Buffalo local marketing: answer the door before you buy the crowd.

Buffalo's calendar hands you dates. The Allentown Art Festival comes in June, Taste of Buffalo in July, the National Buffalo Wing Festival in late summer, and the YMCA Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. Every one of them can send somebody to your listing, in our opinion, and then to your homepage. On the homepages we tested, 75% had tap-to-call and 48% stopped there, about the same as our 31-city sample's 45%. 31 of 44 had no lead form we counted, and the ones that did may include newsletter sign-ups. We'd guess a visitor in a crowd can't hear a phone, and on those pages she may have little else to do.

Here's the order we'd use. First, your Google Business Profile, since it's free and it may be all a person near the festival ever sees. Hours, photographs and the areas you serve. Second, reviews, requested at the close of each job and answered when they come, on Yelp as well if your trade lives there. Third, a second way in on the homepage. Fourth, ads, one small campaign tied to a date, with a landing page built for it. A campaign aimed at one weekend is easy to judge. It either paid or it didn't.

Local marketing starts at $575 a month, with the price depending on complexity, setup and budget, and ad spend goes straight to the platform. Trades differ here. The 5 beauty sites we tested had 2 booking tools and 0 tap-to-call links, too few sites to call a pattern, and a salon would probably lead with booking anyway. The 15 professional-services sites had 93% tap-to-call, and an accounting or financial office may have little reason to chase a festival. A restaurant might have every reason. The Buffalo report has the measurements. Tell us what you sell and where, and we'll tell you where we'd put the first month.