Once upon a time it was a simple matter to market your local business.
However, marketing has evolved drastically over the years. A business can now potentially serve people all around their state, their nation, even around the world. This also means that other businesses have the same capability to steal potential customers right under your nose.
To stay on top of our ever-changing world, you need to learn how to market your local business using modern marketing strategies.
Unfortunately, studies have shown that nearly two-thirds of small businesses end up failing before hitting the 10-year mark.
We don’t want you to become a part of this statistic, but to survive and thrive.
Well you’re in luck – We’ve created the guide you need for local business marketing!
Bolster Your Online Presence to Grow Your Local Business Marketing
As mentioned above, one of the best tips on how to market your local business is by making sure you have a strong online presence.
Aside from having a website and making sure that it is up-to-date and is already able to generate leads, which we have a great article on here, is to ensure that your business can be reached through any means necessary.
Utilizing features like blogs, social media platforms, farming reviews and testimonials from clients, and taking advantage of free listings on certain websites will go a long way to helping you market your local business.
Blog
If building a website is the best thing you can do to market your local business, then creating a blog is the second best thing you can do.
Blogs build trust and credibility with potential and current customers and they can become one of the main drivers to your website. By investing time in writing about local issues and local news and tying it in with your business, then the better chances you will have of driving local search engine traffic to your website.
Optimize Social Pages
Now, once you have built an online presence to market your local business you will need a place to advertise and publish your business information and content. This is where you will need to invest in creating a social media presence and strategy.
The best place to start to market your local business is to create a Facebook page and begin to engage with local customers and businesses as Facebook has the most local engagement of any social platform. Don’t feel pressured to become a master of every social media platform possible, but do your research and be active on the social media platforms that are most popular in your area.
Cultivate Reviews and Testimonials
An easy way to bolster your online presence is to ask customers and clients for reviews and testimonials. If they had a great experience and are excited to share, then have them write out a short paragraph testimonial to share on your blog, your social media, and your website. At the bare minimum, asking for a review on the mapping platforms mentioned below will go a long way to marketing your local business.
Mapping Platforms
If you already have your business set up, but don’t have it listed on Google Maps, Apple Maps, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, etc., then you are ignoring 97% of local customers who search for local businesses online and pull information from the above platforms. If you are curious how to market your local business, then this is a great way to grow your business with very little time or effort.
All you need to do is plug in the appropriate information for your local business on those platforms. Just be sure you include your:
address
phone number
hours
directions
link to website
Market Your Local Business by Engaging Your Local Community
If you are trying to market your local business without trying to be a part of your local community, then you will struggle to create buzz about your business. This can be as simple as talking about your business while you are in line at the grocery store and as complicated as having a physical office space and hosting events.
Investing in offline materials, reaching out to your local media outlets, and giving back to your community will drive traffic to your business just as much if not more than bolstering your online presence.
Offer Online AND Offline Materials
While bolstering your online presence is important you must remember to focus on how to market your local business offline as well.
Business cards and fliers will create a paper trail that can create some buzz in your local community. Ask businesses with bulletin boards to hang fliers for events, drop your business cards off at local businesses that may have some overlap in clientele with your business, and don’t be afraid to hang door flyers or go door-to-door either.
Having a physical presence in the community and making yourself and your staff known to members of the community will make marketing your local business even easier.
Give Back to the Community (Work Days, Charity, Etc.)
When determining how to market your local business there is little more you can do to engage with your community that will be as impactful as giving back to the community.
This can look like a couple different things such as organizing work days where members of your business take part in community service projects. There are also organizations and networks that help organize these for businesses to take part in, so check your local area for opportunities to jump in, serve your local community, and truly engage your community.
Build an Influencer Structure for Local Business Marketing
A modern twist on how to market your local business is through the use of influencers. Now, another name for an influencer that might sound more familiar and less of a trigger word is the term “ambassador.”
Plenty of businesses have had ambassador programs or even affiliate programs that have been around for many years. For the most part, taking advantage of the influencer culture we are experiencing today is changing the names and ways in which we find those ambassadors and affiliates.
The main difference is now our ambassadors and affiliates, our influencers, can have much wider and deeper pools of potential client bases. When considering how to market your local business with an influencer structure you simply need to find the right people in your local area to invite as an influencer.
