Best (FREE) Marketing Tools For Local Businesses | 2018
Reader Digital • August 30, 2018
Every small business needs a digital marketing plan. But with so many components to consider ? from content management to search engine optimization (SEO) to social media outreach ? it can be easy to get overwhelmed and to overspend.
Fortunately, there are a lot of free, user-friendly marketing tools available online to help you make the most of your digital marketing strategy while keeping your tasks and priorities in order.
Here are some of the best digital marketing resources we’ve found for small businesses.
When it comes to digital marketing, content is king. Creating unique, useful, and high-quality webpages and blog posts can help to increase your search engine ranking and drive traffic to your site. To find out what people are searching for, you can explore trending topics and queries using Google Trends, then use them to create relevant content.
Once you’ve decided on a topic, use the Moz Keyword Explorer to research words and phrases to include in your content. Incorporating popular search terms organically in your blog posts and pages can help boost your ranking in search results.
Email campaigns are an important element of any digital marketing plan, connecting you with existing and potential customers to promote your brand, generate sales, and bring in new business. MailChimp can handle everything about email marketing – including signup forms, message templates, audience segmentation, and data analytics to determine how effective your campaigns are.
These days, your small business needs to have a strong social media presence to survive – and Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. Managing multiple profiles and pages is a job in itself, but Hootsuite provides a central system for handling them all. With integrations for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and more, HootSuite allows you to schedule posts, curate cohesive content, and track the impact of your efforts.
Soliciting online reviews is important for building a strong reputation and generating word-of-mouth business. Use this tool to create a simple, printable handout with straightforward instructions on how to write a review – then distribute them in person to encourage your happiest customers to leave positive feedback and testimonials.
When negative reviews come in, it’s important to address them as soon as possible. With this free review monitoring tool, set up email alerts to notify you of new reviews, so you can resolve complaints and grievances quickly. This will improve your online reputation and demonstrate your commitment to customer care.
Local SEO is search engine optimization with a geographical component, taking a user’s current location into account when providing search results. Moz Local helps you achieve a high local SEO ranking by verifying your listings on relevant platforms and distributing them to the apps and directories that aggregate local business data.
To stand out from the crowd, you need to know who your competition is. Local Citation Finder identifies the top-ranking local businesses in your industry, analyzes their mentions across the internet, and helps you discover new opportunities for citations that will increase your local search ranking.
Let Reader Digital handle the marketing strategy for your small business
Even with an arsenal of excellent marketing tools at your disposal, planning and running your own digital marketing campaign is a lot of work – and as a small business owner, you’ve already got a lot on your plate. Let Reader Digital handle the heavy lifting. We’ll craft an affordable and authentic marketing strategy that will boost your web presence, enhance your reputation, and bring in more customers.
Ready to boost your bottom line? Give us a call at (619) 831-8741 to get started today.
