Local Lead Generation: Strategies, Tips & Software

Local lead generation is the act of attracting regional leads to your local business and converting them into interested prospects. This typically includes brick-and-mortar companies such as car dealerships, restaurants, retailers, and law offices. It can also include service businesses that perform work at local job sites, such as contractors and landscapers. The goal of local lead gen is to attract relevant local leads into your pipeline to then further qualify and nurture.

How Does Local Lead Generation Work?

There are many free and paid strategies for generating local leads. First, all local businesses should create an ideal customer profile so they know whom to target, as well as get listed on local directories and review sites. From there, there are various local lead generation tactics according to business type, marketing bandwidth and budget, and overall sales process. Local businesses will typically combine one or more of these strategies into a repeatable lead gen process.

The general process for creating an effective local lead generation system includes:

1. Define Your Ideal Customer: Determine who you're trying to attract so you can focus your lead generation efforts on the leads who are most likely to buy from you.
2. Get Listed on Local Directories: As a local business, submitting your company information to Yelp, Google, and Facebook will help new leads find you and verify that you're legitimate.
3. Build an Organic Online Presence: Use landing pages and lead magnets, your social media profiles, and other online tools to start earning the trust of your potential customers.
4. Create an In-Person Fan Base: Network at local events, organize or participate in community building activities, and ask for referrals to grow your existing list of leads.
5. Test Some Paid Strategies: After you establish your brand online and you earn organic traffic and a following, incorporate paid strategies like in-store promotions or online ads.

You can implement these steps and the associated strategies yourself or hire a lead generation company to help you. Certain types of software can also lighten your workload and take your lead generation to the next level. With proper local lead generation, a steady stream of new leads will discover your business for as long as you keep it going.

Top 9 Strategies for Local Lead Generation

There are nine main strategies for generating leads for your local business. We recommend trying all of the strategies below in the order they're listed, although you can pick and choose according to what you believe is a good fit for your business needs. Regardless of whether you implement all or some of the strategies, you must get your business listed on local online directories, so we'll start with that strategy below.

1. Submit Listings to Local Directories

First, get listed in your area on online ratings and review sites like Yelp, Google My Business, or Facebook. Over time, businesses listed on these sites accumulate positive reviews and clicks. As this occurs, their rankings in search results improve, so more searchers find them.

Here’s how to get your business listed on these three important sites:

• List Your Business on Yelp: Earning Yelp reviews helps you establish your local business’s credibility. You’ll often find Yelp lists of local businesses like “top ten X in your {area}” in Google Search results. Read Yelp’s article on how to list your business. 
• List Your Business on Google My Business: If listed here, your business will appear on Google Maps and Search. People googling things you offer will be able to find you. Getting listed takes just a few steps, which are outlined in Google’s article on adding your business.
• List Your Business on Facebook: Facebook can act as a local business directory. Create a Facebook business account and page, where you can acquire reviews and interact with fans. Read Hootsuite’s article on how to create a Facebook business page.

Getting your company on these sites helps you make your website more discoverable to searchers in the area and thereby win more leads. You can use a range of best practices to convince search engines that your business location deserves a high ranking in the search results — to learn them, check out Moz’s local SEO guide.

Here’s an example of this strategy in action. Imagine you’re craving a back massage, but you don’t know what businesses are nearby or open. You turn to Google and type in “back massage Manhattan.” Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account data like a business’s local content, social profile pages, links, and citations. It then provides users with the most relevant local results.

While it can take months for your page to rank, once it does, you’ll start earning free traffic to your website or landing page, which we'll talk about next. Or, better yet, leads will start walking over to your business and saying hello.

2. Create a Local Landing Page & Lead Magnet

After you've listed your business on all the key sites so your potential customers can know you exist and how to find you, consider creating a landing page to direct them to and a lead magnet to offer them once they reach the page. Let's dive further into landing pages and lead magnets.

Build a Local Landing Page

A local landing page is a web page built to attract potential leads in a specific geographical area to your business. Businesses with multiple locations should have a landing page for each that contains information about that particular location; this helps customers find them. Two local landing pages from the same business might have different information on their events, menu, phone number, address, hours of operation, and services offered.

