Local digital marketing sounds like something that needs an agency and a monthly budget. For a small business it mostly does not. Nearly everything that works for a local trade is free, and the whole lot can be set up in an afternoon.
Here are five things that genuinely bring in enquiries, in the order I would do them.
1. Claim your Google Business Profile
Do this before anything else on the list. It is free, it takes about twenty minutes, and for a local trade nothing else available to you returns as much for as little effort.
It is also the one job worth doing carefully rather than quickly – the categories you choose decide which searches you turn up in, and a couple of easy mistakes will get a listing suspended. We have written the whole process up separately: how to get your business on Google Maps.
Set it up, then come back to the rest of this list.
2. Put your reviews to work everywhere
Collecting reviews is covered in the guide above. What most businesses never do is use them anywhere except the platform they were left on.
A review sitting on Google only helps the people who found you on Google. The same words are worth far more when they are also in front of somebody who arrived from a recommendation, a van sighting or a leaflet.
Put them where decisions actually get made:
- On your website, next to the enquiry form and on your service pages – not buried on a testimonials page nobody clicks.
- On your quotes. Two lines from a previous customer at the bottom of a written quote costs nothing and quietly answers the question they have not asked.
- In your email signature. One line, rotated occasionally.
- On social posts. A finished job photo with the customer’s comment under it does more than either on its own.
Use the customer’s first name and town so it reads as genuine. “Great service” from nobody is worth nothing, and people are good at spotting invented testimonials.
3. Name the towns you cover
People do not search “electrician”. They search “electrician in Slough”. If your website never says Slough, you have very little chance of turning up.
Write the town names naturally into your pages – on the home page, in your service pages, in the footer. Not a stuffed list of forty places you have never worked in, because that fools nobody and reads badly to an actual customer.
If you genuinely work across several distinct areas, a proper page for each can be worth doing, but only if there is something real to say on it: jobs you have done there, how quickly you can get out, what is different about the housing stock. A set of near-identical pages with the town name swapped is the oldest trick in local SEO and Google has been ignoring it for years.
Make sure the same towns appear on your Google profile as well, so the two line up.
4. Post something once a week
Not clever. Just consistent.
A photograph of a finished job with two lines about what it involved is enough. It shows you are active, it gives people something to judge you on, and it quietly builds up a body of work that somebody can scroll through while deciding whether to call.
Put it wherever your customers actually are, which for most local trades is Facebook rather than anywhere newer. Local community groups are worth more than your own page early on – that is where people ask for recommendations, and a business that turns up regularly with useful answers gets named far more often than one that only appears to advertise.
One photo can do three jobs: post it socially, add it to your Google profile, and drop it into the gallery on your website. Taking the picture is the work. Using it three times is free.
5. Answer the money question
Most local businesses avoid talking about price online. That is precisely why the ones who do it get more enquiries.
You do not have to publish a full price list. A “from” figure, or a typical range for a common job, does two useful things at once. It stops people assuming you are out of their league and never ringing. And it filters out the ones who were only ever going to want it done for nothing.
Fewer, better enquiries is the goal. Every quote you drive out to and lose on price is an afternoon you will not get back.
If you are not sure what to put, look at what the job usually lands at and give a range with an honest caveat that it depends on the property. Customers are far more understanding about “it depends” than they are about silence.
Where to start
If you only do one thing, do the Google Business Profile. It is free, it takes twenty minutes, and it is the difference between appearing on the map and not existing. Then start asking for reviews. Those two alone will do more than anything else on this list.
One last thing that is not really marketing but affects results more than any of it: answer quickly. Most enquiries go to whoever replies first, not whoever is best. If you cannot answer the phone on site, even a short text back within the hour will win you work that a rival loses by ringing back the next day.
All of this works better with a website behind it. If you have not got one, or the one you have is not pulling its weight, our website design for tradesmen includes your Google listing set up and verified, and the towns you cover written in from the start. Have a look at what it costs, or tell us about your business and we will come back with a plan and a fixed price.