Local Business Marketing: How (What) to Sell

Is local business marketing now where the new gold rush is?
Can you sell anything to local businesses?
What mistakes do people make?

Some folks are saying that local business marketing is an easy way to make money online however can you sell anything to them? Local business people are very smart because they have already built a substantial professional business that generates profits and are primarily concerned about generating more profits.

Should you sell products or services

It’s easier to sell services to local businesses than products because a service helps them achieve better results. For example you’d have more success helping a local client market their business to profitability than offering them an ebook showing them how to do it.

How to find a service to market

Before deciding what services you want to offer, survey local business owners to get an idea of what their needs are. If you offer a service they don’t need or is not in demand you’ll ultimately fail to build a profitable business for yourself. This is why 95% of online businesses fail in the first 2 years.

Example
Recently I built a new website for a local handyman contractor. He said he spent thousands of dollars on yellow page and newspaper ads and didn’t receive one call. He asked if I could generate leads by promoting his website. So I created a search engine marketing plan that generated traffic to his website which resulted in generating leads that led to sales.

Scalability

Instead of selling a one time service think of ways to scale up the number of services you offer as shown in the example above. For example in my web design business I also offer hosting, search engine optimization, article marketing, website maintenance and consulting services.

Profitability

For your business to be profitable it needs to continually produce enough sales to pay your bills. This means you need to continually invest in the marketing of your website so you can generate new leads. Offer backend services and/or products to generate recurring income.

Outsourcing

When offering a service you often trade time for money. This limits the amount of income you earn because there are a limited number of hours in a day. One client can easily consume all your time. If you have several clients you’ll be limited in your speed of implementation and getting the job completed.

The solution is to outsource projects that take up too much of your time leaving you free to work on acquiring new customers. It’s difficult to work on both at the same time. When working on the details of your business (ie web design and marketing) you tend to lose site of the bigger picture…how to grow your business. Years later you’ll look back and realize you’ve worked hard in your business but it hasn’t grown.

When selling services to local businesses make sure you research their needs, then offer them a range of services which can be scaled up to generate a recurring income.

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