by: AskPat 767 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to . . .what episode is this? Oh, Episode 767. Sorry. Got a little off-kilter there. But anyway, thank you so much for being here today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. It's the end of the year guys. Come on, give me some. . .give me a break.
Okay, now here's today's question from Steven.
Steven: Hey Pat, it's Steven here with MountainFreshMedia.com. I'm wondering what do you suggest for companies to promote their business locally. Often we hear SEO tactics about how to get noticed in general on the web. But what if you were, say, a doctor, or a lawyer, or a dentist, or something that where it's more a local-type business, where you're not expecting Internet traffic, but you want to get local traffic. What do you recommend then for local businesses to increase their web presence, and get more clients in the door? Thanks for all you do.
Pat Flynn: Hey Steve, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate it and in full disclosure, I do not have a quote, “Local business.” I don't have a dentistry, or a chiropractic business, or a massage place, or a you know, any of those types of things. But, I do know a lot of people who do have those and I have read a lot about what works and what doesn't, so I'm going to give you as much information as I can, that I know is going to be helpful probably; sort of the things you should absolutely be doing.
I mean there's probably a billion things you could do, but obviously because of that, there's a lot of noise, but hopefully this stuff will be right up your alley for helping you with your local business. Now even though we don't expect online traffic, you kind of do. I mean you had mentioned we want foot traffic, right? We want people coming in the door, but often times, people first find out about us, even our local businesses online, and there's a few great ways to do that.
I would definitely optimize for local search. You might have noticed before that when you type things into Google like, “Italian restaurant.” It's going show the Italian restaurant's in your area because that's going to be most helpful to you. So there are a lot of tools that you can use to optimize for local SEO, I'm not gonna get into that right now, but just look up, “Local SEO” in Google, and they'll be some good fantastic advice for helping you get on those directories, getting on a map, for example, I know a lot of businesses actually, some of my friends own physical businesses that have yet to be something that could be found on a Google map, which is not good. So you definitely want that, all those kinds of things to happen.
Another thing you should pay attention to is Facebook ads. So, Facebook ads are great because you can get highly locally targeted and, you can then start to get leads that way. Now you do want those to actually … you do want them to be trackable and measurable. I think a big mistake that a lot of people use, is they try to get traffic on Facebook, whether it's local or not, to a landing page, and then from there, hopefully get signups or just. . . again hopefully get people to come and buy their product and that word, “hopefully,” is not what you want to work on. You want to go on something that does work or does not work, so you know where to move on next.
And so for that particular strategy, one thing you want to do is see if you can collect actual leads, whether that's emails, or for local businesses it may be phone calls. And that's how you would know. So, for example, a dentist could promote to his or her local area, and on that landing page, after people click through, maybe there's a phone number. And you call that phone number, and you set up an appointment, and on that particular offer, there's a special deal for people who get that appointment booked through your Facebook. So that's just a very general thing, but that could be you know, what's nice about those like, “Hey, we don't often this deal anywhere else, but since you're here from Facebook, and you found us there, we'd like to offer your first visit free. Or give you a free karate lesson if you're a karate studio or whatever, you know, physical training or whatever it is.
So that another thing that you can pay attention to. So local SEO, for your local search optimization. That's different than local search optimization in terms of what I mentioned earlier, like being the first pop-up, because it's a local area. There's also keywords that you should be paying attention to as well. Metadata that is specifically for your type of business in your area so you'd want to think about what people might be typing in, related to what it is that you have to offer. So it could be the location, but maybe there's different ways to describe your location. Maybe there's different sectors of the city that you serve, or different nicknames for the city that you can also optimize for.
Because people aren't just typing “Italian restaurants,” sometimes they're typing “Self hill Italian restaurants.” Or they're typing, “Downtown whatever city name cheap.” Or maybe specific dishes that you offer, for example, or things like that, so you can optimized for those things that people are searching for beyond just what it is that you offer on the higher level.
Another thing that's really important is Yelp. Sites like Yelp, which have reviews, you know, word of mouth is great but people want to know that they're going to a place that's awesome, so there are sites like Yelp. Yelp is great for all kinds of businesses. There are other ones for specific kinds of businesses I think it was Angel list … oh no not Angel list. There's ones specifically for contractors like, I think it's Angie's List, not Angel’s. . .Angie’s List. That's for startups and stuff.
So you can find local contractors there and if you can get set up there and get people to leave reviews for you, you're going have more social proof, people are gonna be more likely to go to you, because that word of mouth. And then also just word of mouth in general, when people are at your place, you know, treat them like gold. And when you do that, when you make them feel special, they're going to bring their friends.
And so those are just quick, higher level things that you can think about. There's also a lot of great websites that offer tips for local SEO, and local brick and mortar businesses as well. But again, I think those are the few things that you definitely want to focus on. You can also get a little bit more advanced, with some things like retargeting, and also customer databases, I think those all place a big role, you can also get a little bit into direct mail, for setting postcards and little offers, and things here and there, playing into the seasons as well, works really good for local businesses.
So yeah, keep those things in mind Steven. I hope that helps. I want to wish you all the best. Thank you so much for your question. I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show.
For everybody else listening if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to www.AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page.
Thanks so much, I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day by Steve Jobs, he says, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader, and a follower.” Keep innovating everybody, take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.