Every successful business can trace its roots back to a local community in which its ingenuousness and creativity first flourished. From there, small local businesses are able to find their own place in the market and create an identity separate from big players. To target this niche, business owners can focus on local search trends and in effect, better connect with search engine users within a certain radius of their location. This lets local businesses convert more leads to sales and solidify their position as a staple in the community.
Working with a digital marketing company helps you identify local opportunities that your business can use to dominate its market in a big city like Toronto that’s bustling with both competition and opportunities.
Let 360 Business Local help you identify opportunities for your local business. Call (416) 619-7935 today!
Here are four ways a digital marketing company can help your local business find a niche and dominate the local market in Toronto.
Create Niche Content
These days, merely having a website that lists your local business’ products and services is not nearly enough to be found and make a sale. With larger businesses dominating general search terms, it’s important to set yourself apart to be found by your target market. Because your local offerings aren’t necessarily in the business of competing with national or multinational conglomerates, defining your niche is essential to getting found quickly.
A digital marketing company can help you define your strategy in effectively capturing the market in locations your business operates in. This focuses your efforts to bring in sales from the direct communities you serve.
In a diverse market, such as Toronto, the content on your website plays a key role in helping you get found online. Your site’s content also defines who finds you and determines whether they will avail of your products and services.
An effective strategy employed by digital marketers is optimizing content not just according to high-traffic keywords, but also according to local search trends. This is done by pushing area-focused keywords and developing locally-focused content for your website’s product information and contact pages, as well as its blog entries.
When your website incorporates local keywords, your business is brought closer to the communities it serves, presenting you with revenue opportunities you can actually count on.
Aside from keywords, digital marketing companies also lace titles, tags and descriptions with location indicators, further increasing your ranking. Finally, when modifying your website’s code, digital marketers may include a schema markup – it’s an addition to the website’s code that gives search engines more information about your business, aiding your efforts to be found.
Put Yourself on the Map
People now use digital maps, such as Google, to find a place. As such, your business has to appear on the map to be found. New search trends point to increased localization in an effort to better connect search engine users with exactly what they are looking for and what is within proximity to their location.
With the use of location services available on most smartphones or other devices, search engines are able to factor in the user’s location to supply them with search results relevant to their query. When these potential customers are within a certain radius of your establishment, a good map listing will help direct them towards your business.
To reach your business, people need to know exactly where they can find you, and listing your business’ information online makes it easy for potential customers to walk straight on through your doors.
Digital marketers can set up your Google My Business account ,making sure that all information pertaining to your business is properly listed and can be easily found by those looking for related products and services. This service includes populating important fields such as description, categories, location, store hours, contact details, official website, logo, modes of payment accepted and photos of your products, services and place of business. The more information potential customers have about your business, the more likely it appears legitimate and trustworthy.
Use Local Listings
Apart from listings on search engines, online directories and citations also help. Local business listings provide potential customers with information about your business including hours and contact details, helping direct them towards your establishment and opening up opportunities to earn from their visits. Many potential customers regularly check sites or even use apps such as Yellow Pages, Yelp, 411.ca, etc. to find the product or service they desire which is nearest to their location. These users are also reading reviews left by other patrons.
To have more chances of connecting with your market in Toronto, it is important for your business to have thorough listings in these directories as well. A digital marketing company can help you update and maintain existing listings in Toronto, as well as create new listings as new directories emerge. Details such as your business’ name, address, hours and contact information, should be checked to ensure consistency across directories to avoid driving potential customers away due to inconsistent information that makes your business appear unreliable.
Reviews are the New Word of Mouth
Before the rise of advertising and social media, businesses relied on word of mouth advertising that circulated among family and friends. Recommending to one’s social circles a product or service that worked for them was the most trustworthy way to find a business. These days, online reviews work in the same manner.
With more people wanting to gain maximum customer satisfaction and the best value for their money, smart consumerism is on the rise. More and more customers are posting reviews for products and services they avail of, and the effect is two-fold. One, it drives businesses to improve customer satisfaction by innovating on their current offerings; and two, it either encourages or drives away potential customers from your business, depending on experiences of previous customers.
Managing customers’ expectation is no easy feat since many people opt to read online reviews and factor these into their decisions, but a good digital strategy can help you capitalize on good reviews and mitigate the effect of negative feedback.
A digital marketing company can help you monitor reviews as they come in, respond to reviews and build trust in the community. Responding to reviews shows that you care about what your customers have to say and have their satisfaction in mind. A good strategy to employ regarding reviews is asking your customers to post feedback on your business’ Google My Business and social media pages. This help to increases your ratings, boost your online reputation and shows that your business thrives on serving the needs of its local community.
With emerging trends in the digital age, setting up shop in a local market can mean not having to constantly compete with big players who are dominating larger markets. Their reach is wide, but your business can find a local niche, build stable relationships and usher in sales it can really count on. A digital marketing company can help point your business in the direction of its local market, craft messages that target a specific audience it hopes to reach, and help your business become a staple in its community.