5 Ways To Market Yourself. Locally!

Local businesses cannot afford to skip on marketing themselves to attract customers. It's just too risky to rely solely on word of mouth referrals. So what to do? The answer for most has been, "set up a website!"

And then nothing happens.

A Local marketing company is is critical to understanding how to get your page ranked and working smoothly so that you actually get clients from it.

They will save you time and money far beyond what it costs you to use their services.

DIY Marketing

Sometimes you may feel like you don't have the cashflow to pay a marketer or don't find value in their expertise, so what should you do then?

One solution to this problem is to do all of the steps yourself. Although this involves a serious time investment, it can save a few dollars and can be critical in helping you understand the what and how of internet marketing.

I still believe in using a professional. Either in-house (very expensive) or outsourced (in the US!! I can't stress this enough) which will cost far less than a hired hand. Indeed, my company's services are generally sold at full-time value for less than minimum wage cost. Our clients also get to save on paying any benefits like vacation, sick leave or insurance. They also tend to get much better results than a hired on marketing person can. 

How about that for value?

Still, if you just can't stomach the cost of paying anyone else for leads, here are 7 simple checkpoints to make sure of on your website. There will still be a ton to do to make it good, but tis gets you going in the right direction.

1. Make Sure You Have an "<H1>" Tag. If you have no idea what I just said, then you need a pro. The H1 tag is the primary heading for your website and it needs to be properly optimized.
2. Make Sure It's Anchor Text Is Your Primary Service Keyword so that Google, Bing and other search engines know what your page is about.
3. Write A Proper & Short Title For Your Page . Too often I see websites that only have the title of the company. Although that seems like it would be appropriate, just imagine seeing the titles of books at your library. If the title doesn't state what the book is about, how likely are you to pick it up?
4. Create A Google My Business Listing. This will be critical in getting you those all-important phone calls that turn into clients. It needs to be properly optimized, too. Do a google search about optimizing your GMB listing and you'll find some good tutorials.
5. Create Other Citations. Bing, Yelp, Facebook, YP and Houzz or Angie's List should probably be at the top of your priority list. Each citation needs to have the Name of your business, Address of your business and Phone number of your business the same. Just remember NAP.
6. Get Backlinks. A backlink is a link to another page on the internet. These are critical to getting your local business to a top spot on the SERPs. Get them by writing great content and then finding your local business friends who run websites themselves and asking them to link. There's more to it, but this is a good start.
7. Get Reviews On Your GMB Listing. Also, get Yelp & Facebook reviews for your customers to read. Let people know you are good by asking your customers who gush about you anyway to do it online!

These are very overlooked ways to help your website rank better, produce phone calls (or web-form fill outs) and thus create leads for you.