#133: How to Promote Your Business Locally: 5 Tactics to Use in 2023

Show Notes

Marketing your company locally isn't just a "nice-to-have," it's a "must have," especially if you want to increase your brand's stickiness with prospective customers!
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If you don’t have money to spare but do want some budget friendly ideas, well, you’ve come to the right place! In this episode, co-hosts Lori Vajda and Nola Boea share free and low-cost marketing tactics to help you raise brand awareness, drive website traffic, or make sales.

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In This Episode You’ll Learn 

• How these creative ideas can get you on local TV and radio
• Tips for increasing engagement at the local level
• Why organic traffic is more effective, even though paid advertising might yield quicker results
• Why business owners need to embrace DIY marketing.

Key points Lori and Nola are sharing in this episode:
(03:43:13) Five benefits of local promotion you might not have considered. 

(05:47:91) Three costly mistakes to avoid when using paid promotion in 2023.

(08:41:57) Customers who come to you through organic channels, are more likely to be members of your ideal audience for one simple reason.

(10:52:20) Our five free or low-cost ways to build a steady stream of traffic to your business, including local traffic  

(15:02:22) Creative DIY tips for getting press coverage on a local level

Resources 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Lori: There's no doubt that promoting your business, especially locally, isn't just a nice to have, it's a must have. Particularly when it comes to creating that stickiness factor for your business. A lot of the advice out there for promoting a new business suggest that to get started, you invest money in running ads on social platforms like Facebook or Instagram or even Google Ads. And while paid advertising may work faster, it can also be rather expensive. If you don't have money to spare, but you want some budget-friendly ideas, well you've come to the right place. Stay tuned listener because in this episode we are sharing free and low-cost marketing tactics to help you meet your business promotion goals, whether that's raising brand awareness, driving website traffic, or making sales.

[00:00:49] Nola: Welcome to Sticky Brand Lab, where we bridge the gap between knowledge and action by providing you with helpful info, tips and tools from entrepreneurs and other experts so you can quickly and easily jumpstart your side business. We're your hosts. I'm Nola Boea, and this is my co-host, Lori Vajda.

[00:01:05] Lori: Hi Nola.

[00:01:06] Nola: Hey, Lori.

[00:01:07] Lori: Hey, Nola. I have a question for you. I'm sure that you've heard that saying, "Work on your business, not just in your business."

[00:01:15] Nola: So, here's what I understand. IN your business is when you are providing those products and services that you got into business to provide. ON your business means making sure all those operational and even strategic aspects are taking place outside and around and supporting what's going on in your business. So why do you ask?

[00:01:36] Lori: Well, I ask because today's topic about promoting made me wonder, is promoting your business, working IN your business because you're a solopreneur and likely just getting started? Or is it really working ON your business?

[00:01:53] Nola: You might consider marketing or promotion kind of as a backend operational detail and therefore ON your business. But I think that when you get repeat business, when you are upselling and when you're getting referrals, I, things like that should be worked into every client or customer engagement or interaction, which means, in my opinion, that you're always doing a little promotion, which means you're working IN your business as well.

[00:02:22] Lori: That makes perfect sense.

[00:02:23] Nola: So where are you going with this?
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[00:02:25] Lori: Well, part of it is that when I think about a new entrepreneur and the idea of promoting or advertising your business, often, we associate with is the cost. So whether, if you take out ads like Google Ads, which often are pay-per-click, or you have printed materials or swag, you're paying for it, right? And while there's no doubt that paid advertising has its benefits, and ads definitely can work faster than organic traffic, organic traffic in the long run can be a lot more effective and it's a lot cheaper. I mean cheaper in the sense you still have an investment, but your investment often is time.

[00:03:10] Nola: Yes. That's because paid advertising only works best as long as you're paying.

[00:03:15] Lori: Exactly. And so for you, listener, whether you're a newpreneur or you've been business for a while and you're just looking for a few free or inexpensive ways to promote your business, well, we've got you covered, Boo. Today, Nola and I are sharing, five tips and one bonus idea for marketing and promoting your business locally, which supports our general philosophy of, start local, grow global.

