Local Marketing - Knowing Where to Focus Your Efforts

Local Marketing - Knowing Where to Focus Your Efforts

With tight marketing budgets, it’s important to drop ineffective marketing and focus your efforts in the right places.

You are the ultimate authority in your own business. If you are successful, it stands to reason that you understand how to sell to your customers. That said, the best ways to sell to customers has been undergoing rapid changes since the 1990s. Every year, new selling tools emerge, but only some of them produce results.

The tools that become most successful usually involve online marketing. It’s time to take stock of your marketing channels and trim the fat from efforts that aren’t pulling their own weight and put that money into more productive channels.

Out with the Old

Many sales channels simply don’t exist anymore because they require a lot of time and effort for little return. If you haven’t reigned in your door-to-door sales force yet, you’re a dinosaur. The same goes with old-school community groups like Lions Club and Kiwanis. Almost all civic activities are now online, so that’s where your sphere of influence should be.

And what about those brochures, posters and handouts? Why are you still designing and printing them, when you could design them once, put them up online and never have to pay a printer again? Why pay a writer to craft a sales letter and pay to print and mail it, when you could start a much cheaper email campaign? The answers are obvious.

In with the New

Businesses can get a lot more than a number in a phone book these days. Online business listings can do wonders for your reputation. Encourage customers to review your business online with sales incentives or giveaways. When a new customer comes across your listing with glowing reviews, you’ll have established that all-important trust needed to get a new customer in the door. Sites to focus on include Google Places, Yahoo! Local Listings, City Search, AskCity and CityGuide.

Having business listings online is the bare minimum these days. Your business really needs a website, designed by experts to be easy-to-use and engaging to potential customers. This is a lot different from just throwing up a shingle with a single web page showing your business and your contact information. For websites to make a difference, they need to attract new visitors, spread information about your products and make people want to know more about your business.

Social media profiles may or may not help your business. Some have realized enormous success, while others have not quite gotten what they expected from it. Given how affordable this marketing channel is, it’s certainly worth trying. Having a social media expert at your side will increase your chances of success.

Get an expert behind your internet marketing efforts.

Let efelle be your internet-marketing agency. We’ll help you conceive, implement and maintain an online marketing strategy that drives more local customers to your business. Call us at 206.384.4909 or use our online contact form to schedule a free consultation.