4 Tips for Ridiculously Simple Local Lead Generation

Marketers prioritize lead generation on their marketing agenda for a good reason  – for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32 (DMA, 2018). This is particularly true for small and midsize businesses – around 80% of them rely on email as their primary customer acquisition and retention channel.

However, when you are trying to take your local business online and capitalize on the power of social media and automated marketing, many full-proof practices may seem a bit counterintuitive.

After all, a large portion of marketing efforts is dedicated to reaching as many people as possible. With local lead generation, there is a definite number of contacts you can get – and finding them is actually surprisingly easy. Everything is going your way – you just need a little bit of creativity and some conventional, old-school marketing.

Local businesses, in general, have a good headstart when it comes to building a trusting, friendly relationship with their customers. According to Yodle Insights report, U.S. consumers prefer local businesses to national chains when it comes to personalized service, trustworthiness, quality, and reliability.

All you have to do is capitalize on these positive assumptions the consumers have about local businesses.

1. Walk among your customers

And I don’t mean it metaphorically. Owning a local business serving local customers is an amazing headstart for any marketing team. Think about it – you grew up in this village, town or city. You know the neighborhoods, you know the people, you know those little things that make one community.

All of this can help you create a powerful marketing message aimed at the local community, relying on local anecdotes and important people and places. Establishing a local brand means that people see the business owner as one of the people and a person who contributes to the community.

This means, ironically, that a large portion of your lead generation can happen offline. Look at the local calendar and mark a few important days – holidays, local anniversaries, and fairs. Take an active part in them, and this chance to present your business, talk to people, give away a few gifts or coupons and collect emails.

Of course, you can go out and set a stand on any given day, but piggybacking on established local traditions and happenings is a great way to enhance your branding potential. If your budget allows it, sponsoring local sports teams, events, and charities is another great way to raise awareness about your business – and grow your list of contacts.

2. Inspire a sense of belonging with quizzes and blog content

Being part of the local community also gives you a great insight into the type of things people around you are interested in. You are likely to know which are the most popular bars, ball-courts, promenades, etc. This allows you to create amazing, personalized content that will tap into your potential customers’ interests and daily habits.

Blog content can be a great local lead generation tool if you pair it up with hello bar or pop-up windows that offer your readers a personalized newsletter, or giveaways, coupons, and discounts.

However, there is something even better. Do you know that 80% of people will click on a quiz if they see it in their social media newsfeed? Now imagine how viral these quizzes can get if you base them on very specific, local questions that tap into people’s sense and pride of belonging? Actually, you don’t have to imagine – you’ve probably seen one of those quizzes.

Offering people a little incentive for sign-up once they reach the results can be a great way to grow your local email list. But quizzes don’t necessarily have to be just for the entertainment purposes.

Local health institutions and real estate agents have used them to generate local leads by offering people personalized solutions to specific problems, such as health issues or credit score questions.

For example, this real estate agent created a simple “Where should you live?” style quiz, posted it in 30 different local Facebook groups, generating 1,010 leads for free. After the quiz she was able to follow up with them about specific listings based on the results they got.

Integrative Healthcare team created a quiz campaign to find new patients for their local Scottsdale office. They drove people from Facebook to the quiz to answer questions related to their Thyroid health. In exchange for results, they could opt-in with their name and email, and on the results page, they were presented with an offer to sign-up and several discounts to incentivize the conversion.

You can share these quizzes on your Facebook page, or run them as a Facebook ad, taking everyone who clicks directly to your website. When it comes to quizzes, the options are endless.

3. Reach out to local media

Though it may seem like an obsolete marketing strategy, finding your way to local media is a great way to reach your target audience. Even in 2019, local media is still holding on for a very simple reason – it offers people the information they need, but cannot find anywhere else.

Local lead generation in media is possible both through classic advertising and sponsored content.

For example, the insurance company Allstate’s sponsored content strategy has been immensely successful as part of The Renewal Project dedicated to encouraging social innovation in local communities across the United States.

Allstate paired with The Atlantic to run a series of sponsored articles revolving around public education in the United States, the level of racial diversity in public school, and the ways to teach middle schoolers in accordance with their emotional, developmental and academic needs.

Allstate’s goal was to reach its most loyal customer base – the middle class, and it did so by adopting a very localized approach.

Now, don’t get discouraged by the big names in this story – this type of project can easily translate to a local level by combining sponsored content and community outreach I described in the first section.

4. Conventional wisdom: optimize

Finally, the story boils down to the conventional wisdom of the simplest possible scenario. Somebody wants to have a cup of coffee, they google “coffee in this-or-that town” and picks the listing that is either the closest – or the one that is best optimized.

While local lead generation does not require an immense amount of traffic, you still need traffic coming to your website as a prerequisite to generating sign-ups.

Long story short, your entire website and blog content should be optimized for local search. Good SEO is all about giving people exactly what they were looking for. It could be your website’s homepage, or your blog post about 10 things you should take on a hiking trip.

Whenever there is talk about optimizing a site for local customers, I suggest these three optimization steps suggested by Rand Fishkin.

If you want to follow this strategy, you can use a free tool such as KMeta, which enables you to find keywords and related suggestions on Google, Bing, Amazon, and YouTube. If you have a WordPress website, you can add a GeotargetingWP tool that enables content geolocation.

Another way to boost your website’s local ranking is to make sure you include locations, as well as local keywords as hashtags.

Conclusion

Based on your marketing objectives and the nature of your (or your client’s) business, you can employ all of these strategies at the same time, or you can opt for one. If you are running on a tight budget, quizzes can be your best bet, as they have a great click-through-rate and can increase your website’s lead capture by up to 500%.

If you want to see how to make this happen, click on this guide. If you want to start creating your own local lead generation quiz, just click below.