by Spectrum Interactive Group | Apr 4, 2018 | Curated Content, Local Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Tips |
This curated content was originally published on 03 Apr, 2017 via:
http://www.womenonbusiness.com/simple-ways-market-business-local-community/
Sponsored by Got Print:
We are all familiar with the concepts of online marketing. From working social media channels to sending out periodic emails to old and new customers, online marketing is quick, easy, and relatively cheap. There is no denying that social media and other online marketing strategies are successful, but have you considered the effectiveness of offline marketing?
Offline marketing is not for everyone. If you provide SEO services or you are a copywriter, you probably find most of your new clients in the online world, and a website is more cost-effective than printing leaflets for distribution in the local neighborhood. However, in many instances, offline marketing is worth the effort, as some of your neighbors could easily become clients.
Spending time on social media, paying for PPC advertising, and building an attractive website is going to pay dividends, but don’t overlook the fact that you need local customers, preferably people who live a short distance away. To this end, it is worth spending some time and money on local advertising, so what are your options?
Yard Signs
Yard signs are an excellent way to advertise your business to local audiences. A prominent yard sign will attract attention and let local people know that you provide a potentially valuable service. You may need to ensure this is permitted if you’re a renter or your property is subject to any covenants.
Car Stickers
Do you drive around the local area regularly? If so, custom stickers for your vehicle will attract attention and draw in some new clients. Stickers can be used to build brand recognition and advertise services. Go small and discrete for a car or large and bold for a van. Use your company logo for maximum effect, and don’t forget to include a telephone number so people can contact you when they are out and about.
Leaflet Drops
Leaflets cost very little to print in bulk, and if you have the time, it’s worth pounding the sidewalk and delivering leaflets over a few days. The majority will be discarded, but you may just secure some new clients.
Newspaper Advertising
Newspaper advertising is less effective than it once was, but in smaller communities where a popular newspaper serves the local community, a small ad could reach people who might not know your business exists. This is particularly true of seniors, who often rely on community newspapers for their news and local information.
Store Noticeboards
Place a poster or some business cards on a store noticeboard. Customers often check these on their way into and out of a store. For maximum effectiveness, target stores most likely to be used by your customers.
Local Networking Events
Networking events are not just useful for building contacts and making B2B connections. They are also good for promoting small businesses in the local community. A quick conversation over coffee could yield a new client.
Don’t forget about word of mouth advertising. And be sure to perfect your elevator pitch – you never know when it might come in handy.
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This article was originally published on 03 Apr, 2017 by .
The original article appeared here:
http://www.womenonbusiness.com/simple-ways-market-business-local-community/
by Spectrum Interactive Group | Apr 3, 2018 | Curated Content, Email Marketing, Local Marketing, Marketing |
Originally published on 03 Apr, 2017 via:
https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/04/03/5-easy-ways-to-launch-a-local-email-marketing-strategy/
Email marketing is alive and well in 2017, with over 269 billion emails being sent every day.
Unfortunately, according to Email Monday, of these 269 billion only 22% of retail emails are opened. This is significantly less than the open rate of 34% garnered by other types of emails.
It’s also important to note that of the emails that are opened by consumers, 45% are done via a mobile device. In fact, email marketing is becoming synonymous with mobile marketing.
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If your company’s email marketing campaign isn’t seeing success and you find yourself in the 78% of retail emails that are being sent to the junk folder without a second glance, you might want to rethink your strategy. Creating or updating your campaign to focus more on local marketing could be the answer you’ve been looking for.
There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the future of email marketing is hyperlocal. Below we’ve compiled some tips for how to create a successful localized email marketing strategy.
1. Make sure your offers are tailored to your customers so they can actually use them
One strategy to use when creating a local email marketing campaign is to send out coupons and offers for specific geographic areas.
Sending coupons is a great way to get consumers to open your emails, but if you consistently send offers that they can’t realistically take advantage of, they’re going to get annoyed and eventually start sending those emails straight to the trash.
Do some research and figure out how your audience best likes to redeem offers. Is it in person in a brick and mortar store, online via a voucher, etc.? If you have to differentiate your emails and offers based on various target groups, then take the extra time to do that.
Your audience will thank you by consistently opening the emails and taking advantage of the coupons you’re sending.
2. Add a personal touch to email campaigns, and reach out in person whenever possible
No one wants to receive an automatic email that seems to have been written by a robot—it’s impersonal and boring and won’t succeed in engaging your audience. Even if you include a great offer, chances are consumers will stop reading before they even notice it.
Something as simple as a border or a photo around an image can immediately tip the viewer off that it is an automated email. You can try to make emails sound as personal as possible by sending emails from the name of someone in the company, as opposed to the business name itself, and formatting the email in a more natural way.