Hire Local Content Creators
As you are considering the content you want on your blog, your website, your offline materials, etc. you could invest into your community and your influencer structure by hiring content creator talent from your local area.
It is a common practice that many of these content creators will talk about and share the work they do. This creates a natural stream of traffic and interest in your business, especially for those who personally know the content creator.
Create a Loyalty or Referral Program
While a loyalty or referral program doesn’t seem all that spectacular, the fact of the matter is that it can be re-framed as part of your influencer structure to boost customer retention and customer acquisition.
Loyalty and referral programs have been proven to be great ways to market your local business and adding some flair and value by referring to it as an influencer program can add perceived value for clients and customers as well as potential clients and customers.
Involve Staff as Local Emissaries
One way to market your local business is to take advantage of the influencers you already have and take part in your business every day: your staff. Employees love to talk about their place of business, if they feel they are treated fairly and respected. Keeping staff involved with the business and helping them find meaning in their work is a critical part of building an influencer structure.
Beyond this, though, involving your staff as local emissaries by having them be in pictures, videos, giving them a voice on the business social media, sharing birthdays and exciting experiences, and dozens of other ideas can be a great way to mobilize your staff as influencers who are engaging in their community and talking about your business along the way.
How to Market Your Local Business? By Creating an Experience
One last area you can capitalize on as you work through how to market your local business is how to create an experience around your business.
This may seem flashy at first, but it doesn’t need to be. Whether your business is in a trade industry or commercial or manufacturing or anything in between, there is potential to create an experience around your business.
You might be able to market your local business through events, contests, mobile apps, and championing amazing customer service. You never know what might build an incredible experience for your local community members that will result in great marketing for your local business.
Hosting Events
When it comes to hosting events there are two major ways to use them to boost marketing your local business: hosting the event yourself or networking with other businesses to create a bigger event, fair, or festival.
If you host the event yourself you just need to organize the event around something newsworthy: a new product or service, celebrate some local news, celebrate business milestones or even staff milestones, etc. Offer food, drinks, and entertainment and advertise the event on all of your online and offline channels. Events like this create a buzz about your business and those who attend are sure to welcome the experience.
The second option, networking with other local businesses to create an even bigger event, may take a lot more work and coordination but will put your business on the map for engaging the community, creating an experience, and will inevitably bolster your online presence through media attention. One example of how this might work is if a collection of area restaurants, bakeries, and other food vendors set up a community festival to market local or regional cuisine. For thinking through how to market your local business, this could be a great opportunity to check off lots of things in this guide.
Run Contests and Giveaways
Contests and giveaways always build natural curiosity and investment from the local community, especially if it is something worthwhile. It is truly as simple as finding something to giveaway or how a contest might work in your industry and begin to advertise.
The sky’s the limit for this opportunity. It can be something specific to your business or industry or as wild as a radio station giving away a mobile home.
Launch a Mobile App
Launching a mobile app has the added benefit of drastically bolstering your online presence as well as creating an experience. People use apps hundreds of times in a day. They notice the ones that aren’t designed well and they notice the ones that work perfectly every time. So investing in a good mobile app will pay huge dividends when it comes to how to market your local business.
Make sure it is done correctly and offers added benefits to customers and this one is a sure winner.
Focus On Customer Service
The coup de grace for all of the ways we’ve discussed how to market your local business is customer service.
If you have an awesome online presence, a great influencer structure, and are regularly participating in your local community but your customer service is terrible, then you will be eternally stranded in mediocrity. Businesses live and die by their customer service. At some point in time someone will need assistance with your product or service and will need to talk to staff about it. If the customer service is not what they expect, then it will immediately erode any trust that has been built up to that point.
Make your customer service top-notch and it will create an experience for your business that no other marketing for your local business can compare to.
Looking For Some Help to Market Your Local Business?
Which idea for marketing your local business can you start working on today? We would love to hear your thoughts! At Catalyst Brand Group we focus on implementing proven growth strategies in brand, platform, and growth that will help your business grow by 2x-3x per year. If you are looking to implement some of these marketing strategies or for some help in other areas of your business, then Contact Us to start a conversation about how we can help!