13 of Our Best Local Marketing Tips…Ever!
Much to the relief of pretty much everyone, SoLoMo – a crude portmanteau of Social Local Mobile, and surely one of the most godawful marketing buzzwords in existence – failed to catch on and become part of digital marketing’s already insufferable lexicon.
However, that doesn’t mean that local search also fell by the wayside. If anything, it’s become even more crucial than it was a couple of years ago, especially for brick-and-mortar businesses hoping to drive more foot traffic to their store.
To help you maximize your local visibility, we’ll be looking back at the 13 best local marketing tips we’ve ever published. Some are highly specific while others serve as more of a generalized guide, but if you’re trying to reach new customers in your area, grab a coffee and read on.
Note: If you’re looking for SEO tips specific to COVID-19, check out our post 13 SEO Strategies for SMBs During COVID-19.
1. Create Custom Landing Pages for EVERY SINGLE Campaign
Our first tip is among the most important, but it’s also one that often elicits audible groans from already overworked marketers.
Relevance is key to the success of a locally focused campaign, which means reusing generic or overly broad landing pages could cost you conversions. Per our recommended PPC best practices, creating unique, highly relevant landing pages for EVERY SINGLE campaign is one of the best ways to increase your conversion rates. Yes, there’s a greater upfront overhead in terms of time, but laying the groundwork in this way can pay off big further down the road.
2. Use Facebook Ad Targeting to Your Advantage
Facebook Ads’ greatest strength – besides its obscenely large global user base, of course – is the granularity with which advertisers can target their ads.
Facebook allows advertisers to target their ads using virtually every aspect of a person’s life as an advertising parameter, including demographic data such as age, life events like getting married or having a child, their level of education or approximate income, and much more. These parameters can then be combined with location targeting, refining potential audiences even further.
Aside from serving as a cautionary tale about how much information we willingly surrender online, this level of granularity is what allows Facebook to offer advertisers an incredible degree of control over their campaigns.
However, although Facebook’s targeting options are very powerful, it’s important to remember that being too selective with your audience targeting options could result in diminishing your audience to the point it becomes detrimental, so tread carefully.
3. Use Call-Only Ads in Your Campaigns
Unique, highly relevant landing pages are the cornerstone of many ad campaigns (as we established in tip #1), but landing pages can be a double-edged sword; they can be a powerful tool, but they can also be among the “leakiest” stages of the funnel.