Are you a local business searching for a new way to reach your target audience?
You’ve come to the right place!
Local advertising is an excellent way for your company to reach local leads. If you haven’t started investing in advertising your company online, you are missing an exclusive opportunity to grow your business.
As a small business owner, your marketing and advertising goal is probably to get more customers or get in front of them. This is because when it comes to making an appointment or buying products and services, your business should be on their radar. But where and how to start?
On this page, we provide you with 7 local advertising ideas for your businesses. If you want to learn more about it, call us today or contact us online to communicate with an expert about our local digital advertising services.
What Is Local Advertising?
Local advertising targets potential audiences near the business location with messages replicating the local market. A company wanting to use influencers or local slang to attract consumers living nearby would benefit from local advertising and marketing.
The messages conveyed using this method relies on proximity. Local advertising materials engage with the community group to build a presence. Tactics like advertisements, hosting public events, or local influencers are all examples of local advertising.
Small businesses benefit exponentially from local advertising, especially in maintaining a loyal customer base by using local assets.
However, without understanding local audiences, you might lose that foundation for how you can connect with an essential part of your market.
For example, let’s assume you lead marketing efforts for a technology company. After going through market research, you found that your brand’s common insight is that your PCs are lower-quality than competitors.
To switch that opinion, you might invite business owners, students, and young professionals in your area to perform essential job functions on your PCs in-store, documenting ideas. After this, the members tag your brand and share high praise on their followers’ social media accounts. Using such posts, you’ve now created a user-generated local marketing campaign.
This is how local advertising shows that focusing on market research and locality can resonate with a wide audience.
Where Can I Advertise My Local Business?
There are several opportunities for you to advertise your local business to get interested and target leads.
You can advertise your brand on:
- Google Ads
- Yelp
- Microsoft Advertising or Bing Ads
You can use any network to help more people find your company.
7 Ideas for Locally Advertising Your Business
These ideas can be mounted to your business and its requirements. Remember, you don’t always need millions of bucks to be effective; just focus on the right areas. Use these ideas as inspiration when shaping your advertising campaign.
Using PPC Ads to Reach Interested Leads
PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising is one of the most outstanding online local advertising ideas. These ads are paid and appear at the top of search engine results above organic listings. PPC ads are an excellent advertising option for local businesses planning to attract more leads and revenue.
Let’s look at how to get started with running pay-per-click ads.
Select relevant keywords
To begin with PPC ads, you must choose keywords for your ad. Your keywords prompt your ad to appear in search results. If you want to show your advertisement in front of relevant leads looking for your company, select the right keywords to help them discover your business.
If you want to find unique and relevant keywords for your ad, begin with conducting keyword research. Keyword research will guide you towards selecting useful keywords for your ads.
Also, focus mainly on long-tail keywords (contain three or more words).
For example, a long-tail keyword looks like ‘barber shops near San Diego, CA.’
If you opt to choose long-tail keywords, you’ll drive better results with your PPC ads.
Bid for advertisement placement
Once you have selected your keywords, you’ll place a bid for your ad. Set your maximum bid you’re willing to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. This bid amount is flexible and can be changed anytime as needed.
To get an idea for maximum bid, you can use a keyword research tool. These tools show you the average CPC (cost-per-click) for a keyword. This information helps you gain an initial point for your bid amount.
Launch your ad
Once you are done with your ad placement, move forward to launch your campaign. Determine how and when you want to run your advertising campaign. PPC ads give your local business complete control over your ad and allow you to run the best advertising campaign for your company.
Run Ads On Social Media
Another perfect paid advertising option is social media. Social media ads enable you to reach potential leads on social media platforms. It’s an ideal channel to reach people where they are already active.
Many local customers devote their time to social media. On average, a user spends 28% of their online time on social media. Therefore, you have an excellent opportunity to reach users with social media advertising.
Select your social media platform wisely to start running ads. You can choose from platforms, including:
You should choose platforms that your audience visits the most. You can decide which social networks are likely to be active by looking at each platform’s demographics.
Once you select your network, decide the advertisement you want to run. Your ad type depends on the particular platform. Some social sites offer formats, like images and video, while others stick to some specific ones.
For instance, if you want to run an ad on Facebook, you can access multiple ad types, such as video ads, to carousel ads.
Social media also let you set precise targeting settings to reach more people with the most interest in your brand.
You can target people by:
- Demographics
- Buying habits
- Location
- Browsing behavior
Hence, social media ads are best for reaching more leads. As a local business, you can create social media ads to only reach potential local customers.
Claim Your Google My Business Listing
Google My Business Listing is the most crucial tool for local online marketing and advertising. If you haven’t requested your Google My Business listing yet, you might miss a prime opportunity to advertise your business locally.
