Local Business Marketing Ninja Tips - With Sean Beardmore

It's another TAKEOVER episode of the Making Digital Real podcast this week, with Sean Beardmore, who has some awesome ninja tips for local business marketing.
 
3 fantastic strategies to amplify your local business's online presence,  including optimising your Google Business Profile, leveraging contact points on your website to gather customer details through lead magnets, and automating your lead generation process to ensure quick responses to potential clients. 

Massive thanks to Sean for this weeks takeover! 🙌

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Transcript

Michelle DeNio: 0:03

Hey Mike, I just wanted to pop in here and drop you a quick line of appreciation and share a quick testimonial for you. Please use this however you feel fit. But I wanted to say thank you so much for all of your help that you give me and supporting me in my podcast growth and helping me to grow my podcast, I absolutely 100% would have given up or would not be able to maintain the level of consistency I do with my podcasts if you were not on the back end, editing them, making them sound good, giving me suggestions, and just working your audio magic on every one of my episodes. I love them. They always sound amazing, I get so much amazing feedback on it. And honestly, I couldn't do it without you. So your turnaround time is amazing. It's more than any business owner should or could expect. And I just truly I really, really appreciate you and I wanted to say thank you.

Jo Pickard: 0:59

Welcome to the making digital real podcast from Mike Roberts, the ultimate destination for cutting edge insights and strategies in the world of digital marketing.

Mike Roberts: 1:11

Hey, everyone, it's Mike from making digital real and today we have another takeover episode for you. I've got my good friend Sean Beardmore, who's going to be taken over the ninja tips this week. If you are a business owner or solopreneur that has a local business audience, this is the episode for you. He's got some amazing ninja tips. So let's get straight into it. And here is Shawn Beardmore.

Sean Beardmore: 1:38

Hello, Mike, thank you for inviting me to your takeover episode. This week, it's a pleasure to share these three ninja tips that will help any business market to their local area online. Tip number one, if you haven't yet claim your Google business profile. If you have a bricks and mortar business, or an address where you are located but do not serve as clients from claim it. If you have a business where your clients do not visit your listed address, ensure you states you serve clients at their locations and add the areas you cover locally. Having your Google business profile gives you a good chance of being found on the page one of Google for your listed service or products. Let me share with you how you can optimise this profile now, once it has been approved by Google. So what you want to be doing is completing as much information on that profile as possible your opening times. As I've already mentioned, the areas that you serve the officer your contact telephone number. People can also message via your Google business profile. Now, add your photos, list of services, list of products, any broken links. So if you take appointments online, add your book and link on there. And the main thing is just post news and updates on a regular basis much like you do on social media. But let's not forget the key ingredient to Google business profile. And that's reviews. You want to be asking your clients for as many reviews as possible. And maximising as many five star reviews as possible as you can get, which I'm sure you will. One tip though. Never ever, copy and paste a Google review from your clients yourself. Ask your clients to ask review themselves. Tip number two. As a rule of thumb, you want to be able to on your websites make it visibly clear how people can contact you. But wherever possible, you want people to leave their email address. And if possible, a contact number. So encourages you to engage with them. They can do this via an opt in form. But what can you offer. Now these are known as lead magnets in the industry. But you could think about various ways of people wanting to leave their email address being discounts. coupons, vouchers can be a guide on your service, or a catalogue brochure, which they want to download with all the latest information, following them leaving their email address and their contact details. You can now engage with them via email, and even SMS if you wanted to on a regular basis. And then hopefully, these people will become your clients. Tip number three, automate your lead generation process. I get it, you're busy. And there will be times when you cannot instantly reply to an inquiry they've made online or telephone call to your business. The worst thing that we can all do is leave that time to reply too long, let's say up to an hour or over an hour isn't a little bit too long. This potential client could have already moved on. So this is where automation comes in. Somebody emails through to you send it acknowledgement that you've actually received that email and you'll be getting back to them as soon as possible. Tip number two on this one, you can actually add a chat widget as well onto your homepage and even an AI chat widget so what kind of chat widget do where you can actually load it with frequently asked questions that people would ask your business. So the answers can be given to them. You can also add a online booking calendar. And with artificial intelligence now you can actually direct them to the next available appointment you have available. So all in all, whatever way possible, you want to be able to engage with these clients and if they call you, there is something called SMS missed call text back. So if you can imagine, you've missed a call, you could be working, you're unable to take the call. But your prospect has received an instant text back to say, sorry, I didn't take a call. not that busy right now. But I will call you back in the next 30 minutes or an hour, you can actually programme a message to how you want it sent. I hope these tips have been useful. My name is Shawn Barrymore. And if you want to find out more how you can implement all of these tips quickly. You can find me at Shawn beardmore.com and that is Sean spelt as in Sean Connery. It's been a pleasure, Mike, thank you.

Jo Pickard: 6:03

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Making digital real podcast. Until next time, keep innovating, keep growing and keep making digital real