Local marketing is an important element of a larger marketing strategy for a small business. It helps increase your brand awareness, get it in front of the local target audience, and patronize your business in the future. But what can you do to make your local marketing successful? In this guide, you will learn all you need to know about improving your local marketing strategy in order to help your business grow, develop, and succeed.
What types of businesses benefit from local marketing?
Regardless of the type of local business you have, it can benefit from local marketing. Local marketing allows you to nail down your local visibility, which is essential for any type of business. Let’s go through the list of factors that make local marketing so important for a small business, whether it is a retail store, law office, beauty salon, or a plumbing business:
- Local marketing is cost-effective. Most small businesses have a limited budget and do not have enough money to spend on large radius advertisement campaigns. Local marketing is a great solution for them because it usually incurs only a small amount of cost. Starting a local marketing campaign is still effective and it does not require the same financial investment as a national or statewide marketing strategy.
- Local marketing allows to reach the right audience. With proper local marketing, you have a chance to reach those people who are willing to purchase products or services your company offers. You can reach your target audience that is usually local. According to statistics, almost 46% of searches on Google look for local information and local businesses. Also, about 72% of people do not travel farther than five miles after searching for a business they are interested in. Also, according to HubSpot, searches that include the words “close by” and “near me” are getting more and more popular.
- Local marketing provides a good return on investment. Local marketing always creates a strong return on investment for local businesses. It allows them to target the right audience, which helps earn strong profits for businesses.
- Local marketing improves loyalty and brand awareness. With the help of local marketing, you let the local audience living in your area know that your business exists. As a result, they receive a chance to add your business to their understanding of the community, which increases the chances that they will start seeking your business out. Moreover, with the help of an effective local marketing strategy, you can tell people why they should choose your business over competitors. You can use a marketing strategy to tell people about the benefits of your business that the competitors do not have. You will emphasize your unique qualities and features that drive consumers to you.
- Local marketing creates meaningful partnerships. One of the main benefits of being a local business owner is that you can support your local community through meaningful partnership with other businesses. For example, you can donate a percentage of your sales to a local animal shelter and promote this partnership over social media.
Make sure your marketing has a solid foundation
When you start working on your marketing strategy for your local business, you need to make sure that your marketing has a solid foundation. Most local businesses face stiff competition, and that is why they need efficient marketing techniques. Here is what you can do to formulate an effective strong marketing foundation:
- Know your target audience and ideal customer. Regardless of the type of business you have and the type of products or services you offer, you should know as much as possible about your ideal customer. When you are analyzing your ideal customer, you should consider such things as the gender, age, marital status, occupation, geographical location, number of children and their age, their goals and values, their pain points and challenges, education level, income, why they are interested in your product and want to buy it, whether they are decision makers or not, and others. If you have this information about your ideal customer, it will be easier for you to decide what strategies and tools to use in your marketing.
- Understand your competitors. All businesses have competition. Therefore, when you start formulating your marketing foundation, you need to think about your competitors and analyze them. Take your time to analyze their products, to find their flaws, and to think about what can be improved. It is also recommended to find out what their customers say about their products.
- Establish a rapport with your consumers. Telling about your products or services is not enough. You also need to think about different ways to establish a good relationship with your customers. How can you help people fall in love with your product or service? You can use such strategies as free samples, discount vouchers, complimentary consultations or other services, discounted prices for a limited period of time, etc.
- Use a customer referral technique. If you want to help your business expand rapidly, you can use your existing customers who already love your brand and company to reach new customers. If your current customers like your product or service, they can help convince new customers to try it by using a technique known as “third party referrals”. How does it work? Your current customers refer others to you, and you reward them for that. There are different ways to reward them. For example, you can offer them a discount on the next purchase or offer free delivery.
Establish or improve your digital presence
Online presence for businesses is very important because over 90% of people using the Internet are searching for local businesses in their areas. However, it is important to understand that building and improving a digital presence for a small local company is different from developing one for a large national enterprise. Here is a list of effective ways that will help you improve the online presence of your local business:
- Create a website that is optimized for online devices. One of the first and most important steps in improving your digital presence is creating a website. When establishing a website, make sure to incorporate colors, fonts, images, and content that are relevant to your brand. Do not forget to optimize it for smartphones, tablets, and other devices. If you are not sure how to create a good website, you can always hire a professional specializing in building SEO-optimized websites.
