Marketing for Local Business to Make the Phone Ring
My first client when I began marketing for local business was a family member who had just started a handyman business. He had been laid off from his job and needed to earn income quickly to support his family. What he had not anticipated was the fact that print advertising was so expensive.
I was in the first year of building my online business, so I offered to set up a simple blog for him and to use some of the techniques and strategies I was learning in order to help him be found by Google and the other search engines when someone did a search for his keywords and the city he was living and working in with his handyman business. He did not have a budget to pay me, so I agreed to not charge him as long as he paid for the website domain, hosting, and a few other costs. With that I began to market for him a couple of times each week.
The results were nothing short of miraculous! His phone began to ring and within two months he had cancelled his advertising with the local newspaper and the magazine he was running ads in each month. It turned out that marketing for local business was something I could do well. Soon I had several other clients who were paying me to do the same thing for them. One was an insurance agent, another was a dentist, and then I added an attorney and two brothers who were plumbers.
It wasn’t until I began teaching others about marketing for local business that I realized the impact of what this could mean for an entrepreneur. If you have been following me for awhile you might remember a couple named Sue and Bernie I used to talk about.
Sue and Bernie were teachers I knew back when I was working as a classroom teacher. When they retired we remained friends and saw each other every month or so. One evening they were talking about how nice it would be to go to Bernie’s Army reunion, but that they couldn’t possibly afford the airfare and hotel cost. He was a decorated World War II veteran who had served his country selflessly and just wanted to stay in touch with the men who had served alongside him who were still alive. That’s when I realized they were living month to month on their retirement checks and were barely scraping by with their expenses.
Marketing for Local Business as a Business Model
That’s when I began teaching them about marketing for local business. They had a friend in real estate they practiced on for a few weeks, and then they took on a paid client who was an interior designer. This led to two more paid clients and soon they were earning about twenty-five hundred dollars a month in their spare time. They loved doing the work together, and their clients love having more business as a result.
And I forgot to mention that Sue was almost eighty years old at the time and Bernie was already in his late eighties when they began. Anyone can do this and it’s always going to be a win-win situation.
I’m author and online marketing strategist Connie Ragen Green. I work with entrepreneurs to create multiple streams of online income and would love to connect with you. Pick up my Online Entrepreneur’s Blueprint and get started right away.
Leave a Reply