5 Tips & Tricks To Know
Does your company need more local business? Are you unsure what you’re supposed to do to obtain it?
If your goal is to reach a local customer, it doesn’t make sense to market your business the same way as a company that operates on a national or global scale. Instead, you have to “think local,” and perfect your ability to perform local lead generation.
Let’s dive deeper into that and uncover how to do it right.
What is Lead Generation?
To understand what local lead generation is, it might help to know what lead generation itself means. Before we discuss LOCAL LEAD GENERATION, let’s understand what lead generation is in general.
Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into people who have indicated an interest in your company’s product or service. Lead generation examples include blog posts, giveaways, video, live events, and almost any online content.
The variety of lead generation tactics are virtually unlimited. Strategies can cover social media, paid advertising (PPC and Facebook ads), and making offers to your audience in your local area.
Developing a solid lead generation strategy is at the core of success for a business of any shape or size.
So that brings me to the point of this blog — how can construction companies, physicians, attorneys, insurance firms, dentists, and any other local business or organization turn prospects into leads?
Local Lead Generation
To simplify it, local lead generation is just another type of lead generation. That might sound obvious, but it’s really helpful to keep this in mind. You will be using the same principles and concepts I just mentioned but within certain parameters.
Here are some of the most important factors to consider and how they help with the goal of creating local leads.
Local SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is fundamentally the process of expanding your business’ visibility in search engines like Google. The goal is to attract more visitors to your website and increase the opportunity for conversions and sales.
Search engine placement is one of the most important strategies for local lead generation. But this process is different on a local level than it would be for ranking nationally.
Search engines will gather local information such as geographic content, social profile pages, links locally, and citations and maps to provide highly relevant search results to their users.
There are many steps you can take to make sure search engines are finding you and ranking you to the local user. These steps include optimizing the internal linking structure of your website, making sure your website is mobile-friendly, connecting with local customers on social media, and ensuring your name, address, and phone number are all consistent online.
Obviously, this is a very broad overview of local SEO, but with these highlights, you have the ability to understand the core principles and have a good direction for more education or research.
For more detailed information, check out our guide to Doubling Your Sales In 90 Days.
Local SEM
Search Engine Marketing (SEM), is the process of using paid advertising to ensure that your business’ products or services are visible in search engine results pages. When a local lead in your community types a certain keyword into the search engine, a good SEM set up will enable your business to found for that specific keyword in your specific region or geographical location. Simply put, it’s the process of creating a targeted ad on the search engines.
Any business of any size can leverage this practice. This is an excellent way for local companies to generate high-quality leads. Similar to SEO, when you target your local area with search ads, you are already reaching a highly engaged prospect.
Landing Pages, Forms, and Offers
A central part of almost any lead generation effort will include landing pages, conversion forms, high-value offers, and website pages that are designed to turn visitors into leads. Lead forms are designed to capture your visitor’s contact information. Remember though, they won’t give that information up for just anything.
This is a transactional process.
Visitors to your website cannot be expected to simply hand over their email addresses or phone numbers without receiving something of value in return. That “something” is known as an offer. It’s the incentive created to bring interest to your company by offering a value-driven piece of content. Your business will build credibility and trust with content offers such as whitepapers, ebooks, video training, guides, and other compelling offers. However, for a local business, the offer doesn’t always have to be content offers.
Local businesses can often get more attention when offering a free consultation, or a discount in exchange for a visitor’s email address. In the end, a well-built landing page and a high-value offer are vital when it comes to turning an interested visitor into a qualified lead.
If you think “local” and market to your customers who buy local you will market your business very differently than you would market for a national or global campaign. There are people searching for your product and service right now. Can they find you? Do you have a compelling offer for them?