Amanda Ballard: 0:00

a content platform for your story. What does that mean and what does that look like for a natural products business?

Tina Smith: 0:10

Welcome to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. I'm Tina.

Amanda Ballard: 0:15

And I'm Amanda, and we're here to make marketing easier for natural products businesses so you can reach more people and change more lives. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Today we are covering part one of two for how to dominate in your local market. So there's seven steps that we want to go through. Today we're going through numbers one through four and then next episode we'll cover five through seven. So make sure that you stay tuned for both parts. So, tina, let's go ahead and kick this off. What are some of the stats that you've been reading about how to dominate in the local market and what are some things that have to happen in order to do that?

Tina Smith: 0:59

Yeah, just to sort of set the stage for why this is even important, I like to bring a few statistics into the story that we're telling here today about growing your local business and why there are online elements that you have to have in order to show up for your customer where they're looking for you. So 82% of small business owners claim that their main source of new business is referrals. So that's huge in making sure that you've got a robust network of people who are saying great things about you online as well as in person, because we all know that we've got a bigger online network than we have of just people that we see every day. So the good news is you can use that to your advantage and help people talk about you in a positive fashion online, and we'll talk about ways to do that. The other stats are 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile friendly site. So one big thing to do right away is, if you're not driving, take a look right now on your phone and look at your website. Is it optimized for mobile searches and for mobile visitors? It needs to be mobile friendly, meaning it needs to fit on that phone and you know what that is because you're looking for mobile friendly sites as well whenever you're searching online. So if it looks good on your phone, then great, you are halfway there. 61% of people are more likely to contact you if this is fitting correctly on your phone and you can use the website on a phone.

Tina Smith: 2:39

87% of potential customers won't even consider doing business with a business that has low ratings online and this info comes from Search Engine Land, and that's huge. 87% of people will not come see you if you have a low rating. So what does that mean? When someone searches online for you, or especially in Google Maps, this is huge for local businesses. If they look you up and you have a review of less than 4.7 or 4.8 out of 5 stars, then they're probably not going to do business with you.

Tina Smith: 3:14

You've just lost 87% of people who are searching for a local business to try to find supplements, nutrients or whatever natural product you're offering. So reviews again, and higher rating reviews are going to be important, and we'll cover a little bit about what to do if your ratings are lower than you'd like. 64% of consumers say watching a marketing video on Facebook has influenced a purchase decision in the last month. So we'll be talking about online social media and other elements that are going to be important for showing up as a local business. And just realize that 64% of people that are looking for services like yours might decide to make a purchase decision at your store if you have a video on Facebook or some other social media platform.

Amanda Ballard: 4:06

Awesome, yeah, super valuable stats, and I hope that you all can just let those digest for a minute, and if you forgot what those numbers are, we'll put those in the show notes too, because it's really, really helpful to have. So the first thing that you mentioned, tina, was websites being mobile friendly. Can we talk a little bit more about that, and what are some of the other things beyond just being mobile friendly that customers are looking for?

Tina Smith: 4:39

Yeah. So when we're talking about the seven elements for a local business, websites are at the top of the list, and that's because they're the biggest platform that you have to start to show up locally. And what does it look like to have a website that converts online traffic into local store visitors or online shoppers? So some people that are listening today do not have e-commerce. Do not be deterred. That's why we're talking about local businesses. If you've got a brick and mortar store, a website is still really important for you to have, and 92% of customers visit a brand's website for the first time for reasons other than making a purchase. So if someone is thinking about doing business with you maybe they see a billboard about you they're going to go to your website first, typically, unless they have an immediate need to check you out and see what's going on. So we've done a ton of episodes on websites and we'll continue to do so, diving deep into some of these different activities and things that you should have or mistakes that you might be making on your website. Links to those will be in the show notes so that we're not overwhelming you on this topic today. But one of the biggest things that your website needs is to be about the customer's needs and to solve a problem for them. So if you just stayed on your website, I love it when people are clear and they're using keywords like supplement store or health food store, but it's not enough anymore to just say exactly what you do. You have to solve a pain point for your customer, so they're looking for something else. They're not just looking for a supplement, they're looking to solve a problem, and so talking about the problem is super important to have on your website.

