A 6-Step Blueprint for a Successful Local Online Marketing Campaign

A Guide to Marketing Your Local Business

Local businesses have a competitive advantage in their market: no one knows your community better than you do.

Successfully launching and executing a local digital marketing campaign allows small businesses to focus their digital marketing resources on specific regional audiences. Let’s walk through the right strategies to set your local online marketing campaign up for success for more engagements, leads, and—ultimately—more returns.

Why is local digital marketing important for home services companies?

In an era where smartphones are ubiquitous, it’s not far off to expect a homeowner to turn to a Google search whenever they have an issue with their home. That’s why maintaining visibility through digital marketing tactics like search engine optimization, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, web design, and social media marketing become so important.

Success with local business marketing comes from the techniques that optimize search for local audiences and increase online traffic.

The 6-step blueprint for developing your local online marketing strategy

A successful online local marketing program is comprised of a framework of digital marketing tactics that, if properly executed, result in a massive return for your business. Here are six tactics along with the critical roles they play in maximizing your local digital marketing strategies.

Step 1: Gain a holistic view of your business with a brand position audit

It’s easy to get consumed by the day-to-day operations when running your company. A brand audit allows you to take a step back and assess how your company is faring in the marketplace.

By getting a grasp of your brand values and identity, you can get a clearer picture of how your target audience perceives you so you can perfect the foundation of your marketing operations.

A good audit begins with a clear goal or purpose, then collects and analyzes the specific data points relevant to your goal. Lastly, it offers clear methods to test potential solutions and monitor results.

Step 2: Size up the competition with a competitive analysis

By taking stock of your competition’s strategy, you can identify and explore the tactics behind what is working for them—and what gaps they’re leaving in the market. This can help you identify potential opportunities to enhance your own strategy.

Keep in mind, however, that what might work for one company may not work for another, so be judicious during the analysis phase and make sure to constantly monitor any new initiatives.

Step 3: Boost your brand’s visibility with keyword research

Blindly adding words to your website that you assume your target audience is searching for can quickly lead to frustration. A process-driven approach is far more likely to succeed when it involves keyword research.

Effective keyword research can unlock a cache of new terms that are specific to the local audience. In fact, 46% of all Google searches are for a local product or service and 28% of local searches result in a purchase within 24 hours. Knowing what your target audience is looking for can be the difference between being fully booked and struggling to get noticed.

Step 4: Understand your audience persona

When adopting a local online marketing strategy, it’s important to craft specific audience personas. Failing to understand who your most ideal customers are can completely derail all of your other marketing efforts, no matter how strong they are.

A lack of understanding about who your ideal customer is can lead to messaging that turns off your audience. And in a world where reputation is everything, the one you build online spreads faster than ever before.

Conversely, online reviews and testimonials strengthen your reputation and provide critical details about who your best customers are (for more on this, see #6 below). In turn, potential customers will recognize themselves and their own challenges, creating a virtuous loop that only strengthens your business.

Step 5: Choose the right channels

How does your marketing translate across different mediums? In order to effectively market to your customers, you need to meet them where they are online.

Conducting some market research around where your potential customers like to shop and how they make purchasing decisions can greatly inform which channels are most likely to generate a return on investment.

For example, taking a peek into channel analytics like traffic sources can help inform you about which demographics are most likely to be affected by specific content and messaging and where. Once you know this, you’ll know where to spend your marketing dollars and where to put your time and energy.

Step 6: Collect customer reviews

Online customer reviews are influential and reflect how your target market perceives your product or service. This is especially the case with local businesses where user reviews on Yelp or Google can make or break your reputation.

Around 94% of consumers say they have avoided a business because of a negative online review. Additionally, 80% of consumers say the star ratings they trust most are always above four stars. Anything under that is likely to drive customers away.

Collecting these reviews can give you a fantastic insight into what your customers value.

Successful local online marketing strategies in practice

What strategies are businesses in the home services and home improvement sectors implementing, and—more importantly—what are the results? Here at Socius Marketing, our team of digital experts knows what it takes to move the needle, to transform a standard marketing plan into an effective, multi-channel strategy. Let’s take a look at some results…

Award-winning website redesign boosted website traffic by 90%

Reborn Cabinets hired Socius Marketing to initiate a complete digital overhaul that consisted of website infrastructural changes for greater optimization in addition to Google Ads and paid social media marketing.

As a result, the company saw website traffic double and conversions grow year-over-year, averaging 3,000 per month.

A Conversion-centered website increased conversions by 144%

NEWPRO, a home improvement solutions company specializing in energy-efficient renovations, needed a cost-efficient solution for a stronger digital presence. Socius Marketing helped them achieve this goal with a conversion-centered website redesign for mobile optimization, microsites, SEO, paid search, and social media.

Through these digital initiatives, the company managed to increase PPC ad conversions by 76% and organic site conversions across product lines by 144% in just one year.

Modern website and strategic PPC yield one million new net leads

In order to stay competitive in the constantly shifting online landscape, BEE Window needed to implement a complete website overhaul that ensured ease of use and navigation for users, mobile optimization, and fresh content distribution.

With the help of Socius Marketing, the newly optimized website and new PPC plan resulted in a 55% increase in site traffic, 62% improved page views, and new net leads doubled to one million.

There are no shortcuts on the road to success in marketing—but, with Socius, there’s an expressway.

There are many components to developing a successful local business marketing campaign. A framework for developing one that relies on understanding your local audience as well as testing and iterating on your campaigns can be the difference between you and the competition.

Social media and Google have exciting tools you can use to take advantage of to help grow your business. Figuring them out is a different story.