Really SMALL Town Marketing

BTDT.

Local gossip blog, email newsletter or forum. Say what the local newspaper is afraid to editorialize for fear of losing precious advertising dollars.

Go to public meetings. Make public records requests. Become an activist of sorts.

Best works at the county level.

Once you have the eyeballs - and you WILL get the eyeballs, then you can start spinning the mailing list or advertising.

Done this quite effectively multiple times. Built one small town site to 3,000,000 uniques a year in a town of 7,000 residents and 40K in the county.

It's a spin on the local directory model actually.

Why go so specific then?

How far will your plumber go for work? I think that is the key issue.

Services offered by different businesses are going to vary as will the amount of distance they are willing to travel.

I'm moving up toward Rutland VT, but just discovered the house address is actually 10 miles outside of there in an unknown area (I can't even remember the name right now, lol)

Are you asking expressly for figuring out a domain for the business?

Yup, I was thinking actually what Michael was thinking above. Build up an authority website for the town. A lot of the time, in these smaller communities, no one has done it effectively, so there's an opportunity to advertise your "community hub/portal" around town, as well as getting advertisers to it in the process. It's really one one-two punch, because you'll be able to get local advertisers, as well as pushing other offers like CPA and banner ads.

Great stuff guys! Please keep it coming!

No, Jill, I'm not concerned about domains at this point. Just needed some ideas on exactly how to market to an audience that may NOT actually have people looking up their city + keyword because they're just that small. Because I can't just say "Oh hey you're going to get HUNDREDS more calls if we target these four keywords", know what I mean?

I can tell you that being the local "wikileaks" for political stuff is SO effective, that it ended up giving me a tremendous amount of local political clout. If I showed up at a public meeting or hearing, everyone's B-holes snapped shut and I got the red carpet treatment.. although they all hated my guts so badly.

The mistake I made the first time around was actually getting so involved politically that I polarized a lot of the community against each other - and made some really big enemies in the process that still hold the grudges to this day. This is in my hometown community, so I can't easily just walk away and say "oh well".

After running the site for 6 years, I actually pulled the plug.

I didn't want that kind of power or notoriety. I didn't want people calling me up at 3am threatening to kill me, or city employees trying to play double agent and get me to publish sensitive stuff on the site to pressure the opposing sides in a political cat fight. There was a tremendous amount of pressure, and it's very easy to get sucked into the negative politics of the machine.

When I pulled the plug, two factions split and created their own respective sites... the soccer moms, who bitch and moan about everyday stuff. Most of those have moved on to Facebook, and that site is sort of fallen by the wayside.

The other faction continued the political bent, continues to go to public meetings and publish the transcripts, recordings, et al... along with their commentary. I taught them well.

So the point is that if you're wanting to be a big fish in a little pond, it's really easy to do because these communities are already traditionally underserved by media. Politics gets the attention and the traffic.

Here's an example of a community blog that is done EXTREMELY WELL... less editorialized by the owner, who leaves that sort of thing to the guest contributors.

DarkeJournal.com

Actually there's a very good chance they WILL look for it if they're desperate for a plumber.

Around half of the searches on google are "unique" searches meaning that they will never show up in any keyword tool.

And really how much work do you need to do to get the top ranking for
Thorp WI plumber

One web page with specific content and a browser title matching that phrase and one backlink and you should be in the top 3 rankings inside 2 weeks (often within a few days).

So you're not talking about doing a pile of work to get a good ranking.

Also for some businesses just ONE client can be very valuable so you don't need to generate a lot of traffic.

Also remember that some businesses in a local area may be looking for a market way beyond that area.

Not all "local" businesses sell to a local market.


Beyond that a lot of the best marketing is pre-educating prospects to increase the chance they'll buy and following up with prospects and customers to increase purchases and referrals.

A lot of that you can do using the internet in various ways...delivering content, reports and video, email marketing etc etc.

And if you're smart any content you add to a website you'll also optimize for selected keyword phrases.

That way any "SEO" work you do has multiple purposes beyond SEO.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

This is what I understand, you are thinking doing seo for offliner from small town will not benefit their business? Am I right?