Tina Smith: 6:26

And one of the other things that we see missing all the time is how to get in touch with you, where you're located and how to do business with you. So, even if you are e-commerce centric, you've got to show people how to buy on your website, and it needs to be really clear. But if you are a brick and mortar store, especially if you do not do online sales, you've got to put your location on there. You should have your physical address on your website and you should tell people when you're open so that they can know when they can come by and do business with you. And then, finally, they need trust signals to know that you're believable and that you will do what you say you will do.

Tina Smith: 7:09

And again, I'm coming back and will be over and over again coming back to online reviews, and you should have some sort of way for customers to easily give you good reviews, whether it's on your website through Google, my Business through Yelp, some of these other registries, facebook, even those are the highest places where you can start to gather reviews that show up, especially in maps online, and reviews are super important for sending trust signals to the rest of the world. So, if we go back to that initial stat, which is that 82% of small business owners saying that most of their business comes from referrals, the way to get that word out there is to get reviews. And so, amanda, you tell me I know you do tactics in the store how do you guys help people review you online when you're talking about getting that word out in the store, as they're having great interactions with you?

Amanda Ballard: 8:11

Absolutely, and I think the biggest thing here is just incentivize it. Most people don't think about leaving a review unless either A they had an absolutely outstanding experience or they had a terrible experience. The average person isn't going to think, oh, I need to go leave a review after that experience. So if you have signage that you can put in the store of, like, hey, you can have a QR code to your Google my Business account where it's like leave a review, show us that you left the review and get a free product. You can give them a bottle of vitamin D, a bottle of kombucha, whatever.

Amanda Ballard: 8:50

It is something cheap and inexpensive, but something where it's like hey, the two minutes that you took to give us a review, that means a lot to us and here's something in exchange for that, and I've found that that's probably the most effective way to just gather those reviews really, really quickly and then, once you have a review, you can have a review, a pretty large sample size. Then you can use those on your website, like these testimonial sections we always talk about. When people are on your website, they might be seeing those testimonials. Maybe they'll go check out more and so then maybe they'll leave their own review. So I think it's just. It creates this really, really natural kind of system within your store by having these points of contact where they can do that in the store and then having it on your website as well.

Tina Smith: 9:41

Yeah, I love that. I love giving our retailers specifically some very tactical ways to implement some of the things that we're talking about. So we've got a ton to cover today and we're going very surface level, but I am gonna be inviting Amanda to help us like, okay, what does that look like in the store as we're going along, because it's so important to have something that you can practically apply as soon as you walk away from this episode.

Amanda Ballard: 10:07

Next thing on the list, tina, is content a content platform for your story. What does that mean and what does that look like for a natural products business?

Tina Smith: 10:16

Again, I go back to a website. The website is one of the best places where you have it's your own content platform. Now we talk a ton about social media We'll talk about that later too because there are places where that is important to you but just realize you don't own that platform, and so owning a platform where you can tell your own story is really important. You just have full control there. So it's a great idea to have a website. So that kind of goes back to number one. But when we start talking about a story, you have to have something compellingly different in your story for people to come to you and your store, versus buying online or going to a big box, where they're already shopping anyway and just stopping and picking up the extra items there. So we have talked a ton Almost every episode covers a piece of this, which is how are you competing with some of the local big box stores or with other people who are selling online?

Tina Smith: 11:18

If you are a brick and mortar store, especially if you don't have any e-commerce, how are you gonna compete? It should not be on price. That's the worst way to try to compete there. The thing that we're finding we're hearing over and over from the people that we're interviewing is it's all about the experience. Are you creating a destination at your store that gives an experience they cannot find anywhere else? And a lot of that comes with this consultative approach around people's health and wellness, and so if that's what you're doing, then make sure that you are promoting that online and you're telling that story and your homepage on your website. When we get to social media, we'll talk about that In Google my Business, which we'll talk about in a little bit later, but every time you're putting your message out there, it should be about your compelling story and how you're different from anywhere else where they can buy similar products and services.

Amanda Ballard: 12:14

I think COVID kind of escalated this, but I feel like when we were all kind of just staying home a lot more often, I feel like it's taken us a couple of years to still want to get out of the house.

