The Local Business Growth Blueprint

You’ve moved beyond the basics and are now razor-focused on growing your small business. Where do you get started, and what are some proven growth tactics you should look at first?

With all the channels available today, reaching prospects is easier than ever, but that also means it’s harder to stand out. Rather than taking a scattershot approach, you can be strategic about acquiring new customers, boosting sales, and scaling operations.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll share proven methods of growing a local business and cover topics like using your website to convert more customers, implementing viral digital marketing strategies, and leveraging the power of influencer marketing to reach new audiences. Best of all, you’ll find actionable and practical ways to scale your local business and achieve long-term success, including:

• How to use multiple marketing channels to speed growth
• How to create paid advertising campaigns
• How to tap into the power of referral and influencer marketing

Optimizing Your Website for Conversions

Once visitors land on your site, make sure it’s easy for them to convert. Conversions vary by business and stage of the buyer journey. Your goal can be for a visitor to fill out a form, make a purchase, schedule a demo, subscribe to an email list, follow you on social media, or do something else. To make it easier for visitors to take the action you want, there are some optimizations you can make on your website.

Add clear calls to action

Make sure visitors know what you want them to do after visiting your web page—whether that’s to reach out to schedule an appointment, download additional content to learn more, or sign up for your newsletter. Sometimes a call to action (CTA) can simply engage visitors by asking them to comment on a video or post or share it with their social networks.

Without a clear CTA, website visitors who want to get more information or start the buying process may not see an obvious way to move to the next step. Your calls to action should stand out on every page.

Don’t overwhelm visitors with too many conflicting CTAs, but it’s ok to have more than one in case they don’t want to act on the one option they’re provided. You can also test variables like color, size, copy, and placement, but start with making sure the CTA is simple and the action you want someone to take is obvious.

Focus on benefits

Salesy content can be a turnoff to website visitors. Make the focus of your website to provide genuine value to prospects and customers. Content should educate, inform, and even entertain visitors. Your website is an opportunity to show that you’re knowledgeable in your field while also creating a connection with your audience. Consumers look for relatability, understanding, and shared values with the companies they do business with. Show that you care about your customers’ lives and challenges.

Businesses and consumers are on the same page when it comes to web and marketing content. More than 80% of marketers say they use content marketing, while 70% of internet users say they would rather learn about products via content versus advertisements. The trick is knowing how to present web content the right way. In addition to the content you have on your blog and resource pages, your website should showcase the benefits of your products and services.

For example, an orthodontist’s website could highlight their patients’ straight teeth, beautiful smiles, and low monthly payments on the website’s homepage. Calling out benefits can be helpful for SEO and for informing visitors about what you offer.

Remove friction from your site

Content is only part of the user experience (UX) on your website. UX also includes factors like speed, usability, aesthetics, and responsive design. Visitors want to see modern sites that are easy to navigate. Half of consumers say website design is essential to a company’s brand, and 88% of web designers say the top reason visitors leave a site is due to slow loading times. The second most common reason visitors abandon a site is the lack of responsive site design on multiple devices.

The solutions to these common issues are to optimize your website and prioritize the mobile experience. Google’s mobile-friendly test lets you see whether your site is usable on mobile. Google Analytics is another tool that will give you insights into areas for improvement. Use it to see what visitors searched to reach your site. You can then create content and landing pages around those keywords to improve search engine optimization (SEO) and increase traffic.

Optimize your site for real-time engagement

Real-time engagement is important because you get to interact with prospects while they’re on your site already thinking about your business. Provide ways for customers to move to channels they already use and are familiar with to extend the engagement. Live chat is one of the most effective ways to engage visitors when they’re ready. U.S. shoppers are 55% more likely to say it’s important that sites offer live chat than they were in 2019, with 42% now saying so. Even better, chat tools that allow customers to transition to texting can keep them engaged well into the future.

It’s also essential to consider reputation management for your company’s site and web presence. It’s a way to stay in touch with what customers are saying about your business and participate in the conversation. You can request and manage reviews, create customer surveys, and see what’s being said about your company online and on social media.

Another important way to improve engagement is to create interactive content like webinars, courses, quizzes, and assessments. This kind of content allows visitors to engage and develop more of a relationship with your brand. 

