Congratulations. You've just embarked on a new business endeavor filled with excitement and potential. Now, let's get you setup with promoting a brand new local business online. These 10 new local business promotion tips will help you hit the ground running so that your potential customers can find you with ease.
Create Business Pages on Google and Yelp
Your new business won't do you much good if people don't know it exists. One of the first things you can do to help promote your new business online is to create business pages on major business directories such as Google and Yelp. This way, when people are searching online for the products or services that you provide, your business information will come up as an option for them to patronize. Being discovered is a great first step to winning new customers.
Buy a Domain and Publish a Website
Your website is your business in digital form. Even if your business doesn't sell anything online, it's important to have a functional, polished website. Not only will this website be representative of your business, but it can also show up on Google's search engine results page, creating additional opportunities for exposure and new customers.
Many new and even existing business owners make the mistake of publishing a website and never tending to it. This type of website will seldom be found online. In order for this new website to actually put in work for you though, you'll have to make sure you're following all of the best practices that makes the website look good and function well.
Additionally, you'll have to put in just as much effort into the website’s metadata, which is the back-end part of the website that customers can't see, to ensure that search engines appreciate your new website as much as potential customers do.
This is a craft in and of itself but investing time and resources into optimizing your new website will pay many dividends for your business, especially if your competitors are doing a lackluster job on their ends when it comes to search engine optimization.
Create Social Media Pages
There is a lot of hype and excitement surrounding a new business. Local residents will be curious and will want to investigate your new establishment. But the way people look for things online has changed over the course of the past several years. Relying on your business's appearance on search engines is not enough. This is why in addition to major business directories like Google and Yelp, your business should also have a polished appearance on major social media apps.
Since this is one of the first places where people go to see images of a new business or learn more about it, having business pages on social media sites that not only look good in appearance but frequently post news and updates, will help provide your local potential customers with good reason to consider patronizing your new establishment.
List Yourself with Your City's Business Directory
This is a quick and easy way to let local residents know about your new business. Adding your business to your town's business directory also provides you with another link that can show up when people Google the name of your business trying to learn more about it.
If you want to do an even better job of promoting your new business in this manner, you can research additional business directories to add your business information to. Especially if your business has a similar name to another business, it is important to publish many such business directory listings so that when people perform searches online, your business has the best chances of showing up.
Run a Display Campaign
Once you've got your new website somewhat dialed in, one of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to bring traffic to that website is to run a display campaign.
These types of campaigns generally deliver a high volume of impressions and clicks at a relatively low cost, which is especially advantageous to a new business which is likely attempting to market itself with a finite budget.
Display campaigns are one of the fastest the cheapest ways to bring new visitors to your website. To make your new display campaign as efficient as possible, it's important to use polished graphics and leverage marketing best practices such as a call-to-action, a time-sensitive offer, contrasting colors, and good geographic targeting.
Think of a Clever & Enticing Promotion
Since a new business usually doesn't have very many customers, your first few months or years in business should provide potential customers with an enticing offer. Whether it be a discounted deal for first time customers, or a loyalty program that rewards repeat visitors. This is a great way to capitalize on the excitement swirling around your new business while simultaneously giving consumers that might currently be purchasing similar products and services to yours from another vendor a good reason to try your business instead.
Check Google Weekly to See How You Stack Up
Since your business is brand new, so is its web presence. This means your business's exposure on the internet is sparse. For this reason, it is important to perform test searches on search engines to see what's coming up when people Google your business's name or the products and services that you provide.
You can also leverage more advanced tools such as the Google search console to see which of your website's pages are actually indexed and available to show up in search results, and how many impressions and clicks your website is receiving. This can help a lot with mitigating indexing issues and discovering what types of queries are triggering your website or its sub- pages. Then, you can work to alter the content on your website to help your site show up for more desirable queries.
Have a Grand Opening
Who doesn't love a good party? Hosting a grand opening for your new business is a great way to generate buzz and invite local residents to see your business and learn more about what makes it great. This event can also include special offers, discounts, and deals to help generate even more interest in your products and services.
Double Down on Your SEO Efforts
Working on search engine optimization is important for a multitude of reasons, but one of those reasons is that many of your competitors will have a much deeper, better-established presence on the internet.
To give your business the best chance at competing in the digital space, you simply have no choice but to pay extra attention to your SEO in all regards. Doing so will have a profound impact on your business's ability to play catch up and compete with local competition for impressions, clicks, and customers.
Hire Professional Digital Marketing Help
Unless you already have specialists in-house performing the aforementioned tasks, it's a really good idea to leverage a digital marketing firm to help you create and polish these types of digital marketing options and others.
This helps drastically decrease the learning curve associated with attempting to manage these digital endeavors yourself while exponentially increasing the rate at which your new business can grow, particularly if your business has competition, which more often than not, it will.
The money that you invest in hiring professional digital marketing help will pay for itself and then some and can shave months or even years off of stagnant business growth and lost revenue.
At Array Marketing Solutions, one of our specialties is decreasing wasteful ad spend. Because we have many years of experience working with search engine marketing, social media marketing, and website optimization, we can help most new businesses and even established businesses optimize their ad budgets and make them work in a more efficient capacity.
Online marketing and digital advertising have hundreds of moving parts and many pitfalls. As you navigate all that comes with a new business endeavor, you can save yourself a lot of time and headache by outsourcing your online marketing and advertising to seasoned experts.
This also gives you a huge leg up on your competitors that are not leveraging expert-grade digital marketing, helping you overtake some competition that is neglecting these elements of promotion and even steal precious impressions and clicks from people that have been in business much longer than you have.
To learn more about how Array Marketing Solutions can help your new local business stand out from the crowd, contact us today to schedule a free consultation and help your new business shine online.
Cheers,
-AS