How Local Businesses Grow With SEO, Branding, and Paid Ads

PodCast | May 26, 2025

Victor Huynh is the CEO and Head of Digital Strategy at Ready Artwork, a digital marketing agency dedicated to B2B services. Born in San Diego, California, to an immigrant family, Victor embodies the entrepreneurial spirit instilled in him from a young age. He holds a background in graphic design, which propelled him into a marketing manager role early in his career and ultimately led to the creation of Ready Artwork over two decades ago. Throughout his professional journey, Victor has proven to be a versatile leader, serving as the Monrovia Chamber of Commerce President during the pandemic and advocating for local businesses.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:45] Victor Huynh reflects on Ready Artwork’s decade-long relationship with a local music academy and the early logo design era
[4:47] How local SEO and free trial lessons became the client’s most effective lead generation strategy
[12:31] Why most website mistakes come from not knowing what you don’t know
[17:04] Understanding seasonality in marketing metrics and why year-over-year comparisons matter more than month-to-month
[20:04] How identifying a second target audience helped a music academy attract and recruit quality teaching talent
[22:09] Building a digital strategy fast for a dental practice using paid ads to deliver immediate ROI
[26:20] HIPAA-compliant call tracking setup that allowed better attribution and lead quality feedback
[29:07] The importance of maintaining marketing investment during downturns to avoid steeper business declines
[34:06] Key differences between local SEO and traditional SEO, and why geographic relevance matters for visibility

In this episode…

Many local businesses struggle to stand out online, even when their products or services are top-notch. With rising competition and a fast-changing digital landscape, the question becomes: how can local businesses create a marketing strategy that actually drives measurable growth?

According to Victor Huynh, a digital strategist and branding expert, the key is aligning branding, SEO, and paid ads with a business’ unique value proposition. He highlights the importance of understanding customer behavior. Additionally, Victor stresses that a business’ lifetime value and order size are critical to determining how aggressive and effective their marketing efforts can be. With insights into branding psychology, web usability, and the role of Google reviews, Victor paints a clear picture of what separates thriving local brands from those that get left behind.

In this episode of RAW Spotlight, Emily Au and Victor Huynh discuss how SEO, branding, and paid advertising fuel growth for local businesses. They explore optimizing for high-converting KPIs, building websites that address real user needs, and how seasonality impacts marketing performance. Victor also shares how to identify and market to multiple customer segments.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

“Our job as marketers is to get them those free trial lessons, right?”
“You don’t know what you don’t know, right? So it’s not like you’re purposely going out making mistakes.”
“When everyone’s pulling back, that’s when… it makes sense to invest and market.”
“Google, especially now with AI, is reading through people’s experiences and they’re able to classify sentiment.”
“You have to understand why we have the website and what are all the obstacles we need to navigate.”

Action Steps

Identify your highest converting lead type: Focusing on what converts best, like free trial lessons, maximizes ROI and marketing efficiency.
Align branding with digital strategy: Strong, consistent branding boosts trust and raises conversion rates across SEO, ads, and web experiences.
Invest in call tracking and attribution tools: Knowing exactly where leads come from enables smarter ad spending and faster optimization.
Address multiple target audiences: Recognizing and marketing to secondary audiences, like job seekers, can unlock new growth opportunities.
Leverage Google reviews for local SEO: Positive reviews improve rankings, build credibility, and directly influence customer decisions and search visibility.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Ready Artwork, where we deliver uniquely tailored B2B digital marketing services to facilitate the long-term growth of your business.

At Ready Artwork, we combine data-driven insights with innovative design to help your business thrive in the digital age. From SEO and digital advertising to web development and email marketing, we have experts who help companies uncover growth in unexplored and extraordinary ways.

To learn more, visit readyartwork.com or get a free proposal. Let Ready Artwork discover your full potential.