In the early days of the Internet, the goal of most marketing campaigns was to help businesses attract the biggest audience possible. After all, technology had just connected us together like never before. Suddenly any company, no matter how small, could operate on a far larger scale.
Over time, we’ve learned that this “anyone and everyone” approach to building brand awareness fails to see the forest for the trees, so to speak. Especially for small businesses, it’s not about amassing the biggest following possible. It’s about going after the right one – meaning the people who are most likely to become your customers in the first place.
That’s why it’s so important to localize your home services organization’s online presence as a direct result of today’s digital-first customer journey. Remember that not only are 96% of people learning about local businesses online, but about 80% of those local searches are converted into paying customers.
But search engines like Google are far from the “be all, end all” approach some see it as. Local social media tactics for home services contractors are equally important as they give you access to the type of hyper-specific targeting tools that you’d be hard-pressed to match through other means.
How Do Social Media Profiles Help to Localize Your Online Presence?
First, it’s important to acknowledge why it’s worth it to go through this much “trouble” in the first place. After all, if it’s easier to just attract the biggest audience you can through your marketing strategy, won’t you in theory pick up enough new customers for it all to be worth it in the end?
Not necessarily.
According to one recent study, about 72% of brand engagement happens on local pages on social media sites like Facebook. This means that when presented with multiple options for similar businesses, most people are still gravitating towards the ones that operate in the same area that they’re familiar with and that they feel a part of.
This extends to advertising, too. About 4 out of every 5 customers say they actually want ads on these platforms to be customized to not only their specific city, but to zip codes as well. All told, about 86% of consumers say that they regularly look for information about local businesses on large search and social channels.
Immediately, social media advertising helps you reach a new crop of customers – the kinds of people who are farther down the sales funnel than those who are still performing general Google searches. They don’t just want a solution to their problem. They want it now, and they want it easily – which means they want it close by.
Taking this highly localized approach also makes it easier to build trust and connections within your local community. These are two qualities that will serve you well moving forward, especially as you work to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
If another business does exactly what you do, and you can’t match or beat their price, you can do the next best thing – get people to trust you more. Sure, some people will let the decision begin and end with how much money they need to spend. But never underestimate what a massive difference qualities like trust and credibility can make.
Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business
All told, there are a number of different social media platforms that your business can choose from depending on its needs. Some of the more popular ones are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest.
Facebook is great because it connects you to a large audience, has geographic targeting functionality, and can easily be home to many different types of content. You can post long-form Facebook posts that are similar to blogs, share industry articles, hold video Q&A sessions, and more. Instagram is perfect for some types of home services businesses because it’s visual in nature. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all. TikTok is perfect for going after a younger local audience.
But more than anything, you need to identify the platform that is most relevant to your business, your industry, and your customer base. If your ideal customers are those over the age of 65, for example, you’d be wasting every last marketing dollar that you put into TikTok.
Always start with your audience and collect as much information about your ideal customer as possible. Ask yourself where they’re spending the majority of their time online and what type of content they like. Then, work your way back to the platform – and the local social media tactics for home services contractors – that meet those needs.
As you do, always work to maintain a consistent brand presence across any and all social media platforms you use. Everything should feel like it’s coming from the same basic place to avoid confusion.
How to Set Up Your Social Media Profiles for Greater Local Search Visibility
One must also acknowledge that it isn’t just the content that you’re posting on social media that will get you the attention you need. Your profiles themselves can also be enormously helpful, particularly when it comes to local SEO.
Always create a compelling and locally focused bio that gives people insight into who you are, what you do, and why they should bother paying attention. Incorporate as many local keywords and hashtags as you can.
Always utilize any location-based features that are available to you based on the platform you’re on. Some let you add your physical business address to your bio, for example.
How to Infuse Your Current Strategy With Location Signals
Over the long term, work to create content that resonates with your local community. What are the real topics that people are interested in and what unique insight can you shed? This is where you should start in your quest to figure out what type of content to put out in the world.
