Local Business Strategies to Dominate Your Career
Everyone wants to be one of the fortunate few, who achieve overnight success. What most people don’t understand is that “overnight success” is typically preceded by at least 10 years of hard work. Success is achieved through small milestones along the entrepreneurial journey.
This starts with where you already are. Before you “rule the world,” you must learn to dominate your local area. If you’re brand-new, you probably need to start with getting your first client as a new shark.
Domination is counterintuitive. You have let go of the belief that “overnight success” is possible. While there are a few rare cases of “overnight success”, there’s no such thing as a literal 24-hour, overnight success.
Take Facebook, for example. Mark Zuckerberg was busy programming and coding for over 10 years before his business became a global success. At the time, he was studying psychology and computer science at Harvard. Facebook captured the public imagination quickly, but it was backed up by years of training, education, and practice.
The Market Rewards Tenacity
If your parents were anything like mine, they probably instilled in you that it’s unwise to quit something you already started. Even as a child, my parents made sure I knew – if I started a basketball season, I was going to finish.
Whether or not I realized it at the time, my parents were teaching me how to honor a commitment. When it comes to other people’s time and expectations, it’s crucial to your credibility to fulfill your promises.
While this may seem obvious, we don’t always maintain the same sense of obligation when it comes to ourselves. It can be easy to quit when we’re not seeing the results and growth we want. Consistency is the number one key to success in business.
That’s why we have to debunk the myth of “overnight success.” Building a business takes time, hard work, and consistency. But if you can leverage those three attributes, you’ll dominate more than just your local area.
How to do Local SEO
Visibility is more important than perfection. Unless you make yourself and your business easy to reach online, your customers won’t be able to find you. Local SEO is one of the best tools any business owner can use to optimize customer retention.
There are many local business strategies to utilize in order to grow your business, however, local SEO can expand your business and set you apart quicker than anything else. Luckily for you, there are already systematic and proven ways to use local SEO the most effectively, all you have to do is follow the steps.
Local SEO is all about increasing search visibility to customers that may not have found you otherwise. Much of this comes down to being active and creating consistent content.
With as many websites as there are to surf through, Google has become more and more difficult to satisfy over the years. Taking small steps such as claiming a business listing to ensure your franchise location appears in the local search on Google, using local keywords on your webpage, and promoting reviews can drive more leads and conversations.
The business world’s “saturation” tempts us to hold back on launching ideas, webpages, or our businesses, waiting for the “perfect” moment – which is never going to happen. The more intentional you become about promoting your business, the more it will seem like everyone else already “owns the market.” That’s not true!
The more active and credible your webpages appear to be, the higher your SERP rankings will go up and the more trustworthy you’ll seem to searchers. Along with this, the more adaptable your content is to different keywords and Google searches, the more likely your webpage is to be a top result.
Geo-modifiers and prepositional phrases such as “near me” or “best” can influence search results. Having a combination of location-oriented content and qualifiers such as “best” and positive reviews can help Google interpret results for different needs.
Click here for a list of our recommended providers, including for your local SEO.
Stay on Top of Your Competitors
No matter what local business strategies you’re practicing, you always want to stay ahead of your competitors. Whether this is through online marketing, in your store front, or through word of mouth, pay attention to what’s working for your competitors.
Most importantly, make sure to analyze competitor websites to see what targets they are/aren’t hitting. Compare their primary promises against the products and services they offer, and analyze how navigable their layout is. These will help you understand what you need to keep or change to attract customers.
Especially with local SEO, your top concern is to ensure your web page ranking exceeds that of your competitors.
How to Dominate Your Career
If you want to dominate your local area it all comes down to perseverance. The more initiative you take to maintain relevance, reach your audience, and stay ahead of your competitors, the more success you’ll enjoy.
You don’t have to be “everything to everyone,” to win at this game. Find your niche, identify what makes you stand out from your competitors, and bring the two together. Once you know whom you serve, you can dig deep on them and innovate, to keep your brand fresh and customers hungry for more.
If you need help discovering your client’s “pain points,” have a look at this free guide we created on how to do it.
If you remain consistent in these practices, and continue to improve your business strategies, you’re bound to find success. The little victories along the way eventually amount to bigger ones.
