How to Attract More Customers Locally

There are a few main ways to attract customers locally.

1. Direct mail using Every Door Direct Mail in the Local Area
2. Local Directories and Business Listings 
3. Advertising on Social Media and Google in a Local geographic area
4. Local Search Engine Optimization

These are the four best ways to bring awareness to your business and potentially attract more customers in your local market. But let’s take a deeper dive into each point.

Does Direct Mail Still Work? Yes.

Direct mail is an old-school way of advertising, but it still works. Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is an economical and effective way to send mail to potential customers in your local area.

You will have a certified guerrilla marketing team by using this service provided by the United States Postal Service. This type of campaign requires very little personalization. No Excel file with thousands of addresses is needed. Instead, the USPS will take each postcard and deliver it to every address in a specific carrier route, business and/or residential.

To get started with EDDM, you’ll need to research the specific zip codes by visiting the USPS EDDM portal. Here you can enter a zip code, address, or city. It will then list the carrier routes with the following data:

• Total addresses per route
• The cost per route
• An option to select businesses and residential or just residential
• Average household income
• Total number of residential and business addresses

Once this research is completed, you’ll need to provide them with a Larger than normal mailer piece. This can be a postcard, an envelope, or any other form of marketing material. We’ve even mailed bifold and trifold menus. The main requirement for this mailer option is the size. You’ll need to mail a piece no smaller than 6.5 inches tall and larger than 8 inches wide.

The primary detail that is always left out is the handling and setup process. Our team has done this a hundred times, and we’ve made all the mistakes, so you don’t have to. Here is the process:

1. Make the payment or confirm the order online with the intent to pay AT THE LOCAL POST OFFICE. Then download and print the paperwork.
2. Once you have the postcards, ensure they are bundled in stacks of 100. Most printer shops, including us, usually provide you these already bundled in 100 stacks.
3. Print out one cover sheet for every stack of 100 postcards for a carrier route if a route has 487 total addresses. You need to have four (4) stacks of 100 and one (1) stack of 87 postcards. Each stack will need a cover sheet for that route.
4. Once you have completed your route paperwork and signed all documents, you must deliver the postcards to the LOCAL POST OFFICE listed on your paperwork. You can not deliver these postcards to any other post office. This is where the post office limits work on their end, which drops your cost to only $0.195 per postcard to be delivered.

Once all paperwork and the delivery are verified, the USPS will handle the rest and deliver the postcards to all households on the selected routes.

Looking for some EDDM postcard design inspo? Click here to see some of our custom EDDM postcard designs.

Local Directories and Business Listings

Local business directories are still an effective way to get your business more visibility. By listing your information on sites like Yelp, Apple Maps, Superpages.com, and Google Business Profile, potential customers in your area can find you more easily. Better yet, here is a list of 50 local business directories we compiled that you can use today to list your business and increase your local online visibility.

Make sure to include as much detail about the business as possible to ensure that the most up-to-date information is available for potential customers. This includes contact information, hours of operation, website URL, correct address details, your service or product images, and more.

The most important reason for creating your local business listing is for mapping purposes. When people ask SIRI or Alexa for a local business recommendation, or they’re just looking for a “dentist NEAR ME,” you want these pages to showcase your profiles and positive reviews.

5 Ways Your Google My Business Page Gets You Customers

1. Your Google My Business Page will showcase you as one of the many local businesses providing the solution the user is searching for.
2. This local listing profile allows for a user to call you directly, links to your website, and showcases the positive reviews of your business.
3. Users can get directions directly to your business.
4. It offers a website link option to send that traffic to the ideal page for conversion or information about your business.
5. This page also allows for online ordering, reservations, and more integrations.

Use Google Search and Social Media Ads for Local Advertising

Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and other social media ads effectively target people located within your city or town. This type of local advertising can be beneficial because you can customize the area where you want to advertise for customers.

For instance, we have clients that are in highly populated areas. So, along with an SEO campaign, we will dedicate a small budget to run ads on Google Maps. This way, as we continue to increase our ranking on search engines, when someone clicks over to Google Maps, potential customers will see our client’s business listing as an ad in the number one position.

When advertising on Social Media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or LinkedIn, you have various ad types that you can execute. Here are our favorites:

• Brand Awareness Ads – This ad delivery type is intended to showcase your promotion or content to as many people as possible. So if you have two to three ads ready to run, you can deliver them to thousands of people in your local area with a small budget.
• Traffic Ads – These are great for getting people to click on your website, send you a message on Facebook Messenger, or even call your business from a mobile device.
• Conversion Ad Campaigns – This campaign objective delivers your ads to account holders most likely to complete a form or convert on your website.

These platforms regularly make it easier for the everyday business owner to advertise with small budgets. We encourage you to take a small budget and start testing.

Long-Term Local SEO Wins Every Time

Only some business owners have a budget for local advertising. But you can still put your name out there by investing in SEO (search engine optimization). When done correctly, SEO is an effective way to increase your organic traffic and rank higher on local searches.

Here is an example that can help you understand how a properly executed local SEO campaign gets you, new customers.

Let’s say a recently married couple is moving into a new area. They need to know everything going on in their new local community. They’re searching Google for the best restaurants, nearest hospitals, parks, doctors, and more.

But now let’s also add into the mix a child is on the way. Now they’re looking for the best-rated pediatricians, daycare centers, pharmacies, and anything else this child might need.

This is your opportunity to show up! And you can’t risk not showing up on page one or two of the local search rankings. Because let’s be honest, no one is going page past 3.

We recommend conversing with a local SEO agency like ours to help properly educate you on the best local SEO strategy for your business.

With the right strategy in place, which should include a detailed local SEO audit, your business will begin to higher for the keywords or keyphrases that correlate with your business.

The above local SEO can be achieved, but some work must be done. The proper keywords and business category need to be added to the back end of this account. And this shouldn’t be a one-time thing.

All of these options can help you really make an impact in your local area. But like all marketing, it will take time and money to know which strategy will work the best for your business.

Our team has executed the above services for our clients over the past 15 years. We’re a team of local experts here in New Jersey, and we fully understand the importance of a properly laid-out plan. Contact us anytime for a completely free consultation. We’ll be glad to help.