Amanda Ballard: 12:26

We all became more homebody-ish than we used to, and so now it's like if you really want people to come to your store, you have to give them a reason to. It's not just like oh, they're cheaper, give me a reason to get off my couch, drive across town and come see you, and I think so much of that is just that it's fun. People are looking for things to do, to be entertaining. So it's like, even if all you do is sell supplements, how can you make that fun for people? Do you have the right staff that are fun and vibrant and inviting? Do you have a really nicely designed store where it feels bright and healthy and just energizing? Or has your store not been remodeled since 1995? So just be thinking about those things of what can we do to get someone off the couch and into our store.

Tina Smith: 13:23

Yeah, and two references to other episodes that might be really helpful in this area are we interviewed Chase Ballard with that Weiler's Farm Market and he talked about finding your secret sauce as a store.

Tina Smith: 13:37

So that would be really helpful in understanding maybe what you have to offer that someone else doesn't have to offer. And then, second, we interviewed Ryan Sensenbrenner with Enzemedica and he talked specifically about this consultative approach to supplements and to sales and also becoming an innovation destination. So a couple of really big points that he makes in that podcast episode and we will link to those episodes in the show notes below. But it's really important to find your compelling difference and one of the ways that I believe you can do that is to interview your top customers so we can find out things that the thing that makes us more compelling and the reason that they keep coming back to us over and over again, and then we can market that message and find more people like the top customers who are coming to us again and again and who are willing to refer us over and over again. So really important to find out your compelling difference.

Amanda Ballard: 14:38

Okay, so, the third element for dominating in your local market is SEO. Now, Tina knows way more about SEO than I do, so I'm gonna just defer to you Tina, what expert knowledge do you have for us?

Tina Smith: 14:54

Well, you can defer to me, amanda, but you also have some tricks and tips for how to gather some of this information out of your SKUs and your online systems, as people are making purchases in a store, and so I will tap you to have that conversation again, because you do need to know what it is that you're trying to rank for online. And so when we say SEO for the uninitiated, it's search engine optimization, which is just when people go to Google or to Google Maps or to Yelp or any place like that, and they type in keywords that might apply to your store, like supplement store, vitamin store, health food store that you start to show up online because you have created content, you've got the right links, you've got the right words on your website and other materials that are online. So the reason this is important is 80% of people turn to search engines when they're looking for a local store. So I'll say that again because it's huge 80% of people turn to search engines when they're searching for a local store, not just when they're buying online. So if you have a brick and mortar business, this is hugely important for you that you need to show up online, especially when they're typing in keywords, especially in Google Maps. This is really important. So when you think about things like vitamin store, supplement store, health food store, those key terms are very difficult to rank for just online ever and especially local, if you don't have a lot of content going on. So we're going to get to paid marketing, where it might be important for you to buy up some of those high search terms in some places so that you can show up. But there are other ways that you can show up for things that are not so difficult to show up for maybe vitamin D supplements instead of just supplement stores. Or like when we were talking to Rand Sensenbrenner, he's talking about specific problems that you're solving, like digestive issues. If you've got content on your website where you can start showing up for solving digestive issues, then when people are looking for that in Google Maps, your store is going to start to surface at the top of the list.

Tina Smith: 17:15

So key things to have on your website is that you make sure you've got some technical things set up on your website that work right, and websites are making this really easy. You just fill in the blanks anymore, where it's like a title of a page is a keyword like vitamin D supplements. Or you've got metadata, and that word is scary for people when you start to talk about metadata, but really all it is is that's what shows up in the Google description underneath the search term when people are looking for it. So what is that description saying? Does it fit within that box that Google's talking about? Do the photos on your website have alt text? So again, we're talking about metadata. But it's not that hard, because when you upload a picture to a website, anymore there's just a fill in the blank for alt text and then you just you describe what's happening in that picture. So then you start to show up for those topics.

Tina Smith: 18:14

The other piece is to have sites that link back to your site, especially if they're local sites. So think about things like if you're part of a chamber of commerce in your area, you do any local marketing or you sponsor events those pages online. They're going to promote the events online. They should be linking back to your website, which just starts to serve you up more and more for the topics that they're covering. So think about sponsoring local events that are related to your products. If there's a health and wellness sphere going on, you should be there and that link comes back to your website, you start to get served up in searches that are related to health and wellness.

