Small and medium businesses with a physical location as well as national store chains can benefit from local search marketing. Today, bricks and mortar businesses have a number of options to connect online to offline. You can create seamless experiences for your customers and ensure your business gets found.
How do I promote my local business on search?
When devising a local search strategy, business owners and marketers should start by determining objectives first – decide what your business objectives are, what results you hope to achieve through search and how much you wish to invest in your local marketing efforts.
Once you’ve decided you objectives and targets, you can focus your efforts on one or both of these strategies:
Local SEO
Optimising your local business listing and your website will help you to reach potential customers by improving your organic search visibility for location-specific queries.
Local PPC
Pay per click advertising with a specific geographical target will place your business prominently on the search engine results pages when potential customers search for your services.
How much does local search marketing cost?
Every business is unique and our local search marketing services are designed to fit your business needs and scale as your business grows. The cost of Local SEO typically involves a small one-off setup fee. As your business grows, we then charge a very reasonable fee to optimise additional locations. Some factors we consider when quoting for local SEO costs include:
- Do you need to create a listing on Google Business Profile, or does it need to be updated?
- How many locations does your business have?
- Are the products and services offered in each location unique?
When advertising your business to a local audience, there is no minimum budget. We charge a small setup fee and advise clients to set an initial budget that they feel comfortable with. Once you see a return on this initial investment, you can accordingly increase your budget to extend your reach and attract more customers.
If you would like a detailed price quote for your business, please get in touch.
Do I need a website?
The short answer is “no”.
Local organic listings on Google are pulled from Google Business Profile. Optimising your listing, updating it regularly, and acquiring authoritative local citations can suffice to get your business ranked highly for local search queries.
Paid search traffic can also be directed to your Google local listing, a Facebook Page, Instagram profile or even a TikTok profile.
Therefore, you do not need a website to build a local search presence. However, having one can help strengthen your brand message and provide customers valuable information about your business.
Where will my business be listed?
Local search marketing can get your business in front of customers on regular search engine results pages as well as on Google Maps. Within the organic search results, well-optimised local business listings will appear as below:
Location extensions appear within ads above or below organic search results, as seen below:
On Google Maps, you can have organic and ad listings appear one below the other, as seen below:
How will local search help my business?
Local search marketing can help you attract new customers by increasing your online presence. Through local SEO and PPC you will improve your online presence, get more customers and increase sales. Ultimately what we help you achieve is letting consumers in the local area know your business exists and drive footfall to your premises.
- Increase traffic – increasing your online presence will tell Google searchers that your business offers the products or services they are looking for
- Increase footfall – as more people find out about your offers, more people will come to your business location
- Increase sales – growing awareness in the local community and more people visiting your business will lead to more sales
How long will it take for local search marketing to work?
With local SEO the time it takes to notice results depends on your competition and how optimised your local listing is. It can take a day or two to optimise a business that is already listed, but if you want to create a brand new local listing it can take three to four weeks. By contrast, if you are trying to optimise an entirely new website then that can take three to twelve months.
PPC advertising is a lot more immediate and will take effect the moment your campaigns are made live.
How can I get more customer reviews?
Once your local listings have been set up correctly, it is important to build trust in your brand. Reviews and ratings are a great way to show off to your customers that others who visited your business had great things to say about you. Simple ways to get reviews and ratings for your business include:
- Adding your business to review websites
- Include links on your site asking users to leave a review
- Emailing customers to ask them to rate your business
We can help you devise a strategy and campaigns to get more reviews and ratings, which can help further promote your business.
Make sure you add the most positive testimonials to a page on your website!
About the Author
AccuraCast is a data & tech-led B2B digital marketing agency focused on international growth. Over 20 years of expertise in paid search & display advertising (PPC), search engine optimisation (SEO), and social media marketing for ambitious B2B and B2B2C brands. Offices in London, New York and Madrid.
