On Thursday January 12th, we hosted a Small Business Workshop, “Grow Your Business by Localizing Your Marketing Efforts,” in collaboration with the Newton Needham Chamber of Commerce. The presentation focused on using digital marketing and search engine marketing to help local businesses attract more quality traffic to their websites and grow their businesses. Here are some tips and takeaways from the workshop.

5 Useful Tips & Takeaways

1. Localize your efforts and keep your customers in mind

   This tip is a two-for-one! Try to get into the minds of your customers and think about what they will be searching for. Someone is way more likely to search for “best pizza in West Newton,” instead of “best Pizza in Massachusetts” when they want pizza close to West Newton! Think about why a customer would search for your product or offering and incorporate that into your site. Then make sure to use local keywords including specific towns and locations that are relevant to your business.

2. Build a technically sound website.

   Having a great website can help your business heaps! Make sure your website is technically “up to snuff.” It’s oftentimes the first contact a customer has with a company, and having a well-made site conveys reliability and trustworthiness. Don’t try to build your own website unless you have development experience. You can miss important features that help drive sales.

3. Use SEO to compete with the big guys.

   

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   Think of the David vs. Goliath story. David was able to defeat Goliath, with his large marketing budget and all! How? SEO was the little rock that knocked Goliath out! Using SEO effectively can help you compete with the big guys. If you’re hitting the right key words your website can come up above large established companies in a Google search.

4. Content is King

   

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   Keep creating content! Constant content helps keep your website relevant, shows expertise, and brings people to your site. You can use something like a white paper or e-book that takes a lot of effort and stretch that content out to be used in many other forms. That one white paper could turn into three long form blog posts and presentations, four infographics or slide shares, five short term blog posts, and if done correctly ten to twenty social media posts.

5. Broad Keywords vs. Long-tail Key Words.

   

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   Broad keywords are searched for millions of times each day. If you’re a marketing company using the word “marketing” in your website, that’s great, but you have to compete with all of the other times “marketing” is mentioned online. By creating long-tail keywords you’re getting more specific in the search. If you say “social media marketing in Needham” you’ll have a higher chance that someone will find your services.

   It goes both ways! If you’re a landscaping company in Wellesley, you don’t want to turn away business because someone in Wisconsin is calling with an inquiry.

The event was a huge success thanks to everyone in attendance! Follow the link to view the entire presentation, Grow Your Business by Localizing your Marketing Efforts.

We were also streaming the event on Facebook Live! You can watch the entire presentation below!