Creating local landing pages for each of your business’s locations allows you to provide the crucial information your potential leads need when researching your business online. Therefore, you’ll heighten the chances the lead will visit or call your location. Building a landing page is easy when you have software solutions on your side — use a landing page builder to help you create one.

Offer a Lead Magnet

To capture the contact information from visitors, offer a lead magnet, aka a content upgrade, on your landing page. This is a valuable resource that the lead can receive if they give you their contact information. In location-specific businesses, these offers tend to be in-store discount codes, promotions, reservations, free trial codes, or free consultations, but they can also be ebooks, checklists, or other useful documents.

Lead magnets not only help you attract first-time leads to your store, but they also give you the information you need to keep them interested or coming back. For instance, if you collect local leads' email addresses, you can then use email nurturing to stay relevant — this means you can continue marketing to them through emailed coupons or other offers that will inspire them to visit you or your landing page again.

3. Build a Local Organic Social Media Following

Now that you have a landing page and lead magnet, it's time to build a local organic social community; you can then share your page and magnet with your new followers. To do this, create social media accounts across Facebook, LinkedIn, or other platforms and share free content your common buyer will enjoy. If they like what you post, they will start to consume more of your content, which will help them grow interested in and start to trust your business.

Here are some best practices for building a local social media following: 

• Create an Ideal Customer Profile: If you haven't already, analyze your current customer base and find attributes and interests they share to create a profile of them. This will help you create content that piques their interest so they’ll be likely to engage with it. 
• Choose the Right Platform: Do some research and figure out which platform your target buyers use. Survey your customers or look at your competitors’ social media pages to see if they have an active following on the platforms they use. 
• Involve Your Audience in Your Business: Give followers a sense of ownership and investment in your business by making posts asking for their opinions or engaging them in a conversation revolving around your business’s events, offerings, or strategic shifts. 
• Create Content Your Leads Will Find Valuable: Valuable content is entertaining, insightful, or educational. If you own a running apparel store, you might write and share posts that give advice on running or tell unique stories about runners. You can also share your lead magnet.

Johnny Velo Bikes' Facebook post below offers up an example of a creative and effective local social media post. Within one post, they involve and thank a customer and subtly promote one of their bikes without making an ask. Instead of sounding salesy, the post comes off as a helpful way for potential customers to understand whether this bike could also fit them. The post also features a dog, which many followers will connect with:

Managing and growing a social media following relies on your ability to provide valuable content to them, not on your ability to pitch your products or services. Every fifth post, you can include a call-to-action about an upcoming deal or a new product to get new leads into your location, but avoid relentless selling. Focus the majority of your posts on the three “Es” of social media marketing instead: educating, engaging, and entertaining.

4. Focus on In-Person Networking

While you're attracting potential customers on social media, also get out into your area and network with people to indirectly promote your business. Attend local events where your potential buyers hang out, and then strike up conversations with local residents and invite them into your store. If they don’t need your product or service, they might know someone who does.

Below are the specific steps to generate leads through networking:

• Identify Your Ideal Customer: Decide which type of person or business is most likely to become a customer and get use out of your product or service.
• Choose Certain Events to Attend: Using your ideal customer profile as a guide, select a few events to attend so you can meet them and build a relationship.
• Run Through Your Pitch: Before you attend each event, practice your sales pitch so that when you give it to interested leads, you sound natural and helpful.
• Gather Materials to Give Away: Grab some physical or virtual materials to bring to the event so you can leave them with leads you connect with.
• Connect With Attendees and Collect Info: At the event, meet and speak with people, and be sure to exchange contact information whenever there seems to be a good fit.
• Reach Out After the Event: Soon after the event, follow up with all leads that seemed to be a good fit so you can qualify them on a call and then start nurturing them.

The top business networking event types include trade shows, industry conferences, networking groups, local meetups, and online groups and events. As a local business, you can also try promoting your product or service at local festivals and markets to meet like-minded people who could be good customers.

5. Build a Community

Take networking a step further and start creating and cultivating new networks, otherwise known as in-person community building. Here, you’re essentially facilitating and cultivating relationships between people with similar interests. Host or sponsor events where potential leads will meet each other and participate in a group activity, all the while getting to know your brand and staff. For example, a local fantasy bookstore might hold weekly hour-long readings for kids in the area.

