Local marketing is perfect for local businesses. Why try to compete with international brands when those customers will never visit your store and will likely not buy from you online? Unless your customers are internationally based, your marketing approach will always be better off staying as focused as possible.
If you aren’t sure how to focus your marketing, look no further. These top tips will help you get started:
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Identify Your Reach
Your reach is how far customers travel to visit your store. For some businesses, their main customers will solely be those from their immediate community – and that’s okay! For other businesses, customers may specifically travel to your location from across the city.
How far your customers are willing to travel depends on a few different factors. The first is how specialized your business is. If you offer a unique service, product, or if the talent of your employees is your product, then it is more likely that customers will visit from around the city or even the state.
If your business is very local, for example a grocer or a café, then your customers are likely going to be more closely located. Knowing the scope will help you direct your marketing efforts more effectively in the future.
Hire a Local SEO Agency
Getting your business to the top of a local map search is worth its weight in gold, and the best part is that you only have your local and immediate competitors to worry about. While there are several things you can do that are SEO-friendly, none of these will be quite as effective as hiring an SEO agency. SEO companies like YEAH! Local have multiple experts who keep on top of the best practices. They also have top tools so that they can give you the best results.
When it comes to hiring an agency, you are actually better off finding a local option. This is because local companies, particularly those that specialize in serving businesses in their community, have several key benefits. The first is that they understand your business more. They will likely also have paired with many local publishers and websites to help you market your business more effectively.
Offer Local Value
When it comes to marketing, there is hard marketing and soft marketing. While an SEO agency should be able to help you improve your website, your local listings, and your PPC, it will ultimately be up to you to take charge of your more nuanced marketing strategies. One such strategy, for example, can be to create local guides.
The goal of offering this local content is to get customers to visit your site or to stay in contact via email or their social media accounts. You can seamlessly include updates about your business or any other local events that would bring people to your area, like a street festival.
By having people follow you and see you as a means of authority, you, in turn, get more people engaging with your brand, remembering your brand, and thinking about your brand, which can lead to lifelong customers.
