Business Owners - BizMapIQ will give your marketing the direction with the best return on investment (ROI)
- Instead of being unsure about the areas around your business location that should be targeted by your marketing campaigns, you use BizMapIQ to know precisely which neighborhoods to target.
- Instead of not being sure whether your web presence provider targets the neighborhoods you desire, you use BizMapIQ to develop the web presence strategy with your provider.
- Instead of guessing whether a postcard campaign should cover a big enough area, you use BizMapIQ to determine the neighborhoods for a cost-effective postcard campaign and execute it.
- Instead of hoping for success, you use BizMapIQ to set baselines, improve your results month by month, and have metrics that guide you.
- Instead of agreeing on Google Ads as your primary way to gain customers, you use click-through rates (CTR) for your Google Business Profile (GBP) and business website provided by BizMapIQ to discuss the ranking strategy, including blog posts with your web presence provider.
- Instead of guessing which neighborhoods to target, you use BizMapIQ to filter precisely the neighborhoods of interest and run ranking campaigns with your web presence and postcard provider.
Below is a BizMapIQ of an auto repair shop showing only the neighborhoods with a median household income of $80K+ and 10+ existing customers. You know they are willing to drive to your business location and you are in your target customer's sweet spot.
Although many neighborhoods are in the green, a big area is still yellow, and some remote areas are in the red. Time to get to work to turn them green
Are you interested in applying BizMapIQ to your business? Either schedule the first intro here or keep reading to learn why BizMapIQ is the only tool in the market that truly meets your marketing needs.
Do you Google your Business?
As a local business owner, you rely on high Google Search visibility to be found. You trust a web presence provider that manages your website and your Google Business Profile (GBP) for your business(es).
Do you occasionally find yourself entering auto repair-related search phrases like 'auto repair' or 'mechanic near me' on your phone to see how your business ranks on Google Search? You know you rank well once you see your business in the top 3.
Depending on the competitiveness of your area, your business might only be in the top 3 when you google it at the location of your business. What happens when you are 2, 3, or more miles away?
You don't need to drive around to check your Google ranking; there are local search engine optimization (local SEO) tools that show you how your ranking is dropping farther away from your business location. Below is an example of "auto repair" for a particular business near Baltimore. It drops significantly with increasing distance from the business location.
Before you seek out the tool and try it for your business, let's focus on what is missing for local businesses to make an appropriate assessment:
- Are the socioeconomic profiles of the neighborhoods around your business location suited to meet your business goals? In other words, do you know whether your web presence ranks in the neighborhoods with ...
- ... enough households and cars per household,
- ... big enough median household income?
- Does your business' Google Business Profile (GBP) rank in the neighborhoods most suited to meet its business goals?
- Does the website rank in those neighborhoods?
- What alternate solutions exist if the web presence can't promote the business in remote but highly attractive neighborhoods?
What are the neighborhoods best suited for my business?
The following descriptions are specific to auto repair businesses, but most of the observations and conclusions are universally valid for local businesses of any kind.
- Determine neighborhoods with a decent median household income *(typically $80k+) and where your business has existing customers (e.g., 10+). Create a filter for your local analysis and determine these neighborhoods.
- Neighborhoods far from your business location would first receive postcard campaigns before trying to optimize the website for those neighborhoods. This way, you determine whether potential customers are willing to drive the distance to your business.
- Compare your neighborhood ARO with the median household income. If, for example, your neighborhood ARO is $300 for a median household income of $120k, you must have run discounted oil change campaigns and not leveraged the full spectrum of convenience-based value-add for affluent customers. Instead, use loaners, financing, and the DVI as a value-add.
More detailed instructions can be found in this article.
Sounds like Greek to you? Let's unpack what CTR means.
Why is CTR more important for maximizing marketing $$$ than ranking?
As this Article explains in more detail, CTR predicts results better than ranking and more importantly, allows to combine local pack and organic search results.
Google Ads and Google Service Ads are omitted in BizMapIQ since the maximum CTR is 4.5%.
Focusing on ranking the GMB and the business website creates much more cost-effective results than relying on Google Ads.
Google Ads are great to add to existing results from organic and GBP ranking. It is not uncommon that the cost per customer is $200 using Google Ads, where as the cost per customer from organic/GBP is more like $20.
Although $200 per customer seems high, blending it with customers from organic/GBP makes the most sense. For example, if you get 4 customers organically and one from Google Ads, the blended cost is $56 per customer.
Click this article to get 3rd party expert advice on using Google Ads.