[00:03:46] Nola: And this is important, this whole local and global promotion. It's really important because you really are part of a local community. And even though you may have a website, which by definition, worldwide web reaches the whole world, you really want to support your local economy. And that's what's really important about going local. But in addition, it's beneficial to you when you're just getting started, you're testing things out. You're figuring out what works. You're getting one-on-one feedback on people's reaction to your product or service, or ways to tweak it, and you're also getting comfortable talking about your business. And so, it's really helpful to just start out locally before you cast that wider net. Having said that,

[00:04:32] Lori: No, those are really good points. Practicing getting comfortable, kind of like getting your sea legs, if you will, or getting a confidence. It's much easier when you can talk to people in your community and they respond or react or don't. Then you can make those minor tweaks so that when you get to a larger global audience in which you don't get direct feedback, you're pretty secure about what your messaging is and how to reach them.

[00:05:01] Nola: Yes. So listener, a lot of the ideas that we're about to share today, they're going to be easy to execute. All it takes is some time, a few free or low-cost tools, and a little creative courage. And that last one, it's really important for one simple reason: you really don't know what will actually work, or what is actually going to resonate with an audience, until you get out there and do it. Which is why we recommend saving your money.

[00:05:31] Lori: Exactly. You know that saying, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained?" I definitely agree with. And before we share our DIY ideas, we've got a few reasons we think organic and local promotion is the best way to start.

So, here are three downsides to paid promotion. Nola already kind of hit on the first major one, which is, paid advertising is the most successful as long as you continue the investment. And while you're likely to see an increase in traffic in the short term, what often isn't said is that in the long run, when you stop paying, so does your traffic. It kind of disappears. Now, if you compare that to writing, say, an evergreen blog post, for example, or recording a YouTube video or even a podcast, with great keywords in there, you literally can drive free traffic to your business for years to come. Because evergreen never goes out of style. Evergreen, it never becomes old. Like I think about a lot of the things that we're doing that today you can definitely pinpoint to the pandemic. But when you no longer talk about the pandemic, then your content or your marketing promotion kind of feels outdated. Evergreen stays relevant.

The second downside that we want to mention here is, despite the buzz around things like pay-per-click, or PPC, and SEO, paid AdWords and social media advertising, none of these things work quickly. Some of them can take like six months or more to really, really get the benefit of your investment. Not to mention they're very expensive, and that's for two reasons. You need to nail your messaging, as you had said, so, to ensure that you are hitting the right audience, it could take a few ads before you start seeing results and those costs, each time somebody clicks, those cha-chings add up.

The second part to that is, if running ads is still pretty new to you, you're going to be learning as you go. And that in and of itself can be costly because you're learning about the mistakes you're making. But if you hire a professional, which can save you money, it also costs you money to do.

And number three, the people often that come from paid advertising are less likely to be your ideal client. And that's for one simple reason. In order to reach a wide audience, you have to use pretty broad criteria. So while you're trying to figure out if your messaging aligns with the reader or the listener, to get to that, you have to use broad criteria. And then once you start to collect the data and analyze the data, it can get pretty costly.

[00:08:23] Nola: Yep, and those are some real drawbacks of paid ads. Paid ads aren't bad, but those are certainly things that you want to be aware of when you're first starting out.

[00:08:31] Lori: Exactly. The things that people don't tell you when that same person is telling you, the best way to get out there is to pay for it.

[00:08:39] Nola: Now, by comparison, prospective customers who come to you themselves through organic channels, they're more likely to be members of your ideal audience. And that's simply because they found you while they were searching for a solution to their problem. Which is exactly what happens when you post high-quality, engaging, relevant, helpful, evergreen content. You know, you're basically posting the answer and they find it. And that content can be in the form of blog posts, YouTube videos, or even podcasts.

[00:09:12] Lori: Of course.

[00:09:12] Nola: Yeah. So not only does your content basically show them why your business is the ideal solution that they're searching for, but those customers who find you that way, they are likely to be more engaged with you and your business right from the start. Because you didn't snag them; they snagged you.

[00:09:32] Lori: Oh, I love that.

[00:09:33] Nola: Yeah. It's that much stickier from the get-go. Here's a hint. If your business serves the local community, your blog and your web content, it should include the name of your community and any other community-related landmarks, events, referrals or resources, just so those pages, those blog posts or those articles, they'll be found by other locals who are searching for a service like yours.

[00:09:58] Lori: Yeah. It's kind of like thinking of it as anchoring to your community. And that's really the benefit of organic and local promotion. They really go hand in hand. I mean, when it comes to promoting and marketing your business, diversification is key. It's perfectly okay to have and invest money in paid things. You know, we talked about collateral materials, for example. Or swag. You just want to make sure that you also think about your strategy and when you're getting started and your budget is tight, we think the best thing to do is DIY your way through it to help build brand awareness. And it helps with marketing for sales.

