Powerful Local Marketing Ideas For Your Business

Top Actionable Strategies To Boost Local Marketing For Businesses

Smart digital marketing strategies can deliver fantastic dividends for local businesses. If done right, digital marketing can give your local cleaning business the leverage it needs to beat the competition and boost both your business growth and bottom line. The key, however, lies in being consistent and discovering not only the right mix of strategies but also identifying creative ways of using those strategies to propel your business forward.

This is the part where most businesses tend to struggle. Everyone is doing social and brand marketing and search engine optimization. So how do you make a difference by following the same strategies?

This is where you need to get creative and smart about how you plan and implement your local brand marketing. I know what you’re thinking – easier said than done.

But this is what this article is all about. A compilation of powerful local marketing strategies for your cleaning business or disaster restoration services.

And yes, it doesn’t matter if you are an old business or a new set-up. At some point, you will have to consider modifying your digital marketing by infusing creative strategies to attract a new and wider audience.

Continue reading to know more about how you can improve local marketing for your cleaning business.

Powerful Local Marketing Strategies for your Cleaning Services or Disaster Restoration Business

Of course, not all of the following strategies will work for every business. You will need to identify those strategies that address your business needs the best. In addition, you will need to also take into consideration the issue of marketing budget. Here again not every business has the big bucks to hire marketing top guns in the business. However, this is the beauty of digital marketing – it offers

businesses some of the best cost-effective local marketing opportunities for every business irrespective of its size and scale. These strategies if used the right way can provide your brand with great brand exposure and improved ROI on your marketing spend.

So let’s get started.

Optimize on your Local Marketing

Two of the most potent tools for local marketing are online directories and review sites such as Google My Business and Yelp. Potential customers use these tools to discover and collect relevant information such as reviews to learn what others are saying about a business that they are interested in.
Here are a few things you should focus on when optimizing local marketing for your cleaning or restoration brand.

1. Get Listed
Get listed if you want visibility and to build brand credibility for your local business with leading searching engines such as Google. In addition to your business name, address, phone number, be sure to include any other relevant business information (hours of work, holidays, site address, videos about your business) and ensure accuracy and consistency with all your listings. Business listings and reviews sites can help potential customers to do more than discover and learn about your business – they can help influence and encourage brand engagement even before they buy from the business.

2. Create your Google Business Profile
When you create your free Google Business Profile (Google business listing), it can help your business improve visibility in local searches and connect with potential customers who discover your business on Google Maps and Search. Why? Because your Google Business Profile carries all the relevant information a potential customer needs to engage with your brand or to make a buying decision. It is also important that you optimize your Google Business Profile. Here are some of the important areas of focus;

• Create a Google My Business Account (you will need this to connect with
  your Google Business Profile).
• Be sure to complete the different sections of your Google My Business account.
• Select your primary and secondary categories.
• Include a complete and accurate description of your “from the business.”
• Set up messaging.
• Ensure you define applicable attributes.
• Add your business products and services.
• Publish Google posts and upload new photos weekly.
• Collect and respond to all reviews.
• Be sure to answer questions.
• Lastly, maintain your Business Profile.

3. Maintain your Directory Listings
The work that comes after claiming and setting up your directory listings is what counts – you need to make sure that every bit of information that shows up about your cleaning or restoration business is 100% accurate. So update your listings for any changes or updates immediately. Your business listings are about building brand trust not just in the eyes of potential customers, but also for search engines such as Google.

You also need to constantly monitor your local business listings and respond to answers, reviews, and comments. This shows you are proactive and serious about your listing.

4. Build Credibility with Reviews
Reviews can do wonders when it comes to winning new customers. So focus on encouraging reviews for your cleaning business. It won’t do you any good if your business appears in an online directory and you have few or no reviews. Potential customers won’t hesitate to move on to a competitor with a bank of solid reviews.

For this reason, it is important that you create a review-winning strategy that can help you gain more reviews for your local business. Of course, the best and most effective way would be to simply ask happy customers to write reviews for your business. The more the merrier!

Effective Local SEO Strategies

searches. Creating a Google My Business Listing and listing your business on other online directories such as Yelp and Bing Places, are among the first steps you need to take.