AWeber.com suggests sharing emails on social media since it’s easy for people to like, comment, and share them with others. One of the businesses they work with, Vault Brewing, also saw success when they went out into the community to look for email subscribers. They asked people in person at their business location and at live events via surveys and subscriber apps.
They saw much greater success with their email marketing campaign after they incorporated these personal touches, and it’s also a good way to connect with the community and learn more about your target audience.
In the example above, which was sent to a family member of mine, you can see that the email is certainly automated, but that isn’t completely obvious at first glance. This gets you to open the email and engage before making any assumptions, so I thought they did a great job.
Although this may not necessarily be targeted locally, it gives itself a “local” feel by creating an inclusive environment.
3. Integrate social media to spread the word
As I stated above, social media is a great way to connect with a local audience and spread the word about your email marketing campaign. If your business has a newsletter that you email to subscribers, consider posting parts of it on social media with a link to sign up for your email campaign.
Post offers and rewards on social platforms to encourage people to sign up for emails, and get to know your audience better by investigating what groups and communities they participate in socially online. Just make sure you don’t offer the exact same incentives and materials on social media that you do via email, or consumers won’t have a reason to subscribe to your campaign.
As far as local impact goes, social media is actually very localized when shared by individuals as opposed to businesses. Be sure to share these posts directly with those in your local filters. 
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4. Use a subject line that relates to the local area
When crafting an email, how much thought do you put into the subject line? Of course you want it to be engaging so people will be tempted to open it, but have you thought much past that?
Businesses who are focusing on hyperlocal email marketing have suggested using a specific state or city name in the subject line of emails being sent out in order to make national content more relevant for a local audience. According to ImaginePub.com, this simple strategy has the potential to increase open rates by as much as 7%.
Even if you don’t see an improvement at this same rate, most likely your open rates and click-through rates will increase to some degree when you deliberately target audiences in a specific geographic area.
5. Segment your list by language and region for more targeted marketing
Don’t be afraid if a section of your target audience speaks a language other than English, or resides in an unfamiliar location. Instead, embrace these differences and target your marketing to meet them.
Campaignmonitor.com says that incorporating this strategy is a no brainer, seeing as how the Localization Industry Standards Association carried out a study that showed $25 was returned for every $1 invested in localization.
First you’ll want to survey your customers to make sure you have accurate data before segmenting your email list(s). Modify your subject lines based on the criteria from your different lists, and don’t forget to consider your calls-to-action. What works in one language and one region might not have the same effect somewhere else.
If all of this seems a bit overwhelming, consider working with a localization specialist to help get you started. There are also several programs that can help automate your email campaign and free up some of your time so you can focus more on your localization efforts.
The takeaway
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into launching a local email marketing strategy. The tips above are just some of the ways you can localize your email marketing; there are many more ways you can do this depending on how much effort and time you’re willing to put in.
I suggest taking it one step at a time, incorporating one or two strategies, and monitoring their success before going further. Launch 27 recommends many more helpful strategies and case studies in this article published on their blog.
Also keep in mind that when constructing a localized email campaign, don’t forget about best practices associated with email marketing. You always want to ask a customer’s permission before signing them up for email, and you should also offer them an “opt-out” option as well. NoRiskSEO goes into more detail about these strategies and offers other ways to take your marketing campaign to the next level.
Image credit 1-3: Screenshots taken by author March, 2017
Image credit 4: 1.bp.blogspot.com
Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer for NoRiskSEO, a full service SEO agency, and a contributor to SEW. You can connect with Amanda on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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This article was originally published on 03 Apr, 2017 by Amanda DiSilvestro.
The original article appeared here:
https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/04/03/5-easy-ways-to-launch-a-local-email-marketing-strategy/
by Spectrum Interactive Group | Apr 2, 2018 | Local Marketing, Marketing |
Originally published on 31 Mar, 2017 via:
http://searchengineland.com/newest-addition-marketing-mix-proximity-272062
Any marketer worth their salt, or at least one who has managed to stay awake during Marketing 101, can rattle off a long list of marketing mix “Ps.” You know what I’m talking about: product, price, place, promotion, people, processes and physical evidence.
Unfortunately, those old pillars of marketing don’t quite hold up under the weight of today’s digital marketing needs. Our aging mnemonic sorely needs a renovation. It’s time we add proximity into the mix.
Digital puts you in the center of the map
Long gone are the days of unfolding a paper map to find out where you are and where you want to go. Back then, when you ran off the edge of the map, you either got a new map or assumed that “here be monsters.”
You’ll find no edges on today’s digital maps. You are limited only by the power of your zoom and the reach of your click. By default, you are the center of the digital map. The world fills in around you, depending on the whim of your search.
