In order for you to have a successful business, people need to know who you are.
Picture this: you put your life savings into a new air conditioning installation and repair business in Phoenix, but your phone isn’t ringing. Why is this? Until you find a way to broadcast your business publicly, no one knows who you are, or that you have a service that can fix their broken air conditioner.
Did you know that there are more than 550,000 small businesses in Arizona alone, with one million employees? This represents 44.5% of the state’s private workforce, according to the Arizona Commerce Authority.
How does any local AC Installation and Repair business gain traction against larger competitors such as Parker & Sons? How do you direct new customers to learn about your business?
Digital marketing makes it much easier to promote your local business in Phoenix in a cost-efficient manner that makes a genuinely indelible impression on your target audience.
Larger companies like Parker & Sons often focus their advertising budgets on conventional outbound avenues such as radio spots, TV commercials, billboards, and newspaper ads. For a smaller business, you will get a lot more traction by investing in much cheaper digital marketing.
Start With an Intuitive and Polished Website
If you live in Phoenix, you know that your shopping habits are often tied to local business relationships. This is one of the things people love about Phoenix and Scottsdale. How can you then create a relationship with locals so they can learn about your business too?
The first step is to build a search engine friendly website.
Your website is your calling card. It can tout the merits of your value offerings without overwhelming your audience with loud and colorful ads.
The look and feel of your website is crucial. Find color schemes that are consistent with what Phoenix is known for – bold, bright colors. Every sports team is either red, yellow, or some form of purple. Sticking to local colors and symbols will help people relate to your website.
Check out your competitors’ websites, take notes on what works well (and what doesn’t), create a better website for your AC repair business, and your online visitors will stand a good chance of converting into paying clients.
Website functionality is a big ingredient in the recipe for gaining traction online and retaining customers.
A website that should observe these four rules in order to ramp up conversion rates:
- Load in under three seconds
- Function without flaw on mobile devices
- Have a visually appealing aesthetic
- Operate intuitively.
SEO is the Name of the Game
Digital marketing is primarily centered on search engine optimization or SEO for short. SEO involves implementing keywords, key phrases, and even local Phoenix identifiers your target audience is likely to search for when using the internet.
Think of SEO as the central hub of your digital marketing push that establishes a foundation for your marketing campaign’s additional components ranging from social media to PPC ads, email marketing, and beyond.
A brief and superficial SEO push will not suffice.
It will take time and effort to pinpoint the perfect keywords, key phrases, and local identifiers for your business.
Customer research and analysis will be necessary.
For an AC repair company, a target audience would be a homeowner, a business owner, or even an apartment complex or condo owner. What are these people searching for when they need their air conditioning units repaired?
Your keyword phrases could look like “ac repair phoenix” or “phoenix air conditioning replacement.” If you have other services such as heating repair, additional keywords could look like “HVAC repair,” “best HVAC repair in Phoenix,” or “HVAC maintenance.”
Once you determine exactly what your target audience is searching for on the internet, weave those keywords and key phrases into the entirety of your online footprint and be patient.
Ideally, your keyword density rate (this is the number of times a phrase appears on a page in relation to all the other words on the page) will fall in the “sweet spot” of 1% to 2.5%, helping your website and other online content ranks on the first page or two of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
This prominence in search results ultimately connects your business to that many more potential customers.
SEO has evolved to the point that the details of local identifiers matter a great deal.
Artfully incorporate local identifiers ranging from nearby street names to neighborhood names, your local zip code, and even your local area code into your online content, and it really will prove that much easier to connect with locals.
Content is Still King
Keyword-rich content is deeply intertwined with SEO effectiveness.
Once your keywords and phrases are set, it is important to incorporate these into carefully curated content. specific keywords and key phrases to your online content. You will want to create content that helps the target audience solve problems, learn about the industry, or understand your value offering.
Let’s go back to our AC company. For them, they would create content revolving around air conditioning, air conditioning maintenance, and to keep it local and fresh, they might even have some articles related to Phoenix. The local articles and content could be “Summer is just around the corner! Get your HVAC system checked before the heat comes!” or even “Record heat this week, here’s where you can go to stay cool.” This will keep them connected with their audience.
Provide your target audience with a steady stream of informative and insightful content.
It will prove that much easier to engage them to the depth necessary for them to remember your business after consuming your online content and heed your call-to-action by making a purchase or scheduling an appointment.
Social Media is Another Don’t Miss Component of Digital Marketing
Don’t fall into the trap of assuming Facebook and other social media platforms are primarily used by college students and bored empty nesters.
Facebook has quickly become essential to digital marketing for businesses.
If your business does not yet have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms, establish those profiles today.
Though people are more likely to follow their friends and family on social media than businesses, the average social media user is willing to pay attention to companies that use social media.
Arizona communities are incredibly strong. They love local businesses and thrive off of their community’s recommendations. This is why you should be involved in the community and their groups. Join relevant Facebook groups, websites, and blogs that are for industry-specific groups, and more.
You should post informative, helpful, and insightful information on your social media pages. Interact with your online audience by responding to questions and comments.
If necessary, hire a part-time social media specialist to round out your digital marketing team. Invest time and effort into creating online content; share that content with your audience on social media.
There is a chance it will go viral as your followers share it with their friends on social media, steering that many more people toward your website and moving them from the top of the sales funnel to the bottom where they convert into paying customers.
GetVisible
If you want to give your business a leg up in the Phoenix Metro area, the Get Visible marketing agency can help your business create a prominent online presence.
Our digital marketing team knows how to get a local business to successfully rank on Google to those in your area.
Contact us today to learn how we can help your business to become more visible online and transcend traditional marketing techniques.