For many local service-oriented companies, users’ needs for them are often rigid. For example, local moving services, house decoration services, wedding photography services, etc. Once the user reaches the appropriate time, he will definitely need related services. Therefore, Yue Hao believes that when local service-oriented enterprises carry out online marketing, they mainly need to solve the following two key issues. First, when users have relevant needs, they can find our company; second, when users find multiple similar companies, they are willing to choose us. Accordingly, companies must achieve two goals when carrying out online marketing: first, to present our corporate information to target customers in need; second, to highlight the company's own advantages and differentiation and stand out among similar companies.
Here are five online marketing methods that are most suitable for local service-oriented companies. As long as you use appropriate marketing strategies and implement them for a long time, you will be able to achieve good publicity effects.
1. Local website advertising
For ordinary cities, companies can consider the strategy of cluster operations when placing advertisements. The so-called cluster operation means placing advertisements on local websites with better quality. First of all, there are not too many local websites with good quality, only a few in total; secondly, the advertising price of local websites is generally relatively cheap, and the monthly advertising fee of a website may only be a few hundred yuan. This ensures that local users can see our ads as long as they go to local websites. This method can quickly increase the visibility of the company in a short period of time.
If we place ads on information sites, our ads will mainly be based on pictures. Pictures are best in Gif or Flash format. Because these formats of ads can achieve dynamic effects and have stronger expressiveness, they can attract more users' attention and clicks. Yue Hao suggested that everyone should not only place advertisements on the homepage, but also preferably on the content page. Because users arrive at the website in different ways, some may directly enter an internal page through a search engine. After reading the page, the user may directly close the website. But no matter how users come to the website, they will definitely visit the content page. The choice of advertising space also needs to be considered. Generally speaking, the advertising space must be displayed on the first screen, and the position on the left is better than the right. The visual focus in the upper left corner of the page is often the best position for advertising display.
If advertising is placed on the forum, we can promote it through event threads. For example, we can post a promotional post with pictures and text in the most popular section of the forum to introduce the company's preferential and promotional activities, and let the forum recommend it to us. Or we can cooperate with forums to promote promotions through activities such as kick-offs and auctions.
2. Search engine advertising
Search engine advertising is often referred to as Baidu bidding ranking. This kind of advertising has a very obvious effect on traditional service-oriented enterprises. What kind of words users search for means what kind of needs they have. Therefore, most of the users brought in through this method are precise customers with clear needs.
Since the business only provides local services, we only want local people to click on the business's ads. To achieve this goal, we need to make certain settings for the account. At present, Baidu bidding accounts can only pinpoint the delivery area to municipalities and provinces. If the city we are in is not a municipality, we need to make further settings. For example, we are a photo studio in Hangzhou that provides wedding photography services. First of all, we should set the advertising delivery area to "Zhejiang Province". Secondly, we can set the keywords as "Hangzhou wedding photography", "Hangzhou wedding photos" and "Hangzhou wedding photography studio", etc., and adjust the matching methods of these keywords to "exact matching" and "phrase matching". This ensures that only local users can see our advertising information.
For search engine advertising to achieve a good marketing effect, the design of the landing page is very critical. After all, the role of search engine advertising is only to bring us users, but whether users are willing to have a more in-depth understanding or make purchase inquiries depends on the user experience of our landing page. The landing page should not be set as the homepage, but should be set as the service introduction page most relevant to the search keywords. Pages should be beautifully crafted to give users a good visual experience, thus increasing users’ trust in the website. The introduction of the page must highlight the marketing function, directly address the issues that users are most concerned about, and demonstrate the strength and advantages of the company.
3. Promotion of classified information websites
Classified information websites are an important channel for promoting local services. Many netizens have formed a habit that when they are looking for local services, they first go to classified information websites to see if there are suitable merchants. In addition, websites such as Ganji.com and 58.com have carried out extensive publicity in traditional media, so ordinary netizens still have a relatively high degree of recognition for classified information websites. Another important advantage of classified information websites is that these websites themselves have higher weight. When a user searches for a local service on Baidu, the promotion page of the classified information website is likely to be ranked at the top of the search results, thus assisting the company's search engine marketing.