Proximity — the distance from the user to any given location — is a heavily weighted ranking factor for all “near me” searches. Only when you specifically move the focal point from yourself to an area without you in it does proximity seem to loosen its grip on rankings.
And it makes sense that digital maps should be organized this way. Something closer to you is usually easier to get to than something farther away. For marketers, the further a potential customer is from a store, the less likely it is that the customer will visit the location.
Since most people find businesses through local search and digital maps, proximity needs to be a major aspect of every marketing strategy. If you get everything else right but fail to optimize for proximity, you’ll have a hard time leading customers to your brick-and-mortar locations.
Local SEO: Tipping the scale of proximity in your favor
You can’t control where your customers are when they search, but you can put a finger on the scale of proximity to help you rank above another similarly distanced location in your business category.
How? You have two options: You either purchase a higher rank with PPC, or you optimize for organic and hope that the user is searching in an area wide enough that the map needs to filter out locations.
Google and the other major search platforms are making it harder to win the organic hustle with each passing year. But there are still things you can do that will help you improve your rankings on the map.
First, give yourself a chance to show up in local search results by doing the basics. Make sure that your location information is accurate and properly distributed to all the major location data aggregators. Specifically, your name, address and phone number (NAP) need to be accurate, and your geocoordinates for each location should lead customers to the right place.
But the bare minimum doesn’t really cut it anymore. It’s 2017, after all. If you’re relying on the incompetence of your competitors to win at local search, you’re in trouble.
So how do you tip the scales in your favor?
You increase the weight of your local credibility and authority.
Local citations, reviews and Google My Business attributes
Proximity’s influence diminishes as the map zooms out. The more area within your field of vision, the more important it is to filter out locations on the map to avoid clutter. If you’re only looking at the area covered by a city block, good luck trying to shake proximity’s influence. However, if you zoom out just a little, other ranking factors increasingly come into play.
Recently, Andrew Shotland and Dan Liebson gave a presentation about local search ranking factors at SMX West. Some of the most important factors they uncovered outside of proximity were local citations, reviews and optimizing for Google My Business (GMB).
Local citations are important in that they give Google a strong indication that your location is where you say it is and that you have enough clout to attract backlinks.
Meanwhile, reviews help establish the local authority of your brand. The more people vouch for your location with positive reviews, the more comfortable Google feels about sending customers your way.
Finally, Google My Business is critical for helping your cause in local search. This is especially true for filling out your GMB attributes. We’ve begun to see the proliferation of Google My Business fields for each business type. For example, a restaurant will have the opportunity to fill in fields ranging from payment options, takeout, delivery, patio seating and anything else you’d want to know about a location.
You can expect GMB attributes to become a significant ranking signal going forward, thanks to digital assistants and voice search. Why? Because digital assistants and voice search are allowing for much more discerning answers when it comes to helping us find locations.
Voice search and digital assistants
The way we ask questions is changing. Thanks to digital assistants and voice search, when we talk to Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or Siri, we give these search engines much more information than we typically do with a typed search.
We’re often terse when typing in search queries, mainly because we grew up having to do precise keyword matching if we wanted to see relevant search results.
But Google and the other search engines are getting much better at understanding the meaning of words. More importantly, they’re getting better at interpreting user intent. As a result, exact keyword matching is no longer as important — much to the chagrin of advertisers. However, this allows questions and answers to be much more nuanced.
The growing intelligence of search engines is fueling the rise of voice search. Instead of typing a simple query on Google like nearby Mexican restaurants, we’re much more likely to get long-winded with voice search and say, “Okay Google, where’s a good nearby Mexican restaurant with patio seating and a short wait?” Thanks to the blossoming artificial intelligence of search engines, these nuanced questions are becoming much easier for digital assistants to answer.
But just because Google can understand the intent behind more complex questions, it doesn’t mean that Google has the data to answer them. It’s no mystery why Google is crowdsourcing business attributes through Google Maps by asking users about their recent trips to a location. Google is gathering as much information about a location as possible to have the data to answer more nuanced questions.
This presents marketers with an opportunity. If you meet the nuanced criteria of a user’s question by filling out as many applicable attributes as possible in GMB, your location can leapfrog businesses that might be closer but fail to meet the search criteria.
After all, there may be only be a handful of restaurants in an area that meet the criteria of my previous voice search question. Proximity is still a factor, of course, but you at least lessen its tyranny and raise your odds of ranking higher organically.
Final thought
No matter what marketers do, thanks to the way digital maps are organized, it’s hard to escape the influence of proximity on search results. That’s why, even though our list of marketing mix Ps is growing long, it’s time that proximity joins the list.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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This article was originally published on 31 Mar, 2017 by Brian Smith.
The original article appeared here:
http://searchengineland.com/newest-addition-marketing-mix-proximity-272062
