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Historically, New Jersey has gotten a bad rap. Sandwiched between two major cities, Philadelphia and New York, it is hard to be heard of the noise those two cities make, especially New York. New Jersey isn't a monolith, but rather a collection of regions, smaller towns, and cities that are vibrant, growing, and full of opportunity.
Essex, Morris, and Summit counties share common themes, but closest to New York, Essex is most affected by commuting either into New York City or Newark. Hudson river cities share a close bond, but Hoboken is more residential, while Jersey City is much more business centric. Then you have the educational regions like New Brunswick and Princeton, where the universities and med-tech industries dominate.
There is no one-size-fits-all local marketing approach in New Jersey, which is one of the toughest marketing challenges small businesses face in this state.
With so much choice packed into such a small area, the key to success in New Jersey is standing out and being noticed. But, if your website is slow, you are missing out on the biggest part of the digital market, mobile.
If you didn’t build your own site, you’re likely using a content management system (CMS) that your web builder chose. If he or she didn’t educate you on the pros and cons, you may be in for a big surprise in your webpages’ performance and search engine rankings.
The technical definition for a content management system (CMS) is “is a computer software program used to manage the creation and modification of digital content.”
In other words, it is a system that allows the content to be stored separately from the code that builds the page. The user enters the code through a program called an interface, e.g. WordPress, and the interface saves that as the page data. The browser takes the files from both locations and renders the page.
However, while simple and easy, it creates a problem. To make this easier to understand, I use a simple metaphor of an architect, contractor, and warehouse. The user is the architect, the contractor is the browser, and all the design code sits in the warehouse
In this metaphor, we are going to use a prefabricated home. There are a general set of blueprints, but lots of options for flooring, tiles, etc. Think of this as your theme.
The architect now selects specific options within a house, for example, flooring, tile, window type, etc. But, these specifications aren’t given to the contractor (browser) until he or she shows up to build the house.
The contractor knows he or she is building a home, but other than that, it’s left open. Therefore, they have to bring all the labor and materials they might use, even if they aren’t needed in this specific build.
Once at the site, the contract reads the blueprints and then has to sort through and organize their materials first before the job can start.
As you can see there is a lot of wasted time and materials that put a burden on the contractor. This is why a theme will never be as fast as a custom build.
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 New Jersey 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 New Jersey. 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 New Jersey has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.
With so much choice packed into such a small area, the key to success in New Jersey is standing out and being noticed. Local digital marketing can help you do just that.
A custom built website is created by web designers. These designers create code only for the features you use to get the results you want. Therefore, there is no excess code.
If your developer helps you set up your tracking codes and other third party integrations, then you can minimize any issues those create.
The beauty of a custom build is there is no trade-off between speed and quality. When you factor in the lost revenue from bounces and poor conversion that a slower site creates, the investment generally pays for itself.
Without taking any action, your performance on mobile will likely fall in the 20s to 40s on Google Pagespeed Insights.
WordPress is the dominant market player. Therefore, we will touch on some of the common plug-in for this CMS.
Most of the plug-ins, save W3 total cache, are simple. Most are not free if you want to get the maximum benefit. They do produce a measurable difference in speed, but do not expect to get above 50-60.
Accelerated Mobile Pages was introduced by Google in and around 2016. AMP is a stripped down version of HMTL which has fewer features, which makes it very fast. But, now you need to manage two sites versus one. Plus, you lose consistency between mobile and desktop
Since you are changing the theme itself, this requires a significant amount of coding knowledge to do it right. This usually requires hiring a developer.
A good developer can usually clean up the theme enough that you can reach custom speeds. The cost is generally equal to higher than a customer build depending on the work required.
If you want lightning fast speed, skip the CMS. We recommend a custom build.
ProStraegix is a web design agency with offices in New York City. We also provide SEO and pay per click advertising support to our clients.
If you're thinking about finding help in New Jersey 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 New Jersey 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.
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 New Jersey. 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 New Jersey Business & Industry Association 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 likely that you will score points on relevance.
Finding the right SEO for your small business in a neighborhood like New Jersey can be a crucial way to get your company noticed online.
If you are interested in what more we do, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NJ.