Find Local Customers Online

One of the most difficult things that local business owners constantly face is finding the local customers and generating local leads for their business and sometimes it becomes like a mystery because of the unlimited amount of information that’s available on the internet and so many different marketing companies, agencies and software companies all claiming that once you signup for their services or software you would start getting calls from the local, emails and messages from the local customers. Most of you may have already tried such services and software without any success.

How to find local customers online for your local business

Most of the local businesses find it difficult to find local customers is because they do not have any online presence.

Online presence for small businesses is a very vast term in itself that includes everything from having a small business website design to social media pages to web directory listings to active social media profiles to paid advertising and much more.

According to a survey done by constant contact in which over 300 Small and Medium business participated, it was found that 49% of the local businesses never update their business information online.

Let me ask you a simple question. What’s the most common thing you see in people around you who can be your local customers?

Well, let me try to explain to you why I am asking you such a question here. Your local business can be a retail store selling clothes or kitchen remodeling service providing modular kitchen installation to the local residents or it can be a computer repair business fixing computer and laptops of the people within a particular city.

It could any local business that you own but are you able to figure out yet that there’s one thing common among all the people all over the world in today’s time. What’s that you must be thinking now?

The common thing is that everyone around you and all over the world is searching online for a local business or a local service provider and they are only able to find those local businesses that actually have an accurate business listing on the internet or have some kind of online presence such as a website or a social media page such as on facebook or google+ or twitter or instagram etc.

So, not having online presence means your customers are unable to find you and over 70% of the local customers search for a local business online because that’s the easiest way to look for a local service provider.

There are many different ways in which you can create an online presence for your small business:

Creating a Website for your Small Business is the first step towards taking your business online. In today’s business environment where every customer is searching online for service providers locally you can’t afford to run a business without a website.

You can also create a website for free for your small business using our simple step-by-step guide.

Find Local customers online through local business listings:

• Google My Business– Creating a business listing for your local business is free and easy. Once google verifies your physical address by sending you a postcard with a secret code and you fill it up in your google my business listing then your business is verified and starts showing up in search results as well as on the right side of the google search results page.

• Yelp Business Listing– Claiming your business on Yelp is easy and simple and gives your local business better visibility in search engines. When you create a business listing on Yelp it also becomes easier for you to collect customer reviews and ratings.

• Manta– Creating your business listing on Manta gives your business a visibility among 64 Million Manta Users. Manta is a Small Business directory listing website which is the third largest in the world as mentioned by comscore.

• Bing– Bing Places for Business is similar to google my business that provides a local business listing on Bing.com and when a customer searches for a local business within your city it becomes easier for them to discover your business listing on bing search results.

There are several local business directories where you can create a free listing for your business and improve your chances of being found by local customers. Here’s a complete list to help you get started.

Setup Facebook page – Create a Facebook page for your business or brand to connect with the local customers in your town or city. Being one of the world’s largest social networking platform that has over 2 billion monthly active users facebook can put your business in front of thousands of local customers in no time. You can also opt for paid advertising to reach potential customers within your area.

Setup Twitter page – When talking about creating your online presence you cannot afford to miss twitter as it gives you the option to create a business page. Being one of the most popular websites on the internet today, twitter has over 225 million monthly active users. Twitter lets you tweet about almost everything with the world, share news, tips and offers about your business to engage with the potential customers in your area.

Here’s a complete list of social media websites to create your business profile.

As a small business owner following the above mentioned points can make a huge difference to your business and you can easily find local customers online. Don’t wait to create your online presence and business listings to get discovered by local customers. You cannot afford to ignore the internet for finding new customers on a daily basis because everywhere around you people are online on their smart phones, ipads and tablets searching for a local business or a service provider.

Looking forward to grow your small business and find local customers online by having a strong online presence?

How Advanton helps

Advanton is a free resource that helps small businesses start, get online, find customers and grow, with free tools and step-by-step guides. You can also add your business to our directory for free.

There’s no contract and nothing to sign up for to read our guides or use the tools. Advanton earns money when you buy a domain or hosting through our store, which helps keep everything else free.