Modern businesses have a very broad spectrum of channels they can use to market their products to the public. Some are more predominant in the current business ecosystem, and others are yet to become popular. Today, we’d like to look into a marketing field that is commonly overlooked by small businesses — location-based marketing.
When properly integrated into a business’s marketing mix, location-based marketing tools can have a considerable impact on an organization’s reach and revenue. In this article, we’ll look into seven useful tools your small business can use to ensure a fruitful location-based marketing experience. Let’s dive right in, shall we?
Where can your customers find you?
Probably the most common and straightforward tool are directories since their main goal is to provide users with lists of businesses available in some geographical regions. Directories allow major search engines to index all the firms within a location and offer them to their customers.
In order to maximize the benefits that directories provide you with, it’s important to take the time to keep them updated. If your business changes its address, phone number, email address, or anything that your customers will use to reach out — update that data as soon as possible.
What do people think?
Now that your potential customers can find you, it’s essential to let them know how other people feel about your business. People have pretty much become accustomed to Googling a place before visiting it, especially when it comes to restaurants.
Always stay informed about what customers think of your business on services like Yelp and Google+. Even though negative feedback can have a serious toll on your business’s foot traffic, address their feedback in a cordial and professional manner. This will surely minimize the negative impact.
Text message marketing is back
SMS marketing has experienced an enormous increase in popularity over the last five years. Now that we’ve become so dependent on our smartphones, this marketing channel has become a very powerful tool that marketing specialists use regularly. There are now many platforms like SlickText, JookSMS, Protecting, and Pony Express HA that can allow small businesses to experiment with this strain of marketing.
SMS marketing is also very popular due to its impressive open rates. People open SMS messages five times more often than they do emails, which is astonishing, given how inexpensive it is.
Advertise based on their location
Geotargeting is an incredibly powerful tool that has been overlooked by small businesses. It allows you to take advantage of the users’ location data and advertise specific services once they enter particular parts of the city or country.
People’s moods change regularly, based on where they are. This allows marketing specialists to take advantage of their target audience’s mood and deliver only relevant ads. In effect, that will ensure greater conversion ratios.
Incentivize check-ins
Social media platforms allow their users to mention where they’ve been by checking in. Although this practice isn’t as common as it once used to be, it’s still a valid way of spreading the word about your business. What you need to do is provide them with the right incentive.
Beacons
This technology dates back to 2013, when it was released by Apple, but was shortly followed by the Android version.
Beacons are programmed to interact with specific apps on a user’s smartphone or other devices, which allows triggering pre-programmed messages in micro-locations.
Local-search optimization
Local search optimization is a common SEO practice that has to do with the optimization of a business’s website, designed to maximize the chance it appearing in local search queries related to different cities or parts of the country.
This type of optimization implies a broad set of procedures that range from strictly technical to linguistic. While you may need to hire some SEO specialists to ensure that your site abides by SEO standards, legal translations, and localization services like Pick Writers can help you localize your site copy to regional standards.
Conclusion
Location-based marketing is an especially important growth factor for small businesses. Today, the vast majority of these tools are inexpensive and impressively efficient. You’ll have to establish which one works best for your particular company.