Wondering how to help your clients win businesses in your community? If so, this blog is worth a read. While being engaged in the turbulent seas of marketing, don’t lose sight of one of your most significant audiences: your local market. You may need to apply some targeted tactics to reach local audiences. Let’s uncover 10 secret techniques to improve local marketing strategy and reach potential customers.
Check If It’s Mobile-friendly Website
Over half of online traffic across the globe happens on mobile devices. But, more than 60% of mobile searchers contact local businesses if they have a mobile-friendly site. A mobile-friendly website is crucial to attracting local customers.
Fact Check
- Mobile-friendly sites load smoothly when accessed on a mobile device
- They show bigger text to users, form menus, fields, and buttons
- With easy-to-read text, users feel comfortable in browsing site information on the go
So, before you embark on local marketing strategies, confirm your website is mobile-friendly. To check this, use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
Localize Your Website
Localize your website by making web content relevant to your local audience and consumer base. It is advisable to add ‘Location-based Terms’ to the site. Say, for instance, instead of digital marketing services, your page could read “Best Digital Marketing Services in Toronto.” Wherever relevant, localize your website content. Promote neighbourhood events, local gatherings, and industry listings from your area. Please remember to keep the language consistent between website, digital ads and social media.
Add Location Page
Add a location page to your website. This is important especially if your office is at more than one location. Local location page includes the following information:
- Your business name
- Address
- Phone number
- Opening time
- Other relevant store information
Adding a location page helps you rank on local SERPs.
Know Your Audience and Target Them
Know who your audiences are before developing any local SEO strategy.
- Know the group to which the ideal customer belongs
- Get an idea about your customers’ interests
- Confirm what is going to appeal to them
- Find out what social media platforms they spend the most time on
- Once you recognize your audience, know who and where they are
- Build your campaigns around the audience's interests
- Use the keywords they'll be searching for
- Make advertisements that explain how your product solves its problems
Invest in Local SEO
Local searches result in 50% of mobile users visiting stores within 24 hours. But this is impossible without local SEO. Ask your digital marketing agency to run local SEO campaigns. For this, software like Google AdWords is used. Creating local SEO campaigns helps drive traffic both online and offline. Also, consider PPC campaigns and other SEO strategies.
Take Advantage of Local Directories
Many third-party websites, review sites, and directories highlight local businesses. They educate people where to shop. These sites are important for SEO and local search intent purposes. The most important listing among them is Google My Business (GMB). GMB shows up your business accurately when people search for your industry, business, products, services, name. Also, create listings on Whitepages, Yellow Pages, Angie's List, Yelp, Better Business Bureau (BBB), Foursquare and other local directories. Use tools like Moz Local to simplify this process.
Be Active in Your Community
Play with consumer’s feelings. Consumers are proud of the town, city, and neighbourhood they live in. Also, they prefer shopping at local businesses and organizations. Support local community as a business and empower them. In return, your community is likely to support you. Interact with a local sports team, be active with non-profit activities, associate with social activities, and community school events. If physically attending them is not possible, consider sponsoring an event to get more eyes on your brand name.
Go Local On Social Media
Use social media platforms that your local audience is on. After all, social media is arguably the fastest way to connect with local and global shoppers. Most of the social platforms provide several localization options, such as
- Set a location in your profile
- Tag the location of each post
- Answer to questions of local customers
- Have conversations with the target audience
- Share local hashtags in comments or caption
Cross-promote With Other Local Businesses
Cross-promotion is a highly result-oriented marketing method. This mutually beneficial marketing method involves two or more businesses promoting each other to their customers. With this, each brand earns more customers and boosts sales overall. Cross-promotion gives an immediate but vast exposure to an array of potential customers with minimum effort. For a successful cross-promotion:
- Conduct your own research
- Build relationships with other brands
- Start with a plan
- Offer discounts for partners
- Take your cross-promotion strategy to social media
- Start a referral program
- Be careful when building relations with brands (Don’t jump into a partnership with just anyone)
Run Contests or Promotions
Promotions such as contests are excellent tools to engage a local audience.
- Be creative with contests
- Offer prizes that the potential audience would want
- Offer promotions to celebrate local events
- Offer free giveaways or discounts to engage with your social media profiles
- Aim to connect with the community in other ways
- Share consumer’s purchases, or tag the business on Twitter or Facebook
Consider running a contest through which participants can enter on social media and collect their prizes in person.
The Pareto Principle
According to the Pareto principle, 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your efforts. For instance, only 20% of your marketing campaigns account for 80% of your success, or 20% of your customer base is responsible for 80% of your sales. Keep the Pareto principle in mind as well as track your marketing efforts. Check what marketing tactics are performing best to engage your audience. Once you find the 20% that’s most successful, invest the majority of your efforts on these campaigns and platforms, as you now know they are the most lucrative.