How To Grow Your Local Business Fast When Traffic Is Down

Send us a text

Are you stuck trying to figure out how to grow your local business? Has foot traffic been down? Just posting on social media isn’t enough anymore—but don’t worry, I’ve got you covered!

In this video, we’re diving into simple strategies that actually work to market your business and attract local customers. 
✔️ Transform your entire marketing strategy in just one hour a month
✔️ Game-changing approach to content creation that fits into the busiest of schedules
✔️ Feel more confident in organizing your digital content
✔️ Turns heads on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube Shorts.

Whether you’re just starting out or ready to take things to the next level, this video is packed with actionable tips you can use right away.

Hit play to learn how to grow your local business and start seeing real results! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share—let’s grow together! 🚀

Key Moments:
00:00 - Introduction
Marketing your local business: What’s the key?

00:48 - Overwhelm in Marketing
Acknowledging the challenges of juggling it all.

01:00 - The 1-Hour Content Plan
How spending one hour a month can revolutionize your marketing.

01:27 - Creative vs. Analytical Approaches
Tailoring content creation strategies to your strengths.

02:50 - Organizing Content for Success
Using folders to simplify and strategize your visuals.

04:00 - Capturing Great Photos and Videos
Practical tips for creating calming, engaging visuals.

05:50 - Choosing Your Platforms
Where to start: Instagram, Facebook, and beyond.

07:00 - The Power of YouTube Shorts
Why YouTube is essential for local visibility.

08:29 - Leveraging Pinterest for SEO
How Pinterest can save you when Google reshuffles.

09:30 - Google Business Basics
The importance of optimizing your Google Business profile.

09:50 - Bing and ChatGPT Integration
Why Bing matters for local search visibility.

10:19 - Repurposing Content
Making your photos and videos work harder for you.

10:48 - Planning for Seasonal Success
Preparing during slower seasons to stay ahead during busy times.

11:23 - Closing Thoughts
Final tips and encouragement to take action.

---

🚨 Feeling stuck when it comes to finding new clients? 🚨

Discover a fresh approach in my video, "How to Get Unstuck: Mindset Shift." I'll show you how to transform your FREE content into a steady stream of high-paying clients using a game-changing framework for lead generation.

👉 Watch now and start seeing results: https://youtu.be/6fB5ssqy5Ws?si=fyhnAzEpGOVA_KBM

---------
About Brenda Eckhardt:
Brenda Eckhardt is a seasoned photographer and marketing strategist with over 20 years of experience helping individuals and businesses shine. Known for capturing timeless senior and family portraits, Brenda’s work goes beyond photography—she empowers small business owners and social media managers to confidently grow their online presence. Through personalized consulting, captivating content creation, and strategic guidance, she combines creativity with proven m

🎧 Like what you hear? Follow the show and leave a review it helps others to find this podcast.

📥 Grab your free Content Clarity Planner
📸 Connect on Instagram
🌐 Explore free resources + programs
💬 Ready to grow your business with clarity and less stress? Apply to wo

Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 (00:00):
Marketing your local business?
How do you grow?
What really is the key?
If we had to put everythingthrough a sifter and shake it
all out and say, okay, what isthe one thing that I really need
to do?
That's going to move thatneedle, that's going to help me
to get things going, get morefeet in the door or more orders
through my Shopify account.

(00:21):
What is it?
What can I do and what isreasonable within your already
constrained time?
Because I get it.
You're probably already feelinglike you're doing all the things
.
Your brain is probably veryfull at the end of the week, if
not the end of the day, ordriving in on Monday to wherever
you go to your business, orgetting your laptop out.
You're already feeling thatoverwhelm.

(00:42):
I acknowledge you and I get it,because that is very real and
it can be paralyzing.
What I believe will be left ifyou shake it all out, sift it
through, is one hour of contentcapturing per month.
You will revolutionize yourmarketing for free.
All it costs you is your time.
So what does that really mean?
Do you need to be aphotographer, a creative person?

