Local Market Monopoly

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Clarence Fisher: Have you subscribed to the Local Market Monopoly newsletter yet? Each week you get one actionable digital marketing tip delivered straight to your inbox. Designed specifically for small businesses like you who want to increase their market share and grow their online presence. Each tip focuses on strategies for growing your online reputation, increasing your company's reach, and improving sales and referrals without wasting money on ineffective tactics. Sign up now at localmarketmonopoly.com and start receiving our best of the best strategies immediately.
Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. I'm Clarence Fisher your host. This is episode 83 where we're going to share with you some, we said hacks, but they're really just ways and methods to market your business on a shoestring budget. Hey, uncertainty can happen, but the show still must go on. So how do you make that happen? I'm going to give you some ways as soon as we get back. Whoa.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher uncovering the tools tactics and strategies, the most successful small businesses used to dominate their local markets and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: Now, back to the lesson at hand, ways to market your business on a shoestring budget. Now, the ways that I'm going to share you, they're tried and true, and I would imagine you, you should probably even do these things if you have a budget like this is the baseline real quick. Mainstreetmarketingcoach.com. If you want me to work with you or your head of marketing every single week to implement all of these strategies into your business, go over to mainstreet marketing coach.com and sign up there. All right, so marketing your business on a shoestring budget, getting traffic to your website. It doesn't have to be expensive. I mean, in fact, there are many ways that you can do this thing at low cost. Number one, we're going to just get right into business. Number one is SEO. Now, when I say no cost, I don't mean no sweat, right?
So you're either going to spend money or time you're going to spend something, and that definitely holds true with SEO writing content. Just yesterday, I got a call, what am I? Good buddies was like, Hey, how do I find out what people are asking online about a particular subject? He was writing a talk and he just wanted to know what are people asking about this so that he could write a very solid presentation while I sent him over to answerthepublic.com, and that's where I'm going to send you for whatever your business is, whatever your topic is, type it into type that keyword word phrase. It usually works best with one or two words. Type it into answer the search bar, answerthepublic.com and it will spit out all the questions people are asking online about your particular product, your particular service, your particular keyword, and you can go to how-tos you can.
I mean, you can dig in there, but here's the purp, here's the reason of doing that as related to SEO. If you write your blogs on, like you pick a question that someone's already searching and then write your blog post about that record your videos that we're going to talk about here in a little bit about that, then the chances are very good that you pull up when people are searching for that, especially in a hyper-local situation, especially in your city. So if someone is asking how many chiropractic treatments are needed, or do you have to go to the chiropractor forever? And I'm always picking on chiropractors, right? Do you have to go to the chiropractor forever, say that's a search term and you record a video, a write of log post entitled, do you have to go to the chiropractor forever? Guess who shows up when people search?
Do you have to go to the chiropractor forever? You? So SEO is, I mean, a great, great, great investment and it's something that you should be doing all along. So start small. Make sure that all of your pages have unique titles. Make sure that the descriptions are unique. You can download a plugin, especially if you have WordPress, you can use Yoast or All in one SEO. We just moved over from, don't Hate Me if there's some SEOs in here listening. Do not hate me. I just moved over from Yoast to All in one SEO, and I mean they pretty much worked the same, but there were some items on all in one that we wanted to take advantage of. So if you have a WordPress site, definitely, which most businesses do now, plug that in there and it will walk you through how to SEO your pages.
Okay? Number two is your Google Business Profile. Now, some businesses only rely on their Google business profile and even on the section, the field where it asks for your website, many businesses are just putting in their Facebook page there. They're using the Google business profile even without a website. It's one of the easiest ways for your business to get traffic, and we've got plenty of episodes about that. One of the latest ones was episode, what is this? Episode 68, where the do's and don'ts of optimizing your Google Business Profile. You can definitely go check that out to make sure that you get your Google Business Profile looking nice and right, but that's a way to do it. Very, very, very low cost. Even no cost. I'll tell you right now before even going over there is you want to make sure that you fill out every single thing that they ask.