If that so, here is my opinion.
Instead of marketing their business for the town citizen, why don't you promoting their uniqueness to people outside the town.

For example, I live at the place where we have nice village view, so I'm promoting "Homestay business" here to people outside my small town.

Just my 2 cents.

How about promotional products?

Oh man, you guys, I HAD to let you know this...

Because of Michael's idea about a community directory, I looked up the town we do our grocery shopping in.

BAH HA HA HA HA

Not only did I find two town directories, but one of them has listed every single business, the owner's name, address, phone number and website, if they have one.

CHA-CHING!

ETA: It gets better! That directory has links to SIX other small down directories, all having the same business info for all the local businesses. (I am laughing maniacally and I think my husband thinks I've gone over the edge...)

Hey Lisa,

If you do a search at google itself, on say Plumbers Thorp WI, the first 2 results I found were pinned in local. Most of the other results are directories... the fact is, if you can find it in even google (without having local search volume info), it means SOMEONE is looking

According to the kw tool, 3600 people on average are searching on thorp wi every month... so I'm sure some of those people are looking for plumbers.

Glad you found that other source - use it to your advantage

(I can totally relate to the giggling/hubby looking at you like you're nuts LOL)

plumbers was just an example

The tried and tested niche that pays well and is available in almost every city is house painters. I've recently tried that niche with better success.

You should consider setting up a business directory for the city and including different niches and advertising spots, call is "citycentral".com, so if your city was Timbuktu, make it tumbuktucentral.com and get it in the local newspaper etc, business owners will contact you.

One of the few, if you build it they will come, websites.

Lisa,

I live in a town of 920 people, in the center of a bunch of towns up to 3,000 in population and two towns away from a metropolis of 29,000 people.

People in my situation have a number of geographic terms they search on for (let's say) a tradesperson. I'll describe it for my area and you should be able to transfer it to your situation. They search by:

* name of county
* area code
* name of the metropolis
* "hilltowns" (generic name for the small towns in this area)
* western mass (larger region)
* Pioneer Valley (a section of the larger region)
* landmarks/tourist spots, like Tanglewood or local colleges (especially for tourist-related services)

Hope that is helpful.

Marcia Yudkin

ONCE AGAIN, you guys have my brain reeling with possibilities!

Thank you!

Well, here's what I'm doing to tomorrow, on my very first appointment ever:

I'm printing out their website report from WooRank and telling them how I can correct all the "red" marks on the report.

I also printed out 4 Google results for popular search terms that they SHOULD be targeting, but are not. They are, of course, no where on the front page, which I will show them.

I'm going to pitch SEO on their current website, along with a GP listing.

I will walk out of that meeting with a check.

That sounds like a really solid plan Lisa.

Consider getting your hands on a PLR book or report in the upcoming months you can give to them and plop your name on it, make it about SEO. Adds a ton of credibility when you say, "Here is my SEO book that you can find online"

Get it listed on Amazon at some point too.

Will help a ton!

GOOD LUCK! Let us know how it goes

- Brenden

Yeah, and you can also build pamphlets on the same topics and hand them out to the owners. Anything with your name and info on it really helps.

This thread has been very interesting to me as well, living in a town of less than 1,000 people, surrounded by even smaller towns. I wondered exactly the same thing - is anybody really doing these searches, but what someone brought out about 1 or 2 extra customers makes sense; in such a rural area, that could make the difference.

I'm going to put some of these suggestions to use as well - thanks, everyone!

Lisa,

I firmly believe the advice and angle Michael has shared is perfect for smaller communities.

Also if your taking to a small local business I think community positioning is going to be FAR more effective then doing SEO for a site.

Word travels fast in small counties and communities. Hey did you hear the Jones boys got caught doing such and such...It only takes one word and every one knows about it.

Approach your prospects from this angle I think.

Russ

This is a great and helpful thread. I live in a slightly smaller town too and wondered if people search for stuff (though I do and can't find anything!).

I also do offline consulting, web design and SEO. That woorank is a great idea. I have about 4 businesses I can do that up for today! Thanks.