The Best Way to Sell Your Local SEO Strategy to Small Business Investors

It’s not simple to assist your client in expanding their brick-and-mortar operation.

In the current economic environment, when viruses and variants threaten the survival of long-standing brick-and-mortar firms all over the world, this attitude is even more potent. Business owners were already dealing with difficulties of a different nature before COVID-19 altered the way we consume and make purchasing decisions.

An often-cited American statistic According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of U.S. companies fail during the first year. That figure rises to 50% after five years. The best retailers of the twenty-first century, including Toys R Us, GNC, Pier 1 Imports, Sears, and J.C. Penny, all struggled. A record-breaking 9,500 brick-and-mortar retailers closed their doors in 2019. 12,500 additional stores closed in 2020.

But this isn’t a somber tale about the hotly contested future of physical commerce. In fact, the pandemic has made people more appreciative of local shops, eateries, and activities. During COVID, businesses that adapted their approach survived and even flourished, with those that quickly embraced online marketing particularly well-positioned. In reality, a lot of enterprises started during these turbulent times.

As a marketer, you must position yourself in a way that goes beyond the technicalities of citations, on-site optimization, and link building to aid clients. This is the key to expanding your SEO or marketing firm. Instead, think about how you might support your client’s business expansion and make your job essential to their success.

The Rise of New Businesses

In the United States, business launches surged by 24% between 2020 and 2022, although the country was experiencing one of the worst economic crises in contemporary history. There is growing interest in launching a business.

And everything makes sense when you connect the dots. Many Americans returned to activities they had abandoned during the height of COVID-19, reexamined their job ambitions as the unemployment rate increased, and considered their goals during the lockdown and social isolation. A record-breaking number of business plan templates were downloaded in 2022, according to my company Wise Business Plans, a consulting service for business plans.

No matter what kind of business your customer owns, they need a business plan to obtain a bank loan or raise money from investors. The modern business world is evolving, but one thing hasn’t changed.

Lenders demand strong business strategies and evidence of customer interest (such as traction) from brick-and-mortar enterprises to be satisfied.

It’s time to engage with your customer to include your local SEO strategy in their business plans if you want to assist them to raise money and renew their SEO and marketing contracts.

Integrating Your Local SEO Strategy Into Investor Documentation

Local SEO is essential for brick-and-mortar companies. Potential customers who want to buy right away are drawn by local SEO. Google estimates that almost half of all searches have a local focus, and as of 2015, 93% of local queries see the desired local pack. Additionally, “near me” searches on Google increased by almost double in 2020. Most local searchers go to a retailer within five miles of their location, and 18% of local mobile transactions result in a sale the same day.

Smart, modern marketers are aware of the value of local SEO and are probably familiar with the aforementioned figures (and used it in sales pitches of their own).

These data are crucial, though, because local SEO is rarely if ever, mentioned in business planning by most organizations. Why don’t fundraising documents utilize local SEO to demonstrate growth potential despite its proven effectiveness?

The first thing you should do is assist your customer in incorporating local SEO analytics and statistics into the portion of their company plan or pitch deck titled “marketing plan.” Since SEO is a foreign language to many lenders (accredited investors and financial institutions), they lack expertise in it.

Schedule Meetings

It’s time to start scheduling meetings with investors if both you and your client are confident in the facts you’ve gathered for their business plan. Consider attending these meetings with your client and creating a new income share agreement for your involvement even if you aren’t a member of the in-house staff. Having an SEO expert on-site will make your client seem more qualified, knowledgeable, and prepared to explain the competitive advantages of local SEO.

Depending on the kind of business your customer is doing, they will meet different types of investors. They are likely to meet with a bank lender for a straightforward coffee shop or retail establishment. On the other side, they might meet with an angel investor if they have recently opened their first coworking space.

It’s critical to convey the importance of local SEO at a meeting using straightforward language and verifiable facts, just like you would with a new client.

Here are some pointers to assist you in doing that:

• Use visual graphs. Communicating how local SEO plays a significant part in the company’s growth trajectory requires adhering to the maxim “show, don’t tell.” Use visually appealing bar charts, pie charts, and line graphs to demonstrate the effectiveness of local SEO.
• Share and explain growth reports. Lenders and investors aren’t always concerned with making a profit; many of them invest in businesses that make little money because they perceive long-term promises. Show clickthrough rates from local results in your Local Rank Tracker report, and note improvements in page ranking. Any indicator of progress will be beneficial.
• Cite statistics. Investors want proof that actual research has been done and pertinent data has been gathered. Fortunately, there is a wealth of publicly available data on local SEO, so you don’t need to employ a market research company to accomplish this for you.
• Avoid teaching. If you’ve ever tried to explain what SEO is or how it operates locally to a family member or acquaintance, you know that the topic can drag on for a while.
• Investors do not require or want a comprehensive course in SEO.
• Investors need information that is organized into simple parts and clearly explains the overall picture.

Competitor Analysis

You can mention the advantages of local SEO in the “Competitor Analysis” section of your client’s business plan in addition to the “Marketing Plan” section. Many competition analysis tools can show the local SEO work that other businesses are doing for their operation.

The competition analysis part of a conventional business plan focuses on a competitor’s market share, price, strengths, shortcomings, and client testimonials. But every SEO professional is aware of the immense worth of looking at their traffic, top-ranking keywords, and local influence. Utilize this information to support your case that your client is in a superior position to draw local clients than its rivals.

A Sample of a Local SEO Strategy for a Business Plan

Let’s look at the section on competitor analysis in a business plan for Autostar Transport Express, a firm that transports cars.

We obtained the following metrics for Autostar using Semrush’s Competitive Research Dashboard. It demonstrates that Autostar contributes 22.1K keywords to featured snippets.

Tip for communicating SEO lingo in simple terms:

Snippets: a few pertinent sentences taken from your website that are displayed at the top of search results pages.

Local Packs: a virtual business card that shows up alongside direct rivals at the top of search engine results on pages.

Here is a screenshot from the same competitive research study for Bottom of the Drip, a fictional neighborhood coffee business.

As you can see, Bohemian Cupsody will rank higher than Bottom of the Drip in search engine results, and people who are looking for nearby coffee shops are more likely to visit the former.

Conclusion

Marketers and SEO professionals use dashboard metrics to communicate progress to clients and sometimes include those reports in their business plans.

However, by leveraging your knowledge of local SEO and insight, you can uniquely position yourself to build a long-term partnership with your client by helping them secure funding that supports long-term contracts. Looking beyond financial plans and forecasts can help your clients prove their potential to lenders based on the place where almost every consumer begins to shop: Google.