A 100% optimized or completed, at least Google Business Profile will do wonders. Number three, public relations. I know you're probably wondering, Hey, Clarence, I said low budget. I'm not going to go hire a PR firm. Wait, you don't have to. Here's the thing. You can go to a site called HARO. It says, help a reporter out. And this is where reporters go to say, Hey, I need an expert on this topic. I'm writing a piece on this topic. And you just find your topic and find a reporter that's writing about that, and you reach out to 'em and say, Hey, I'm the expert on this topic. And then they get a quote from you, they put it in their piece and boom, there you go. If you want to go even further than that, this is something you should be doing anyway.
When you are going to networking events and chamber ribbon cuttings and all of this stuff, when the local press shows up, the local reporters show up. You need to befriend them and get their information. You can connect with them even on social media is a good one. Friend them on Facebook, connect with them on LinkedIn and get to know them. And then you can present yourself as the subject matter expert for whenever they're going, whenever they're going to do a story about something that pertains to your industry or your market. So that should be a running list that's going that you keep going, and there you go. That's free as well because you're going to be at the, well, you probably spent some gas money to get to the event, but you're going to be n networking anyway. So make sure that you are on purpose about keeping up with the media that's there.
All right, number four, lemme give you this. All right, it's public speaking. Look, I get it. Most people, it's been documented. Most people would rather die than speak publicly, but I promise you, given that choice, you probably should just get up and say something. If you have difficulty with that, you can use Toastmaster. I, man, I did Toastmasters like eight years finally became a distinguished Toastmaster, DTM, thank you very much. It was a long road, but you don't have to go all the way to the top. Tons of people take Toastmasters on their lunch break from work so that they can take the skills that they learned there and get ahead at work because people who know how to speak can demand more in the workplace. It just is what it is. But specifically for you at your business, public speaking rocks, if you can get on at the chamber, chamber is always looking for people to provide education or speak at their events.
You can hook up with other people who are doing lunch and learns. There are several high profile lunch and learns in my city. Even if you're not doing that, there are associations all around your city that are looking for speakers to come in and talk about a topic. So if you can just put a presentation together, get in front of a crowd, people are more likely to take action on what they hear from you. I mean, this has been integral in our growth. When I very first started, that's how we built, I shared this in another episode is I got on, it was at our church. It was my very first speaking engagement at Victory Christian Center. It was business. They had a marketplace ministry type thing. And on a Saturday, they had a bunch of business owners get together, and I got on the bill very fresh, had not worked with a whole bunch of people, and I remember my wife was at the booth and I said, Hey, at the end when I finish, I'm going to send people over here to take us up on our offer.
Let's pray. And we're at a church, so I'm sure he is going to hear it. I bombed. I bombed horribly. So much so that the speaker that, the headlining speaker that was there that came on after me as I was walking off, she said, Hey, bud, come here. Give me a hug. And she hugged me right there in front of everybody, and I'm like, my head's down. I'm like, I bombed. So I limped over to the table, got behind our little table, and I told my wife, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I drag you out here and I'm sorry I failed. And then somebody walked over to the table and I was like, are you looking for the bathroom? But it's over? And they're like, no, I want to sign up for your thing. Okay. They gave them, and then before you knew it, we signed up nine or 10 people.
It was crazy. And I'm looking over at my wife, I'm thinking, I think this is going to work. But that was from public speaking. And so what we did is she took some pictures of me speaking there, and I took that and I took the topic and I started reaching out to other people. And then we got especially associations, and then I got on at other associations, and then before you know it, I had a contract with, we're in Oklahoma. So I got a contract with the Cherokee Nation to speak to present that they had a program for their small business owners, Cherokee small business owners, and I had a contract to go and present at all of their events all around presenting to them. And it started with one little small speaking event and big shout out to my wife who went to all of those events, took pictures, took video, and allowed us to continue to grow, continue to grow, continue to grow. So I'm really big on that one.
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Now you just want to look around and see if you can find someone who really, if you're looking at their blog and you see that they serve businesses, you may want to reach out to them and see if you can provide some guest articles. And I mean, think about it, Inc. Magazine entrepreneur, all of that stuff is just full of guest articles. The same thing happens on a local level. Here's the thing you have to remember with this. Do not give them content that you've posted anywhere else. Like you should not take a blog post off of your company blog and give it to them to post on their blog. Please give them original content. And if you have chatGPT at this point, that should be pretty easy to do. You can actually just take your blog, a blog off your blog, post a blog post off your blog, paste it and ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to rewrite it, and then go ahead and verify and edit as you wish.