- Produce quality and engaging content. Numerous studies have shown that one of the best ways to attract a wider audience is to produce valuable content for them. Moreover, quality content allows you to tell the world about your brand, your product or service, and its personality. You can create content that would emphasize the pain points of your audience, answer their questions, and offer solutions. There are many types of content that you can use. It can be articles, blog posts, video content, podcasts, and more.
- Make sure you have a social media presence. If you want to stand out from your competitors, you need to dominate and be active in the social media arena. What does it mean? It means you should use popular social media platforms to increase your brand awareness. It is very important because over 3.2 billion people in the world are active users of social media platforms. Therefore, if your business does not have a social media presence, your potential customers may not even know that your business exists. Moreover, a social media presence also helps your business be more transparent and establish a close relationship with the audience. If you wonder what social networks you should use, think about where your primary audience is. If your audience uses Instagram rather than Twitter, you should focus on Instagram marketing.
- Establish partnerships with other companies. You can network with other companies, podcasters, and bloggers by finding something you share in common. You can establish meaningful connections by sharing your passions, interests, and hobbies with them.
- Get your business listed on web directories. Listing on web directories helps you generate additional traffic to your website. Web directories can be especially helpful for local searches. You should select directories that will add real value to your business. The most popular web directories that you may want to consider include Google My Business, Apple Maps, Google Maps, Yelp, and Bing Places.
- Use paid search marketing or online advertising. Creating a paid advertising campaign with Google, Bing, or Yahoo is one of the most effective methods to improve your online presence. However, before creating it, you need to think about what exactly you want to promote. Do you want to promote your services, product, or email newsletter? Once you decide, find a platform or search engine that would work best for you.
Local marketing strategies you can start today
As a business owner, you may wonder what local marketing strategies you can start immediately in order to promote your local business. Here is a list of strategies you should consider:
- Sponsoring local events. One of the best ways to improve your brand awareness and talk about your company is to sponsor an event in your local community. When you are looking for an event to sponsor, choose the one that may attract new potential customers. For example, it is probably a bad idea to sponsor an event at a local night club if you want to promote your toy business.
- Introduce your business to the local media. Find newspapers, radio stations, or local TV channels that can tell people about your business. For example, you can contact local newspapers or magazines by sending them press releases or article ideas.
- Host a special “experience” event for your local community. Think about hosting an event that will be interesting, exciting, and memorable for the community. For example, you can turn a simple sales event into an enjoyable experience for shoppers by adding beverages and live music.
- Run local Facebook ads. By running Facebook ads, you can increase the familiarity of consumers with your brand and increase your sales.
These are only a few examples of local marketing strategies and tools that you can use today to promote your business and tell the local community about it. It does not matter what type of business you have – these strategies will help you stand out from the crowd and improve your brand awareness.
Standing out in your local community
There are thousands of small businesses in your local community, so as a business owner you definitely face some competition. How can you stand out in your local community and make people want to buy your product or service? Here is a list of a few techniques:
- Invest in local SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website and its presence for certain keywords that your target audience would search for. A proper local SEO strategy is very important, and there are companies that can help you develop one.
- Focus on reviews. Reviews are very important because most prospective customers read reviews first before deciding whether they want to buy a product or service or not. Therefore, you should constantly monitor online reviews, respond to all of them, and encourage your customers to leave reviews.
- Be active on social media. There are many things you can do on social media to remain active and stand out in the local community. You can post information about local events, create valuable content for the audience, or run contests.
Are you looking for a company in Arizona that specializes in local SEO for small businesses and digital marketing for local businesses? Do you want to create an effective local marketing strategy for your company? Then you should contact BizIQ – a local digital marketing agency located in Phoenix, AZ. We are a team of marketing professionals who provide local business SEO services and local SEO solutions to local companies. Contact us if you have any questions or you want to get more information about our local SEO company pricing or local SEO packages we offer.
