18 local marketing tips for Utah businesses from successful experts

Every business owner, especially those that are small in size or starting up, should have Google Analytics and Google Search Console setup. Even if they have these tools connected to their website, it would be worth their time and effort to assure they are setup properly. For example, have you filtered out your office & home traffic from Analytics? Have you set up basic reporting dashboards or segments to help you understand your audience from a basic level? Have you submitted your sitemap to Search Console and set it up so you can receive notifications or any issues or errors?

While these tools are simple, having them set up properly to start recording data today, will benefit every business owner in the future. It's OK if they don't have time to digest the data every week, simply having each one setup as soon as possible, will help them make decisions in the future as they are able to get help from an agency or hire in-house marketers.

As Marketing on Facebook has evolved over the years one of the biggest changes we have seen is the shift from organic to paid reach. If you are investing time on unique, engaging content on Facebook (and you should be!) you are wasting your time if you are not spending on boosting those posts. Even a couple dollars can make a tremendous impact on reach and exponentially increase the ROI you will see from your Facebook marketing efforts. It is something you can't afford not to afford.

The most important marketing tip that local businesses need to know is this: Stop spreading yourself too thin by trying lots of different marketing tactics. A lot of business owners hear about the newest and hottest trend (Snapchat, Pokemon Go, etc.), and lose sight of what's actually driving their sales. Look into your numbers. Find the few tactics that work best for your business, and focus 100% of your efforts on optimizing them.

Use a test site for SEO – instead of making big changes and overhauls to your main site, develop a smaller site that you can test title tags on, deep links, promotion efforts etc. We are fortunate enough to have a smaller brand where we conduct SEO experiments. If the experiment yields good results, we roll it up to our larger money making sites. This tactic makes SEO a lot less risky for your business.

Engage with people outside of your inner circle. Ask people which have knowledge and experience different from your own. Diversity of ideas provokes different perspectives as you solve a problem.

Differentiate yourself in the market. Seriously. Check the competitors that are nearby and study them. Find theirs offers, what their value proposition is, and how you can stand out. Try to understand your audience better. What do they really value? What do they look for? Why should they go to you and not your competitors?What can you do different to call attention? Whats the one thing that they value the most? It may seem obvious, but answering these questions will set you in a whole new perspective.

Use Call to Action Images at the bottom of blog posts to encourage content downloads and form completes. For example, if you have a blog post on “How to Motivate Your Employees,” include an image of a free “Employee Motivation Guide” that can be downloaded by entering an email. We increased our form captures by 45% on blog posts by using CTA images instead of hyperlinked text.

Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Find those in your industry or space who have already had success, and deconstruct their strategy to understand what they did. One book that changed the way I view online marketing is DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson. He gives away all the processes, funnels and scripts he used to build his company Clickfunnels into a multi-million dollar business. That's the kind of case study I want to emulate in my own business.

One tool I'd recommend to a business is buzzsumo.com. This tool provides competitive intelligence into what content, on a certain domain, is resonating best with the social web. It's a great way to get content ideas by seeing what's received the most social shares on competitor's sites. Furthermore, you can drill down to see who has shared it so you can find influencers to share you content as well.

Facebook Business pages are super important for social proof and to stay in front of your prospective clients and customers. The best way for an offline business to incorporate this into their day to day operations is to encourage visitors to "check in" on Facebook when they enter the office. By posting a simple sign to encourage visitors to check-in, all of their friends will know who they are using for local shopping or services. A gift could be offered for checking in as well such as 5% discount or a treat of some kind as well... especially at restaurants. Be sure your FB page is ready for the check-ins by following these simple instructions from Facebook.

If you are a local business that is just starting out or even established, you probably have some competition. You know who they are and you can easily find them online by searching locally for your market (Ie. "dentist CITY NAME").

Would you like to know what keyword terms they are ranking for? Go over to SEMRush, and drop your competitors URL into the tool. Then on the left side, you can go to "Organic Research" and click on "Positions" and find out what keywords/terms they are ranking for.

Take this information and use it on your own website. You may find out that people are searching for "CITY NAME dentist" rather than "dentist CITY NAME". You can go through your website and update this information on your page titles and URL's. (If you are working with a web designer/SEO company, it may be best to send this info to them!).

As an SEO expert, my #1 recommendation to any local business is to optimize their local business listings on Google My Business, Bing and Yelp. Those three platforms should always be the first place to start when creating an online identity with the local rankings in mind. Having a complete profile with photos, up-to-date contact information and customer reviews is critical!

As for the tools, Bright Local is the one that I would recommend to anyone looking to improve and keep track of their local presence online. Among many other great features, it performs an audit of your business's local citations and lets you know if any changes to NAP (name, address, phone #) need to be implemented. Affordable rates, 14 day free trial and no contract are just the icing on the cake.

About 8.4% of search ranking factors for local businesses is attributed by reviews. The best and easiest way to influence search ranking with reviews is by setting up a Google Business Page and encouraging customers to give reviews. Or you could try Yotpo or Schema.

Local reviews help search engines decipher how relevant your website is according to what people are searching for, area relevance, and the reputation of your business.

For Google Business, be aware that you'll only see a difference from when you have at least 5 reviews. Make sure your address and contact details are the same all over the Internet.

First, hire out your graphic design. It will make all the difference. But for those times when you need something fast (like for social media) and the quality can be a 7/10 - go to canva.com. They have a ton of templates you can use for social media and other formats to make your message more visual. The basic account is free and rarely do I ever need to spend money.

Every local business owner wants to have a website that is built upon a solid foundation. It is in this very foundation where success of a website rises and falls. If you want this kind of edge over others within your niche, you need to strengthen your on-page SEO. And in case you didn't know, On Page SEO is first step to solid search engine rankings.

Don't associate local marketing with small budgets.

It seems as though too many locally-focused business owners think that because they can invest in a $300/month marketing package, that it's going to provide business changing results. Especially if you're in a locally-competitive industry, you can easily spend up to $10,000/month on digital marketing, billboards, print ads, sponsorship, events, etc. Look at most home builders, solar installers or medical company's marketing plans and I bet you'll see 5-digit per month expenses. Even moderate campaigns for the average home services company or specialty store should be north of $1,000/month to make a substantial change.

Going lower than that needs the appropriate expectation from the beginning, but depending on the agency/software you choose, you may or may not get it.

So, how do you get it? Research strategies, review various companies, read reviews, ask other company's who they use and interview them. Just don't sign with the company because you happened to take their phone call.

Facebook ads are my marketing superpower. They can be extremely cost effective (for example, my video ads got down to 13 cents per engagement). My goal is to spend 10% of my return or less on ads. Facebook ads are ideal for a local business or events, as you can just show them to people who live within a few miles from your business.

Get on Facebook, but go deeper than just posting periodically on your business page. Join Facebook Groups related to your local market & introduce yourself. I’ve been able to add 1000’s of new followers to businesses by promoting in local groups.

Run some Facebook ads telling people about your business, and include your best “get them in the door” offers. People love pictures, and they prefer ads from local, relevant businesses.