Highly Beneficial Local Marketing Online Trends You Cannot Ignore
The fact is, marketing trends are constantly changing. And if you are running a local business, it can be difficult to keep up, especially if you are very busy with regards to the day-to-day operation of your business. But which online trends should you follow? Are there any that are not worthwhile or not greatly valuable?
You definitely have to pick and choose when it comes to marketing. Obviously, not many people have an unlimited budget that allows them to jump on the bandwagon of every trend.
But that does not mean you can totally ignore trends. The key is to go after the ones that have the greatest chance of generating revenue and attracting new customers – and disregarding the rest. So, let’s cut through the non-essentials and focus on the crucial stuff.
Nowadays you cannot go anywhere without reading about why online reviews are crucial – but a surprising number of local businesses are to this day still not prioritising them. In other words, this is not a new trend, but it’s an essential one for sure.
The numbers don’t lie. According to Brightlocal survey, 81% of consumers use Google review site to evaluate local businesses before making a purchasing decision – and 88% of consumers would use a business that responds to all of their reviews, compared to just 47% who would use a business that does not at all reply to their reviews.
But what should you do in essence to properly gain from the trend of online reviews as a local business?
Claim your Google Business Profile listing (more on that later). The thing is, online reviews via Google carry the most weight within the local business space. So, set up a system to generate reviews and encourage your existing customers to leave you reviews on your Google listing. Also have a system for responding quickly on Google to both positive and negative reviews.
Mobile payments by consumers are convenient and – when properly used – they can protect financial information of consumers. Research published by Business Fortune Insights shows that the mobile payment trend has been rising over the past 5 years and is expected to grow from 3.84 trillion dollars in 2024 to 27.81 trillion dollars in 2032.
Some of the best and most reliable mobile payment apps include:
- PayPal
- Square
- Cash App
- Google Wallet
- Apple Pay
- Stripe
With consumers heavily doing cashless transactions in this day and age, providing mobile payment method in business is no longer an option, it is a must, especially as it makes purchase transactions much more convenient. And it gives peace of mind to your customers and can help you attract new customers who like to support businesses that support mobile payment methods.
Whenever you hear online about “chatbots” are you thinking science fiction or reality? If you selected the first option, it’s time to pull your head out of the sand and step into the 21st century – because chatbots are going nowhere, they are here to stay.
Statistically, a whopping 1.4 billion people currently interact with chatbots. And adding live chat to your website can boost conversions by 20 percent and skyrocket your ROI by as much as 305 percent.
Programming chatbots can be complex task but it’s a worthwhile investment to set one up for your business. You can start on a small scale by programming a chatbot to handle customer payment inquiries and other routine tasks. The trend is towards having complete virtual assistants, so bear that in mind as you move forward with this stuff.
Interactive videos are another trend that might sound like sci fi. The trend towards interactive videos in marketing is indeed massive. Let’s look at some numbers:
- The click-through rate for interactive video is 10 times higher than for regular video
- 360-degree video has a 48% higher completion rate than regular video
- Likewise, the ROI on interactive video is 14% higher than with regular video
Major brands like Johnny Walker, Samsung, and Porsche are using interactive online video content to connect with their customers. The benefits that an interactive video provides to your audience is that it allows them to immerse themselves in a story and choose what they see and how they see it.
Google Business Profile is one of the best ways to increase the visibility of your local business online. In case you have not claimed and optimised your listing already, then in all probability you are significantly losing business to your competitors.
You can click here to claim your listing. Once you have done that, it is vital that you complete your listing and optimise it for local searches. Here are some pointers:
- Enter all information that Google requests, including your full business name, address, phone number, URL of your website, hours, prices, and so on.
- Upload pictures of the inside and outside of your business and any products or services that you sell.
- Include your company logo, slogan, and other marketing information.
- Include your most important local keywords in your business description and listing.
- Update your followers on important events and announcements by creating Google Business Profile posts.
- Encourage customers to leave reviews.
Besides, it is vital to monitor your Google Business Profile listing as customers have the possibility to change information on your listing. You’ll need to make sure that your hours and other information are correct, as doing this plays a key part in terms of optimising your listing for customer acquisition.
GPS technology has become commonplace in today’s digital world. What you may not know is that you can actually use its sister, beacon technology as a local marketing system to engage with your customers and provide them with location-specific advertising and offers.
To do it, you’ll need to:
- Create a mobile app with mobile beacon technology integrated
- Encourage your customers to download your app
- Use the app to track their locations
- Use their locations to send push notifications with offers, coupons and promotions
For example, let’s say you own a retail store, you might set up multiple beacons in your store. Then, when a customer is browsing, you can use the app to send them notifications offering special deals on the products they are looking at.
Another option is to use this technology to automatically ping or send push notifications to your customers when they are near your business location and entice them to come in instead of passing by.
This location-based method is known as beacon marketing, which is also called proximity marketing.
Customers who downloaded your mobile app (with beacon functionality) will be on your mobile push notification list. And if such customers are near your business location, they will automatically receive your preset “Near Business Location” exclusive offers – by notifications on their mobile phone.
Below, is another example – in terms of utilising mobile beacon technology…
As a local business owner, you would want to maximise the performance of your workforce and maximise customer service delivery, especially in line with your local marketing efforts or advertising spend.
In conjunction with mobile beacon technology, you can further improve your workforce management capabilities and customer service delivery by implementing workforce management software.
This form of software helps to efficiently schedule shifts, optimise labour costs, track employee attendances or movements, automate the processes that manage workers’ time. It also efficiently organises and deploys labour force, enhances service delivery and streamlines communications among team members.
By integrating mobile beacon technology with workforce management software, this will really help you achieve the very best out of your workforce and operational processes, and highly improve your customer service delivery. This will also truly have a more positive knock-on effect on your local marketing efforts or your ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).
Local marketing changes on a near-daily basis. The online trends that we have described here are actually some very valuable ones that are unlikely to go anywhere – and properly utilising them can help you to attract new customers or make more sales via existing customers without overspending on marketing. To find out about the online services that we actually provide to local businesses, access this link:
