As Boris Johnson announced the end of all the ridiculous Covid measures so called introduced to combat the Omicron variant which has been proven to be nothing more than a mid upper respiratory cold, many small businesses and tradesmen have given a sigh of relief after seemingly being targeted by Governments across the world whilst big box stores and global chains where aloud to make massive profits.
During the coronavirus years it was reported that more than 17,500 shops, restaurants, leisure and hospitality venues went into administration or simply closed their doors after being told that they couldn't open because they were non-essential whilst the large chain next door was allowed to continue trading whilst selling much of the same merchandise.
Small independent retail stores didn't stand a chance and simply called it a day whilst tradesmen such as plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, fencing contractors, driveway installers etc could legally continue to offer their services because they worked on site or at the clients home, so could not be targeted by the same covid rules that where crippling many small businesses, businesses that operated from a physical location and needed customers to come to them to purchase their products or services. It's been said that these retail stores could still sell online but with online sales dominated by the likes of Amazon coupled with increased competition this simple wasn't profitable for a number of small retails stores who relied on foot traffic.
It Wasn't All Plain Sailing For Tradesmen Either
Even though they where not required to closed down it wasn't all plain sailing for independent tradesmen either because the same quantity of work wasn't there like it was before the pandemic.
People where worried about their jobs being secure and still being there when it was all over. People where also worried about finances in general and many homeowners cancelled or delayed any home improvements. Of course not everyone fell for the exaggerated pandemic numbers and continued as normal but this meant that there were fewer leads going round and to survive a tradesman had to be on the ball, so to speak when it came to advertising and promotion and grab every crumb of work.
Tradesmen such as independent locksmiths for example where now surviving on jobs from people locked out of their home, office or vehicle - emergency call out jobs - rather than jobs from people wanting lock upgrades or new security products such as floodlights, burglar alarms or CCTV systems and the locksmiths who survived where the ones who contacted professional marketing companies in an effort to get a higher percentage of the available leads, those locksmiths who just sat there waiting for the phone to ring didn't get the work and many called it a day and became just another lock down statistic.
Can Small Businesses and Tradesmen Afford Internet Marketing
Some people wrongly believe that small businesses and independent tradesmen simply can't afford to pay for internet marketing especially when they hear about the massive amount of money some online companies spend with marketing agencies, but this is a myth.
Independent tradesmen want local work, so only require local SEO which is a lot different than standard SEO, in fact the algorithms Google uses for local businesses differs a great deal to their standard algorithm and does in fact favour smaller, local businesses over national corporations.
A locksmith will typically target 5 - 10 miles around their location if they are based in a densely populated urban town, for example, a locksmith in Lancaster or Morecambe, towns that are situated in a heavily populated area of Lancashire wouldn't need to travel too far from base but if their location is in a more rural area, a locksmith in Clydebank, Scotland for example, then they will usually cover a much larger area, say 25 miles radius maybe wider.
How to Choose a Reliable Marketing Agency for Local SEO
If a small local businesses is vigilant when choosing a reliable, professional marketing company then they can easily bring in 10 times the cost of their marketing each month, sometimes more, however, in the unregulated internet marketing industry amateurs and scammers are widespread and as a rule of thumb you should avoid any company or agency asking you to sign any kind of minimum term contract as this usually indicates a company who is going to fail to rank you, I mean you wouldn't leave a marketing company after a couple of months if their work was bringing in business every month, would you? With that in mind it's clear that minimum term contracts are totally unnecessary unless the company is dodgy.
Another good idea is to ask who else they have ranked in the past and request case studies. A genuine marketing company will have no issue in giving you names and details of their other local business clients or supplying marketing data showing the client climbing the rankings, data which all genuine marketing company collect.
Local SEO can make a difference when it comes to operating a successful local business