(01:03):
No, you don't.
You don't have to be any kindof creative person.
If you're a creative person andyou're watching this video and
thinking about how can I grow mybusiness, I would bet that your
camera roll already looks likeyou have all kinds of hodgepodge
videos and pictures from yourbusiness, your people, your
product and your behind thescenes.
If you're not a creative personand you're more scientific or

(01:26):
more like spreadsheet kind of athinker, you probably don't have
a ton on your phone related toyour business.
Both are okay.
If you're that creative person,you just need to spend time, and
probably that hour of the firstmonth, organizing things into
Google Photos based on topic.
Maybe allow yourself to have 10pictures and videos per folder.

(01:46):
Let's say that you are in ainterior design business.
You would do only living roomsin one folder or one home with a
lot of different angles andphotos and videos of that living
room.
If you're in a sell candles,let's go back to the candle
topic.
Have a video of candles thatare per season or your new line,

(02:09):
or only a certain size, only ascent family in one, maybe to
give as gifts ideal for mom,perfect for a friend.
Just make subfolders, even ifyou don't put anything in it yet
, but that relate to what thatpost could look like who that
will appeal to, and that's howyou start to idea generate.

(02:30):
What content should I capture inthat hour per month?
If you're more of a scientificperson, that's also a really
great place to start, becauseyou need to have some context if
you think more in a spreadsheetway in your brain, to know what
to photograph and what to takevideo of.
So the example I'm using isthis home that I photographed

(02:51):
and took video of for a localremodeler and I spent less than
an hour in the home and all Idid was do walkthrough videos
and as I was walking through Iremember thinking that when I've
worked side by side withbusiness owners, there's a lot
of like nervous energy and a lotof quick panning and kind of
jerking the phone a little bitbecause you're excited and

(03:14):
you're kind of having fun beingthe photographer, videographer.
Think of it as your customerneeds a calming feed in this
very noisy world.
Slow it down, just take slowpans of the room.
If you're taking video of yourproduct, just do kind of a 90
degree pan around the productand be really slow about it.

(03:34):
Go up and down and just getgreat angles of whatever that
product is, and that's a realwaiting to happen or a TikTok
waiting to happen.
So those photos and videos thengo into those subfolders and,
as far as the platforms go fromthere, like, where do you take
all this?
What do you do?
First, I like to think ofInstagram and Facebook first.

(03:57):
It's just we're all the mostfamiliar with because they've
been around the longest.
So Instagram, start withFacebook and Instagram and make
sure those are connected so thatwhen you post to Instagram or
in Business Manager on Facebook,that it saves you time because
the post, one post will go upsimultaneously to both platforms

(04:17):
.
So Instagram and Facebook.
Next is, I believe, in order ofimportance, is YouTube Shorts.
If you don't have a YouTubeaccount, I don't care what
business type or industry you'rein, I recommend getting one
because it is searchable inlocal Google searches.
If you go to Google right nowand you search your business

(04:37):
type and location for me itwould be, let's just use the
example photographers, madison,wisconsin You'll see videos show
up in the feed on the main pageand then, if you click on
videos, a lot of those videosare all populated from YouTube,
especially YouTube Shorts, thatthey're being pushed out right
now and you want to hop ontothat because those reach a lot

(05:01):
of people and they can be reallynarrowed to your location by
using the right keywords.
You get a very small amount ofwords allowed in YouTube Shorts,
but if you do it correctly, toyour location, with a unique
word and something that sparkssomebody's interest, it's gold.
So YouTube Shorts, pinterest.
If you're in a creativebusiness, you can definitely

(05:24):
keyword your posts to localsearches.
I had amazing luck withPinterest when Google has
reshuffled in the past.
I don't know if you've everexperienced that, but when
Google reshuffles it can beearth shattering for a one
person, local business Becauseif you fall off the map or not
really off the map, but if youfall off the first five or six

(05:47):
listings you're probably notgoing to be busy.
So thank goodness for me thatI've always used Pinterest and
used it for SEO, so you canconnect your Pinterest to
Instagram now and have thoseposts go up also simultaneously,
whether it's reels or yourstatic posts, your carousels.
If you look on my PinterestBrenda Eckhart photography and

(06:11):
creative media you will see myposts go up.
Now I haven't optimized a lotof those, but in the dark winter
, when it's very quiet for me,then I go back and start
keywording specifically in a waythat Pinterest likes and you
can research that to adjust yourkeywording for those particular
pins Pinterest can be reallypowerful.
Don't sleep on Pinterest.

