Online Marketing Tactics for Local Businesses

Part 1: SEO and Social Media

No matter your business niche, maximising your online presence is crucial to your success. With internet users increasingly turning to AI-powered assistants, search engines and social media platforms to discover local businesses, having a robust digital marketing strategy can significantly impact your ability to attract and retain customers.

From leveraging search engine optimisation (SEO) to developing an effective social media posting schedule, there are a wide variety of online marketing strategies that can help you reach your business goals. This guide will delve into proven online marketing tactics to help you build brand awareness, drive website traffic and ultimately win new business.

In this post we’ll focus on SEO, social media and email marketing, aiming to equip you with actionable digital marketing tips in order to enhance your online visibility and engage both new and existing customers effectively.

Enhance Your Local SEO

Optimising Your Google Business Profile

Google provides a free business profile you can customise to let customers know about your business and if you’re not taking advantage of this you’re missing a huge opportunity. A well optimised Google Business profile is pivotal for local businesses aiming to enhance their visibility in local searches. If you’ve not already set up a Google Business profile you may find one has been set up automatically which you can claim in order to control the details you share, otherwise you can start a new profile from scratch.

Head to google.com/business and search for your business by name. Whether you’re updating an existing profile or building a new one you’ll want to start by ensuring all your business information is accurate and complete, including your address, phone number, website URL and business hours. Consistency is key here so if you have more than one contact number, pick one as your primary number and make sure you use this first and foremost across all online business literature (i.e. on your website and in other business listings you may have such as at yell.com).

Similarly, make sure that the way you detail your address is always the same. You may think that XYZ Business, Something Street, Anywhere AB1 2CD is fine, but if you’re actually based at Unit A3, ABC Business Park, Something Street, then having the two versions of the address appear in different places will ultimately confuse search engines and associated services such as AI assistants, limiting your visibility. In local search, NAP (name, address and phone number) consistency is incredibly important, and this goes for your business name too. Keep a consistent brand identity to maximise your Google Business profile’s effectiveness.

Maximising Maps Visibility

Once you’re certain you’ve included all the accurate details, adding high-quality photos of your business can also make your profile more appealing to potential customers. Encourage your satisfied customers to leave positive reviews too, as these can significantly impact your search engine ranking and how frequently you appear in Google Maps results. You can also regularly update your profile with posts about promotions, events and new products or services to keep your audience engaged, which Google likes to see.

Additionally, make use of the Q&A section to address common customer queries, which can also help in managing customer expectations. By maintaining an active and detailed Google Business Profile, you improve your chances of being discovered by local internet users and drive more foot traffic to your business if you serve customers at your location.

Don’t worry if you’re a business that doesn’t welcome customers onsite however. You can still add all of your business details then specify that it’s a business address that doesn’t service customers onsite, and specify a service area instead, such as being able to visit clients across specific postcodes. Adding your business information in as much details as possible is still vital to your online visibility, even if you don’t want people to know where you’re actually based. You can actually hide your physical address in your Google Business profile though this does limit your chances of being returned in local search results. Should you be a home worker not keen to advertise this then why not take advantage of a virtual office and use this address for your business profile, making sure to select the option saying it’s not a site where you welcome customers.

Local Link Building Strategies

Once your business is listed on Google, you’ll want to start influencing how frequently it shows up in search results over your competitors. One of the primary differentiators Google uses to pick site A over site B when ranking results, is the backlink profile. This means that websites that have more, relevant and high quality links from other sites pointing at them, the greater the chance of being considered a more trustworthy and authoritative site. In short, you need links for search engines to take you seriously.

If your site doesn’t have many links there are a few things you can try to improve this. Start by reaching out to niche appropriate local blogs, news websites and business directories to get your business listed. For instance if you’re a law firm you should make sure you’re listed with the Law Society. If you’re a builder, you should be included on Checkatrade.

Building relationships with other local businesses can also lead to opportunities for links. Did your business supply materials for an impressive building project that’s featured on a local architect’s site? Ask them if they’ll reference you in their case study so users reading the content know where the fancy fixtures came from, which will also serve as a positive signal to search engines. Or perhaps you’re a tenant in a Brighton serviced office space and the building management would be happy to list you as a partner on their website, helping encourage enquiries from firms in related, complementary niches.

Additionally, sponsoring local events or charities can result in backlinks from their websites. Then there’s guest blogging on local industry-related sites which can further enhance your link profile, though do be careful with taking up offers from third parties to do this on your behalf. This is a much overused link building tactic and whilst it still has value, it’s very easy to get it wrong and waste time and effort on content that provides no value. This guest blogging guide provides more info on how best to approach this.

And lastly, don’t overlook the power of social media platforms; sharing your content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X and LinkedIn can generate not just traffic but potentially more backlinks. Anything you can share that provides value to others can potentially be reshared and earn you more attention. This is why many businesses conduct research and then share the results for free so that the insights within can be picked up by other businesses in the sector to report on, referencing the original company who produced the data and earning them links and publicity.

Effective Social Media Marketing

Crafting a Social Media Content Calendar

Getting social media right isn’t easy and it can take time and effort understanding how to engage with your audience and which platforms will work best with your industry. However, maintaining a consistent and organised social media presence is key to being able to optimise your strategy based on learnings.

Begin by identifying key dates, such as holidays, industry events and product launches, around which you can plan your content. Use a spreadsheet or a specialised tool to map out your posts across various social media platforms, ensuring a good mix of content types—such as promotional posts, educational articles, user-generated content, videos and engagement-focused updates. Schedule your posts in advance but remain flexible to accommodate real-time trends and interactions.

A well-structured content calendar helps in maintaining a consistent posting schedule, ensuring that your audience stays engaged. It also allows you to track the performance of different types of content, providing insights into what resonates most with your target audience. With a selection of key pillars throughout the year around which to anchor your content you can take the day to day stress out of what you should be posting.

Engaging Content for Social Media Platforms

Your social media content should captivate your audience and build a loyal following. Start by understanding the preferences and behaviours of your target audience on each social media platform. Tailor your content to fit the unique style and format of each platform—visual content like images and videos perform well on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, while concise and informative posts are more suitable for Twitter/X and LinkedIn.

You should try to incorporate a mix of content types, such as behind-the-scenes glimpses, customer testimonials, interactive polls and informative blog posts (or links to them on your site). Asking thoughtful, topical questions can help broaden your reach and always include clear calls-to-action to encourage interactions, such as likes, shares and comments. Regularly analyse the engagement metrics to understand what type of content resonates most with your audience.

Don’t be afraid to toot your own horn across social media, but don’t overdo it either. There should be self congratulatory content but it should be complemented by content that’s going to resonate with the different audiences you’ve built across different channels.

Where Next?

This is just the start of our series on small business online marketing tips and we’ll be sharing strategies for email marketing and online advertising in our next post. Whether you’re a sole trader, small business owner or managing a larger SME, there’s no excuse not to get on top of your online marketing given the results it can yield.

Of course you can always outsource this work to a freelancer or digital marketing agency but it pays to have an understanding of the basics to ensure you get the most for your money.