A Super-Successful Local Business...Without Social Media?!

Better Product Won't Sell Itself

There's the old saying of "If you build it, they will come", and maybe that's true but it takes time. So when you're a new business and budgets are tight - time is not something you have a lot of to spend waiting for new customers.

Fortunately this business was offering up one of my favorite dishes - Poke' bowls, a hawaiian style rice bowl that I can't get enough of. Once I heard their story I had to jump in not only to see them succeed, but to make sure I could always eat my favorite dish from an amazing shop!

Combining affordable marketing, rock solid business profiles, and a bit of personal branding - this business was so successful they could open a 2nd location in 1 year!

The Problem:

Relying on a beautiful or unique product to market for you is not always a successful strategy. Sometimes you're unknown too long to survive long enough to be found. This then creates its own problem, leaving no budget to invest in marketing to be found...

That was the case here - all the hard work put into a beautiful menu but no time and energy left to build beautiful online profiles. This business had opened to a friend-packed opening, only to level off to very low foot traffic, even with amazing dishes on offer.

Social Media Vs Local Profiles - Search Intent

Something inspires every business owner to open their shop. Maybe scrolling social media caused a chain of events to make everything happen. It's a big maybe, but that was the case here, so this business wanted to make sure their menu was social ready in photos.

The thing is, social media traffic only has a small % of people actually wanting what your business has to offer! Imagine instead being found be people looking for what you want such as "lunch near me". About 99% of those searches would love to find an amazing place to eat...but if they don't see you, then you're missing out on all of those new customers!

Ranking Locally Is So Powerful

Fortunately I caught this business owner early in their opening and was able to guide them the right way without too much lost time and effort.

We got them optimized to show up for "healthy food" among other popular keywords and quickly out-ranking their competition, driving large amounts of foot traffic to their doors. This was all done in the first months of opening due to the correct approach, with ranking local as their top priority.

Supercharging The Solution

Creating a local profile that does the heavy lifting for you is key, and once you do that - it allows something with a huge ROI - local search ads.

Confident in their local profile, we started running simple local ads and the results were amazing! Imagine spending $500 and earning $5,000 - it's like printing money! That's exactly what we did, and with little to no social media presence (200 followers) - this brand started selling like crazy.

All this additional revenue allowed them to aggressively position on delivery platforms to secure a huge amount of orders, driving up their popularity even more! Normally a business struggles to absorb the fees from ordering platforms, but in this case it served as a great marketing tool . Finally we created a personal touch thank you note on every order, helping to create brand loyalty + more direct orders - saving them massively in the long run!

In the end, they have 2 successful shops open now, both covering different parts of the city and making other businesses jealous at this rapid success. I have no doubt this brand is destined for great things, because they got their foundations setup right and will be impossible to topple from on top of their market.