Local marketing is a strategy that consists of focusing marketing efforts on a specific geographic location and whose goal is to win customers in a small but very defined market segment.
Local marketing can make small and medium-sized companies more visible and thus win more customers.
Local marketing, like local SEO, is usually the best option for small and medium-sized businesses that want to adapt their positioning and visibility to a local market using all the tools offered on the internet such as Google My Business and Google Maps or local business directories.
Improving local marketing is a process that consists of several essential elements:
-SEO Local: Local Search Engine Optimization is responsible for finding the keywords that the business or company is positioning itself locally for and continuously attracting search engine visitors to a website in order to improve the company’s visibility and reach more potential customers.
Local service web pages must contain localization keywords and tags so that they always appear when the search is done correctly. In other words, a plumber from Valencia shouldn’t show up when looking for plumbers in Palencia.
It is useful to improve the meta descriptions to reflect the different categories of products or services. You should implement that too local rich results to display the address and telephone number as well as the operating hours.
-Website: The website is an indispensable tool for any company that wants to gain local or national visibility. The website as its own channel should be the center of all marketing measures taken.
Websites have to be simple and meet all the requirements for the Google user experience so that visitors can easily navigate and find what they are looking for. The design has to react and navigate as quickly as possible.
The pages should have links to company profiles from Google My Business, Facebook, Twitter, or an industry-relevant website such as TripAdvisor.
Company directories and lists: Companies must have an optimized profile in the main directories and company lists, be it Google My Business, Google Maps, Yelp, Bing, Google, Apple Maps or certain directories such as TripAdvisor, Booking, OpenTable, Kayak, El Tenedor, etc.
If people search for the company and it doesn’t have a profile on Google or Google My Business, Google can create one. However, these profiles are not complete and often contain incorrect or outdated information. It’s always better to get ahead and Create a profile yourselfComplete all the information and optimize it with high quality images and content adapted for SEO.
Directories are important as they provide customers with a direct means of communication with the company. However, they require a lot of work as the point is not to create a profile and forget about it. They need to be monitored regularly and make relevant changes.
Online reputation management: As we have explained, directories are a direct communication channel between the customer and the company. This means that negative and even destructive criticism can occasionally be received. Part of the work in managing these profiles will be dealing with these types of comments.
First of all, it should always answer a negative comment, as an unanswered comment leaves a bad impression on other users. If it is a well-founded criticism, you should respond in a friendly manner and try to learn about the comment, thanking the time, and apologizing for the mistake. If the criticism is unfounded or destructive, it is best not to respond. If it is a direct attack, you can always contact the director’s administrator to request deletion of the comment.
Comments and ratings are very important. For Google, positive ratings and comments on Google My Business or Google Maps serve as Ranking factor for the company.
Local and social advertising: Both Facebook Ads and Google Ads offer a very affordable advertising system that companies can use to advertise for less than 10 euros a day. This offers a wide range of possibilities for small and medium-sized businesses that have very economical advertising that reaches many more users than conventional advertising.
Ads should be optimized by using the top performing local keywords and targeting them.
