How to Promote Your Business Online

Most ‘brick and mortar’ businesses these days expand their customer base by taking advantage of the internet.  However, they sometimes lighten up on promoting themselves locally.  The following are some tips for reaching those customers right around the corner.  After all, local customers are every bit as important as national customers, if not more so.

Where Are They on the Map?

In addition to having a business listed in the yellow pages, businesses should take advantage of Google My Business and list themselves that way.  With seventy percent of the world using Google for their searches, it is well worth their time to list with the search engine.  The majority of their traffic may well come via Google, as well as walking in the front door.

Get Reviews

There are a variety of platforms that keep customer reviews of businesses.  Good reviews on Yelp, Google, and Facebook can make, rather than break, a business.  Since most people rely on the opinions of others, someone at the business should pay close attention to the reviews and respond to them accordingly.  There is little worse than leaving bad reviews for all to see.  They need to show that they respond quickly and politely to any issues that arise. 

Localized SEO

Customers not only must rank well nationally, with respect to SEO, but they must be able to rank high locally, preferably in the first position of the first page.  That applies to all the major search engines.  The ultimate goal is to bring in more customers, not just to be on the first page, so they need to have their website in good working order to show their description and related functions listed properly.   

Social Media Marketing

There are several good social media platforms, but the best is Facebook currently.  It is simple to create a nice company page on Facebook, and from there interact with customers near and far.  The important part about Facebook is how interconnected people can be and how effectively those connections can take place.  It is not just a list of customers, but an interconnected list of customers.  It is critical to have a good footprint on Facebook in order to reach your customers.

The Power of Video

In this day and age people want more than just reading.  They want to experience things with sound and movement.  Video is a powerful tool for showing a customer the business.  It is the closest thing to being there for the customer, short of actually being there.

Mobile Traffic

The mobile market is growing every year, with billions of customers.  There is no ignoring mobile media and its reach.  The customer should have a website that is optimized for display and function on a variety of mobile devices.  In addition, the customer can have an app that is used specifically with their business. 

Although there is more to know about local promotion of a business, these tips should be a great reminder of where to focus one’s energy.  You can find more great tips on salespromotions.org.