By:\u00a0DYNAMIC BUSINESS<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>Admit it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re just a little jealous of large corporations with bottomless pockets to spend on advertising. It seems like they can dominate any market. But, they do have a weakness \u2013 local markets. Even with billions of dollars, large corporations often find it difficult to compete against a well-positioned small business.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how to capture your local market<\/a> using online marketing.<\/p>\n

Engage Local Forums<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the best things you can do<\/a> is endear yourself to other local businesses. Find a forum where they hang out and get involved. In many cases, this also means joining the local Chamber of Commerce. Even if you\u2019re not much of a networker, it pays to get in with other small businesses.<\/p>\n

Why? Because those businesses also have customers. And, no matter how amazing a company\u2019s product or service is, those customers aren\u2019t going to spend 100% of their money with just one merchant.<\/p>\n

This is why you want to make friends with other businesses, especially non-competing companies. You see, even if you do no marketing, if their customers become familiar with your name, then it\u2019s almost like an endorsement of your business \u2013 even when there\u2019s no official endorsement.<\/p>\n

For example, if a local company hosts a client appreciation night, and it\u2019s sponsored by other local businesses, make sure your name is one of those sponsors.<\/p>\n

If a local little league needs to raise money for new uniforms, make sure you\u2019re one of the local businesses supporting their cause. It gets your name out there so that when you approach customers directly, they\u2019ve at least heard of you before.<\/p>\n

Hire An Expert<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not good at marketing, hire an expert. According to SEO expert Alex Miller<\/a>, even small businesses benefit tremendously from SEO, especially local marketing.<\/p>\n

A marketing expert can find your current weaknesses and help you patch them up so that your competition doesn\u2019t exploit them. Most small companies just don\u2019t have the budget to waste on strategies that go nowhere. And, unless you\u2019re a large corporation, hiring an outside expert is probably the best way for you to shore up your marketing strategy without doing a lot of expensive internal testing.<\/p>\n

How To Use Local Keywords<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a small company that\u2019s just starting out, then you should be focusing on local keywords to rank in the search engine results. Ideally, keywords that have low competition, and yet moderate to high traffic numbers are going to be your best bet.<\/p>\n

For example, let\u2019s say you run a flower shop in Elmira, NY. You want to run a Valentine\u2019s Day promotion. You know you\u2019re going to have stiff competition. This is a huge day for flowers. You might be tempted to use \u201cValentine\u2019s Day flowers\u201d or \u201cValentine\u2019s Day bouquets\u201d in your ads. Don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Instead, you should use \u201cValentine\u2019s Day Flowers Elmira\u201d or something similar. You could also use variations on that keyword, like \u201cElmira Flower shops.\u201d<\/p>\n

While there\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with keywords like \u201cValentine\u2019s Day flowers\u201d or \u201cflower shops\u201d or \u201cValentine\u2019s Day flower specials,\u201d a lot of the larger companies are going to be bidding on these words and will drive the costs up.<\/p>\n

So, even if you do get customers, you\u2019ll be paying a lot more for those leads than you should.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, using local keywords will almost certainly be cheaper and your cost per click and, thus, your customer acquisition cost, will be much lower.<\/p>\n

Invest In Good Content<\/strong><\/p>\n

Content is something most businesses cheap out on, and for insane reasons. They don\u2019t \u201cget\u201d that content is an asset. A good writer costs between $50 and $100 per hour, or more. You might spend $1 per word to have a professional job done. Most businesses are playing around in the $0.01 to $0.03 per word. They\u2019ll spend $15 on a 500 word article and believe that they\u2019re spending a lot of money because they\u2019re purchasing 10 articles in a batch.<\/p>\n

The reality is that those 10 articles aren\u2019t worth one article written at $1 per word, with a total word count of 1500 to 2000 words. Reason? Quality.<\/p>\n

A 2000 word article could be a resource article \u2013 something that is sorely lacking in your industry. And, the writer could be a professional that has the educational background and writing experience to pull it off. And, at the end of the day, the job of that content is to bring in leads and educate your potential customers.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s not doing those two things, it\u2019s a waste of money, no matter how little you spent on it.<\/p>\n

Source: Dynamic Business<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By:\u00a0DYNAMIC BUSINESS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Admit it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re just a little jealous of large corporations with bottomless pockets to spend on advertising. It seems like they can dominate any market. But, they do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}