There’s only 1 thing that matters when you’re looking at local online marketing…

That is to get customers to call you and then trust you enough to pay for your products and services.

All the mission statements, the business plans and the “make believe” customer persona can wait…

Once you get the calls coming in you’ll probably find you don’t need any of that…

The fact that you’re searching for how to do local online marketing, leads me to assume that you have a business and you need more customers and money coming in, so that’s what we’re going to focus on…

The only 3 things you’ll need to start…

It’s actually pretty simple. It only gets hard if you keep yourself busy with the things that make you feel good but don’t actually get the calls coming in…

Don’t wait for the business cards to get printed up…

Don’t wait for your pretty logo…

You don’t need it to make money…

From this point on you’re in client getting mode. 

The only things you’ll need to begin marketing your business are…

1. Something people want to buy. 

2. People searching for it…

3. A way to get in front of these people.

That’s it…

Don’t over complicate it…

Just a side note, I would probably also get insurance.

And 2 bank accounts…

One account for your profits and another account to cover taxes and expenses…

Now you should be good to go…

The truth is, when you’re staring out in business, all of the branding and customer profiling is a waste of time…

I’ve found that you won’t know who your ideal customer is or what they want until you start providing your service…

You think you’re selling to a certain type of person but once you’re in business, you start to realize that it’s a completely different customer than you expected, or worse…

The customer you built your business around sucks…

You hate doing work for these people and now you can’t stand your business…

If you already have a business set up and a customer that you love, then great.

The following marketing methods are still the best place for you to start…

Now I’m going to assume you have the first point covered. That is, you have something that people want to buy…

So, I’m going to go straight to number 2… 

You need to have people searching for your product or service…

Listen and listen good…

The quickest and easiest way to enter any type of business and start making money is to Sell to the buyers…

Buyers are the people who are out there actively searching for your service right now…

A buyer is not any and everyone in your local area…

Don’t worry about who they are just yet. All you need to know is that they want what you’re selling. 

You can easily work out who the buyers are by looking at what they search for online.

We’re not going to do a deep market analysis…

We just want to know what your customers are typing into Google when they need the product or service you offer.

So, what keywords and phrases do they use when they’re searching for your service?

Here’s how you find out:

Head over to Google ads keyword planner and find out what your customers are searching for on Google.

1. Start with a keyword that you think a buyer would use

A great keyword to start with is your service followed by your location.

For example… Plumber Melbourne, or Chiropractor Mentone.

These will be your main service pages. These are your money keywords…

2. Look for long tail keywords.

Think of a list of keyword phrases that your customer would be searching. These are likely to be questions such as… “How to stop my decking boards from cupping”

These phrases will be used for the topics of your blog posts.

These are your expertise and relationship building articles.

You can show up in 3 positions for most of these keywords. You should be trying to claim top spot in Google ads, Google My Business and the SEO results…

This is what it looks like for one of my businesses, Handyman on the Mornington Peninsula:

This one search term is enough to drive my entire business. But this is not me trying to brag. Ok maybe a little, but I worked hard to get all 3 of those positions on Google…

For real though, how many calls do you think you’d get if your business showed up for the top spots in Google…

Your customer would type in your money keywords and there you are. The top spot on the ad listings. 

Ok, but most people hate clicking on the ads and scroll down to the maps listings…

Guess what?

You’re there too and you’ve got a bunch of before and after pics and dozens of happy customers leaving 5 star reviews…

What’s that?

You personally never click on the maps listing. You go straight down to the SEO listings…

Well so do most of your customers. That’s why you take that top spot as well…

I know what you’re thinking…

This takes a lot of time and money. You want something cheap, maybe even free, and something that will get the calls coming in today…

Well let me tell you this…

When I started my business, I put up a single ad on Google and within 30 minutes of going live, I got a call for $1500 worth of work.

