Marketer Crew - ⚡ MC - Digital Clutter

Good Morning,

Today's email discusses marketing tactics for local businesses and cool extensions you should use.

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30 marketing tactics for local businesses

1. Run Google Ads on your direct-intent keywords. If you're an accounting firm in Boston, run ads to your home for all variations of the "accounting firm Boston" keyword
2. Optimize your homepage for the respective keyword via YoastSEO or RankMath.
3. Create a page for every location you run, and optimize it for the keyword [location] + [service].
4. Create a page for every service you offer, and link to them throughout your website. Optimize each page for the keyword [location] + [service], e.g. "photography NYC"
5. If your website is getting 1,000+ traffic per month, set up Facebook Remarketing and run lead generation ads for everyone that visited your website.
6. Run location-based Facebook ads, targeting your city or a specific district. Advertise an offer (e.g. free consultation call, dessert, whatever) instead of just advertising your business. This will let you track people who came to your business via ads and will let you know whether you're generating an ROI or not.
7. Optimize the hell out of your Google My Business (GMB) account. This plays a big part in local SEO, and thousands of potential customers will see it every month.
8. Submit your website to directories in your region. E.g. list of businesses, Yelp, Airbnb experiences, TripAdvisor (if it's tourist-friendly) and whatever else is relevant.
9. Avoid experimental ad platforms. E.g. Quora, Reddit, etc. For local biz, the basics work best. From my experience, the best-performing ad channels are Google Search, Facebook Ads, Google Display manual placements (e.g. placing banner ads to your website on websites popular in your area).
10. Find roundup posts about your services and get featured. E.g. if you Google "law firms Vancouver," you might see a directory of best law firms in Vancouver. See if you can get featured on the list (it's probably going to cost you, though).
11. Partner with businesses that aren't direct competitors and exchange clients when relevant.
12. Leave your flyers in hostels, hotels, etc. This is relevant mainly if you're tourist-friendly biz (e.g. tour, restaurant, etc.)
13. Create the right social media profiles. The must-haves are: LinkedIn (mainly for B2B businesses like accounting firms, law firms, etc.), Facebook (must-have for any business), Twitter (relevant for any US biz), Instagram (Relevant for businesses where you offer an interest / aesthetic product, service, or experience. E.g. restaurant, barbershop, tour, etc.)
14. Keep your social media profiles as up-to-date as possible. Either hire a freelancer on UpWork to actively manage your account (expensive option) or give one of your employees who has an eye for aesthetics a raise and put them in charge of this. Honestly, social media (for small businesses) isn't rocket science, so I'd recommend the latter.
15. Don't follow the buzz. Just because everyone's talking about TikTok doesn't mean it's relevant for your business. I remember how Gary V was promoting Snapchat as THE BIG BIG OPPORTUNITY even though it was "meh" and irrelevant for most businesses.
16. If you're a restaurant or someone that really relies on aesthetics to sell products, get a pro camera and take some quality pics and upload them on your social media pages.
17. Don't overthink your marketing tactics. You don't need to go viral on TikTok, do a PR dance-fest in the city centre, or whatever most people think of when they hear the word "marketing." Tried-and-tested marketing always works better.
18. Done something interesting? Launched a cool new product line? Opened an innovative boardgame-bar-esports-place? Let your local media know. Reach out to the journalists who've covered similar events before via email, and pitch them your new product/service/experience.
19. Encourage your customers to leave reviews on Facebook, Google Maps, TripAdvisor, and whatever else is relevant for your biz. Don't bribe them with freebies - that's against the rules. Instead, focus on providing an A++ product/service, and then ask for a review.
20. Are you a restaurant or a bar? Give out flyers near the main street. Give away a free drink if they bring the flyer to the restaurant.
21. Keep your Google My Business updated. Treat it just like you'd treat your Facebook business profile. A TON of people use GMB to decide on what to do / where to eat / where to go, etc.
22. Take advantage of Facebook's insane ad targeting options. Here are some ideas:
23. Advertising something for tourists? Directly target people "Traveling to [location]"
24. Want to target local business owners? That's literally a targeting option on Facebook
25. Do you organize birthday parties? Target people with a birthday coming up the following month.
26. Target micro-influencers in your area (mainly relevant for B2C). Find people with 1,000 - 3,000 Instagram followers, and offer them something free for a shout-out. Unlike regular influencers, they don't get a ton of paid gigs.
27. Attend networking events in your area (if you're B2B)
28. Use LinkedIn outreach software to reach out to B2B prospects in your area at scale.
29. Don't buy offline banner ads. They're very overpriced and mostly relevant for big brands. You'll get a LOT better bang for your buck via online ads.
30. Organize contests and giveaways on your social media profiles.

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Snippets

• Digital clutter doesn't get talked about as much physical clutter. I think we should block off time to do some digital housekeeping every Sunday! Just 1 hour every week is enough to declutter emails, file downloads, bookmarks etc.
• I Don't Care About Cookies — EU regulations require that any website using tracking cookies must notify the visitors. But it's really boring to close this cookie pop-up. Install this free extension and remove cookie warnings from almost all websites!
• Change Case — change case of text by using keyboard shortcuts. I have set Alt+1,2,3,4 shortcuts for making text upper case, lower case, title case and sentence case respectively. It works great. 
• Wordtune — amazing extension that helps to rephrase text using AI. You can rewrite, change the tone or improve clarity by using this free extension.
• @Jeremy Moser — Copywriting tip: read competitor reviews. Identify common pain points and use them in your marketing copy.
• Shower Thoughts: It's cruel how alcohol gives us the confidence to try things, while simultaneously taking away our ability.
• Shower Thoughts: Professors are human programmers. Psychologists are human debuggers.
• Shower Thoughts: If 24-hour clocks started at 23:59 and counted down till 00:01, people might try getting more done.

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Worth Reading

1. How to negotiate your tech salary (video)

2. Thirty+ useful Google Sheets tips for everyone 

3. How Canny founders built a $1m ARR SaaS startup

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 Good Findings

• IdeaEconomy.net - the weekly digest for the creator economy. Grow your audience. Build your business.
• Start + Optimize + Grow a successful newsletter with this FREE guide from Dylan at Growth Currency. Use his strategies, tools & tactics to speed up your newsletter growth.

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