→S&R Insurance was able to boost traffic from Google by 120% using Podium’s Webchat to optimize their website for real-time engagement. They also used Podium to add texting and improve review management. These site optimization efforts improved the overall website experience for visitors.

Using Text Marketing to Your Advantage

Most consumers are already using their smartphones to shop, communicate, and research purchases. Text marketing is a natural extension of that habit and a way to make the most of consumers’ relationship with mobile devices. Here are some benefits and tips to help your business use text. 

Reap the benefits of text marketing

Text marketing is a cost-efficient way to reach willing customers. Most consumers want to receive promotional offers through text, which benefits businesses as well because you can achieve phenomenal open rates. You can also see real sales results with significantly higher response rates than email, phone, or Facebook marketing because most consumers think texting with a business is more convenient than other methods.

Use text marketing to drive sales

So, what kinds of texts should you send? Like all marketing efforts, you want to be helpful and avoid over-texting. Consider sending texts that announce promotions, allow product pre-orders, confirm and track orders, provide location information, and more. Be sure to personalize the communications and offers as much as possible since 56% of customers expect it. Here are some specific ways you can increase sales using text.

• Send reminders about upcoming appointments and events
• Update buyers on purchase information and tracking numbers
• Reengage past customers by sending an offer to let them know you miss them
• Communicate about purchases so customers can easily find tracking and delivery information
• Promote offers and send reminders again before they expire
• Ask for reviews or send surveys after a purchase

Some of these tactics can result in immediate sales, while others foster a positive long-term relationship.

Engage with customers via text

Make your texts engaging by using your brand voice and giving customers a chance to make their voices heard. You can do this by asking them to leave a review, provide feedback, complete a survey, or give accept a follow-up offer. Many customers respond to such requests, with 76% leaving reviews when asked. Make it easy for them to act by sending the link and keeping the request simple.

Texts should be relatively short to make text marketing easier for you and your customers. You can automate texts like review requests and even use request templates. Other best practices of text marketing include using personalization, clearly identifying yourself as the sender, making messages interesting, and not being afraid to use emojis.

Improving Email Marketing

Email is a cost-effective marketing tool, showing an average return of $36 per dollar spent. Using it is not enough, though. You need to target the right recipients, craft useful emails, and time them so that they’re more handy than annoying. Customers’ inboxes are already crowded, with 64% of small businesses saying email is a top marketing channel. So here are some tips to help you be more strategic with your email marketing and stand out to your prospects.

Build targeted email campaigns

Targeting recipients based on what you already know about them makes campaigns more effective. The top strategies for targeted campaigns are market segmentation, message personalization, and email automation. These tactics make your emails more relevant while also being easier to send and gather data on. The more you learn about your customers, the more precise you can be. You can segment your subscribers by:

• Role
• Industry
• Demographic
• Lead score
• Geographic area
• Purchase history
• Content topic
• Engagement level
• Spending history
• Page visits
• CTA source
• And more

How you target your campaigns will be based on your goals and priorities. The content of the emails can then be personalized further by using recipients’ names, mentioning past purchases, and offering promotions on items they’ve viewed or added to their carts. Both segmentation and personalization have been shown to improve click rates.

In addition to the direct results you’ll see from email clicks and sales, your email analytics will play an important role in gathering data. The data is not just for email use but for customer insights that can be used across campaigns. You’ll be able to save an increasing amount of data for your customer profile and about individual buyers. In addition to creating more personalized experiences, you can begin to predict how buyers will behave and what they likely want next.

Create engaging newsletters

Modern newsletters are distributed via email, but they’re a different content animal from other types of emails. It seems like nearly everyone wants you to subscribe to their email newsletter, but do they have a compelling reason to even create a newsletter? Some ways to ensure your newsletter is interesting and useful enough to gain subscribers include:

• Be consistent. Try to keep up a regular cadence and provide subscribers with the kind of content they signed up for.
• Make it interesting. Not every piece of news needs to go in the newsletter. Focus on what your customers will care about, and don’t be afraid to entertain readers when appropriate.
• Consider the design. Make the newsletter easy to scan, read, and look at. Use images and bullet points to break up text.
• Make it engaging. Use calls to action, request replies, and more so readers can interact or learn more if they want to.
• Proofread. Let subscribers know you care about quality through a well-written newsletter that doesn’t look haphazardly written.

