Local marketing is increasingly becoming a superb way to connect with customers in your local area while promoting your business. It helps small businesses attract new customers and effectively impact business sales. Local marketing strategies might be a little different from the techniques and methods of general marketing, but the results are very effective when done right.
With local marketing, businesses can reach, engage, and appeal to local people directly, and this is why every small business, including industrial companies, needs it. This blog post will outline what local marketing is and speak to the benefits it can bring to industrial companies at the sales level, making it a great way to put part of small business loans to use.
What Is Local Marketing, and How It Can Help Your Sales?
Local marketing is a valuable marketing strategy that helps businesses target consumers/customers within a specific radius of the physical location of said business. It is sometimes called local store marketing or neighborhood marketing.
Local marketing is a great marketing weapon for businesses with at least one brick-and-mortar location, whether local or chain. While it can work for brands with multiple physical locations, it is crucial to locally-based firms that mainly conduct their business dealings in person rather than online.
The Benefits of Local Marketing
Increased sales and patronage from the local community is the most significant benefit of using local marketing. Below we look at some of the other benefits.
Cost Savings
Most times, small businesses struggle with trying to establish themselves in a new or changing market. A local marketing approach can be a great way for a small business to promote itself for a relatively small cost. On search engines like Google and Bing, for example, local listings often appear on the top search results.
Boosted Sales
Another benefit of applying location-based marketing is that it eliminates certain barriers to sales. You are better positioned to persuade customers near your business to buy from your physical store.
Increased Brand Awareness
To increase your business’s presence online, you can use relevant keywords that potential customers are searching for in your area. This approach optimizes your site for local keywords, which means that it shows up for more searches, raising your brand awareness in the process.
Referrals
Part of your local mix should be networking with local businesses to spread the news about your brand. Some examples include asking for formal referrals from other local businesses, posting fliers in areas with high traffic, and engaging in co-promotions.
Increased Visibility with Search Engines
Local marketing is also a search engine marketing strategy. The keywords you focus on — whether for organic content or paid means — should include your city, county, and the geographical area. That way, when users perform local searches relevant to your service or product, your website will appear in their search results.
Digital Local Marketing Tactics
Local marketing can attract many loyal local customers to your businesses, no matter the industry. Here, we find some digital ways to use local marketing to market to your advantage in your industry.
Local SEO
The goal of local SEO is to increase the visibility of local businesses in location pages, online maps, and search results. Local search engine optimization works a little bit differently than regular SEO since Google uses different ranking signals. Here are some of them:
- NAP citations
- The location the individual is searching from
- Shares on social media
- The presence of a Google My Business listing
- Keywords that are used in a Google My Business profile
- The business’ Google Maps star rating
- Online reviews sentiment
- Keywords used in reviews online
- The number of check-ins at a specific location
Content Marketing
You can also apply a local lens to your content marketing to build trust, generate solid leads, and gather loyal customers. Here are some tips for you:
- Share links with local influencers to promote your business, goods, and services
- Capture the location of email subscribers so you can send local content to local contacts
- Make your social media marketing location-specific
- Write and share relevant local content across all your channels
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is a fast way to promote your local business on social and search platforms. With Google, for instance, you could run a PPC campaign or local services ads. And Facebook’s hyperlocal ads or local awareness ads are a great pick that will help you target a specific and small local area.
When Industrial Companies Should Focus on Local Marketing
Many small businesses local to a specific area can’t readily compete directly with competitors in another geographic location. Industrial companies are different, though. They can transcend their local markets to deliver products and services in other states, regions, or even countries.
Rather than taking all comers, though, a growth strategy for an industrial company may be to break into new geographically-specific markets. Say, for example, there is a warehouse racking installation company in the Chicago area that dominates Illinois and they want to expand their geographic footprint to include Minnesota. In that case, they could benefit from a targeted local marketing strategy.
Broadly, here are some reasons why industrial companies might consider local marketing:
- It can be an effective way for industrial companies to consolidate their presence in an existing geographic market, or break into a new one
- Customers are always reading local online reviews. Since reviews affect purchasing decisions, it is vital to manage your local online reputation, and local marketing is a way to do this.
- Customers typically search with local intent using search phrases like “near me” because it feels more secure to work with a business near them. This can also be a highly relevant criterion for finding the right partner — say for MRO services. If you’re not targeting audiences in the location you operate, you will miss out on many sales.
- Local marketing is a way to humanize your industrial brand and connect with your customers by sponsoring location-specific promotions and engaging with communities on social media.
Tips on Creating a Successful Local Marketing Campaign
One of the highlights of local marketing is that it allows you to hone your available resources to focus on a specific audience. But to have a successful strategy, you need to have an accurate idea of your buyer personas.
A buyer persona should help you better understand the demographic of your target audience, their psychographic information, and geographic locations. In addition to equipping yourself with personas, here are some useful tips on creating a successful local marketing campaign:
- Make sure to create a custom landing page for every campaign
- Use ad extensions to maximize your brand’s visibility online and get your brand in front of your target audience
- Come up with and write ads that emphasize time-sensitive offers on goods and services
- Use social media platforms and their marketing tools, such as Facebook’s audience targeting, to your advantage.
- Make sure that you have a mobile-friendly website
- Create lots of locally focused content related to the products and services you offer
- Geo-targeting is a must. Use Google Ads and its geo-targeting options to your advantage
- Apply ad scheduling in your campaigns to reflect your business hours
Hopefully these insights have bene helpful. Bottom line: If you already run one or plan to open a business that caters to a local audience, you need a local marketing strategy!
