Tips For Attracting Local Clients Through Online Marketing

Whilst many people tend to focus their websites to a wide audience (such as the state, the country or even the world), there are plenty of lucrative opportunities sitting on your doorstep that you have probably overlooked. Before investing in a huge international or national online marketing campaign, why not look at what you can do closer to home first?

• Optimise your website for local searches
  Whilst this is more the job of an SEO team, an online marketer can take a critical look at their website and see whether it has been optimized to appear in local searches. Does the contact information include the suburb and postcode? Do you include the business address on more than one page of the website?
The introduction of Google’s Local Search has made it incredibly easier for a business to connect with their existing clients and for potential ones to contact them. By making sure that your business is listed in Google Local Search as a part of your online marketing campaign, you can receive a steady flow of connections (both by phone, email and contact form).
• Try working for free to get your name out there
  If you’re having a relatively slow time of the year, why not use an online marketing campaign to offer some free services to local businesses and individuals in order to get your name out there? You don’t have to offer every service that you provide for free, of course, but perhaps some of the more popular ones. If you are a financial planner, for example, why not begin a promotion for a free 30 minute consultation (after booking through the website). Then, you can use the time to sell your other services to them.
• Offer a bonus to existing clients for referring you to new ones
  If you remain in contact with your existing clients and customers (through an e-newsletter, for example), you could try offering them a referral bonus or reward when they send new clients or customers your way. Your online marketers will need to work out the best way to do this for your business – perhaps by adding a section to your next e-newsletter, or by including instructions on confirmation emails. Offer things that people want, such as free services or a gift (vouchers tend to work well).

Trying to attract local clients or customers can be one of the hardest things that an online marketer will do – after all, the audience is nowhere near as large and your ways for getting in contact with them is limited. The best advice for a localized online marketing campaign is to offer bonuses to your local community in order to get your name out where you need it to be.