(06:32):
Next would be in my mind, tiktok.
If you do a lot of behind thescenes and like this face to
camera short although they arepushing out more 10 minute
videos but if you use TikTok,that's a whole separate content
creation type.
I don't believe that Reels orFacebook kind of videos short

(06:53):
form YouTube shorts perform wellon TikTok.
I've just never seen it.
But next up would be GoogleBusiness for SEO purposes and
for people to find you locally.
So take 10 or 20 of the photosthat you took and videos and
upload them just to your Googlebusiness profile.
You don't have to do anythingspecial, you don't even have to

(07:13):
caption them if you don't wantto.
They go in your account and ifyour account is already
optimized to your location,you're just kind of feeding the
Google machine.
If you're a main streetbusiness, google business should
jump to number one aboveInstagram and Facebook, and
Instagram and Facebook should benumber two, by the way, because
you need that foot traffic.
So then, on Google Business,secondarily to just adding your

(07:36):
photos, do a post once a month.
You can do posts on GoogleBusiness and keyword it to the
season, the time of year, or youcan even keyword it to cities
that maybe are nearby that youwant to tap into or a style that
you want to jump on that trendand get people to come to you.
Let's say it would be decks.

(07:57):
If you're a deck builder,springtime you're going to want
to.
Well, wintertime you're goingto want to say, hey, get on my
schedule for a deck this spring,or get a quote, whatever
wording you would use.
But then put the locations thatyou want to target in that
caption for that post on Googlebusiness and do that once a
month.
Bing should be connected to yourGoogle business.

(08:18):
It's easy to do.
If you go into your Googleaccount and your Bing account,
you make sure you're signed intoboth.
You can connect them so thatwhenever you do anything in
Google business, itautomatically, the more that it
is now searching the web foranswers to give you sourcing,
like if you ask who's the bestdetailer for cars in my area, it

(08:42):
will search Bing, not Google.
It's a Bing platform, so you'llwant to make sure that you're
not sleeping on Bing and notupdating that, and if you don't
have a Bing account and you're alocal business, that's really
critical that you do that,because more people are now
using ChatGPT as a search enginethan even Google.
So things to think about.
I hope you're taking notes ifthis is a lot of new information

(09:05):
to you, and if you did, I don'twant this to overwhelm you.
Take notes and then justhighlight what you think you
should be doing first and don'tlet yourself get overwhelmed
because I'm throwing a lot ofinformation at you.
So that about does it.
As we end this video, you'llsee all the different ways that
I have multi-purposed photos andvideos from that home that I

(09:28):
spent less than an hour in andthey can be reposted every few
months in different ways fordifferent topics.
Again, thinking back to theGoogle folder concept, that is a
great way for you to finddifferent ways to repurpose the
same photos and videos, andpeople forget, they don't always
see your posts, so don't beafraid to do that.
Just keep rotating through, andI know that business can be very

(09:51):
seasonal depending on whatyou're in, and it's important in
the busier months to really padthat photo, that camera roll,
so you have a lot to work within the winter, when you actually
have time to go through, and orsummer, depending on what
season your business is seasonalin to be able to organize and
really get things scheduled outso that when your busy season

(10:12):
comes up again, you don't reallyhave to think about it as much.
It's kind of on autopilot, orat least it's very easy to
access to quickly get postsready and out.
I hope that this helped you.
I'd love to hear your feedback.
Please subscribe and like thisYouTube channel.
I would love it if you followedme and I would love it if you
gave a review and if you'relistening to this on the podcast

(10:34):
.
All right, well, have a greatday and I'll talk to you next
time.