Below are some effective community building ideas: 

• Start a Local Volunteer Group: A local grocer might organize monthly trips to a shelter to serve food. 
• Host Weekly Events at Your Location: A chess store might host local tournaments in its shop. A BBQ restaurant might host grill-offs in its parking lot. 
• Partner With Complementary Companies: A drum store and a guitar store might co-sponsor a local music-oriented event that occurs each year.

The best part about community building is that it’s intrinsically valuable. Even if you fail to generate any leads from your efforts, you will gain priceless value-adds to your life, including leadership skills, a sense of purpose, and friendship. Plus, the people in the area will appreciate the community you’ve created for them, and your brand will therefore be top of mind to them, meaning they could turn into leads and customers down the line.

6. Earn Referrals

Next, ask for referrals from current customers or people you meet through networking or community building. You can receive referrals for free, or you can create marketing campaigns that incentivize customers to tell other people about your business by giving them rewards in exchange for the new customer. There are many effective strategies to earn referrals, some of which require more time, effort, or money than others.

Below are the main ways to generate referrals for your business:

• Request Them From Your Network: Ask for referrals from your current or past customers. You can also approach your network in case they have contacts that could be a good fit.
• Send a Survey to Your Customers: Create a customer satisfaction survey that passively asks for referrals.
• Earn Word-of-Mouth Recommendations: If you provide great service, your customers may organically recommend you to their network.
• Request Online Reviews: Gather testimonials or reviews on your local Google or Yelp listings so potential customers can see how you've helped people like them.
• Launch a Discount Program: Give customers the opportunity to refer someone to you in exchange for a discount on a future purchase.
• Create a Rewards Program: Give cash or a gift card to anyone who refers someone to your business if they end up becoming a customer.
• Establish an Agreement: Partner with complementary companies so you can cross-promote each other to customers.

There's also software that can help you with some of the ways above, such as PartnerStack or Ambassador for referral discount or rewards programs. Consider starting with the easiest, most affordable ways to earn referrals, like simply asking for them from your network or customers. Then you can add on some of the more structured, sophisticated programs when needed.

7. Create In-Store Materials & Promotions

When you've gotten the word out about your business, you can then start incentivizing leads to actually visit you. Create savings deals and activate creative pricing strategies, then advertise them to your target audience in the area. Bargain shoppers love buy-one-get-one-free deals, 50%-off sales, or free appetizers with a certain entree. You could also hold an in-store event that attracts people to your location, like a book reading from a famous author that you pay to attend.

Below are some tried-and-true ideas for implementing in-store promotions: 

• Run Giveaway Raffles: Give people a chance to win a shopping spree or a significant discount in return for their contact information. This takes advantage of the law of reciprocity — when you give people something for free, they'll want to give you something in return.
• Advertise the Promotion on Social Media: Use your social accounts to spread the word about your in-store promo. Create funny or interesting posts that your followers want to share with their friends and encourage them to attend. 
• Print Advertising Graphics: Label the items that are on sale. It also helps to place large graphic ads in the window; we’ve all entered a store after seeing a “70% off” sign.

Here's an example of a contest that offers a giveaway to the winner. Strand Book Store created the promotion and then posted it to their Facebook page and website to get the word out. This is a good example of an online promotion that could result in in-store visits:

If you get these deals in front of the right people, in-store or online promotions can be a great way to draw people to your store, office, or website. Plus, your business can get rid of some slow-moving stock or get a quick boost in cash flow during slow periods. Think through what you could give to your leads, especially anything that won't cost you much. That way, you'll build relationships but have money left over for online ads, which we'll look at now.

8. Run Local PPC Search Ads

Another way to invest in traffic to your website is by using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, aka running Google Search ads that target keywords relevant to your business. Through local PPC ads, you can target location-specific relevant keywords like “chiropractor San Diego County.” These ads then show up in the top 2-4 search results for the keywords you target, and you pay a small price whenever a user clicks on your ad.

