We know the way you market your business differs depending on what your goals are: increase website traffic, increase sales for your e-commerce shop, or increase foot traffic to your brick and mortar. We also know there are a lot of online marketing strategies floating around that can seem overwhelming, confusing, or time-consuming.

But there’s no doubt about it, no matter what your business is you need to be doing something to get people to your checkout lane, whether it’s virtual or in real life. If you’re a local business trying to get more people inside your physical location, try some of these simple but effective marketing tips to drive foot traffic:

1. Make Sure It’s Obvious You’re Open

This might seem, well, obvious, but make sure it’s clear that your business is open. This is particularly important if you don’t have many windows or you’re not directly on a sidewalk. Bright lights on, a “We’re Open” sign in the window or door, music on, door open if weather permits. Anything you can do to let people walking by know that you’re open for business.

2. Optimize Your Online Listings

If you haven’t yet, log in to your Google account and create your Google My Business listing ASAP. Then make sure you optimize it so Google shows your business to people searching for shops like yours on Google and Google Maps.

Include your name, address, phone number, hours, and photos of your business to ensure people know exactly what you offer. 

We mentioned Google specifically, but the search engines all reward your listing more when you have multiple, accurate listings across the networks. Ensure you are properly set up and active on Facebook, Yelp, Waze, Yellow Pages, Uber, Lyft, and more. 

In fact, with our Local Listings Management service, 10|20 Marketing can help you get set up and stay running on multiple listing directories, for a low monthly fee. If you’re interested in learning more, book a free consultation.

3. …And then use Google’s Local Inventory Ads

Google creates a local storefront for you to highlight your products, showing consumers exactly what you have in stock so they are more likely to come inside. How does it work? When a consumer searches Google for a product, the engine will display any inventory results it finds. When customers click on the ad or free product listing, they will be redirected to the storefront connected to your business’s listing. Yet another reason it’s so important to have that Google My Business listing up to date!

4. Don’t Underestimate The Power of a Flyer

If you read our recent blog Are Flyers Still Useful For Marketing?, then you’ll know that flyers DO still have an impact in the marketing world. And with so many businesses turning to email marketing and flooding inboxes, a well-timed, well-designed flyer might just catch someone’s eye and bring them into your store.

5. Highlight an offer on a Sandwich Board

Buy one get one free Pizza? 10% off your first massage? Whatever your offer is, putting it on a sandwich board where pedestrians can’t miss it is a guaranteed way to increase visitors to your store. Think of it as a free, relevant billboard that points straight into your store!

Share a special offer or highlight a new product to drive traffic off the sidewalk and into your business.

Often, when it comes to marketing our local businesses we either forget the basics in favour of large campaigns or get so overwhelmed with everything we don’t do anything at all. These simple marketing tips we’ve shared can each be completed in a relatively short amount of time without requiring a large investment, but bring with them major results in terms of additional foot traffic.

If you’d like additional support or want to chat about driving foot traffic to your local business, book a free consultation call today.