Connect email with other channels

Email efforts shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. They should be tied to your efforts in sales, customer service, and other areas of marketing. You can simplify this connection by using a centralized platform to organize chat, text, email, social media, event apps, review sites, and analytics tools. Connecting inbound and outbound marketing campaigns allows for more cohesive branding and messaging. Customers will begin to see your local business as more recognizable, consistent, and trustworthy. Furthermore, the analytics you get from connecting channels gives you a more comprehensive picture of your marketing and customers.

Email should become a natural part of your local business’s customer marketing, communication, and sales processes. For example, you should send emails to confirm and track every online purchase. You can also use email to thank customers, ask for reviews, and maintain relationships.

Creating Paid Advertising Campaigns

Advertising has changed significantly over recent years. Digital advertising can feel complex to small business owners and marketers, but understanding these strategies should get you on the right track.

Choose the right advertising platforms

The first big advertising challenge is deciding where to spend your limited advertising dollars. Options include Google ads, other search engines, various social media platforms, and industry websites. Narrow down your options by learning where your customers spend their time. If you don’t already have a customer profile of your target market, start by outlining everything you know about your audience. Consider their interests, preferences, challenges, buying characteristics, and geographic locations.

Those answers are key to finding which platforms are relevant to your audience. One-fourth of 18- to 44-year-old social media users have made a purchase via a social app. And even more use social media to discover or research products. But it’s important to learn more about the habits of your specific buyer profile.

Some business owners wonder why they should pay for advertising when social media is free. The answer is that you extend your brand’s reach and can boost your local business growth by using a mix of inbound and outbound marketing. Also, by advertising to the right audiences, you reach people who may not have found you organically, and you do so more quickly and efficiently.

Build targeted ad campaigns

Once you have determined who your target audience is and where they are, you can begin to create ad campaigns relevant to them. Targeted campaigns minimize waste by focusing marketing efforts on your most likely prospects. Social media sites like Facebook already have information on many users, like location, likes, age, education, and workplace. Those platforms provide a shortcut to building an ad funnel and reaching targets using lookalike audiences. Important aspects of creating and optimizing an ad campaign include:

• Doing audience research
• Setting campaign goals based on key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Setting a realistic budget and timeline to evaluate results
• Testing different ad creatives and platforms
• Analyzing results to optimize tactics and spending
• Personalizing ads as much as possible

Personalization is important because 71% of customers want it in their ads. Personalization can also increase revenue and repeat purchases. 

Create ads people want to click

Choosing the right advertising platforms and designing a well-thought-out strategy is not enough. You need to create ads that are compelling enough for prospects to spend their time reading or viewing. Making an ad “go viral” shouldn’t necessarily be a goal, but there are tactics you can use to make your ads relevant to your prospects.

• Get their attention. Get to know your audience so you know what’s interesting to them, what worries them, and what they’re looking for.
• Make ads share-worthy. If your ad is engaging, customers may want to share it with their networks. Make sure it’s interesting and easy to share.
• Appeal to emotion. When your audience feels something, they’re more likely to relate and engage. 
• Call them to action. A clear, clickable CTA will let your audience see that they can learn more or take another kind of step.
• Make it visually compelling. Fonts, colors, photos, videos, and other imagery will make your ad more appealing and memorable. It makes sense that 86% of marketers say visual content is either essential, “very important,” or “quite important.”
  

Leveraging Social Media

Social media is a significant part of today’s local business promotion. More than a quarter of social media users (26.5%) look for products to purchase on social sites. A lot of customers even buy directly on social sites. Consumers expect local businesses to at least have a social presence and to be able to learn about and interact with them there. Here’s what you need to know about using social media to help with local business growth.

Identify the right social platforms

Where do your customers like to go online? Some businesses think they have to run social media profiles on every platform, but it’s best to prioritize them until you learn what’s working and what you can manage. Start by looking up information about platform users. But choosing a platform isn’t all about who the users are. It’s also about why they’re there. For example, Pinterest may have a different demographic than YouTube, but both are places where someone may go to find “how-to” information. Conversely, LinkedIn users have different objectives for being on the platform than TikTok fans do on TikTok.

The most popular social media sites include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Yelp, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. There are less mainstream platforms—and even obscure niche sites—that are for social media. These include Reddit, Goodreads, Discord, Twitch, and many more platforms, as many are always coming, going, and changing. Whichever platforms you think fit your local business, it’s important to be sure your team understands the use of the site or hires someone who does.

