The Local Marketing Stack

Name Address & Phone

Zone 1 • Difficulty: • Free Options Available

Your Name, Address and Phone are foundational to your identity as a business, and they’re not something you should change frequently, if ever.  If you’re just starting up, there are some less-than-obvious things to keep in mind—it’s harder than you might think.

Considerations:

• When possible, your name should be descriptive, unique, and memorable.
  Sure, there’s moderate SEO benefit to using keywords in your name, but it’s easy to go overboard and that’s a short-term strategy. Before you settle on a name, consider looking at namechk to make sure there are acceptable social media profiles and usernames available, as well as the TESS portal of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Even if you’re not planning to file a trademark application it’s a good idea to know whether there’s a high risk of brand confusion.
• If you’re a local business (as opposed to e-commerce), your location should be in the city from which you intend to draw most of your customers.
  Locating in a suburb or surrounding town will make it much more difficult to draw customers from a population center. A home office is just fine but consider whether you’re OK with people knowing it about it in your marketing materials. Keep in mind that a P.O. Box will not be eligible for a listing by many major online business portals including Google My Business.
• Should I get a local phone number or a toll-free 800 number?
  While 800 numbers may work well for ecommerce, if you’re a local business, area code phone numbers have actually been found to increase your conversion rate by as much as 100% in digital advertising case studies.