How to Establish a Successful Local Marketing Strategy

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Local companies or businesses that are not able to compete with their large competitors in other geographic locations can market locally in a particular area. It’s imperative for them to set a well-planned local marketing strategy to promote their brands to customers who may not know that there are specialty businesses in their locale. Below are some helpful tips to optimize your local marketing efforts that will be very beneficial to your business.

Be mobile-ready

This is one of the top priorities for many marketers in 2014. According to Forrester, about 2 billion people own smartphones worldwide. This means that mobile technology is not just a passing digital trend but it can potentially revolutionize any business. In fact, most customers make purchase decisions within an hour of researching products or services on their mobile devices which could translate to an increase in sales especially for mobile-ready sites. Make sure to capitalize on having your website mobile-friendly to streamline leads and traffic from mobile users.

Use Location-based keywords

To be able to attract local customers online, include search engine marketing into your strategies using location-based keywords. These are keywords specific to your business location. Focusing on keywords like “web hosting provider” won’t give the right traction that you’re looking for compared to “Singapore web hosting” if you want to draw customers who are looking for local web hosting company in Singapore. The ability to focus on one specific area is an edge local businesses have over large companies. As soon as you have your keywords, make sure to incorporate them across your website in titles, headers, meta tags, etc.

Register in Local listings

You can take advantage of online local listings such as Google My Business, and Yahoo Local to enhance local visibility for your brand and reach local customers. Make sure to leverage on these listings based on your business name, description, location, custom fields and categories.

Offline Marketing

Just because we live in a digital era, doesn’t mean that marketing offline won’t work for your local business. Handing out business cards as you network with new people allows a potential customer to get in touch with your business in the future. You can also offer sponsorship on local sports teams to get the word out about your company to the community. Participating in trade shows will also boost your business network with other local customers and business owners.

Measure your Performance

An essential part in every local marketing strategy is measuring and reporting their performance. This can offer meaningful insights on how to consistently increase ROI, ensure that marketing efforts are parallel to your business goals and make sound marketing investments and decisions. Some metrics you can measure are click tracking, number of video views, Facebook and Twitter reach and other local marketing analytics.

Local brands have a huge potential to leverage locations to influence local visibility and tap more customers; these five tips should give you some ideas. With the help of digital technology, marketers can definitely save on cost, time, and maximize their local marketing efforts.