Two Items Are Essential to Your Local Marketing Success: Phone Number & Location
As a local business, you have two very valuable assets in your marketing arsenal. Without both of these items, your business will fail. These items are your phone number & your address.
These two items are essential to your success. If prospects can’t find this information you won’t be buying groceries. And still, why are they sometimes so hard to find on many local business websites?
Phone Number
Your phone number is the lifeblood of your business. Without a steady stream of phone calls, businesses often dry up. Frequent phone calls are essential to a healthy local business.
Yet many local businesses hide their phone number on their website. Sometimes it’s only found on on the contact page. That’s a bad idea. It’s important to prominently display your phone number on your website.
Location
Your location is equally important. Customers need to know where you are in order to drive to your location. Keep in mind, many visitors stumble upon your site from out of state and often out of country. Visitors should know where you’re located as soon as possible.
As simple as it sounds, many local businesses do not prominently display an address or map to their location. That mistake is costing money – because it’s causing confusion to your website vistitors.
Here’s an example of a local business hiding their contact information:
There are four ways to unhide your contact information:
1) Insert Contact Information In Your Header
The header of your website should be on every page of your website. If you put your phone number and address in your header, then your contact information will be in a prominent location on every page of your website. That’s exactly what you want.
2) Include a Map & Pictures Of Your Location
Visitors know what a Contact page is. They expect to see your contact information there. But local businesses should also display a map. It also helps to include pictures of your location to reinforce you have a real brick-and-mortar business.
3) Review Your Contact Page
People click on your Contact page because they’re looking for a way to get in touch with you. Make sure to include the important elements as close to the top of your Contact page as possible – above the fold.
Be sure to include:
- Phone number
- Address
- Fax number
- Directions
- Cities Served
- Email address
- Directions
- Map
- Pictures
- Contact Form (if appropriate)
- Any other information to establish your location.
4) Try a Local Number
Finally, many business owners think a toll-free (800,888, etc.) number encourages more phone calls. However, this practice may be sending prospects to your competition. People perceive toll-free numbers as distant. Test out a local number on your website to see if calls improve.