I already know what you're thinking. You're like, I'm not even going to take my blog. I'm going to go to somebody else's blog and be like, rewrite this or whatever you want to do. I mean, it's your life. Number six is Facebook groups. Create a Facebook group. We have some wholesale beauty supply distributors that we serve that have Facebook groups for all of the salons and stylists that they serve in their area, and it is hopping. And so that's a free thing there is they've created a Facebook group specifically for stylists, specifically for salons that they can jump in, get some value, and also discounts, but they have to be licensed and all that stuff. But there are also Facebook groups that you have these in your community of a Facebook group of just business owners, and these popped up like crazy during Covid where all of these business owners would get into one Facebook group and there are thousands and thousands of them to support each other.
Well, you can do the same thing for just your niche. If you are a plumber, you can start a Facebook group for homeowners, not a Facebook. That's, that's the key. It's not a Facebook group for plumbers. It is a Facebook group for the people you serve, which are homeowners. And what you could do is make this the place to go for tips and strategies on how to take care of your home. So you have whoever you have an agreement with that does electricity. So you have your electrician in there. You can have your real estate agent or your real estate agents in there providing stuff like that. So that's, that's how you could benefit from a Facebook group. Email marketing is not necessarily free, but it's low budget. I mean, you can get an email marketing system for little of nothing nowadays, and you need to leverage that.
That's the next thing. And we talk about email a lot here because email is still king. Get people on your email list and email them frequently. How often should you be sending emails? We cover that in episode 66. How Often Should You Be Sending Emails? Well, that's the title of it, episode 66, check that out. But the short answer is often. Every week if you can get away with it. If you're on our list, I know you see that. We send out quite a few emails, especially if you don't open the email that I sent you before, you're going to get another email saying, Hey, open this. But start with once a month if you are super freaked out about it, but move to once a week. The more emails you send, the more money you make, period.
And the last thing I want to share with you is video marketing. Pull out your cell phone. You don't have to have all the lights and the expensive camera. All you got to have is the action. Okay? Pull out your cell phone, record the video, create a YouTube channel. You can put your video, actually, even if you don't want to go all the way with a YouTube channel, you can post your video on LinkedIn, post your video on Facebook. If you have a Facebook group, post your video on Facebook. Here's the thing, if you go to the things that I shared and we put the things that I shared with you together today, if you go to answerthepublic.com and you find a question that people are asking about your product, your service, you record a quick two minute video answering that. It's, Hey, it's Clarence's over here at Marshmallow King, and I get how they get asked all the time.
Why do marshmallows stick to the roof of your mouth? That is a great question. Here's the answer, a blah, blah, blah, blah, a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Don't forget, you get a free marshmallow on your birthday when you come over to Marsh Miller King, marsh Miller King. All right, cut. Now, I'm going to turn, I'm going to take that and I'm going to go to Temi temi.com. Give them the, upload the video. They're going to give me the transcript of that video for 10 cents a minute. If it is two, it's a two-minute video. We're looking at 20 cents. Give that to me. I'm going to kind of massage it a little bit, put it on our website. I'm going to take that content and put that content on Facebook, put that content on LinkedIn.
Then I'm going to have that video and post that video the very next day of the same content, but it, it's video. It's not written this time. So I'm going to post that video on Facebook, post that video on LinkedIn. This is without a YouTube channel. Then take that video. If you know what, you really should take that video, put it on YouTube so that you can embed that video on your blog. Woo. Oh, you could even send it to the reporter that you met at the Punch Bowl at the networking event, and you can take that same topic and make a speech about it. See, this is what I'm saying. You haven't spent any, you've spent 20 cents. Oh, boy, I hope you got something out of this. If you did, send it to someone that you love, send it to someone you hate, just send it to someone. Tag me, Clarence Fisher, hashtag Local Market Monopoly, and I am going to see you next week when I continue to help you own your block.

Closing: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show and visit local market monopoly.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.