Tina Smith: 18:57

So those are some key things, but I think the biggest thing and the easiest thing for people to do is not only to make sure that your name and address and phone number are on your website, but also that you've got a Google my Business profile with the same information name, address and phone number, hours of operation in your location.

Tina Smith: 19:21

And then the big kicker, which we've already talked about, is reviews 4.7 or greater, especially on Google my Business, because that's what's gonna show up at the top of Google Maps. Then those things are gonna help you show up faster and better in organic search. So I just threw a ton of information out at you, but I did prioritize it. Google my Business and how to find you in your hours of operation on your own website with reviews, are gonna be the top pieces that you need for foundational SEO. Now, amanda, you can tell us the right keywords that should start to show up both in your products and services and on your website. Help us find practical ways to figure out what those are, outside of just health food store or vitamins and supplements, which are gonna be difficult to rank for.

Amanda Ballard: 20:12

You've got some tactics.

Amanda Ballard: 20:14

Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is well, there's a couple of things that you can do. So if you have something like a blog where you're providing educational content for your customers, doing research or paying somebody to do the research for you to figure out, hey, if you were to do a blog article on magnesium citrate, for example, you sell magnesium citrate in your stores and if you do that you might be able to move up in the ranks. So let's write an article on MagCitrate and maybe we can offer more information about MagCitrate versus magnesium oxide or something like that, and just provide different information for people to learn. And then you're adding more of those keywords to the site that again, those might be easier to rank for than just generic health food store.

Amanda Ballard: 21:11

So, finding those topics that your customers care about and again that goes back to what Tina said about interviewing your top customers what do they care about? And then looking at your sales data, what's moving, what's not. If you're not moving anything, maybe you have very few prenatal supplements and they're just not moving for you and maybe that's not really your focus. Don't write an article about prenatal supplements if that's not what matters to your business. So you kind of have to look at what matters to you, but also what matters to your customers, and make informed decisions about what you want to feature on your website, because, at the end of the day, you want it to kind of match the in-store experience. If you're writing all these articles about random stuff that you don't even prioritize just so you can move up the SEO ranks, that's probably not the best strategy.

Tina Smith: 22:03

And I always like to focus on high profitability as well as high customer interest. So customer reviews I mean sorry, customer interviews are great for that. But also, just like you're talking about sales data, look at those items that are constantly being purchased and repurchased. So you're looking for people who are coming back for the same product again and again and that they have a high margin for you. So that's where you want to show up. If people are looking for that product they want, you want them to be at your store and then they'll get other products while they're there as well. But you're looking for those high margin repurchase products on your sales data. That's the first place I would start before I hired anyone.

Amanda Ballard: 22:47

Right, right, and I think the other thing, too, that you can focus on is you know whatever makes you unique in your community. So, you know, if you offer, you know, health coaching as part of your business model, you better have information about health coaching on your website and the writing information about how your health coaching can improve the lives of your customers, so anything that makes you unique. If you have, you know, you know hyperbaric chamber that you rent out, whatever it is like, make sure that those unique things are featured on your website and those keywords are there.

Tina Smith: 23:24

Yeah, absolutely. And if you're getting stuck between using health coaching and health consultants, sometimes people really want to drill down into what's the higher volume with the easiest search ranking ability for you. That's the point where you call in a professional and run some reports for you, and we've got a link in the show notes where you can get an SEO audit from us, so happy to run that analysis for you. But there are ways that you can do this without hiring someone like us. So use the data that's at your fingertips first, and if you want to refine it and make it just work even better for you, that's when you call an expert and we would be happy to help.

Amanda Ballard: 24:03

So number four this will be the last one we'll cover in this episode is social media engagement. So I think that there's there's a lot to say about social media, and I think for a lot of people it's really intimidating, and maybe rightfully so, but I think that with the right strategy, it can be easier than we think it can be. So, tina, can you talk about just some of these things that we should be looking for with our social media?

Tina Smith: 24:33

We have a whole topic that we're going to cover, which is, you know, marketing, in 30 minutes a day. So there are ways to make this easier than what it looks like. But there are basically three types of content that you can post on social media that will help you start to get traffic to your website and then ultimately into your store. And one is creating original content, and I think that's where people get really nervous, because that takes a lot of effort to figure out. What am I talking about? What should it look like?

