In the beginning, all advertising was local. From word-of-mouth recommendations to advertising in the local newspaper, everything was confined to the immediate town.
In 1983 the internet was invented and the next thing you know you’re buying from brands based all over the world and paying extortionate shipping prices.
It might be tempting for businesses to automatically think they too need to go viral online and gain global exposure. However, especially for brick-and-mortar businesses, local advertising is a crucial tool in your arsenal.
Local advertising allows you to reach customers closest to your location who are most likely to stop by to make a purchase in person. Appealing to these customers also gives you the opportunity to turn them into loyal, repeat customers who will therefore give you free advertising in the form of word-of-mouth recommendations.
Taking a local marketing approach doesn’t mean confining yourself to the local newspaper and leaflets though, online/digital marketing can be used specifically to target local customers through demographic settings and audience segmentation strategies.
Benefits of Local Marketing
Local Market Dominance
Become the champion of your own geographic area for your product or service. Getting your business to rank as the number 1 coffee shop in the world is a near to impossible task, ranking at number 1 in the UK can also be a considerable challenge, but ranking number 1 in your city or town? Now that’s more doable. Allow yourself to focus on your surroundings and build a solid foundation for your business and go on to expand from there.
It’s strongly recommended that you set up a Google MyBusiness profile for yourself. The search results on Google will display listings based on a user’s approximate location, regardless of whether they entre of specific search area or not. The top section of the search results will feature a box displaying local businesses’ listings on Google Maps.
Highly Targeted
The goal of targeted advertising is to reach people with certain traits, characteristics, or interests – including location. By targeting a smaller target audience, your business can leverage the knowledge of local slang, customs, and habits to create highly effective, local marketing campaigns. By making your business’s marketing so personalised, your business feels more ‘part of the community’ and strengthen customer relations.
Increased Foot Traffic
This might be an obvious one, but advertising locally will help to increase brand awareness in your region and get local customers through your door. Trying to advertise regionally are going to be less effective due to customers not being located close enough to your store to justify a visit.
Better Audience Insights
Having a local, repeat customer base will allow you to build customer relationships better and give you insight into what your customers are looking for and what is working with your business. Whilst this can be gathered from regional customers through online feedback surveys, having that more personal in-person connection with your customers provides more specific responses and on-going live feedback.
Elevated Brand Reputation
Though local marketing you can establish your business with a positive community-focused reputation. Collect reviews from frequent, local customers to help validate your product or service. Even better if you have an established customer relationship for a glowing review. These reviews once posted online will help your business grow when aiming to reach national level.
Local Referrals
Creating a loyal, local customer base for yourself will generate positive word-of-mouth advertising for your business. Once this spreads, you will find yourself gaining customers from outside the immediate local area, helping your business grow.
Methods of Local Advertising
Here are some of our top methods for advertising your business locally:
Google Ads
Using Google Ads doesn’t have to be a complicated, expensive endeavour. By creating local search ads and local display ads can increase local brand awareness for nearby users. Google Ads can be used to target specific demographics including creating segmentations based on geographical data.
Because Google Ads charges on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, you will only be charged when a user clicks on your ad. The recommended starting budget is between £10-£50 a day.
Find Local Sponsorship Opportunities
Get involved in your local community and find events to sponsor to raise your brand awareness. Sponsor events in exchange for marketing materials such as banners, logo placements, or even a stall at the event.
Attend Local Events
These could be exhibits, craft fairs, weekend markets, or food and drink festivals in your local area. You don’t necessarily need a full-scale pop-up shop, hand out flyers, create signs or sponsor the event itself for additional self-promotion.
Host an Event
Can’t find a suitable event for your business? Host you own! You could create a community focused event for everyone to participate in such as a workshop or offer an in-store experience where people can test out your products. This is a great way to get more customers into your physical store who might not have considered visiting before.
The cost of hosting an event depends on your event type and location, but it’s possible to host for free or keep costs low.
Get Featured in Local News or Magazines
Get in contact with local newspapers or community magazines to do a feature of your business. You could either directly advertise your products or create a type of content marketing where you can provide added value to your target audience to increase brand recognition. You could do an interview about starting your own business as a guide for entrepreneurs or if you’re a new bookstore provide content like monthly author recommendations or explorations of specific genres.
You can also take a more direct approach of paying for advertising space regularly in your local newspaper.
Collaborate With Other Local Businesses
Other small business owners in your area are likely facing the same issues as you are. Two heads are always better than one, so team up for benefits such as exposure to new audiences, access to shared resources, and to learn from each other’s experiences. Some collaboration ideas include creating co-marketing campaigns, shop-in-shops, and bundled products.
Need help with your local advertising?
Dash can help you with your local advertising through arranging local press nights, getting you on local radio stations, helping host in-store experiences and events, and so much more. Schedule a call today to see how Dash can help your business grow.
Whether you’re looking for marketing expertise or have a specific project in mind, we’re here to assist.