Key digital marketing tactics for local businesses

The Digital Marketing Podcast with Mandar Marathe

Local search queries are on the rise and are growing 7% YoY as per data from Google. If you are a local business, then you can grow with digital marketing tactics that we are going to talk about.

1. Rock your map listings: Whether its Google My Business, Bing Places or Apple Maps, you need to get your business listed on these maps platforms. If you have multiple listings for your business, then use Moz Local to maintain consistency across your listings on all platforms.

2. Local listing / aggregator websites: Sites such as JustDial.com or Sulekha.com do well with local searches. Make sure that your business is listed on such sites and have reviews as people tend to use these sites when it comes to searching for local services.

3. Local / city pages on website: An example I would like to state here is that of Agarwalpackers.com - They are a packing and moving company offering services across multiple cities in India. If you search for packers and movers in Mumbai or packers and movers in Hyderabad, then Agarwal Packers and Movers ranks at the top. Create local pages for a region or a city on your website.

4. SEO: Use hyper-local keywords within your content on city / locality pages. Also, its important to use schema markup for better visibility on voice search and mobile searches. LocalBusiness schema or TouristAttraction schema (if you are a travel website) need to be added. When it comes to link building, you need to identify local news websites and build links from them. For e.g. thaneweb.com is a local news site that gives news and lists businesses in Thane.

5. Google Ads: Google Ads (AdWords) are good for driving sales / leads for local businesses. You can use geo-targeting or radius targeting to reach out to your customers in the vicinity of your store. Put your phone number in search ads as people tend to call you. Also use local extension so that people can find driving directions to your business.