Over the last several years, you may have heard about how “essential” local search is to the success of small businesses trying to stand out in a crowd on the Internet. Believe it or not, even that may be putting it mildly.
According to one recent study, about 98% of consumers used the Internet to find more information about local businesses in particular in 2022. Once those people find what they’re looking for, a massive 80% of those local searches convert. Things have gotten to the point where roughly 46% of all searches conducted on Google are for local businesses – a trend that shows absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
So when it comes to your small business’s ability to raise awareness, educate consumers, convert website visitors, separate yourself from your competitors, and so much more, local search isn’t just “essential.”
It’s crucial to your survival.
Having said that, local search isn’t just about search engine optimization (SEO), either. There’s a great deal of psychology at play. Once you understand the role that psychology has in shaping local search decisions, you’ll put yourself in the best possible position to use it all to your advantage.
The Consumer Decision-Making Process
When it comes to the consumer decision-making process, there are three main phases to be aware of: awareness, consideration, and decision.
During the awareness phase is when consumers first find out about your local business. Statistically speaking, this will happen via a search engine. During the consideration phase is when those factors that influence someone’s local opinions come into play. People start to read reviews and look up information in an effort to build trust and educate themselves.
Psychological triggers like perceived scarcity, fear, curiosity, and even loss aversion are all among the many things that can influence someone’s final purchasing decision.
Understand Local Intent
To that end, one of the most important things that you can do is make an effort to understand local intent. It isn’t enough to understand that someone is searching for “best doctor in Cleveland.” Are they searching for themselves or for someone else? How old are they? What type of care do they need?
Analyzing the motivations behind local searches helps you understand what messaging you need to use to reach someone at exactly the right moment. You want them to know that you fully understand their problem and that only you can offer a true solution. The impact of this context is huge on local intent because if you’re an optometrist that ranks highly for “best doctor in Cleveland” when it comes to SEO but someone is actually looking for another type of specialist, it ultimately won’t benefit you in any way because you couldn’t have served that person in the first place.
Cognitive Biases in Local Search
There are also a number of cognitive biases that you’ll want to be aware of that are at the heart of most local searches.
Availability heuristic refers to how easily accessible information influences decisions. If a person has a question and it’s difficult to find the answer, after awhile they will stop looking or go elsewhere. If the answer is easy to find, they’ll be instantly satisfied and it will ultimately have more weight.
Similarly, social proof is important. Reviews and recommendations factor into local choices a great deal because people want to know that other people like them have made a similar decision and everything worked out well in the end.
There is also an anchoring effect at play. That initial information that someone gets will absolutely shape their long-term perception. To put it another way, “you can only make one first impression, so you’d better go out of your way to make it a good one.”
Emotional Factors in Local Search
Of course, there are also a great deal of emotional factors at play in local searches, too. When people feel an emotion, they’re naturally compelled to take action. This is why so many local searches convert within just 24 hours. That’s why you need to prioritize creating emotional connections through your local marketing efforts.
By leveraging positive emotional associations like happiness or excitement, you also end up building brand loyalty as well.
The Role of Trust in Local Business Selection
People don’t want to give their hard-earned money to businesses that they don’t like or are suspicious of, which is why it is imperative that you make every effort to build trust through both online and offline channels.
Keep in mind that according to another recent study, people will read an average of 10 reviews before deciding to trust a business. They won’t just take your word for it that you can live up to the promises you’re making. They want to know it beyond the shadow of a doubt.
This is why you should always publish thought leadership pieces to show that yours is a voice worth paying attention to. Proactively answer questions through blogs and shed insight on topics that people want to find out more about. Lean into customer testimonials and show what a difference your products and services make in people. All this will help build a positive image of your brand as an organization that can be trusted.
Personalization in Local Marketing
Personalized recommendations are important in local search because they’re another opportunity for you to show people that you understand them. You’re not just recommending a generic product or service. You’re recommending one based on their unique purchase history, or on something they’ve said or done in the past.