You will also need to focus on other local SEO basics such as;

• Conducting a technical SEO audit of your site.
• Targeting for local keywords and optimizing your site for those words.
• Focusing on building inbound links.
• Optimizing page load speed.
• Optimizing for mobile.
• Creating local content.

In addition to the above strategies, consider the following to boost search rankings and increase brand visibility in front of relevant audience groups.

1. Focus on Ranking for Multiple Locations
If your cleaning or restoration business services multiple locations, then it is best that you focus on optimizing ranking in local searches for each of those locations. So customize your local pages with relevant information for each of the sites across different locations. This will help you rank organically for relevant searches within that location.

Also when you feature location-based pages within your top navigation, it can help further drive ranking since it simplifies the search process for customers looking for your service within their area, and also effectively boosts your site’s internal linking foundation.

2. Optimize your Local Pages with Relevant Location-based Information
When it comes to optimizing your local pages, you need to think beyond the regular design strategy. Here is a good place to start – ask yourself how relevant is the content on your page to local audiences? In addition to all the regular business information, how you can further build on adding page relevance? One of the best ways of doing this is by linking out to different sources of local information or locally relevant ideas – you can then use this information on your business’s local page. So for example, if you have collaborated with a local business partner within the community, or if you have been involved in local

causes, then talk about it and link out. You could also focus on your partnership with local suppliers. Linking out locally can help you build a local connection which in turn can drive up your search rankings in local SERPs since Google likes organic connections like these that build brand credibility.

Get Serious about Social

Businesses use social to create brand engagement and to connect with wider audience groups. So you probably are doing a lot of the regular social activity advocated on top social marketing sites. If yes, then great going. But here’s the thing about social, you need to constantly reinvent yourself and think out of the box. Why? Because all of the things you are doing on social are things that even your competitors do. So you need to think about what can make you stand out from the competition.

1. Build an Emotional Appeal for your Service/Product
Building brand engagement is not easy. But once you do, it can deliver fantastic dividends. Your area of focus should be on the quality of engagement you provide to customers and potential audiences.

So for example, if you are a plumbing service provider, then focus on building a sense of proactive approach among your target customers. Instead of only marketing to them about services that can help remedy a plumbing issue, focus also on how you can educate and encourage customers to proactively seek your services to prevent potentially damaging outcomes – not just to their homes, but also their lives and health. Your customers don’t have to wait till after suffering some form of plumbing accident or even a natural disaster to seek your services. Tell them about services that you can provide to help protect and prevent plumbing issues even before a calamity strikes or before they face an inevitable plumbing problem.

It really is about providing actionable information that can add real value to their homes and as a result to their lives. When you offer this kind of information, it shows that you are thinking about your customers on a human level and not just as consumers of your services.

See how you can use this information to reshape your brand image to convey wellness and value to the homes and lives of your target audiences.

2. Display Clarity of Purpose in your Social Messages as a Brand Differentiator

If you want to stand apart from the competition, then you need to show you are different. How do you do that? Here are a few things to focus on;

a) Identify and understand what target customers want – because unless you have this information, you won’t be able to create content that builds connections. So this is should be your first step.
b) Optimize your messaging – by streamlining your social efforts and messaging if you want to showcase that you are an industry expert. You cannot have your messaging flying all over in different directions – this just creates chaos and a lot of unnecessary noise. Identify and curate ideas, topics, and themes that are directly connected with your brand. By doing this you can help build a brand image that is clear, unique, and immediately strikes a connection within the user’s mind.
c) Identify and partner with local influencers – who can help you push your brand among local audiences. Start by identifying influencers and then assessing if their interests and images align with your brand. You will of course have to first establish how your brand can add value to the influencer and vice versa.
d) Social is not about limited to just conversions – it is about building human connections. And brands that can do this are the ones that will reap rich dividends through the journey of their business. So make sure you treat your social connections with the respect they deserve. Building human connections on social takes time and effort. Of course, if you can infuse a hint of humor in your interactions, then it will speed things up effectively. Just one more thing, whatever you do, make sure you never take your users for granted. So don’t assume anything on their behalf. If you are unsure about ideas or messaging, engage with users and gain their feedback. Customers in fact will appreciate you more for allowing them to voice their opinion. Besides it shows you care and that is what social interactions should be about.

Improve your Customer Targeting Strategies

A major goal for any local business today is to attract new customers by creating targeted ads. Here are a few tips to consider.

