Find the Best Small Business Marketing Firm in Jersey City

Paulm27, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Jersey City: The New FiDi?

Few in Manhattan realize that from Exchange Place to Newport there is over 13 million square feet a prime office space, known as Wall Street West. 

Jersey City is the second largest city in New Jersey after Newark, and about a third of all its job base is in the financial services sector. Many who left FiDi after 9/11. The number of large brands in Jersey City such as Forbes and Fidelity Investments, for example.

All those high paying jobs have transformed Jersey City. It now faces many of the same marketing challenges of the other gentrified neighborhood. How to stand out and be trendy enough so people take notice

Why Web Design Matters in Jersey City?

With so much choice packed into such a small area, the key to success in Jersey City is standing out and being noticed. A fast, intuitive, and responsive web design can help you stand out.

  1. A fast, intuitive, and responsive design can help your Jersey City business differentiate itself and own its small niche. Then, exploring how you might expand from it.
  2. A web design that is fast and responsive is excellent for mobile. In high mobile use areas like Jersey City, mobile raise awareness among both Jersey City residents and those Manhattanites that are not too high and mighty to cross the river..
  3. A superior mobile experience lets both Jersey City and nearby Manhattan neighborhoods know you are nearby, open, and accessible, especially in the summer when local festivals add to the experience.

Get Right Small Business Marketing Help

Use the 6 Key Factors

6 Factors Great Small Business Marketing Agency

All great marketing starts with a strategy.

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.

Measurement and Return of Advertising Spending are Must Haves

If there isn't a expected outcome and clear indication of your expected return, then find other help marketing your small business.

Testing is Key

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

Digital Marketing Knowhow is Fundamental

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?

Small Business Experience Can't be Beat

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.

Risk Sharing

Marketing is inherently risky. When seeking marketing help, see whether they will share the risk with your small business.

Creativity Wins Points.

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 Jersey City or at your business location.

email marketing for small business call to action

Call to Action

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 Jersey City. 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 Jersey City has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.

Why Local Digital Marketing Matters in Jersey City?

With so much choice packed into such a small area, the key to success in Jersey City is standing out and being noticed. Local digital marketing can help you do just that. 

  1. Local digital marketing in Jersey City is about differentiating and owning a small niche. Then, exploring how you might expand from it.
  2. Digital is important to raise awareness among both Jersey City residents and those Manhattanites that are not too high and mighty to cross the river.. 
  3. It lets both Jersey City and nearby Manhattan neighborhoods know you are nearby, open, and accessible, especially in the summer when local festivals add to the experience.

Size Does Matter

I wish it were otherwise, but it is like a law of nature. The size of your account is directly proportional to the time the agency will spend on it. It is also proportional to the quality and experience of the talent that we are assigned to your business. Luckily, you can solve this problem by finding an agency where your business and budget matters to their bottom line. This is why smaller firms are preferable for smaller businesses.

Location is equally important. Most small businesses are local businesses, where the target audience is within a few blocks to mile radius from your location. Each place is unique. It has its own quirks. It takes someone who knows the area to understand those nuances. This is important because you want your ads to be perceived as authentic. Customers are easily turned off by cookie-cutter responses or creative.

Are They Willing to Share the Risk?

Marketing is not an exact science, where you say X and your target always does Y. This doesn't mean that marketing does not work or that it is a waste of time. It simply acknowledges the fact upfront that marketing contains some risk. It is true that there are best practices that can reduce this risk to optimize your return.

However, you never have complete information so sometimes even the best plans take time or need tweaking. This is why you should seek a partner who is upfront about the risk and is willing to share it with you. You also have to be willing to invest the time in following best practices. If you are dictating all the terms, then it is only reasonable that you accept that risk.

If you need help with marketing your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Things to Remember…

If you're thinking about finding help in Jersey City for your small business, here are some things to keep in mind.

  1. Find a firm that knows your area. If your small business is marketing in Jersey City, you'll want help from someone who understands how Jersey City works. The best marketing firms understand what makes Jersey City so special and can communicate to your clientele.
  2. Find a company you can trust. If you can't trust a business to have your best interests, you're already going to be left in the lurch. Make sure you have a guarantee that your business will be treated fairly by all parties.
  3. Get the size of help you need. A larger firm can provide more resources and can do more things. A smaller firm, on the other hand, can feel like a neighbor in Jersey City, with the added benefit of one-on-one help from the best the company can offer.

How to Adapt Our Small Business SEO Tips for Jersey City

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:

Proximity 

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 Jersey City 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 Exchange Place”.

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. 

Prominence 

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 locations are in or near Jersey CIty. 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 NJ State Library or Hudson County Chamber of Commerce for listings that might pertain to you. Any local listing helps.

Relevance

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 Jersey City can be a crucial way to get your company noticed online.

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 Jersey City. If you want the full state, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NJ.