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Local marketing strategies have never been more important, so we've decided to build on last week's topic and dig into more strategies and tools you can use!

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What's New?

Cinnamon Toast Crunch wins the story of the week with their PR Disaster. What were they thinking? Just....wrong. You can read about it and more below!

Challenge-Response Disaster: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Shrimp Tails - The sugary cereal's digital team initially tried to deny a writer's aquatic discovery on Twitter. The prawny saga has become must-see social media entertainment.

Wix and Google Announce GMB Integration - Expanded partnership with Google integrates Google My Business. Makes Wix a more substantial presence in local search.

How Messaging Channels are Surging and Becoming Critical to Marketing Success - More customers are using messaging channels to engage with brands and make purchases; this is evident in the number of first-time users who adopted a messaging channel in the last year.

What's Working?

In part 1 of this blog, we discussed GMB, Google local campaigns, Citations, NAP, and the Map Pack.

In part 2, we're digging deeper into Paid Ads, Ad examples, GMB coupons, how to optimize GMB, and other practical tools to help build your local marketing strategies.

Local marketing will be important in 2021!

• 97% of people learn more about a local company online than any other medium.
• 88% of mobile online searches for local businesses result in either a call or business visit within one day.

Let's break down what we'll be covering:

Local Paid Ad Campaigns

Google Ads is an excellent option for Local Ad campaigns, especially for those with a modest marketing budget.

Your ads will appear across Google's properties, including the Google Search Network, Google Display Network, Google Maps, and YouTube.

Some things to consider when developing local marketing campaigns using Google Ads:

• Create Locations: detailed radius location targeting in Google Ads.
• Locations bid adjustments.
• Talk about the distance to your location in the ad copy.
• Localize call-outs and extensions.
• Create custom landing pages for each location.

Some more pro tips for Google Ads:

• Call-only campaigns are great for emergency services.
• Separate mobile and desktop campaigns (on mobile, users can call right away).
• Don’t be generic, or you’ll get lost in the noise - add specific details that will help people find you locally.
• Use different messaging for corporate vs. residential.

Location Extensions allow you to show a business address, phone number, and a map marker along with your ad text.

They can help you close the loop between online ads and offline sales by driving foot traffic to stores.

It's a super handy feature that allows you to add important details to your ads to help users find or contact you.

• Sync the locations through GMB.
• Separate campaigns for each location.
• Can add map pin extensions to ad extensions.

Facebook Ads is another fantastic option for developing local marketing campaigns and can be done on a limited budget.

You'll want to:

• Create Locations: detailed radius location targeting in Facebook Ads.
• Talk about the distance to your location in the ads copy.
• Tell people in the area about things happening now.
• Reach customers within your service areas.

Some tips for local Facebook ads:

• Use the name of the location you're targeting in your copy.
• For example, "Hey, Hamilton!"
• Use images from the location (avoid using stock imagery).
• Don't over-optimize! Focus on the specific details.
• Add at least 4 ad copy variants and image variants.

Facebook’s Preferred Audience Targeting

You can also use Facebook’s Preferred Audience Targeting for organic posts!

If you have never used it before, you need to activate the feature in your settings!

Localized Content Ideas

Keeping your online presence up-to-date with relevant and fresh content shows Google and directories that your business is active, which will help you rank higher. Quite often, multi-location brands forget that unique local content is just as important as national content.

So, what are some ways to get the community engaged with your business?

Here are a few to get those creative juices flowing:

Google My Business Coupons

Google allows businesses to use special coupon codes in exchange for following them.

• Users won’t see exactly what the offer is until they follow the business listing.
• Once they follow the listing, they can gain access to any offers or coupons.
• These offers can be saved to an Offer folder, which can be used anytime later.

GMB Products & Services

Products and Services is a powerful feature in Google My Business that often gets overlooked. This feature is designed with small to medium businesses in mind.

It allows you to showcase your products on page one of Google, for free, within your Google My Business Knowledge Panel.

On a GMB Product listing, you’ll be able to:

• Display valuable details about the product.
• Link to the product’s page on your website.
• Display a convenient phone call button to allow customers to call you with any questions about the product.

Listing Builders and Reputation Management

Listing builder and reputation management tools help organize and compile online data in one place.

They collect all the data about your business found online, including:

• Listing Presence
• Reviews
• Social
• Website
• Advertising
• SEO

This is an example of the Executive Report in Vendasta, showing the Foundation 5:

• Advertising Intelligence
• Reputation Management
• Customer Voice
• Social Marketing
• Listing Builder

Bright Local is another Reputation Management Platform that focuses on local marketing.

Get access to tools that make it easy to:

• Monitor
• Audit
• Improve local marketing performance

All in one place.

Key features include:

• Local SEO Tools
• Reputation Manager
• Citation Builder
• Agency Features

You can also learn how to:

• Increase rankings
• Get more search traffic
• Improve visibility
• and more

Their Bright Local Academy courses are also an amazing resource for learning.

SEMRush - Local Audit Tool

We talk about SEMRush a lot… because it’s awesome - and it has an incredible amount of features.

One of those features is the Local SEO toolkit.

This toolkit includes:

• Listing Management
• Position Tracking
• Site Audit
• On-Page SEO Checker

With the Listing Management tool, you can:

• Distribute your business data automatically to the most authoritative directories.
• Ensure maximum visibility for your business by keeping your listings free of malicious duplicates.
• Track local rankings.
• Organize GMB and Facebook listings.
• Manage reviews and user suggestions.
• Get the overall picture of how well all of your related businesses perform in local search.

Position Tracking lets you track a website's daily rankings for a custom set of target keywords.

You can set your targeting to watch any specific geographic location and device type (mobile phone, tablet, or desktop).

Site Audit is a powerful website crawler that allows you to analyze the health of a website.

It will provide you with a list of issues that makes it easy to see where exactly a website is struggling.

Fixing these issues will help boost the SEO of a website.

On-Page SEO Checker offers a complete and structured list of things you could do to improve the ranks of pages on your website.

You’ll receive on-page SEO ideas, semantically related words to include on your pages, target content length and readability, and backlink prospects.

Geotagging Photos - GeoImgr

This is a fantastic tool and can have a significant effect on your SERPs rankings when used.

"Geotagging photos" means that you attach latitude and longitude coordinates to a JPG photo file in the metadata.

Geotagging images is important because it improves the search engine ranking for location-specific websites and businesses.

Very few businesses do this, so taking advantage of this feature will put you ahead of the competition.

• GeoImgr is a simple web tool for geotagging photos.
• Easily geotag photos with new coordinates.

That's a Wrap

There's never been a better time to invest in a local marketing strategy.

With so many people looking to buy locally and support their communities, your business must implement local marketing strategies.

People want to find and support local businesses, so make it easy for them to do so.

Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, comments, or stories to share, sound off in the comments below, or hit us up on our socials!