Companies don’t have to own their own servers and software doesn’t cost tens of millions to get started. So, why does it feel like marketing services want $2,000+ to get started? In short, if you are a local business, it shouldn’t. We are about to outline exactly what we do and how to do it yourself, for free!
Free Internet Marketing Strategies for Local Businesses
To start, be careful tossing money into anything that you can’t measure. $600 per month at a local newspaper? This is pretty much a gamble. It could work, or it could not? So how can you keep tossing money at it? Anything that you can measure the phone calls or customers from is the way to go if you are short on budget. Word of mouth is always a great referral source. But, we are going to focus on internet advertising, because that is what we do best.
The Lowest Hanging Fruit: Local Search Engine Optimization
If you are looking for low hanging fruit for new business, paid ads is not the way to go. Paid ads stop the moment that you stop paying for them. Local search engine optimization is, essentially, permanent. Additionally, an estimated 80% of people search for local businesses each week. Once you are top, you pretty much stay the top. The top client gets more calls, more jobs, more reviews on the backend, and continues to grow in reputation. Social media presence is there to stay.
Getting Your Google Business Profile to The Top of Google Maps (#1)
1. Fill out the whole profile, including fresh photos
It’s really easy to see a bunch of tasks on your Google Business Profile and think “I’ll do that later.” STOP! Do not. Fill it out immediately. Fill out every single service under “products” you want to rank for since that it often what is used to rank on maps. Be sure to have photos of the location, you and your team, and a nice company logo. Its hard to separate you and your service in people’s mind if they don’t know what your company looks like.
For example, take these two coffee shops: which would you rather go to?
Option A
Option B
The answer is Option B, right? Very clearly, you can tell where you want to go. Why? Even though Option A has literally 1,300+ google reviews, you don’t immediately see where you are going to be sitting and feel comfortable. I you are a service business, people want to see your location, vehicle, or what it looks like when you are in action fixing up their car, roof, appliance, or plumbing!
Additionally, Google actually takes how filled out your profile is whenever it is deciding how relevant you are. Missing a facebook page, website, or address could be essential to them realizing that you are legit. Remember that you are pitching their algorithm just as much as you are the end consumer!
2. Check the Right Industry Boxes
The brutal truth is, if you even phrase your industry wrong on Google then they might slip you into the wrong bucket. I will add, Google has heard complains as to this and tried to create some pre-made and generalized industry “buckets” for ease of use. But, I cannot emphasize enough taht the services provided must be fully filled out or you just won’t show up.
3. Actively Updating Your Profile
A multitude of studies have been generated on how often to update your Google Business Profile. Our opinion? Companies shown to update their Google Business Profile 2+ times per week saw a significant average increase in rank. If you aren’t sure of what average rank is for a google business profile, it is literally where you are in the line up when someone searches on Google Maps or with local intent in the search bar. Here is a grid of where our client ranks in Google Local for “Appliance Repair.” If you aren’t sure how to do this feel free to check out some tools like Semrush that way you can compare self-reporting vs using a start-up marketing service. Anyway, back to optimizing for free: next, this ties into social posts.
4. Getting GBP Reviews from Every Customer
The number of reviews you get for your business is one of the top methods of ranking. If you don’t collect reviews, almost all local SEO efforts are worthless! The other items are foundational and might have some impact, but collecting of reviews is absolutely essential. You can go to your Google Business Profile and press “Request Reviews” to get the link or QR code to share.
Getting Free Impressions Posting On Social Twice Per Week
First, if you don’t have a Facebook page, set it up. It takes 2 minutes and gets you free impressions and authority. Invited your friends to like it. Next, don’t overthink the posts. Sometimes, posts are just about sharing information on what you do in an interactive way. Facebook likes content that it can share with users. It likes photos. Take advantage of this by creating simple posts on what you do with a nice photo and posting it. Add the right hashtags and, if anyone likes it, you might immediately get a few hundred or even thousand impressions. Someone with 200 followers means that 200 people see what they like!
It also creates a perception in people’s mind that business is “good” and that you are active to respond to inquiries. On the other hand, a stagnant page with nothing on it looks… Sad.
