If you are a local business trying to market yourself online, you might find it daunting to read up and study the Internet marketing tactics that successful businesses use. You’ve probably read about blogging, article marketing, SEO, SEM, pay per click marketing, and even social media marketing. But which marketing tactics are the most effective for local businesses?
From what I’ve seen, there are 5 must-do strategies for local businesses to get their online presence to the right audience. If you are running a local business and you want to be found by the right customers, try these 5 online marketing strategies.
- Google Places – Local search engine marketing begins with the local search directory of each of the search engines. Google’s is the largest, but you should also include Bing and Yahoo! in your marketing strategy.
- Facebook-Twitter – Facebook and Twitter make a great team. Let’s call it the Facebook-Twitter one-two punch. Use them effectively and you can drive local traffic to your website and your business offline.
- Blogging - Blogging is still one of the best ways to brand and market a business online – even a local business.
- Pay per click marketing – With PPC, you can build your website today, start marketing, and drive traffic to your website and local business by tomorrow. It’s more costly than other marketing strategies online, but it’s also more effective on the short term.
- Craigslist – Believe it or not, Craigslist is one of the most trafficked websites online. You can run a simple two sentence ad on Craigslist for your city and get calls the same day.
Try these 5 online marketing strategies for local businesses. They are effective and can be used over and over again.
