Local Lead Generation: How to Hit Marketing Homeruns in Your Hometown

If you are a small to medium-sized business that can deliver a physical product at a reduced (or matched) cost locally, then you must consider implementing a serious local search campaign. I would urge you to take a serious look at any funds in your marketing plan allocated to radio, television, or any other form of non-direct response marketing and consider using at least some of those funds for a well-planned local search effort.

Small businesses and start-ups trying to grow revenue can very often build long-term relationships with local prospects much more easily than non-local prospects. Approaching local search with the goal of increasing the lifetime value of the lead through proper relationship management strategies is a very effective way to grow a business.

Local Search as Direct Response Marketing Tool
Local search is also a direct response marketing tool; direct response marketing campaigns direct the prospect to take an action that can be tracked through the entire lifetime of the prospect. Effective direct response marketing campaigns can deliver the merchant the metrics and key performance indicators that just flat out are not accessible via non-direct response marketing avenues such as radio or television. At the conclusion of a direct marketing campaign, you can determine the absolute cost of a lead, the absolute value of that lead, and also obtain the pieces of data necessary to identify the highest value leads. In short, you can accurately determine ROI.

Local Search 101
I am going to lay out an example of a local search campaign that even a one-man start-up can run; then I am going to show you all of the tools that I would use to get it up and running with as little up-front cost as possible:

Let’s imagine that a local start-up that makes organic soaps is ready to implement a local search campaign. This is a one-person operation with no existing sales and very little capital. We are going to run a three-pronged local search campaign that includes email marketing , direct mail marketing, and direct sales using leads generated through organic local search and paid local search.

Site Creation and Optimization
To get our local organic search leads, we have to create a website with pages of content that are optimized for the search terms that your local prospects are likely to use (often referred to as local search engine optimization). We are going to assume that this company exists in Denver, Colorado, and therefore we are going to optimize our key search terms appended and pre-pended with all combinations of Denver, Colorado, and all of the local suburbs we want to service. Examples might be: Denver organic soap, Colorado organic soap, Denver organic shea butter soap, organic soap Denver, organic soap Colorado, etc. We optimize our pages using these terms in the page names, article titles, article content, etc. according to basic SEO best practices. We also have to make sure that the pages are designed to drive the prospects to take action. In the upper-right of all of our pages we have an opt-in form to receive a free bar of our soap (or whatever product we decide to give away to generate the lead) and we have some small text reading, “Only valid for residents of Denver, Colorado.” Our form collects the following data: first name, last name, email address, shipping address, and telephone number. We will use this data to deliver our email broadcasts and direct mail pieces.

Google AdWords
Now that we have our organic lead generation method in place, we will want to start preparing our paid local search processes. For small business I recommend starting with Google AdWords pay-per-click advertising using geo-targeting to display ads to only local search users. These Google AdWords ads appear when someone from Denver searches one of your search terms on Google.com. Our Google Adwords ad copy is pitching the free bar of organic soap for all Denver residents. When prospects click on our ad, we take them to a page we created on our site with only the sales copy, again pitching the free bar of soap with our form front-and-center as the primary component of the page. Remember, our primary objective is to drive the prospect to fill out the form.

Google Local Business Center
Finally, as an additional component to our local efforts, we are going to add our business to the Google Local Business Center. We do this to get listed with the Google local search results that are displayed when specific terms relative to a geographic area are searched with easy-to-read information like phone number and address.

Direct Marketing
Now that we are generating leads, we must start closing these prospects. The first step in our process is to personally deliver the free offer promised and to try to sell our soap club offering that delivers a package of differently-themed soaps every month for $29.95 per month. The offer must be compelling and the merchant must be prepared to discount to win the sale. Direct sales take nerve, but must not be disregarded; direct sales still generate the majority of purchases for local companies.

Email Marketing
The form the prospects filled out was also connected to an email autoresponder and broadcast solution (like Aweber) that we will use to broadcast emails with sales copy (describing specific components of our soap club) directing the prospects to our web page where we can accept orders (using PayPal or 1ShoppingCart.com). Every time a new prospect fills out your form requesting your free offer they are added to the list to receive broadcast emails (this is done automatically). We have several emails pre-loaded into the campaign to be sent out at different intervals. In this case we have ten emails set to go out pitching specific aspects of our soap club. The first email goes out the day after they sign up using the form, the next goes out two days after that, the next goes out seven days after that, etc. When done properly, email campaigns to targeted prospects like the ones we have generated should create an ever-growing volume of orders.

Direct Mail Marketing
Finally we are delivering our print pieces. Print can be costly, but it is still effective. In this case, we are sending post cards with sales copy centered on the local, organic aspect of the company. For shipping we use the cheapest USPS rates. Print pieces should be sent out periodically, and I usually recommend about once per month if possible. The print piece should direct the prospects to your online order form.

The goal of this article was to provide a broad overview and an easy-to-understand example of how local search applies to small businesses and start-ups. There are many other local direct response advertising methods that can be employed, and I will be covering another major local direct response tool in an article in the near future, so stay tuned. Below is a list of every tool you need to run a campaign like the one described above.

AWeber – How to create your forms, email list, and broadcasts: $19.99/month.
WordPress – How you create your website: FREE.
HostGator – Where your website lives: $9.95/month.
Google AdWords – Pay by the click for prospects: price varies.
Google Local Business Center – Get your local Google business listing: FREE.
PayPal – Process online credit orders: FREE.
1ShoppingCart – Process online credit card orders: $34/month.