
Do you have other tips you want to share with us? Leave us a comment.