If classified information website promotion is to achieve obvious results, it must be implemented for a long time and in large quantities. Using differentiated strategies to highlight the company's own advantages is the key to the success of this approach. The author once used Ganji.com to look for local moving services, but found a problem: the moving list page is full of a lot of similar information. Although there are many moving companies, their information titles and content introductions are basically the same. It's hard for me to make a choice at this point. The general practice of many consumers is to randomly find two or three companies for telephone consultation to identify one. This will cause our company to miss many precise target users.
It is not difficult to solve this problem, but our information must be differentiated. From the description of the title to the presentation of the information, we should be different from other companies. We can directly point out the advantages and characteristics of the company in the title, such as "A long-established moving company with ten years of history", "Short-distance moving starts at 50 yuan", "80 moving vehicles distributed throughout the city", "Huilongguan, Tiantongyuan Moving" . From the company's strength, service prices to service areas, these are the issues that consumers are most concerned about. If we can point it out directly, we can attract target customers to pay attention to our information and click on our information. On the specific introduction page, we need to clarify the following issues: the size of the moving vehicle, the moving price, the moving service area, the strength of the moving company, and detailed contact information. When listing this information, there must be clear arrangements so that users can understand it at a glance. If we can add two more pictures to give users an intuitive visual experience of the moving vehicle or moving company, the effect will be even better.
4. Local QQ group promotion
QQ group has always been a good place to gather popularity. As long as we master certain marketing and promotion skills, we can achieve good publicity effects. To promote QQ groups, the first step is to add more local QQ groups. We can use the search group panel to search with the city as the keyword. When joining groups, we try our best to choose groups with a large number of people and high activity. There are many QQ groups for "locals in other places". Yue Hao feels that such groups are of little value to local companies. We should add QQ groups for making friends in the same city or for outdoor activities.
To promote in the QQ group, you first need to have a certain degree of exposure in the group and become familiar with everyone. The past method of advertising through group messages is no longer easy to use because everyone is disgusted with this method, so we need to adopt certain strategies. For example, we can change our group nickname to "Hangzhou Wedding Photography", and then keep our name at the top of the member list. Even if we don’t talk in the group every day, as long as users in the group have relevant needs, they may think of us and contact us proactively. Because every time users join the QQ group, they can see our group nickname, and over time they will have a deep impression. There are two main ways to make our QQ ranking high. One is to apply for QQ membership, and the other is to add special characters such as spaces before the group nickname. Maintaining a high exposure rate allows users to think of us when they have needs.
The QQ group email function is currently a widely used and effective promotion method. If advertising information is sent in this way, even if the recipient is not interested, there will be no strong resentment. Some groups do not have the group email function enabled. We can go to the group owner or group administrator to apply for it. The reason why the first order on Nuomi.com was so successful was largely due to the use of QQ group emails to carry out viral marketing. The title of the group email must be written around the user’s needs or the selling points of the product. The email body can be made into an HTML email with pictures and text. This kind of email has stronger presentation power and can stimulate consumers' desire to buy.
5. City Post Bar Promotion
When we search for many city names on Baidu, the corresponding city Tieba will appear at the top of the search results. After clicking to enter Tieba, you will usually find that these local Tieba have high popularity. Since the local Tieba is a place where local people gather, we should use this platform for publicity and promotion.
We can make the advertising information into pictures, and then set the pictures as personal avatars or personal signatures. As long as we post and interact in the Tieba, our advertising information will be displayed. If we often interact with netizens in the bar, the advertising information will naturally leave a deep impression on these netizens. Another method is to simulate real users to post help posts to trigger our ads. For example, a certain netizen is getting married recently and would like everyone to recommend a better local wedding photography shop. We can naturally elicit the company's introduction information when replying. The introduction information should be as rich as possible, and it is best to show the characteristics of the photo studio with pictures and texts. At this time, even if there is a slight suspicion of advertising, it is harmless.
Establishing yourself as a bar celebrity is also a good strategy. Communicate more with netizens on Tieba, and help everyone when there is nothing to do. If we persist for a long time, we can form a reputation within a certain circle. When we occasionally post promotional information, these netizens will not only pay attention, but may also help us spread the word. Word-of-mouth spread among local people often brings us many unexpected gains.
Author information: Yue Hao, www.yuehao9.com . Copyright statement: Free reprinting is welcome. Please retain the original author information when reprinting. Thank you for your cooperation.
Thank you Yue Hao for your contribution