Forcing Google, Chat GPT, and Yahoo to Index your Website
1. Fix Your Website Meta Tag, Title Tag, H1 Tag, and H2 Tag
Did you know that there are actually html tags on each part of your website to sell search engine web scrapers what it is? For instance, you could have “Joe’s Plumbing” but, if it doesn’t have the right tag, search engines don’t know what to do with your site or where it belongs.
Once you have done this, you need to setup an account on Google Search Console to ensure that your site isn’t currently having any penalties and to see your rank progress over time.
2. Create Consistant NAP
An extremely annoying thing as a consumer is when you can’t find the right phone number to call on a website. If on maps, not being able to find the right address is also annoying. Before your do anything with search engines, make sure that you have the right information that you are going to use everywhere.
3. Index Your Site
Once your NAP is right, rather than trying to feed the search engines on the backend, send it straight to the source! Localeze, Data Axel, and several other databses actually list businesses and where they are located for engines and maps to pick up on. Data Axel has a good free tool to submit your information but Localeze is way easier to use with their ~$99/year plan!
4. Add Schema for Chat GPT
Adding schema on your website so that AI engines and other engines can better read your site is crucial. There is a lot of hype on GEO and the idea of AI replacing google. It is best to be prepared in either way! Here is an example schema and we also wrote a separate article on it here:
The Exception to Measuring Paid Ads – Meta ads and Local Service Ads (requires some ad spend)
A. Why We Like LSAs
Unlike google ads, Google Local Service Ads let you pay for lead. This was launched around 2018-2020 across different beta tests but they have been one of Google’s most profitable ventures. This is no surprise considering that they pose almost no risk to business owners! We will willingly manage these accounts assuming you have an extra side budget to allocate to Google directly.
The biggest and cleares benefit is that you can bid X dollars for Y phone calls. For example, you bid $20/lead X 5 per month. You get charged $100 and get 5 phone calls from prospective clients. If it isn’t a fit, you just mark it as “Bad Lead” in the portal and possibly get refunded. Check out the program here.
B. Why Meta Ads Beat Out Every Competition
As we discussed prior, $600/month to be on the local TV or news is a potential disaster. Nothing to measure. Just guess work. High minimums. For $4, on the other hand, you can get in front of 1,000 people on Facebook in a target demographic such as age, gender, interest, and more. Obviously, sometimes it is more and sometimes it is less. But, assuming CPM of $4, for $100 you will get 25,000 views. Wow! Compare this to TV back in the 80s when it would cost ~$50 for 1,000 views. What cost $50, now costs $4.
If you set it up right with a large enough audience and focused on posts that already worked and have been tested organically, you can only hope for similar results.
How to Know if it is Working
If you have our proprietary reporting, this is easy. However, free tools also exist simply by clicking on the Google Business Profile and clicking “Performance.” If it looks like this, then it is working!
Setting Up Call Tracking
You can also use tools like call rail to get forwarding numbers for your website, facebook, and other accounts so you can know exactly what is getting you traffic. This even works for print ads in the yellow pages! Starter plans are about ~$50 per month plus ~$3 per phone number.
Calculating how Much Time this Will Take Each Month
Task List
- 9 posts per month X 2 (GBP, FB) X 15 minutes = 4.5 hours
- GBP Updates with fresh photos = 1 hours
- Requesting GBP Reviews 30 days a month X 10 minutes = 5 hours
- Checking website meta title, tags, and checking Google Search Console for indexing status = 1.5 hours
- Optimizing Google LSA account = 4 hours
- Optimizing Meta Ads account = 4 hours
Total Opportunity Costs
- Total 20 hours of tasks X $20 an hour = $400/month
- Localeze = $10/month
- Call Rail = $65/month
- = Total of $475/month opportunity cost per month
What does it look like to hire someone else?
There are plenty of good agencies out there. However, few offer a startup marketing package like ours.
About Green Search Marketing
We are a Service, Not a Subscription
We don’t hand clients a login and wish them luck. The point of this service is that we not only provide you the tools you need for success, but also implement them. We can’t replace your hard work and unique trade skill. But, you can’t provide your unique trade skill if you are stuck in the office all day clicking post and reading reviews. That’s where we step in. Then, as you grow, we have a great opportunity to see where you might benefit from additional service that we can offer you later.
Our Discounted Startup-Bundle