Below are the high-level steps to set up your local Google Search ad:

• Identify Your Target Audience: Define the lead you're working to attract so you can focus your campaign on them and their needs.
• Map Your PPC Lead Funnel: Craft a relevant lead magnet, sales-focused landing page, and thank-you page, and set up the way you'll capture leads and deliver the lead magnet.
• Incorporate Relevant Keywords: Choose your keywords with help from Google Trends, Ahrefs, or other keyword tools; you can also expand your reach by targeting similar keywords.
• Create Your Campaign and Ad: Follow Google Ads' instructions to solidify your campaign details and get your ad listed.
• Capture Contact Information: Collect leads' information using your lead capture tool after they click your ad and are taken to your landing page.

There are also several best practices that will help you write an effective Google ad, including writing the keyword in the headline and listing your most sought-after services so the searcher can see that you solve their need, including testimonials and reviews to foster trust, and mentioning your lead magnet to inspire clicks.

The power of Google Search ads is that your business offer appears in front of searchers who are in a buying mood. Unlike organic search, the results for PPC ads are often immediate. Once your campaign is live, you can start advertising to potential leads in your area and watching the traffic roll in. However, beware that even though the Google ads show up at the top of the page, users are still far more likely to click on organic results — this is true for social media ads too.

9. Use Targeted Social Media Ads

Like PPC ads, most social media platforms offer advertisers the ability to create ads targeted to people in a specific region or location. This means that your ads are appearing only on the news feeds or inboxes of people within a defined proximity to your business location — a certain region, city, metro area, or zip code. You can also target based on other specifications so that you’re reaching only your ideal customers.

Common targeting factors include: 

• Demographics: These include gender, age group, education level, income, relationship status, and more. 
• Interest: Most social media platforms give you the option to target people with specific interests, from fishing to croquet. 
• Keywords: On Twitter, keyword targeting means reaching users who tweet certain words. On LinkedIn, it’s targeting users with certain professional characteristics like job title. On Facebook, it’s targeting people with specific words on their profile page. 
• Your Customer Data: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter let you upload lists of people and their data from your CRM so that you can advertise to them if they have profiles on the network.

Because of how targeted they can be, region-specific social media ads are a staple in most local lead generation campaigns. These ads can tell people to come to your store, they can instruct them to click on a lead magnet that will sweep the interested users away to your landing page and then request their information, or they can collect their details directly on the platform to reduce friction, such as in Facebook lead ads and LinkedIn lead gen forms.

If you'd like to advertise on social media but you don't have the time or expertise to set up and monitor a campaign yourself, you can also hire a social media advertising agency to help you. Each of these nine strategies tends to bring impressive results, and there are agencies and software to help with most of othem.

4 Best Local Lead Generation Software Types

Local lead generation strategies can seem like a lot of work, but there are some powerful software solutions out there that can enhance portions of your lead generation strategy. Let’s cover four of the best solution types, what they do, and whether you should use them for your specific business.

Marketing CRMsAd PlatformsGoogle ToolsSales Prospecting Tools

Marketing CRMs can help you generate leads via Google, social media, and your website, then nurture them via email. Marketing automation can also execute tasks for you according to how you want to generate leads, and website tracking will tell you whether your online efforts and landing pages are working. Local businesses that want to better define and speak to their target audience can benefit from this type of platform.

For more on these CRMs, check out our guide to the best marketing CRMs available. There, you'll find details on the top options, what they offer, and how much you should expect to pay.

Marketing CRM example (Zoho CRM)

Depending on the local lead generation strategies you choose to try, you'll find some of these software types to be more helpful than others. As you decide which strategies you believe will best help you generate local leads, keep these platform options in mind so you can track your results and stay organized in your efforts.

Top 4 Tips for Local Lead Generation

There are a few key tips that can help you successfully execute the nine strategies above. Take a look at the below to learn how you can impress your leads by providing value, prioritizing the right paid strategies, clearly listing your multiple brick-and-mortar locations if you have them, and improving the look and feel of your website.

These best practices largely help improve your leads' view of you as well as their understanding of how to find you and whether you can help them. With these strategies and the associated tips, you should see a spike in the amount of leads you generate for your local business.

Bottom Line: Local Lead Generation

Local lead generation is an ongoing process of finding new people who would benefit from your business and attracting them to your physical location. You can do this through various online means, but don’t forget the human aspect of local lead generation. Your business is a part of the community in which it resides. It supports and benefits the people who live there. So go out and meet those people, learn about them, and invite them in for a visit.