[00:10:39] Nola: Absolutely. So listener, now that we've absolutely convinced you to focus on organic local marketing,

[00:10:47] Lori: At least we hope we have.

[00:10:48] Nola: Yeah. Let's look at five free or low-cost ways to build a steady stream of traffic to your business, including local traffic. Now, when you're just starting out, the one thing that you don't have a lot of besides time is an audience, because you're just starting out. So, tip number one is our workaround for that. And that is to start out by talking to other people's audiences. Now, that's assuming that you share the same target audience. You can accomplish this by contributing content to the sites and posts and platforms of other established businesses. It can be a guest blog post, it could be a newsletter article, or you can even have a guest article on their LinkedIn page. And better yet, you can go to that business and collaborate. They write for you, you write for them, you build awareness for each other, right? And you can also offer to repost each other's content. They write something you reposted on your site saying, "Hey, my colleague just wrote this great blog post. I want to share it with you." And they can do the same. It's a collaborative thing.

Now, as a side note, when you repost other local businesses' social posts, they can see that you're supporting them and it really builds goodwill and encourages them to support you as well. And by doing things like that, you help each other build the community's businesses.

[00:12:17] Lori: One of the things you might not know is, an additional benefit, of having written a blog and having it posted on someone else's or they share, another business owner shares, is that you get backlinks. And backlinks demonstrate to Google your authority, if you will. And so that credibility helps to move you up the ladder on that first page. Not just you, but it also does that for whoever you share their information as well, the business that you're sharing. So definitely consider that when you are picking out who to pitch to. And also, just know that other items work equally as well. So you don't have to have an article or just a blog post. You can use infographics. You can be active on social media. It'll demonstrate in Google that you've responded, so you can share that link on your social platforms as well. You can put it as a resource on a resource page. All of those things go a long way in moving you up the chain, if you will, on search engines.

[00:13:22] Nola: That's really good advice. I would just say, be sure that you're clear on both your ideal audience and the audience that you're trying to reach. Otherwise, it's going to be for naught. Your efforts will be a bust for your business rather than a boom. For example, let's say you are a landscaping professional and you want to get the word out there. Well, it would definitely be more "fruitful"

[00:13:45] Lori: Good pun.

[00:13:46] Nola: Yeah, to guest blog for a garden club rather than a running club, for example.

[00:13:53] Lori: You and I aren't saying they need to line up a hundred percent. Even if a third of that other business' audience is somebody that you're trying to reach, that's still a good number because that's a third more people than you have in your pond. You just want to be careful that you're not attracting people who can't afford your products or people who can't afford your services.

[00:14:17] Nola: Right. That's very good. Now, here's a suggestion. If you're just starting out and you're feeling a little reluctant, maybe shy to reach out to a business because you're new, you're not used to talking about your expertise, just remember, you're not asking them for any favors. You are offering value to their audience. So, you're sharing useful information, you're helping generate traffic for their site and their business, and it just so happens that it's going to do the same for you, which is a win-win. So, don't think about it as asking a favor. Think about it as having a gift to offer.

[00:14:58] Lori: Ooh. I love that. That's, that is a really good tip.
Tip number two: getting press coverage. Now, that on a local level is much easier than you think, and you don't need to hire a PR company to do it. This is something you can DIY, and I know this because I actually have experience in doing it. One of the ideas is who you want to target. Think of local journalists, your local newscaster, radio or podcast professional. You just want to be sure that your outreach includes a pitch deck, and you don't have to go through anything lengthy. You're just suggesting here's some topics that I can talk about. Here's where my expertise shines. You want an attention-grabbing item along with the products and services that you offer.
Now, the example I want to share is how I did this when I was a dating coach. It was in January, so February, Valentine's Day, the target audience was singles who were dating, and how to enhance that. So the win-win here is oftentimes local journalists, radio stations, they're looking for people just like you and me that they can kind of what they often might call a filler spot. So, they've done some really heavy national or local, and now they're looking for something light and interesting, or they're looking for a subject matter expert.

