10 Best Ways to Promote Your Business Locally (Free & Paid)

Last updated on January 5th, 2026 at 11:13 am

Looking for ways to promote your business locally?

Well, I’ve got good news.

First, there is much less competition when you choose to focus on advertising and marketing a business on a local scale (vs. a nationwide scale).

So the path ahead won’t be too treacherous.

Second, there are tons of tried-and-tested ways to build brand awareness, generate leads, and make more sales as a local small business — you don’t have to try something crazy… just do what’s proven to work!

And third, we’ve listed all of those refined-by-fire tactics for you below.

Only the best of the best.

We’ve got five free promotion methods and five paid promotion methods.

Free Ways to Promote Your Business Locally

Who doesn’t love free promotional methods that are proven to provide excellent results?

Here are five!

1. Use a Sales Funnel (Not a Website)

This is ground zero for your digital marketing success.

As you might expect, even though we’re talking about promoting your business locally… you’ve still got to get your business online.

And you might think, Ah! Yes. I’ve already got a website. No worries 😎

BUT…

That’s not good enough.

Check out the video below to find out why.

You don’t need a website, you need a sales funnel.

Where a website is sort of like a digital brochure that allows people to go wherever they want…

… a sales funnel is an experience that guides people toward taking the one action you want them to take, page by page.

Let’s look at a quick example.

You want to promote your business locally, right?

Well… it just so happens that we have a free training where you can learn exactly how small business owners just like you are using sales funnel to fill their businesses with their dream customers.

See what we did there?

We’re using a sales funnel… to get you to sign up for a training on sales funnels (meta, I know).

But it works!

Notice how there’s no navigation on that page… there’s nowhere else to go except for deeper into the sales funnel.

That’s the point.

You don’t want people to be randomly perusing your website.

You want people to take action.

That’s what sales funnels will help you with — you should be driving all of your online traffic to sales funnels rather than websites if you want to get better results.

Click the link below to dive straight into our free training!

Learn How To Use Brick-And-Mortar Funnels For Mind-Blowing Results (FREE)!

2. Get a Google Business Profile

If you don’t have a Google Business Profile… then you’re missing out on a LOT of potential leads, traffic, and sales.

It’s 100% free and it’ll help your business to be easier to find when people are searching in Google.

Here’s the link to set up your profile.

You can add photos, hours of operation, phone number, address, and other pertinent information.

Here’s an example of what these listings look like in Google.

This is an absolute must for local businesses.

It’s also worth creating a process for people to leave reviews on your Google Business account after visiting your business. The more reviews you have and the better those reviews are, the more traffic and leads your profile will generate.

But Google isn’t the only free place where you can list your business (although it probably is the most valuable).

Here are a few other places where we recommend listing your business as well..

Facebook
Apple Maps
Bing
Yelp

The more places where you list your business, the more opportunities there will be for people to find you online.

3. Nail Local Search Optimization

Getting a Google Business Profile will help your business be found in Google.

But that’s only the beginning.

Here are some other things you can do to drive more organic search traffic to your local business website or sales funnel…

Optimize Your Homepage

What’s the most important page of your website or sales funnel?

The first one!

That’s called your homepage or your landing page.

To get that ranking in Google, start by identifying the highest value keyword phrase you can go after — you can do some basic keyword research for free with Ubersuggest.

The most important keyword for you to target will be pretty basic: something like “[business] in [city]”

If you’re a dentist, then you might target something like “Best Dentist in Honolulu”.

Once you’ve decided on a term to target, put that exact phrase in your title tag, meta description, and URL of your homepage.

Collect SEO Citations

Citations are where other sites mention you (and link back) to your own site. Google uses that information to determine the credibility and trustworthiness of your website, which impacts how well it ranks.

The easiest place to get citations for local businesses is in directories. Here’s a long list of directories you can get listed on.

That’s a lot. But the more of these where you get your business listed, the better your rankings will be!

Start a Blog

Starting a blog will give you the opportunity to rank for various local keyword phrases that your target market types into Google.

Christopher Ellyn Homes, for instance, a real estate investing company in Indiana, has tons of blog content targeting local keyword phrases.

This allows them to rank for many different high-value phrases, driving both traffic and leads online.

You can do something similar!

4. Create an Email List

Building an email list is absolutely critical to your ongoing success.

Think of your email list as a well — whenever you need, you can go to it, dip in a pale, and pull out some water.

