How To Promote Your Local Business

Yes, Your Brick and Mortar Store Needs an Online Presence

Why does an “online presence” matter for your brick-and-mortar store?

Throughout Covid, most B&M stores had to pivot to offering online shopping capabilities to stay afloat. Creating a strong online presence for an online store makes pretty intuitive sense, but for those who withstood Covid, offer a product/service that cannot be sold online, or started after the pandemic wound down – this question becomes a lot more gray.

Why do you need an online presence if you just offer physical face-to-face shopping/service?

B&M stores that only serve customers in person certainly have their own set of challenges – monthly rent, organizing staffing, paying utilities… Adding a digital side feels like a lot of effort, especially if the budget is tight.

Marketing a business online

So, why is it necessary? Well, to simplify it grossly: how else are people going to find out about your business? We live in the digital age, we all know this. Think about it, when you need to find a product or service near you – let’s say a nearby salon – how would you go about looking for it? Drive around aimlessly until you stumble on a strip mall that has a corner suite rented out to “SALON” in bright red letters? (oddly specific, I know). Not with these gas prices!

You, along with everybody else, will go onto Google or Maps and search “nearby salons” or some variant. Here, you can sort by distance, reviews and ratings, what’s open now… then of course you can call and set up an appointment, speak to someone about the new balayage you want for summer, you get the idea. All without leaving the couch!

Online marketing for local businesses

This all sounds so elementary, like “we know that is how we look for salons, get to the point!” – I’m getting there (promise). We can know these truths, but applying them to your business yourself is a whole different story. It still shocks us at how many small businesses don’t even have a website. We don’t want you to fall into the thought process of:

You don’t need a website as B&M
You don’t know where to start

We are here to help with that!

How to market and advertise a small business?

How to promote your local business online. Let’s start with what your online presence must include:

A website – absolutely mandatory! If there is one thing to take away from this whole article, it’s that you. need. a. website. Don’t care how big or small your business is, if you are located in DFW, LA or Timbuktu. And before deciding whether to try and build one yourself or pay someone to do it – we highly recommend reading these articles to help you decide:
- How to Choose A Web Designer
- Do I Really Need a Custom Website For My Business?
Google integration & SEO – almost just as important as a website. If you just build a website, it will just sit there. You need to optimize each page to rank well on search engines. Creating a Google My Business page and utilizing some of their other tools will help drive traffic and potential customers to your business. If you’re in need of some Google and SEO help, don’t worry- we got you covered. Check out:

Ways to promote your business

Those 2 points are non-negotiable. Since this article is focusing on those with a B&M store only, these next 2 points are more or less *optional.*

Social media marketing – the pro to this is that using social media, posting, etc. is free. The con is that it takes a lot of time, which as a small business, we know is an extremely valuable asset. Social Media content and following can really help boost your site traffic, but comes with a high cost (paying someone to manage it or taking the time to do it yourself).
Paid ads – Google or Facebook ads are two of the most popular types of paid digital advertising. Of course there are paid physical ads in newspapers, billboards, etc. but digital ads are extremely convenient to manage as you can collect a lot of data about how your ad is performing, make tweaks instantly, and more. The con, of course, is that you either have to take the time to manage your ads daily or pay someone too, along with allocating a specific ad budget to pay for the ad space.

Websites for small business

We tell all of our clients – your website is an investment, and can be argued it’s the most important one for your business out of anything else. It is a 24/7 employee working for you! It is quite literally the cornerstone for the rest of your marketing efforts- digital or physical, where you point people to and how you can be consistently found and remembered.

Internet marketing services for local businesses

To wrap it up, yes, your online presence is necessary to help your B&M business succeed! There are things to prioritize and some optional items, but the best thing to do is get started!

As always, we hope this article helped. We would love to hear your thoughts! And of course, we would love to meet you and have free 15-minute consultations to learn about your business and how we can help.

Keep creative friends!
– Mad Banana Team

Want to share?