In this case, I was the dating coach, so I was the subject matter expert. And what I had done was put together a basket. It had in it those kisses, you know, and hugs, the candy. It had this rubber get-a-date. It was a guy and you put it in water and it expanded, and had some, some stickers. It had a balloon and some streamers. I mean, it was an attention-grabbing basket. And then it had all of my collateral information for how to reach me and what I could talk about and what the focus was. And it ended up that I was on one TV show. I was on two different types of radio shows, and on one of those radio shows, they asked me to come back as a regular contributor. So I would come back every other month and be on the show, and it was another way to show my expertise and talk about things at the dating, at the local level. And it was great. It was great fun for me. It was a benefit to their show as well, if you will.

Now, today, things are a little bit different than when I was doing this, so here's some suggestions to keep in mind. There are far more touchpoints that have to happen today than when I was a dating coach 10, 15 years ago. So my recommendation is, don't get discouraged if you don't hear anything back. Just in your strategy, have it planned out that you'll at least do three or four touchpoints. And a touchpoint could be, maybe you send a balloon and attached to that would be a one-page sheet. And you want to put the name of the journalist or the name of the newscaster on it, and you give them a balloon. You want to time it to some event or something that's coming up that your focus, your business, would be relevant to. Then the second one, you might send something that's a, got a little swag to it, and then your third, maybe you send a pastry or a cake from a local bakery, or you send your basket that you've DIYed together. So you spend the least amount to something a little more investing, in order to try and capture their attention.

[00:18:37] Nola: The reason why you have to get so creative at capturing the attention of journalists and influencers is because everybody's trying to get their attention. You even have professional PR firms trying to get their talent on their show. So you have to stand out from the crowd. Now as an alternative, consider this. Some communities have very localized publications that talk about local events. They feature local business owners and they may report on local government activities. And you might see these types of magazines freely available at local convenience stores. The editors of these publications, they're always looking for interesting local news. Just keep in mind that their editorial calendar is often planned months in advance, and they often have like the general theme or the general focus that they're going to be covering. So, if you're going to target these publications, you'll need to inquire about their timeline and their themes just to make sure that the story you pitch is still newsworthy or relevant when that publication hits the local stands.

[00:19:43] Lori: Yeah. A couple other things to keep in mind here is most of those local publications also keep data so they're able to tell you who their audience reach is. This is going to be important. Because if you are pitching them an idea to be a contributor, you want to make sure that that publication attracts the audience that you want to reach. Many of those local publications are free. But there are a number of them that, for you contributing your blog or your article, you also get an ad in that publication. And for those that's often paid. So just be aware that some may be paid, still low-cost amount, but it still is paid, and some of them are free. So depending on your budget and your timing, you have two options.

[00:20:31] Nola: Now we're going to tie our next two tips together, tips number three and four. But first, Lori, did you know that businesses with an online presence receive 35% of their total traffic, and get this, 33%, that's one third, of their revenue, from online searches alone?

[00:20:49] Lori: It's so incredible to me, and when you consider that with the need for local use of keywords, you realize just how powerful evergreen content or content is in general. One of the big ones right now is farm-to-table, so people will talk about ingredients or local producers, and they'll include that in their product description for their service or the item that they're selling.

Dynamic content is a great place that you can put keywords in, like your blog posts or even your transcripts from video or podcasts.

[00:21:25] Nola: Which leads us to tip number three, get found in Google searches. And the best way to do that is with a keyword-rich website or landing page. And when we say keyword-rich, we're not saying repeat the same words over and over and over until. That'll get you away. I mean, Google will like reject you. They'll spit you out. But what you can do is use those words or phrases that your ideal customer or client would naturally use, naturally say, when they go to search for a solution. So, with that said, while keywords are certainly "key" quote-unquote, to getting online traffic, it really can only work on a website that is doing all the other things right.

[00:22:06] Lori: I think you hit on something really important. When you're talking about a website, you're not talking about investing in a high-end website with all the bells and whistles. Although that can definitely be beneficial, it's costly. But from a Google search standpoint, the basic website, even a DIY one, if it has the right elements in it, will work just as well and be just as effective as paying big dollars.

[00:22:34] Nola: Absolutely. You can build it yourself. Just make sure it's user-friendly. And most of the DIY platforms out there are designed to try to keep it user-friendly. They all are made to be able to adjust for a variety of mobile devices, regardless of screen size. You want to make it easy on the eyes, somewhat intuitive, but it's important to have content such as blog posts or video transcripts, or show notes that refresh the page. Really, the big deal is the content itself. It gives those search bots something fresh to call attention to and to put in into the Google search on a regular basis.

[00:23:14] Lori: Yeah. When you Google your name or the name of your business, you're able to see what populates up. That's where you really get to see just how powerful your content is. Each post takes up a new space in the results.

[00:23:31] Nola: Absolutely. Having a well-functioning website gives you the ability to be found on search engines. Which brings us to tip number four, which is Google My Business.

[00:23:42] Lori: That's right. I love Google My Business, and it's an often-overlooked opportunity to promote your business locally and, in capital A N D, and, you don't have to have a brick-and-mortar location to set it up. You can have an area that you reach. Google My Business allows you each blog post you put, you can put memes on it, you're just updating it with fresh, dynamic content. And when you put it together with other free Google tools like Google Analytics or Google Reviews or Google Maps, you tie all of those together. All of them work synergistically to move you up the ladder on that home first page of Google. Plus, you're using content dynamically, which means you are refreshing it. You've got another place to put it, another place to link back to your site, another place for people to find touchpoints related to your business.

[00:24:47] Nola: Well, tip number five is actually more or less offline. And that is, showcase your expertise. And you can do this by looking for speaking opportunities related to your industry. And that can include local engagements such as your Rotary Club, your Chamber of Commerce, or local companies often offer Lunch & Learn opportunities to their employees. The key here is to get in front of targeted audiences who would most benefit from your expertise. Now also, you can expand regionally and even beyond by speaking at trade shows and conferences, both in person or virtual, or even hybrid conferences. You can speak on podcasts or on radio shows, and don't forget your local radio show. What you want to look for are opportunities with similar target audiences. You want to get in front of an audience that will really find what you have to be relevant to them and who would eventually produce a few paying customers.

Now, to be able to get these speaking engagements, you're going to need to pitch or talk to the people who are producing them, right? So the easiest way to do that is by email. And you want to follow the same type of format or logic or professionalism that you would with any professional email outreach. That is, be sure to create a really engaging subject line. Put a lot of value in the offering you're providing, that you're writing out. Now, explain that topic with an interesting title. Outline your learning objectives. Offer handouts or leave behinds, and be sure to include a brief bio of yourself.

[00:26:32] Lori: Exactly. You can use tools like Canva or, one of my favorite stock photo places is Yay Images and Deposit Photo. All three of these have free usage. You can upgrade, and get, by paying a small fee, depending on it's a one-time use, or if you want to subscribe. If it's like one of those photo places that I just mentioned, they often run specials, so you can pay a fee, a discounted rate if you subscribe to them, and you'll get so many photos you can use any time at a discounted rate. So it doesn't really cost that much to do that.

Same with getting an email system. One of the benefits of these outreaches is that you're collecting email addresses. So you want to look for email platform that you can use that can kind of grow with you.

[00:27:25] Nola: Very good.

[00:27:26] Lori: Our last tip is a bonus tip. Our suggestion is, attend industry or networking events. Not only do these events bring together other business-minded professionals from a variety of industries or maybe even niche industries, they're also looking to grow their business as well. So, you have access to owners and professionals that you can pitch collaborative ideas to, or you can set up, "Hey, let's do an event together. Let's do webinar together."

Again, referring back to when I was a dating coach, I attended a Women's Chamber of Commerce and sitting next to me was a woman she was starting a news magazine for people in the community who were divorced. She wanted to provide them with resources that they could use, helpful articles, and because I was at the right place at the right time talking to her, I ended up being a contributor to her physical magazine, but that writing experience then opened me up for online writing opportunities. Those opportunities put me in contact with other people who are putting on events who invited me to participate. So I really think there's really a lot of benefit to promotion at the local level and then growing to the global level.

[00:28:48] Nola: Very cool. Well listener, we hope the ideas and thoughts we've shared here today have sparked your interest, curiosity, and willingness to DIY your own business promotion outreach, and empowered you to become a first-time entrepreneur in the second half of your vibrant life. And be sure to stick around to the very end of the podcast for a fun little surprise.

[00:29:10] Lori: If you found the information we've shared here today helpful and want more tools, tips, and inspiration delivered to your inbox, sign up for News You Can Use over on our website at stickybrandlab.com.

[00:29:24] Nola: Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring, and motivating episode. And remember, action creates results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects.

[OUT-TAKE]

And again, having a well-functioning website gives you the ability to be found on search engine, which brings up, ah, take three.
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[00:29:52] Lori: I feel ya. I feel your pain. I already had it at the beginning when I couldn't see anything.