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Officially, Chinatown is less that 500 acres. But, it has hundreds of small businesses crammed into one small space. The reality is Chinatown is more for the tourists as more of the Asian population has migrated to the Queens Chinatown in Flushing. Much of the authentic Chinese culture moving with it.
That doesn't mean Chinatown is not a vibrant, colorful neighborhood. It simply means that its customer base has changed significantly. Instead of catering to Asian Americans and other New Yorkers, it now focuses on tourism. COVID 19 had a devastating effect on Tourism and Chinatown, just like Times Square, has suffered.
For Chinatown, local digital marketing may need to wait until tourism rebounds, likely later in 2021. So, now is the time to get ready. With a new administration with a much more open attitude, New York City's tourism business will come back. Having a fast, intuitive, and responsive site will be make sure you are ready to greet them when they do.
In other words, the small business has a clear understanding of their market segment, and they have a clear picture of how they can win. Strategic marketing is how you make this happen.
If there isn't a expected outcome and clear indication of your expected return, then find other help marketing your small business.
If the small business marketing agency you found to help raise your visibility in your market doesn't have a testing and learning plan, find someone else
Any small business digital marketing agency should have digital knowhow. But, you would be surprised that many don't. Before you accept marketing help for your small business, check their technical credentials. Do they offer email marketing? What does their own online marketing look like? How about social media marketing? What do their post look like?
This probably goes without saying, but you'll want to make sure that any marketing help you hire has significant small business experience. Large company solutions won't work.
Marketing is inherently risky. When seeking marketing help, see whether they will share the risk with your small business.
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 Chinatown interacting with your neighborhood can add value.
It also helps with when your calls to action focus on local events in and around Chinatown 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 Chinatown. 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 Chinatown has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.
For Chinatown, local digital marketing may need to wait until tourism rebounds, likely later in 2021. With a new administration with a much more open attitude, New York City's tourism business will come back. Once people have been vaccinated, we fully expect Chinatown's crowded street will be bustling again.
Look, you want any small business marketing partner vesting in your outcome. Marketing is risking. So, you shouldn't have to bear all the risk. Look for small business marketing help that is confident enough in their skills to own some of the risks. If they are, then you know they genuinely want to help your small business succeed.
Size and local knowledge matter. That's been proven, consistently. Therefore, the quality of the help you receive depends on the knowledge of the area, plus the experience level of the team assigned to your business.
In truth, there are many different benefits that marketing firms of different sizes provides. As Liz O'Neill points out on the Precision Marketing Group blog, the help any small business marketing firm provides needs to match the scale you require.
If you need help with marketing your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
If you're thinking about finding help in Chinatown for your small business, here are some 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 Chinatown 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 neighborhoods you service, for example “seo services Jay Street”.
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 areas are near Chinatown. 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, e.g. the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce or Chinatown NYC. 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 likely that you will score points on relevance.
Finding the right SEO for your small business in a neighborhood like Chinatown can be a crucial way to get your company noticed online.
These same tools would apply if you want to target local SEO in NYC or more narrowly local SEO in Manhattan.
See more about Small Business Marketing in Chinatown. If you are more interest in the borough, you can see our Small Business Marketing in Manhattan. If you want the full city, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NYC.