How can I get traffic to my local business?

[sumer720]

Hello, I have a local phone and tablet repair store and have been in business close to a year. I get a lot of traffic via craigslist, and some through Facebook and of course word of mouth. But I need to put a plan together to bring in some sales.

Facebook works good but the conversion rate isn't as high as I'd like, and I'm having a hard time targeting my audience because phone/tablet repair is something everyone can relate to now a days so I don't know what to narrow my audience to. I honestly don't have any filters besides running my ads to everyone in my city. I'd really like to get some ideas on how to make the most out of my Facebook ads because I've been running 4-5 day ads spending about $30-$50 a day so I really want to get the most from my money.

I have a yelp page but I need reviews. I'm trying to get customers to go online and leave a review for a discount or free accessory but lot of them get put in the "non recommended" section. Can someone tell me how I can at least get 5 positive reviews to stick on my yelp listing? That will help me gain a lot of credibility and hopefully ranking. I just signed up with a paid per click ad service with yelp that starts next month so I solid, reputable page would help.

I have a google+ page for my business that has only one 3 star review. The person building my website won't be done with it for another week or so, so I haven't spent any money or anything to get my business to rank because I want to have a website to send my traffic to. I would like to rank somewhere in the first 5-7 listings on google for "Phone Repair" "iPad Repair" "iPhone Repair" and so on.. I'm a noob when it comes to SEO so any advice on how to achieve that would be really beneficial.

All of your ideas and thoughts would help me. If I'm doing something wrong please correct me. I'm a 21 year old entrepreneur looking to learn. Thank you.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

What have you done as to local SEO for your business website?

 

[sumer720]

I haven't had a website, I'm having one built which will be ready in about a week. I'm been using my Facebook page as the store's website.

 

[Jobsout]

Some of the very good ways to get local traffic are:
Citations,High PR Forum Posting(Niche Wise),Local Forum Posting (So that people will know about your store)
Some Mobile repairing based QnA Postings.
Social Bookmarking will also play the best role for it.
Other would be social media work to catch the traffic from local.
All the best!!!

 

[Techxan]

Go to brightlocal.com, and subscribe for the $20 a month plan and then go in and run all the reports for your business that you can. They have a free month, so if you are not going to stay subscribed, run the reports again just before you cancel.

Using these reports, start working on the problems these reports show you. Pay particular attention to page titles, h1 tags and descriptions. Make sure your site is responsive or you have a mobile version, mobile experience is becoming a ranking factor.

Keep your location and main keywords in the title and heading tags.

Descriptions are not used for ranking, but they are generally shown in the search results, so make the description informative and designed to get a click, not necessarily to match the keyword.

Make sure that you have your NAP on the website in microcode, use a schema generator for this purpose, and put this in the footer of every page on the site.

Since you have a store, the local algorithm will help you rank, so learn how to do citations. Run the citations report from BL, and start getting citations. Use the list they provide and get the ones with a rating above 30. Do the highest rated ones, but do not worry about the paid ones for now.

Gather up some pictures to use for the citations, and make sure to have a picture of your store front included. Use the same pictures in the same order when you upload them, and upload the storefront one first.

Make about 200 or so citations as fast as you can and make them identical to each other. (pm me if you need to and I will teach you how).

When I ran my computer repair shop, I had guys and girls who came by to do the repairs I couldn't do. I would take in game systems, and laptop screen repairs and power connection repairs, and these people wuld stop by and do the repairs I had accumulated on a regular schedule when I had work for them.

You might consider doing this if you offer a high value service that other shops do not offer. You can give these other shops a good rate, and spend a couple of afternoons making rounds each week.

Go into Googfe alerts and put alerts for everything you can think of about your service for Q and A sites. use th site command (site:answers.yahoo.com fix phone screen), and go to these sites when a question pops up. Every once in a while, drop a link to your site and your NAP, especially if the question is in your vicinity.

Go into the various tech repair platforms (work market, field solutions, onforce, and so on) an list your services with them. Getting a drug test and a background check will increase the number of calls in your area you are eligible for.

If your area allows bandit signs, have some made up and put them out near shopping places like best buy for the weekend, being sure to go pick them up at the end of the weekend. This has the potiental to bring in repairs from the people who went to best buy and crap when they find found out what fixing the item will cost with GeekSquad.At the rate GS screws things up, you will get work they create for you.

At your place of business set up a geo cache and set up a video camera so you can show people who find the geo cache. List the geo cache with geocaching websites and the video feed with camsites for great back links.

If your place of business is near a mall, sporting arena, freeway, or other local point of interest, put up a webcam, and list it with cam sites using your business NAP in the location description. This creates powerful citations.

