How to Drive Foot Traffic to Your Brick & Mortar Business for FREE

It’s the white elephant in the room that every retailer (big & small) is talking about…

Getting More Foot Traffic into Brick & Mortar Businesses

While our first instinct is to use traditional paid marketing tactics – advertisements, mailers even local radio & tv stations, the first place I tell EVERY brick & mortar business to start is the one that will actually drive targeted traffic of people looking for exactly what you have to offer, in other words – the right buyers – and it also happens to be FREE….

It’s Search Engines. Now DON’T stop reading or close the page thinking that online resources aren’t going to bring traffic into your offline business because that couldn’t be further from the truth.

First let’s quickly define..

What is a Search Engine? – it is a software program that helps people find information typically on the web. Google is the #1 search engine right now, however there are many – Bing, Yahoo etc..

How do Search Engines work? They crawl web pages, images, blog posts, social media sites, everything on the web looking for common words that indication what those pages or sites are about so that when people do a search for something, the search engines can give them the information they are searching for.

Why do I need to know about Search Engines if I have a Brick & Mortar business?

The number of daily searches on Google is over 3.5 million

Over 45% of searches done on Google are location based searches…In other words people are searching for things “near me”

72% of people who do a local search visit a store within 5 miles

86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps

78% of those people doing a search on their phone will make a purchase in a local business

18% of location-based searches on a phone (mobile) turn into a sale within 1 day

81% of people report doing an online search before making a large purchase

New customers are looking for local businesses through search engines online –and over 70% of those new customers will visit a store within 5 miles of them, and over 78% of those visits will results in a purchase. So… Search, Drive, Buy – does it get any better than that?

Your customer is looking for you and your offline business online, and you can drive that traffic into your store for FREE by optimizing your business listings on those search engines.

What is Optimizing? To optimize your business listing or anything online for that matter – means to do everything you can to give yourself the chance to be shown as frequently as possible and as high up in searches that you are an exact match for. For example, if you have a dress store in Miami, when people do a search on Google for dresses in Miami or dresses near me (for customers in Miami)– you want your store to not only show up, but to be on page 1 or as close to it – of the search results as possible.

This is referred to as Search Engine Optimization or SEO. As I explained earlier, search engines crawl web site pages, images & content online to find the words that match what their customers are looking for. The goal of a search engine is to provide accurate, relevant information as quickly as possible to the customers who are doing the search. In order to do that, the search engines need data or information. The more information using the same words – these are called keywords – or phrases – called long tail keywords – that you add to your business listing, the better of a chance you have of skyrocketing to the top of searches & claiming the lion’s share of FREE traffic to your business.

Not only that, remember these are specific searches for something, so if your information is real and relevant, you will drive traffic to your store for people looking to buy exactly what you sell, which is why the percentage of purchases is so high.

Okay I get it – how do it do this?

Google has made it very easy by creating a dedicated page for you to go to and claim your business and enter in your data, they even allow you to upload images, video’s and a description of merchandise that you carry. You can find it at www.googlemybusiness.com

HOWEVER, while Google is the largest search engine, there are several search engines and also business listing sites with millions of hits each day that you can claim, add or update your business listing on – some with large communities and followings. I’ve created a FREE downloadable PDF with a list including the links, of the top search engines as well as business listing sites for you.

If you want to know the tips & tricks for getting the most amount of traffic on those search engines, you can go here and learn How To Optimize your Brick &Mortar Business Listing on Search Engines.

If your interested in learning NEW ways to build, scale & grow your business with information tailored specifically to Brick & Mortar, then sign up below to receive weekly content and video tutorials. If you are interested in getting support & sharing valuable information with a community of passionate small business owners, click here to join my private Facebook Group Brick & Mortar Mastery.

I hope you found this useful, helpful and full of opportunity.

Wishing you much success, Jodi