Richmond local marketing starts with a phone number you can tap.

A marketing plan is a way of paying people to look at your homepage, so start there. Tap-to-call shows on 25 of the 43 homepages we tested, 58% against 72% in our 31-city sample. 13 offered no phone link, form or booking tool that we counted, 30% against 17%. On a modest sample, each of those is a gap of a few sites. We looked at homepages only, without counting email links or contact pages, so a form one click in wouldn't show. Health shows the same lean: 7 of 10 sites had tap-to-call, against 88% of 310 in the sample, on a small group. Before you buy traffic, make sure a visitor has something to tap.

Then the free part. Your Google Business Profile should say where you are, in a city with 9,349 business establishments and two counties at its edges, and it should match the site. A lead form, which can be a newsletter sign-up, shows on 11 of 43, 26% against 31%, and booking on 7, both about the same. A phone link stands alone on 15, 35% against 45%, another gap of a few sites. Reviews we didn't measure, though we'd ask after every job and reply to what comes back. For a law firm or clinic, check with your own adviser or board what you may say in reply.

Ads can come after that, and the calendar gives you some dates. The Monument Avenue 10K runs in April, the Richmond Folk Festival is held on the downtown riverfront in October, and the marathon comes in November. A restaurant can buy those weeks with Google Ads and then stop. Flying Squirrels and Kickers home dates, and VCU and Richmond game days, may matter too, if you're nearby. A professional office may do better with a steady small budget on the one service it most wants, and we'd test that before scaling anything. We charge from $575 a month for local marketing, depending on complexity, setup and budget. You pay the ad spend to the platform yourself. You can read the full test in the Richmond report. Tell us which week of the year you'd like busier, and we'd plan from there.