Local businesses, like any other business, need a sound marketing strategy to effectively attract and convert new customers. Everyone knows that. A consistent reason why so many local businesses have underperforming marketing strategies is that the person executing the marketing plan is simply not on the same page as the business owner.
As a marketer, I found the results of a 2021 local search industry survey pretty insightful. It shows (among other interesting tidbits) the most valuable services for local marketing success according to the local marketers vs. the local businesses.
For you local business owners, I’m going to share some key takeaways and add a little more color behind “why” local marketers, like myself, may value a particular service over another.
Here are the results that stood out to me –
1. Local marketers value Google My Business and On-site Optimization more than local businesses.
There is a good reason why marketers put more value on these services. They are trying to focus on the foundational elements that help capture more value from all other marketing efforts here. GMB and your website are the primary ways people find your business these days, so let’s make that as easy as possible.
An analogy would be if you had a brick-and-mortar store with a bunch of clothing racks, display signs, and a puddle of spilled coffee blocking your cash register. If someone asked how would you improve sales you’d simply remove the clutter around your register. Stores have clear paths to the cash register to make it as easy as possible for the customer to complete their transaction. It’s no different online.
If you don’t have an optimized GMB profile or website that makes it unnecessarily difficult for potential customers to find your business, understand what you sell, or connect with you.
It’s also helpful to understand the platform we are working with here – Google. The #1 website in the world. Did you know Google’s actual company mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”? – source.
Google invested gobbles of money in creating a FREE platform that helps local businesses organize their information so that people looking for their specific businesses or services can easily find them. If you help them by following their best practices in optimizing your GMB profile and website, Google will reward you.
Coincidently, the same study shows the metrics most valued by businesses are local rankings, google organic rankings, and phone calls. Guess where you should focus if you want to improve local rankings, google organic rankings, and phone calls? That’s right, Google My Business optimization and on-site optimization.
SEO isn’t the sexiest strategy, but the impact it has on all other digital marketing efforts makes them the top valued services by local marketers for a reason.
2. Local businesses value social media greater than local marketers.
Social media is great for building awareness and engaging with your target market. There are three main components local businesses owners should be aware of – Facebook business page optimization, paid social, and publishing content. You could have a very simple social media strategy where you create a Facebook business page and manage it similar to a GMB or Yelp profile. You provide enough info about your business and a clear way for the user to get in touch with you. Super simple.
Or you could try publishing content to generate new business and engage with your audience. This type of strategy is a bigger lift that requires ongoing resources.
To manage a successful social media content campaign, you should have a clear plan as to what you are publishing, who is it intended for, what is the desired result of the post, how you will measure performance, and how it falls within the overarching goal of increasing revenue for your local business. That’s for each post. For how often to post, monthly at the very least and always go for quality (provide as much value to your audience as you comfortable can) over quantity.
Also, unless your target audience is already following your business page, you’ll have to run paid promotions or paid social ads to get your content to display to the audience(s) you’re trying to reach.
I believe the disconnect as to why local businesses value social media more than local marketers is primarily on understanding the impact vs. effort of managing social media vs other channels and tactics. There are very often lower hanging fruits that would return greater ROI for their clients.
3. Local businesses value competitor research more than marketers.
Local business usually owners have their spidey sense turned up to 11 when it comes to local competition. It’s a top concern of most local business owners – how to handle the competition – because they know that everyone is fighting for the same local market share and trying to get the same people to open their wallets at their establishments. Marketers could conduct deep research on competitors’ marketing efforts, website makeup, marketing tools, what the person in charge of marketing eats for breakfast (kidding)… The point is, while competitive research (to a point) is very helpful information to have, it shouldn’t get in the way of focusing on making progress from within.
Alternatively to diving deeper into competitive search, you could try to better understand how you compete and learn through messaging tests – are you higher quality, are you a better experience (quicker), or are you cheaper. Work on being a better YOU vs. positing yourself against specific competitors. Every business is different so what works for them won’t necessarily work for you.
This is why I believe competitor research is considered less valuable to local marketers than businesses. Marketers know that if a local business locks into their competitive advantage and follows optimization and marketing best practices, they will get the best possible outcome for their business.
Conclusion
A good local marketer should be 100% aligned with their client and ultimately want the same thing – increased performance and revenue for the local business. Many of the failed strategies I’ve experienced could have been resolved with better communication and openness to listen and understand what is most valued within a marketing strategy and why. Hopefully, this article helps align local marketers with local businesses so everyone can start seeing better results.