That should keep you busy for a day or two.

DON'T build backlinks to your site unless they come along with the citations you build. Don't let anyone do seo on your webste if they want to build backlinks.

 

[FlinnD]

You are essentially a tech company. Use social media platforms that require creativity to use effectively but reward well and im sure you will be fine

 

[KHR]

Social Media is the Best Option for Local Business. You can use Facebook Ads, Target Your Local People to show them your existences.

 

[tubeboost]

It's quite possible to create an YouTube channel and make videos about repairing, something like "How To". Adding reviews to new gadgets, etc. YT channels about gadgets are very popular.

 

[maxedgames]

Social Media, Cold Calling, local promotions

 

[Cashington]

You might wanna try Google Adwords too .
If you're interested go to the Freebies/Giveaways section here on BHW , I have a thread of giving away 100$ coupons for Google Adwords ..

 

[sumer720]

Thank you for all your responses. Once I get my website up and running this will be great help on how to get it rank well. There is quite a few other stores that offer phone repair in my city and one specific competitor is having major success on Facebook. I can tell by the amount of likes his page posts get, and everyone I know says they've seen their ads while scrolling through their feed. What could be their strategy? I'm trying to get the amount of likes on my page posts that they are.. could they just have a really high budget? I want to get the most for my money if I'm running Facebook ads and so far I don't think I am.

 

[webgenservices]

Share this on social websites like twitter, facebook, linkedin.

 

[ReformTheBox]

Reaching out and posting in your local neighborhood forums will go a very long way. Not only does it bring in more traffic, but it brings in potential buying traffic in your area. As well as establishing a local footprint. Another great reason behind posting in related content forums if anyone does any research about your business before purchasing you can have an impact on what it is they will see exactly with proper management. Hints the term "SEO"


I would suggest building a citation list, meaning checking all your directory listings making sure they are proper and complete.
You can do this a few different ways, the "free" way is to enter your business phone number on Google search engine and begin going through all of the listings. It can be time consuming if you have a lot of citations. But, very well worth it.
Another good idea while checking your citations would be to take each url and save it to a notepad so you will have access to them later. It is a good idea to update your citations from time to time. I like to build my citation list categorizing each citation videos, profiles, social media, places to leave review, basic citation post, blogs, forums etc, etc.


When it comes to social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Google + It wouldn't be a bad idea to stay as active as you can. Remember to # (Hash tag) your area. I have been playing around with hash tagging quite a bit. From my experiences I have had nothing but great results. Give it a try, Check out all the added organic traffic. Keep in mind you're also leaving another "Local foot print" I spoke of earlier.


Hope this helps, Feel free to contact me if you have more questions. I am always up for a skype chat or phone call.


Thank you,
Skyler Jarman

 

[sumer720]

Thanks for all the tips.

I have the lowest price and highest quality, literally, in my entire city. I'm just struggling trying to get people to know that my store is here. Would Google Ads work better than Facebook Ads if I'm trying to focus on getting clicks and calls to my business?

 

[randybishop]

Thanks for all the tips.

I have the lowest price and highest quality, literally, in my entire city. I'm just struggling trying to get people to know that my store is here. Would Google Ads work better than Facebook Ads if I'm trying to focus on getting clicks and calls to my business?

I know the anxiety you are feeling, I've been there.

What about your google+ page? How is it ranking?
That is where 95% of my local business calls come from.
I would be glad to help you if you have questions PM me.

 

[tonybao]

You should to try facebook ads,Bing and adword also. If you need to $50 facebook coupon and $100 Bing ads coupon, pm me.

 

[luckydesigner2]

Register your site with Google's optimization, collaborate with other sites, and try to get your friends to go to it.

 

[sumer720]

You should to try facebook ads,Bing and adword also. If you need to $50 facebook coupon and $100 Bing ads coupon, pm me.

I've tried Facebook ads but there are 2 other shops that for sure have a much higher budget than me because they show up ALL the time. I would like to do the same, but Im afraid my results won't be enough to cover the high marketing budget. My average profit margin per customer/sale is around ~$45. What do you guys think? If that's my average margin per sale, what other ad websites would work for me?

 

[b1step-ahead]

join your local chamber of commerce, go to business networking events, we have a lot of cpr's popping up around here - cell phone repair- find out what there doing or your biggest competitor. Joining the chamber will give you a credibility boost. Start a referral program, for every referal a current customer brings you, you give them 50% off their next repair, that shit works great. You have to stop to a certain point.

 

[TeKn1qu3z]

Do some tier link building. Set up some nice web 2.0 sites as tier 1 and spam some backlinks to those pages.