1. Run Google Ads

You can use pay-per-click ads to target potential customers within your local area of operation. You can either run classic search engine result Google Ads, Google Shopping Ads, or you can go with Google Service Ads among others. The one thing you want to keep in mind here is to leverage both the radius targeting tool as well as the location bid adjustments feature to effectively boost the performance of your Google Ads.

• Start by creating your locations.
• Once your locations collect clicks and conversion data, use the data in your decision-making process.
• Enter Location Bid Adjustments.

These three steps will help you optimize on your Google Ads and drive better
targeting of customers.

2. Optimize on Local Facebook Ads
In addition to running Google Ads, you might want to consider running Facebook Ads for your business. Why? Because the reach of social cannot be denied in increasing brand visibility and building business credibility among potential customers. And this holds true for FB. It is after all one of the biggest social platforms and so if you haven’t already optimized on Facebook Ads, then you better get started in a hurry. When you use local FB Ads, here’s what happens – when a user scrolls through their feeds and carries out Google searches they see your business popping up more and more. And when there is a real need for your business services or products, chances are they will remember your brand and connect with your business.

3. Use Remarketing to Build your Reviews Portfolio
As mentioned above one of the steps in optimizing your Google Business Profile is by collecting and responding to reviews. Your customer(s) has taken the time to pen their experience with your brand. And so it is only right to respond to their reviews as a way of acknowledging and appreciating their contribution towards building your brand. However, sometimes even if a customer has enjoyed a stellar brand experience, they might simply forget to leave you a review. So is all that goodwill and effort

gone to waste? Well no. You can leverage remarketing to invite and generate
reviews for your business. Here’s what you can do;

• You can create a thank-you or a confirmation page for when customers
  either finish an event or even if they go ahead fill out a form in your Google Analytics.
• Next, go ahead and add a remarketing tracking code to your thank-you or
  confirmation page.
• You can then set up the list in Google Analytics which will allow you to tag
  visiting customers to that URL.
• Then you can go ahead and create a simple Display Ad that encourages
  customers to leave a review either on Google or any other review platform.

Marketing Tips within the Local Community
Organic connections and marketing channels can give a huge boost to your local cleaning or restoration business presence. In addition, your local marketing initiatives can boost your brand engagement with local audiences and drive up your local business rankings in SERPs. Notice there are a lot of “local” mentions in the last sentence – but all of it is for the good.

So consider the following tips to optimize on local marketing strategies for your cleaning or restoration business within the community.

1.Sponsor a Local Event or Function
Look for opportunities that allow you to be a part of community-building events. You might want to give preference to events and functions that impact the local community as a whole. These include events associated with the local school, or hospital/healthcare center, or even sponsoring an environmental or non-profit cause can be fantastic places to start. So if you find something within these domains, then go ahead and become a sponsor. Not only will this kind of participation in local events help your brand stand out, it also gives you a great opportunity to build goodwill for your brand and reputation among the local population. This in turn can help you build connections to further your business goals.

At the very least, it will help generate the right kind of noise to put your brand in the spotlight – not just locally, but also in local SERPs since Google loves these kinds of brand recommendations.

2. Volunteer with the Local Community
In addition to sponsoring events and functions, look for opportunities that allow you to take part in volunteer work/projects within the local community.
Remember, the goal here is to get be seen and connect with the right people within the community for a potential future dividend. Besides, this is one of the oldest and easiest ways to spread the word about your business – and it will cost you absolutely nothing!

3. Network with Local Business Owners
Networking with local business owners is again a great way of marketing your
business with local communities. It allows you to find opportunities to build
mutually rewarding partnerships while also exploring ways in which you can
promote each other’s business. If you are new and need a step up within the local market, networking can help you build brand credibility anytime a local business partner actively endorses your business with their stamp of approval or vote of confidence.

In Conclusion
The above-mentioned local marketing strategies can help you build a strong local brand presence for your cleaning or restoration business. Of course, not every single strategy might be ideal for your business. So it is really up to you to select those strategies that work for your business and then apply them.
What you need to remember is that the purpose of using local marketing strategies is to help you build brand visibility, connect and engage with local audiences, and to stand apart from your competition. So if something works, then optimize on it by all means and build your local brand.