One more consideration is what kinds of content the site supports. Instagram, for example, is primarily a visual platform for photos and videos. Instagram reports that 90% of users follow one or more business accounts on the platform. Even though it’s a great place for visual businesses like photographers and artists to share creations or stores to show off merchandise—other local businesses are still able to get creative with storytelling and humor to make the platform work for them.

Share valuable content

Your content starts with what’s on your profiles. Your “about’ section may be the first impression a prospect gets of your local business, so it’s important to put thought into it. In addition, choose interesting imagery and remember to fill out as much information as you can, including your company description, hours, address, website, and contact information. Social media profiles provide a place to tell your business’ story and discuss why you do what you do.

Then, you can plan all the other kinds of content you want to share. Start with a calendar and plan a strategic mix of types of posts, including educational, informative, entertaining, and promotional. The 80/20 rule is a common recommendation for social media marketers, meaning they post only 20% promotional content and the other 80% is information, educational, or entertaining. While it’s not a hard and fast rule, and there are other formulas, it reinforces the idea that you should be giving more than you ask in your social media content.

There are other considerations when it comes to the kinds of content you should share. Try different formats to see what your prospects and customers appreciate and pay attention to, such as:

• Video (live or recorded)
• Photos
• Graphics
• Text messages
• Quizzes/polls
• Guides or how-to articles.

Then, you must decide what kind of content to provide within those formats. This may be a mix of:

• Offers
• Discounts
• Sales
• FAQs
• Positive reviews
• Product images
• Curated content
• Before-and-after results
• Customer stories
• Business and employee stories

Customer-generated content is valuable because people trust real testimonials, and you don’t have to work to create it. You can simply share customers’ social media posts on your own website and social profiles. These are only some of the content types, so to make the most of your efforts, continue to test and optimize content as well as your posting schedule.

Finally, instead of trying to go “viral,” it’s more important to be authentic and useful to your audience. Minimize how much value you place on vanity metrics. Just because a post gets a lot of likes or shares doesn’t necessarily mean it has reached or resonated with the right audience. Consistency and authenticity will get long-term results, and creative tactics like partnering with complementary social accounts will also help you reach a wider audience.

Engage with your social media audience

Social media shouldn’t just be making posts and following a strict calendar—it is “social,” after all. Your brand should reply to commenters when appropriate, join relevant groups, answer community questions, and provide customer support. And you’re not limited to interacting only on your page. Consider participating in or creating Facebook and LinkedIn groups to interact with communities of your target audience. Not all engagement has to be on your public profile. A tool like Facebook Messenger can be used for answering customer questions or addressing customer issues with discretion. All engagement is an opportunity to build relationships.

It also helps to use social listening and monitoring tools to uncover community sentiment about your business and industry. You can learn more about what customers are saying about you. Online reviews are an important part of your social presence. Spend time reading and responding with genuine concern and respect to positive and negative reviews. Platforms like Yelp, Facebook, and Google Reviews are important to consumers researching businesses.

Customers are more likely to write a review when upset about an experience, so it’s important to urge happy customers to write positive reviews. It’s also important to respond to reviews since potential customers are looking. Seventy-two percent of consumers say they don’t purchase until they’ve read the reviews.

Business and product reviews can also increase conversions and build trust, while a negative review can turn off potential customers. Fortunately, you can counter the effects of negative reviews by responding to them. Some business owners and marketers don’t realize Google Reviews even impact your search rankings. Reputation management isn’t a passive strategy—it’s built on how you interact and engage with people.

A reputation management platform can help companies engage with and improve review profiles on a local level. As a side note, these solutions can also help you analyze reviews and feedback to improve your products and service, better educate customers on products, and provide better customer service.

Embracing Referral Marketing

Word-of-mouth referrals have always been important to business, but now companies can be more organized and strategic by creating a referral program. Here are some starting tips.

Build a referral program

You can build a referral program by asking your best customers to refer your business to new customers. But referrals don’t always have to come from customers. You can build referral partnerships with other, complementary businesses and, in some cases, it can be a reciprocal arrangement. For example, a roofing company may refer clients to specific contractors for interior remodeling work. They have the same kinds of customers but don’t sell competing products and services. With business referrals, it’s important to remember that your partner’s reputation is on the line when they make a referral to your business. So, it’s not just about providing fees or gifts—it’s important to build trust and confidence with a partner. 