Use this to capitalize on every opportunity you have to showcase your company’s community involvement and support. Note that your content strategy can also be a great way to highlight local testimonials and success stories, too. Show people in your area how you’ve helped other people in your area. It’s a simple concept, but a powerful one.
Use Social Media as a Way to Engage Your Local Community
Within the context of home services businesses, you must understand that social media is not a passive form of marketing. It’s not like a billboard in that you put collateral out into the world and hope people see it. You need to be proactive about engaging with your local community as much as possible.
This means actively participating in local groups and community forums. If people leave local reviews or feedback, respond to them and start a conversation. Run specific local promotions on social media and, if the opportunity presents itself, engage with other local businesses in your community.
Enhance Your Local Visibility With Social Media Advertising
Other invaluable local social media tactics for home services contractors include targeting local audiences through Facebook and Instagram advertising. You can easily leverage geotargeting features for specific local promotions.
Do you want your ad to be displayed in front of college-educated women who are married with two kids and who live in a specific zip code? Facebook advertising is so specific that you can absolutely do that.
Collaborate with Your Customers to Create Local, Authentic Content (User-Generated Content)
In an effort to meet the constant need for content that people have, encourage your customers to create some of it themselves. Encouraging people to share their experiences with your business is one of the best forms of user-generated content in existence. You can even run local contests and campaigns that involve your customers to boost engagement across the board.
When people do start to participate and share their user-generated content, be sure to repost it and reshape it across all social media platforms. This is a perfect chance to connect your various social media audiences together.
Analyze Engagement and Reach to Determine the Best Course of Action
As is true with other forms of digital marketing, you won’t be able to improve upon that which you aren’t actively measuring. This means that as you start to build out your social media marketing, you need to set up analytics tools to track local engagement and visibility.
As more data pours in, analyze those metrics to understand which of your local social media tactics for home services contractors are effective and, more importantly, which ones aren’t. Make data-driven adjustments to optimize what you’re doing based on the results you want to achieve.
Consider not only your reach but also your engagement levels, the quality of the leads you’re generating, and even the revenue your campaigns are bringing in.
Surefire Local: Your Social Media Odyssey Begins Now
Overall, understand that localizing your online presence is an ongoing process – especially when it comes to social media. Thankfully, sites like Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and others provide an easy way to maintain your online presence without too much effort on your part.
Thanks to the digital-first customer journey that has taken hold in the modern era, social media has only become more important over the last few years. You can expect this trend to continue moving forward.
Localized social media gives you increased visibility in specific zip codes. It offers better and more organic customer engagement. It’s the type of opportunity that would have been unthinkable even as recently as a decade ago and thanks to Surefire Local, it’s also far easier to take advantage of than you might think.
Surefire Local is an all-in-one marketing platform dedicated to helping small businesses like yours create local signals across platforms and profiles that make it easier for new customers to find them. In terms of social media management, we offer tools for scheduling posts, tracking engagement metrics, responding to comments, and more. Pull all your disparate efforts together into a single, easy-to-use platform to keep everything straight.
The platform also includes features that can help with other aspects of your campaigns, including but not limited to things like:
- Website and local SEO optimizations. This includes creating geo-tagged content that is published on your website, across social media profiles, and more.
- Content marketing. Surefire Local gives you the tools needed to create locally targeted and highly relevant content.
- Analytics and reporting. Get full transparency into your campaign performance for the first time so that you know exactly what each of your marketing dollars is getting you in return.
We also offer a number of helpful educational resources so that you can make the most of these features. This includes the types of webinars, blogs, and other content that help you learn (and master) all things local online marketing.
If you’re interested in finding out more about local social media tactics for home services contractors and how to stand out in a crowd by using social media to your advantage, or if you’re just eager to see what an all-in-one marketing platform like Surefire Local can do for you, please don’t delay – contact us today or click here to attend a Surefire Local demo.