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Summit is one of the many unique suburbs in Union county New Jersey. Others like it, Union, Watchung, for example. They all have their own character and quirks. All are predominately bedroom communities for people who want a more suburban life, but still want to be close to New York City.
All are roughly 45 minutes commute from New York City. Summit is a bit more unique in that it has a bustling central business district and hospital surrounding the train station.
I bring this bit of trivia up for a reason. Many of the small businesses in these areas rely on the ebb and flow of commuter traffic in and out of New York City. Most of their quaint downtown district surround the train station, so that daily ebb and flow is important to know.
One of the major challenges for new businesses in the suburbs, like Summit, is being found if you are off the beaten path. A fast, intuitive, and responsive website, when used effectively, can help you get noticed.
If you are on the beaten path, then it’s all about timing. How to maximize the daily rush coming in and out of town especially when Manhattan offices eventually reopen.
Strategy is a term that is misused often. A strategy is making a clear choice of between options. As a metaphor, I like to use a vacation as the example. The strategy is choosing where to go. The tactic is the means of transportation. Here, you need to evaluate if the agency you choose has a clear understand of where you are going and how it can deploy its tactics to help you win.
Sometimes marketing is an investment. Sometimes programs work. Sometimes, they fail. Regardless, you need a measurement plan in place to know which to kill and which to grow.
Learning is part of any marketing campaign. It is how you improve and grow. The market is constantly changing. You will be best suited to meet that change if you constantly testing.
Digital marketing is a diverse field. One group specializes on web design and another on social. If you need a specialized agency for each, the costs add up quickly. Each have overheads they need to cover. This is where a full service agency can help. Those overheads are shared the different disciplines. Now, one caveat, it is important to know that the full service agency can provide the same if not better quality as the specialized.
Large company solutions or carbon copies of other campaigns rarely work for small businesses. If you are seeking marketing help, make sure that the firm you chose has the experience in small business.
If a marketing firm will not share some of the risk with you, then they are not as vested in the outcome as you are.
According to Best Designs, original graphics are the most successful.
“Original graphics make up 40% of all successful visual content that accomplishes marketing goals, but 43% of marketers struggle with the consistent production of captivating visuals.”
Since we are communicating one message, the artwork that supports it must work very hard to support the message. This is where local market know-how can really help. Original photos and images of your business in Kipps Bay interacting with your neighborhood can add value.
It also helps with when your calls to action focus on local events in and around Summit or at your business location.
Every email, no matter how trivial, should have a call to action. This is where all the hard work above pays off. If we omit one, we just wasted resources that could have been spent more cost effectively.
We cover email list building in great detail in our post on small business email marketing. Again, we will just hit the highlights here as it pertains to Summit. Every neighborhood has summer fairs. While these were severely impacted by COVID, in our post COVID world they should roar back with a vengeance. It would be smart to see if you could piggy-back off one or more of them.
Incentives, deals, free trials, and samples are all great options when developing your calls to action. See if you can partner with your neighbors to create a shared promotion. This way one shopper in Summit has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.
One of the major challenges for new businesses in the suburbs, like Summit, is being found if you are off the beaten path. Local digital marketing, when used effectively, can help you get noticed.
If you are on the beaten path, then it’s all about timing. How to maximize the daily rush coming in and out of town.
Marketing always contains some risk. You should be suspect of anyone who tells you otherwise. Yes, there are techniques that can make you much more successful. However, any seasoned marketer knows that even with the best techniques, there is always some uncertainty. If you truly are a team, then your partner should be willing to help you share some of the risk, as long as you are willing to follow best practices. If your partner helped you build the strategy and craft the brand message, then it is reasonable that they share some of the risk. This way you are both aligned to the same goal, which is delivering a positive return on your marketing spending.
First, if you work with a larger firm, the quality of the people and the time they will invest is directly proportional to the amount of money you spend. They may tell you otherwise, but you know that not every client or customer is treated equally. This is why you want to find a firm where you budget matters to them. This way your project gets the attention it deserves instead of being given to a junior team member as part of the 10 other projects he or she is working on.
In addition, local knowledge is important so your message comes across as authentic. If the firm doesn't understand your neighborhood, town, or city, then the language they use or tone of the campaign can be off. Customers are smarter than many give them credit for. They can usually spot fakes easily.
If you need help with marketing your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
If you're thinking about finding help in Summit or Union County for your small business, here are the things to keep in mind.
Aside from all the general tips above, here are some specific actions you can take based on the three key elements of local search algorithms:
All of this assumes that you have completed your keyword research and developed your keyword list. If you have not, this section will be more effective once you do. Please see our previous post on digital marketing in Summit and then come back.
Go through your keywords list and select those which are good descriptors of your business. If it were me, I would use something like “digital marketing agency”, “seo services”, for example. Then make a list of the towns/areas you service, for example “seo services union county”.
Now comes the harder part, that is frankly a bit tedious. For each combination, see if you can create a somewhat unique post that’s 500-1000 words for that keyword. For us, it is a post like this. I try to write a post that helps my potential clients learn something or do something they didn’t know they could.
Now, this is the good part. If you do write quality posts for these keywords, you will be raising your prominence. Google knows that all these neighborhoods are in Summit. So, for each good post you write, you help raise your prominence on a given topic in a given location.
Prominence is also helped by the basic techniques I mentioned earlier, such as being a part of local business groups. Please see the Summit Chamber of Commerce or New Jersey Small Business for listings that might pertain to you. Any local listing helps.
This is why I like the blog technique because it hits all three key areas. If your keyword is a descriptor of what you do and the neighborhood is one you serve, it is highly that you will score points on relevance.
The same tips would apply if you were wanted to go more broadly, for example, the state level with Local SEO New Jersey
If you are interested in what more we do, you can see our Small Business Marketing in Summit. If you want the full state, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NJ.