→Guyou Construction is a full-service energy solutions provider that saw their local business grow when they used Podium Campaigns to get more customer reviews and referrals. They sent promotional messages and asked current customers to tell their friends and family. Their first referral campaign saw significant return on investment (ROI), with multiple referrals and a sale for over $30,000.

Encourage word-of-mouth recommendations

Most local businesses would love to receive word-of-mouth recommendations. However, people are often busy, and it may not even occur to customers to tell their friends about you. That’s why it’s essential to explicitly ask for reviews, recommendations, and referrals. You may choose to offer customers gifts or discounts as part of the process.

There are also many ways to ask. You can do so in receipt emails or texts, follow-up surveys, or on social media. Also, be sure to provide the link to your review page—that way a customer is less likely to give up because they don’t have to put in additional effort. It also helps to share reviews and testimonials on your site to demonstrate that you welcome them.

Offer referral incentives

Reward existing customers for referring new customers. There are various ways to set up an incentive program. It may include allowing customers to share a referral code that’s easy to distribute on social media. You can offer a gift or reward to the referring customer or provide a discount to both the referrer and new customer. Rewards can include coupons, cash, gift cards, or exclusive items. The reward should make sense for your type of company and customer value and have some value to your customer. Not only do you get the referral but a customer who is likely happy to return.

Growing with Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a relatively new but effective form of growing your business. It means developing and paying for partnerships with industry influencers to let people learn about your business and products and gain new customers. The influencer marketing industry has exploded, recently reaching $16.4 billion. Though it’s likely to continue to grow, it is likely to also change. Experts predict that micro-influencers will play a larger role in the industry as will user-generated content.

Identify influencers in your industry

Influencer marketing is an investment, but it’s also about building industry relationships. Businesses have a limited pool of influencers who are relevant to what they offer. So, it’s essential to nurture these partnerships to be mutually beneficial. Start by considering what you want to achieve and the image you want to project. Any influencers you employ will be a reflection on your own brand.

These are some of the ways you can find the right influencers for your brand:

• Conduct a search for influencers. Many influencers will show up in search engine results, and some sites have compiled lists of influencers. Also search the social media platforms you already use.
• Check out your followers. Maybe you’re already being followed by an influencer or micro-influencer. And if they’re already a fan, the relationship can grow more easily and authentically. 
• Monitor mentions. See who’s mentioned your brand (and don’t forget to thank them for their support). Some existing customers may fit the influencer bill.
• Research hashtags and keywords. Who is already known for talking about products in your industry? At the very least you’ll get an idea of who the influencers are and what’s being said in your industry. In the long run, you can build relationships and possibly even partnerships.
• Work with an agency. There are companies that specialize in recruiting and matching influencers with businesses. Some specialize in matching niche micro-influencers.

Build a partnership program

Your partnership program will depend on your type of business. Maybe you’re looking for an industry authority, or maybe a network of micro-influencers makes more sense. Building the program may involve using your internal resources, an online platform, or professional agency. There’s not just one way to establish a partnership. Some ways may involve mainly sharing content, while other setups may be more elaborate.

Partnerships may involve monetary payments, or they may involve providing influencers with your products. Some businesses pay influencers a percentage of the sales they help generate. Create clear contracts so influencers know what they are expected to deliver and what they will get in return. These are relationships you want to nurture and not allow to sour due to neglect or misunderstandings.

Measure the impact of influencer marketing

Compare your marketing results before and after you implement influencer marketing. Determine which influencer posts and campaigns showed the best results. Measure your metrics against your business goals and key performance indicators. Consider metrics like ROI, cost per lead, and customer lifetime value.

If you want to achieve an objective through influencer marketing—such as grow brand awareness, increase conversion rates, acquire new customers, increase sales, or get more reviews—it’s essential to set a concrete goal and then track your progress.

By extending your marketing efforts across multiple channels, you’ll be better able to reach more customers and successfully grow your business.

Speed Local Business Growth with Podium

Growing your local business takes time and effort, but by connecting multiple channels and automating marketing tasks, you can see more growth more quickly. Podium helps local businesses:

• Connect with customers faster
• Get more reviews
• Increase revenue
• Measure marketing results
• Turn website visitors into leads and repeat customers.

Discover how Podium can help your local business by watching this demo.