Except the water is money and the pale is email campaigns.

It’s an asset for your business.

By building an email list, you can market directly to people who’ve bought from you before (without paying to reach them) and capitalize on the value of return customers.

What am I talking about?

Check out these stats…

The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70 percent. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20 percent
80 percent of your future profits will come from just 20 percent of your existing customers
65 percent of a company’s business comes from existing customers

Whenever possible, collect email addresses from people who buy from you so that you can keep marketing and selling to them over and over again.

You can build an email list with ClickFunnels.

5. Attend Community Events

It’s difficult to quantify the value of having your business attend local community events, such as…

Farmer’s Markets
Charity Events
Local Meetups

But one thing’s for certain…

The more active your business is in the community where you operate, the more brand awareness you’re going to build.

And the more brand awareness you build, the more customers you’re going to acquire naturally just by word-of-mouth and good ol’ fashioned brand awareness.

Paid Ways to Promote Your Business Locally

Free is great.

But sometimes you need to pay some money to grow faster. Here are the five best-paid ways to promote your business locally.

6. Run Local Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are one of the most effective (and affordable) ways to reach new customers in your area.

You can target people by their location, interests, and even behaviors.

For example, if you own a pizza place, you could target people who live within 5 miles of your store and who have shown an interest in other pizza places in the past.

You can also use “lookalike audiences” to target people who are similar to your current customers — or remarketing advertisements to target your existing customers (after all… who just buys pizza once???).

Paid Ways To Promote Your Business Locally, Felix and Oscar's example.

This is a powerful way to reach your new and existing customers.

The best part? You only pay when someone takes an action that you specify, such as clicking on your ad.

This makes Facebook Ads an extremely cost-effective way to reach new customers.

7. Send Direct Mail

For some companies — such as real estate agents, dentists’ offices, preschools, and chiropractors — direct mail is still an effective way to reach new customers, even in the age of digital marketing.

The key is to make your direct mail piece stand out so that people actually open it and read it.

One way to do this is to personalize the envelope with the recipient’s name and address.

You can also include a QR code that people can scan to get more information about your offer.

Paid Ways To Promote Your Business Locally, send direct mail.

If you do decide to use direct mail to promote your business, make sure to track your results so that you know how much each new customer costs you.

This will help you determine whether or not direct mail is a worthwhile investment for your business.

8. Run Location-Based Google Ads

Google Ads is another effective way to reach new customers in your area.

With Google Ads, you can target people who are searching for the products or services that you offer in your area.

For example, if you’re a plumber in Los Angeles, you could target people who are searching for “plumbers in Los Angeles” or “Los Angeles plumbers.”

You can also target people who are searching for general terms related to your business, such as “plumbing services” or “plumbing repairs.”

Speaking of which, check out all of these ads…

This is similar to working on your website’s SEO… but instead waiting months to get to the first page, you’re paying to show up in the paid search results at the top of the page.

Google Ads can be a great way to reach new customers, but it’s important to track your results so that you know how much each new customer costs you.

9. Pay for Local Sponsorships

Another great way to promote your business locally is to pay for sponsorships at local events or with local businesses.

For example, you could sponsor a little league team, a 5k race, a local charity event, or a local radio station.

This is a great way to get your brand in front of potential customers and to build goodwill in the community.

Just make sure that you’re sponsoring an event or business that is relevant to your target market.

10. Run a Giveaway or Contest

Paid Ways To Promote Your Business Locally, giveaway contest example.

People love free stuff.

And if you run a giveaway or contest, you can get people to sign up for your email list, follow you on social media, or even come into your store.

To run a successful giveaway or contest, make sure to promote it heavily through your website, social media, and email list.

You can also partner with other businesses in your area to promote the giveaway or contest.

For example, if you’re a clothing store, you could partner with a local hair salon to give away a free haircut and style with every purchase.

Just make sure that the giveaway you’re hosting will attract the right people (i.e. your target market) and not just a ton of random people.

Final Thoughts

There you have it!

Those are the 10 best ways we know of for local businesses to generate leads and make sales.

If you’re ready for the next step, and if you want to learn how to get more of your dream customers through your door like clockwork, then click below to sign up for our free training.

It’ll blow your mind. 🙂

Learn How To Use Brick-And-Mortar Funnels For Mind-Blowing Results (FREE)!

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