When it comes to your digital presence, a lot of small local businesses don't focus on it much because most of the customers they get are from mouth marketing or because they have a shop in a location that hosts a lot of people.
That being said, There's no shortage of customers who find it difficult to go to market physically to find who provides which service and what's their reliability. I've faced this problem myself several times. It's hard to find where to find a reliable computer repair shop when I'm travelling or working from an unknown place. So many times I've relocated to new places and struggled with finding a good tailor or a good sweets shop ( can't avoid sweets :) ). So many times I've searched on google maps: computer repair shop near me, sweets shop near me etc. While I've always found the results, I've seen some good businesses missing it.
I'm going to list down some of the basic local SEO practices to ensure your digital presence that might help you get some more customers:
Google My Business Profile
More than 92% of searches today are from Google, so there's no doubt that you need to focus mainly on your google result ( if it's not banned in your country). A good Google My Business profile can help you with adding your location, services and products that you're providing, offers, if you have any and most importantly, collecting reviews from your customers, it will help you gain customers' trust on you.
One of the best features social media has given is easily tagging someone and sharing something. If you have your pages/profiles on social media and you're able to put some engaging content there, you're going to get some customers definitely from there. I've seen artists get orders from Instagram just after they posted one of their arts online. So having an engaging social media profile is always good for your business.
Listing on Business Directories
When Internet was not so popular, it used to hard to find companies/business online. Everybody wasn't a having a website and search engines were simply not intelligent like today. A lot of business directory websites started those days to help people, but those sites have a very good authority and still contribute to your online presence. So you should consider creating your profiles on these directories like yelp, foursquare, justdial etc.
Having a Website
While every business may not need it, but having a website definitely helps you with a lot of things, SEO benefits being one of them. I often get a lot leads via our website vilabs.in plus it's easier for me to get leads in a systematic manner. I've have few different kind of forms where I can request information from people in advance before they contact me. Also, it's easier for me tell people to go and search something like tech partner@vilabs rather than giving them visiting cards. I can easily share a link for something I want to share through a page created on my website. There are hundreds of ways you can use it for. You can also run pay per click advertisements on google for your website, if that seems to be working for your business.
While creating a website might seem like a costly affair, you can create a simple one directly from google my business.
Other Search Engine Business pages
You may consider creating profiles/business pages on other search engines like Bing for Business, Yahoo Business etc. You can use even a website like yext that help you manage all these at one place.
Getting engagement and Feedback from Users
There's nothing better than people talking about you and provide you a positive feedback. It all depends on your service too but you can request people to provide you a feedback and share your page. This will definitely help you grow your audience.
Advertisements
If you have a marketing budget, you can go for advertisement using social media as well as google, as opt for pay per click or display ads, however, always set a finite and limited budget that fits for you. You'll find a lot of audience targeting options and you can use them according to your customer base. I'll have an article on targeted advertising soon.
If you have any queries related to your business or some technical help, do write us on our Contact us page and we'll reach out to you. Thank you!