Overall, you need to tailor your marketing messages to individual preferences. However, always balance personalization with privacy considerations. The fastest way to ruin virtually all of the trust that you’ve worked so hard to build is to fall victim to a data breach or to let someone’s personal information fall into the eyes of the public against their will.
Behavioral Marketing Tips for Local Businesses
Overall, there are a number of effective local marketing strategies that you can use to put the psychology of local search to work for you.
First, always claim and optimize your Google Business Profile. Make sure the information is accurate and up-to-date. People naturally trust Google, which means they’ll trust your Google Business Page regardless of whether you’re the one updating it.
You should also leverage emotional storytelling as much as possible. This is why customer testimonials are so powerful. You can see the look in someone’s eye or hear the emotion in their voice when they talk about what an impact your business made on their lives. This also again underlines the importance of both social proof and user-generated content.
As outlined above, you’ll definitely want to utilize personalization as much as possible. If you can make someone feel like they’re the only person your efforts are focused on, they’ll feel recognized and special and will be motivated to take action.
Beyond that, you’ll also want to pursue opportunities like:
- Building trust through transparency. If you make a mistake, own up to it.
- Engage in local community events whenever possible to get your name out there.
- Create relevant, local content that shows you actually care about the area you serve.
- Optimize your website for local searches.
- Implement targeted local advertising.
- Create the most convenient customer experience you can to meaningfully improve people’s lives.
- Engage in local partnerships with others in the community that your target audience already trusts.
The Surefire Local Approach: Your Localized Online Marketing Partner
It doesn’t matter what type of small business you’re running – you always need to understand as much as you can about why people do what they do so that you can better position yourself to get them to do what you want. In this context, that means understanding the true psychology at the heart of your customer’s decisions.
It’s not enough to know that they’re conducting local searches. Why are they doing it? What are they looking for that they haven’t been able to find to this point? Answers to questions like those will help you localize your online presence, but understand that they’re also answers that will be unique to the specific audience you’re trying to reach.
If you’re able to successfully do so, however, you have the potential to dramatically increase your visibility in specific zip codes. This leads to better customer engagement and sustainable long-term business growth. All these goals can be traced directly back to effective local online marketing, which is why this is one area you need to take seriously.
At Surefire Local, we’re all about helping small businesses in particular establish the best online presence that they can. We do this by creating local signals across various platforms and profiles, all in the name of making it as easy as possible for new customers to find them.
Surefire Local is a true all-in-one marketing platform in every sense of the term. It’s a “single source of truth” when it comes to your localized online marketing, including the features that let you focus on:
- Local SEO and website optimizations. You’d be surprised by what a major difference creating geo-tagged content that gets published to your website, blog, and various social media profiles can make.
- Online review management. Customers are paying attention to reviews which means you need to, as well. We’ll help you send review requests, write responses to reviews, analyze your brand sentiment, and more – all to learn exactly what your customers think about your business.
- Local online advertising. Publish ads built from the ground up to attract only the attention of those customers who actually live and work within your service area.
- Directory management. Claim, edit, and publish high-quality new content like photos or special offers across more than 80 different directory listing platforms.
- Content marketing. Get the right message in front of the right person at the right time with locally targeted and relevant content on your blog, business directories, social media profiles, and Google Business Profile.
- Social media management. Unlock the power of tools that help you schedule posts, track engagement metrics, and even respond to comments.
All of this and we also offer analytics and reporting to help you see exactly how your campaign is performing, no matter what. You can see how much revenue each of your hard-earned marketing dollars generates and get AI-generated recommendations on what you should do next. This, coupled with our educational resources like webinars and blogs, make this the investment in local online marketing that will continue to pay off in more ways than one.
So if you’re ready to leverage the full power of the psychology of local online marketing to your advantage, great – we’re ready for you, too. Contact us today for more information or click here to attend a Surefire Local demo to see exactly what it can do for you.