What Everyone Ought to Know About Local Marketing

What Everyone Ought to Know About Local Marketing

The time of global marketing campaigns is over. Today, audiences won’t buy into generic marketing pushes that they deem irrelevant. Major conglomerates like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut are shifting away from international strategies to focus on customers needs using local marketing tactics.

The importance of local marketing cannot be ignored. This practice is no longer reserved for mom and pop shops in small towns. “Customers [have] stopped feeling a connection with the generic products and communications,” assert researchers Luigi Dumitrescu and Simona Vinerean in The Glocal Strategy of Global Brands report.

In their report, the authors cite several brands like Coca-Cola and McDonalds who have shifted their strategies to focus on local marketing. For example, McDonald’s has adapted its global marketing to different regions by offering food that is popular in that region – like wine in France and mutton pies in Australia. This strategy is increasing the success of their marketing in those regions. whether you run an international enterprise or small business, understanding and implementing local marketing practices is imperative to your long-term success.

What Does Local Business Marketing Entail?

With local marketing, businesses create authentic experiences that meet the needs of customers in specific markets. The key components of local marketing strategies include SEO, Facebook advertising, customer reviews, events, and partnerships with complementary organizations.

Research from Google shows that “50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34% who searched on computer/tablet did the same.” Do a Google search for your business right now. Are you happy with the results? Is your company’s digital presence informative, up-to-date, and highly ranked? If not, there’s no time to waste with starting a local marketing campaign for your organization.

Achieving Success with Local Marketing

Many tactics work together to create one powerful local marketing strategy. To begin your foray into local marketing, try some of the following methods:

• Familiarize yourself with the local targeting tools available on ad platforms such as Google Adwords and Facebook advertising. These platforms empower your local business marketing campaigns by delivering relevant content to users in specific areas.
• Develop a content marketing strategy that generates locally-focused content that people want to click on and addresses their questions and concerns at every stage of the marketing funnel.
• Use customer reviews from Google, Yelp, Facebook, and LinkedIn to create content for social media channels. Convincing quotes or testimonials from an actual customer play well with interested individuals.
• Create custom landing pages for every SEO and Facebook advertising you are running to track individual metrics. These custom landing pages can granularly address small markets while measuring performance to see which strategies are accomplishing business goals.
• Users visit a lot of different sites to gather information about a business, so cover all of your bases. Update your profiles regularly so they are always correct. This means listing your business in the proper categories on Yelp and Google, posting current hours of operation available, and providing any relevant information.
• Partner with a complementary business or nonprofit to host a local event.

A local marketing strategy is multi-faceted, cross-channel, and ongoing. Your efforts might not generate immediate results but in the long run, your business benefits from the increased exposure, engagement, and ultimately, lead generation. If you need a hand launching a local marketing strategy for your organization, speak with the experts about at Alt Creative today.