- First, start by claiming your Google My Business local listing.
- Once you get your listing, fill out the information on it.
- Add and verify that your address, name, phone number, and hours of operation are correct.
This information should be consistent on all platforms.
If your business is known by a nickname, like ‘Joe’s’ instead of ‘Joe’s Steaks and Subs,’ use your corporation’s full name on all its listings.
Once you verify the information, add a description of your business.
This description provides your audience with better information about your business.
You can add images to your listing too. Images provide your audience with more valuable insight into your company. They can see pictures of your team, business, and products, which can get them eager about visiting your location.
By filling out your business listing completely, you increase your probabilities of appearing in the local SEO 3-pack. This 3-pack box appears in local search results with 3 Google My Business listings from the area.
Run Google Local Services Ads
These ads work well for companies that offer definite services. If your business only provides assistance, you should skip ahead to this list’s next advertising strategy.
Companies that run Google Local Services ads are:
- Plumbers
- Movers
- Electricians
- House Cleaners
- Real Estate Agents
- Locksmiths
When you sign up for such Local Services by Google, you will see if your business qualifies. If you do, continue with the sign-up process. At this point, you’ll provide Google with your address location and the services you offer.
After that, determine your ad’s budget and decide how much you want to spend on gaining customers each week.
Remember, you only pay when people contact your business, not when they click your ad!
Once you create your campaign, you’ll launch your ad. Starting and ending your ad as required prevents your business from getting double-booked.
Create an Email Marketing Strategy to Customize Your Audience’s Experience
Email marketing is a great strategy to help you advertise your local business to your audience. You can send your audience customized advertisements to get them to convert.
To get started, you will need a list of subscribers. You can find subscribers through your social media profiles, website, or in-store.
We recommend obtaining subscribers organically for the best results.
Once the list of subscribers is ready, start sending them personalized content.
With email marketing strategies, you can send advertisements about your business, products, and services. You can also use emails to send exclusive deals, coupons, and product promotions.
It’s an outstanding opportunity for you to advertise your business to local subscribers.
Get Leads Back Using Retargeted Ads
Retargeted ads are a useful tool for helping you acquire leads back to your business. Many people will visit your company’s website and not convert right away. They might need more time to think or get diverted.
When these leads leave your website, you may feel like they are lost.
The best part is that you can bring those leads back by running retargeted ads.
Retargeted ads are a perfect way for you to drive leads back to your website. To use retargeted ads, you can put a pixel tracker on your site. The pixel tracker tracks essential information about your audience and the web pages they visit.
You also have an option to use cookies for retargeted ads. Cookies are like small files stored on a user’s computer that helps them hold data about the web browser. The website owner can access cookie information and use it for remarketing.
Thus, remarketing is an excellent local business advertising strategy that helps you drive leads back to your business. It’s a great way to keep your company at the forefront of your audience’s minds and get them to buy your products and use your services.
Participate in Threads
Another common online local advertising strategy is to participate in popular threads like Reddit and Quora. They are great places to advertise your local business.
People don’t want to see undisguised ads for your business in community threads. If you run an advertisement into a thread, you’re likely to meet with an adverse reaction that can end up hurting your business growth and people’s perception of it.
Instead, you should advertise in a low-key manner, i.e., if somebody asks a question about an industry-related topic, you should answer that question.
For example, let’s assume that you’re a florist, and someone posts a thread asking for ideas on low budget wedding flowers that look costly. So, if you have a good piece of content on your page covering such a topic, you can answer this question and attach your article for reference.
It’s negligent but is a great way to advertise your business locally.
Now that you’ve got a couple of ideas to locally advertise your business, you might be probably wondering how much it will cost you. Let’s explore that then.
How Much Does Local Advertising Cost?
Probably, the cost of ads varies depending on your goal. Though there are numerous benchmarks to point when considering online ad costs, however, we’ve listed a few of them based on cost per impressions (CPM) unless otherwise noted.
| Platform | Cost Per Click |
|---|---|
| Google Ads | $2.32 |
| $2 | |
| $1.72 | |
| $5 | |
| Microsoft Ads | $1.54 |
| Snapchat | $2.95 |
Start Advertising Locally for Your Business Now
A strong local advertising plan helps you attract more leads. By investing in such strategies, you’ll help expand your reach virtually and find more people interested in buying your products and services.
At JetRank, we have over years of experience creating online marketing campaigns for the clients. We have a local advertising expert team that will help you create a local ad campaign that works for your business.
If you wish to learn more about local advertising, you can call us today or contact us online to discuss our digital advertising services with a strategist.