Tina Smith: 25:07

Do I need a producer, a video editor, like whatever that ends up looking like? Do I need an artist you know to come in and graphic artist to help me get this post exactly right? So original content feels the most. It's the best because you're talking about your culture and things that are happening in your store. Lots of ideas around how to get that content out there and what to cover without going nuts with it, but it is one that feels very intimidating for people but realize that it's only one of three types of content that you can put on social media.

Tina Smith: 25:45

And so if you relegate that to once a month or once every other week, or if you're a daily poster and you feel like being involved in that level, then you know you only need to do original content a few times, versus every single day or every week or every month. So then you've got earned content where other people are talking about you or referencing you. So this again, we go back to be part of events that are local. Do you joint partnerships with local farmers, locally sourced products, because you might be carrying those in your store when other people aren't. So there's an opportunity for you to have conversation with them or do a post with them that you can both post on your channels. And then this becomes other people are talking about you and you're just sort of reposting that content onto your own channel.

Tina Smith: 26:42

The third is that you're just posting other content that's relevant to your audience and you're making attribution to the original source. So you might have some commentary around it that makes it a little bit more original, or maybe it's just great as it is and you want to share a resource with your people. That becomes a whole lot easier to fill in the gaps of a social media strategy, whenever you are saying, okay, here are things that are relevant to you, to my audience I didn't create it, this other person did, but I think you'll find it useful and then, interspersed through that, you've got original content and you've got earned content where other people are posting about you. And again we can talk about how you can do all of this in 30 minutes a day on another episode. But right now we're just saying be engaged, be on the social media platforms, and you don't have to be on every platform, but you do need to be on the ones where your audience is hanging out. So that's social media.

Amanda Ballard: 27:41

Yeah, yeah, and, like Tina said, we could spend, I mean, multiple episodes just talking about social media. So we won't do all of that today. But I think the big thing is to just be yourself too. Like, if you look at other businesses that either you're there, you're competitors, or maybe they're another natural products health food store across the country, it can get really easy to just compare yourself to them and just be like, well, if I can't be, you know everyone market, then why try that? There couldn't be anything further from the truth. Like.

Amanda Ballard: 28:17

Your audience comes to you for a reason, and so I think that you just need to lean into what, what makes your business unique, what makes your customers unique, and kind of just cater your social media content to them, forget what they're doing out. You know in other areas that you don't. You don't reach them. So it's okay if you are, you know, a small town health food store in you know the middle of nowhere, alabama, that's okay. You don't have to be the same business model as someone that's in you know, downtown LA. So I think that you need to just be true to who you are, because if you try to be someone that you're not, people will catch on to that and no one wants that.

Tina Smith: 29:02

Yeah, and do things that are important to you, products you love. Talk about those, how they've changed your life. People love personal stories. Share personal stories share. Hey, this is a team member, and when they've done something really great for a customer, people will love to hear that.

Amanda Ballard: 29:19

Yeah.

Tina Smith: 29:20

And also, if you think about it, if you start doing video content especially, think about talking. You're, you talk to customers all the time and you do it well, or they wouldn't come back over and over again. So just think about one of your favorite customers when you turn that video camera on. Start thinking in terms of I'm talking to Amanda right now. Amanda, you're not going to believe this. We got this new product, I tried it and it did this for me. So you're having a personal conversation and people will feel that coming through because they come to your store for your personality or your experience and knowledge or whatever it is that you have that someone else doesn't have. So show up that way online and you're going to continue to attract that customer plus others like them in the area. All right, guys, so that's it for today.

Amanda Ballard: 30:07

We'll do the next three elements of how to dominate in your local market on the next episode, so stay tuned. All right, great to see you again. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. We hope you found this episode to be super helpful. Make sure you check out the show notes for any of those valuable resources that we mentioned on today's episode.

Tina Smith: 30:29

And, before you go, we would love for you to give us a review. Follow, like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify, youtube or wherever you're listening today, and make sure you join us for our next episode, where we give you more marketing tips so that you can reach more people and change more lives.