Before you say you don’t have money for ads, I also didn’t have the money to pay for ads. You don’t need to pay anything until 30 days after your ads run…

You can set a daily budget $10 and if you think it’s not working you can pause it whenever you like. There’s no upfront payment. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad…

The click that resulted in $1500 worth of work, only cost me $3.50…

You can’t afford to spend $3.50 and get $1500 worth of work?

And the first month of Google ads only cost me $90…

Now, if I only received 1 job from my $90 ad spend I still made $1410 for the month…

So think of this…

I didn’t need to pay any money to start running ads on Google. And I didn’t need to pay any money unless a customer clicked on my ad. And I still didn’t need to pay any money until after 30 days within which time I made more than enough money to pay my bills, feed my family and pay for the $90 ad spend…

The way I look at it…

When you do Google ads right, they’re free…

They didn’t cost me anything out of my pocket. It all came from the profits generated by the ads…

Ok, maybe you’re not convinced or you still want a “Free” way to market your small business…

 

How about Google My Business or GMB?

This is a free advertising platform and if you know what you’re doing, you can show up in the top 3 spots within 2 weeks…

I know, because that’s how quickly I ranked one of my businesses on GMB

It can take longer, but shouldn’t take longer than 4 weeks…

The great thing about GMB is that it automatically shows up above the SEO listing. 

And the qualifying requirement is that you’re local…

You need to have a physical address in the suburb you’re trying to rank in. This is great because it will cut out a lot of the outside competition. And a huge factor in a customer calling a service provider is that they are local.

I get asked all the time, “Are you local?” 

Customers have this hang up about service providers that have to travel to do the work. They think that you’ll charge more if you have to travel or you just won’t show up…

And if you have a local shop where customers come to you, then your customers also prefer local because they don’t want to travel. 

GMB local pack is powerful because your customer can see that you’re local. They can see your previous work, and they can see what past customers have to say about you…

I personally noticed a huge increase of calls coming in the moment I ranked on Google My Business.

So as long as you have a physical address in your service area, you can rank for your money keywords. But don’t worry if it’s your home address. You have the option to hide your address from the public. Google just needs to know you’re in the area…

So head over to GMG and get your business listed. Just fill in your details the best you can. Don’t wait or hesitate on this one. Google needs to send a postcard out to your address so you can confirm you’re in the area. It takes roughly 2 weeks…

So don’t wait till it’s perfect, get your postcard sent out then you can check out my other resources on GMB to help you fill out your listing so it ranks number 1 in the listings…

Here’s the thing, as good as GMB is, I’ve found one thing that’s better…

The top spot in the SEO listings

This is the cream of the crop when it comes to local online marketing.

For whatever reason, over 60% of your customers ignore the ads at the top, they skip straight past the GMB listings and they go straight to the SEO listings…

You can get enough work to run a successful business with just the first 2 methods that I showed you.

And at first, you’ll have no other choice. It can take 6 to 12 months to get to the top of the SEO listings.

No business can wait that long to get the calls coming in so here’s what you should do…

Set up your ads, you’ll get calls coming in within hours…

If you don’t know how to run ads without losing your shirt, then you can follow along with my Google Ads guide…

Then go ahead and claim your GMB listing and use my guide so you can get it set up properly. This will give you a big boost in customers within 2 to 4 weeks…

You’ll be scooping up around 40% of the buyers…

Now you’re getting a steady stream of work coming in, you can focus on the other 60% of the buyers who click on the SEO listings…

Anything you do for your SEO will also drive you Google Maps listing to the top of the rankings…

Do you need some extra help to get this all going?

Like I said before, this is how I do local online marketing for my own local businesses.

So just know, it’s not as hard as it seems…

That’s why I set up this website.

I document everything I do and put it on my website.

Plus, whenever I learn something new I write about it and send it to my list.

If you’d like to see how I do it for my business, and copy it for yourself, you should get on my list.

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Sincerely 

Jason – The Local Online Marketing Specialist

 

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