A Guide for Local Marketing and How to Promote Your Business in the Community
The world of online marketing and general business marketing opens up a wealth of opportunities to get the word out there about your business. There are many ways within a marketing strategy that you can get the word out about your business to people across the globe.
What do you do, however, when you want to know how to promote your business in the community around you? Local marketing can be very different to online marketing, where you're trying to reach the general populace, and due to the amount of marketing and communication now achieved through the internet and virtual contact, it can even seem daunting to take a step back and look into traditional methods of connecting with those in your local community.
Despite the world being a highly virtual place, there are still many solutions for promoting your business in the community with many high-quality marketing opportunities, which local businesses need to know about. It's always important to combine traditional face-to-face methods with online marketing to keep up with a competitive business market and better learn how to promote your business in the community.
Optimize Your Business for Local Search
Online SEO is crucial for any business wanting to draw the attention of potential customers and market towards its targeted audience. When it comes to promoting your business in the community, you also need to think about local SEO and local search, as this will be fundamental for finding business opportunities in your area.
Local search on Google is an extremely helpful feature, and it's ideal for local small business owners who are looking how to promote their business in the community. Local search results on Google will bring up businesses on the main results page, which are within distance to the needs of the searcher, and provide all relevant contact information such as an address, phone number, and official website, as well as an overview of the business.
Therefore, when looking for how to promote your business in the community, set your business up with Google listings and enter as much relevant information as possible regarding your contact details and opening times. This can be extremely helpful for local searchers.
It's also a good idea to use analytics to better understand what people are searching for so that you can tailor for that.
Distribute Your Business Cards Locally
With so much business and advertising now happening online, you may think that finding a way to promote your business in the community doesn't involve traditional printed business cards — but it can and does! Business cards are not obsolete, and they're still great tools for getting your name and contact details out there with potential customers.
In regard to local distribution and how to promote your business in the community, you can look for opportunities to place your business cards where possible. This could be on the postings board in a local shop or post office, which might advertise local businesses. You could ask for a business card stand to be placed on the counter of shops or pay for the service to be able to do that. You can hand your business cards out in the local community when speaking with people or attending community events.
Business cards are definitely handy tools when looking at how to promote your business in the community.
Advertise with Your Local Newspaper
News can easily be accessed online nowadays, but newspapers still exist, and communities still enjoy reading newspapers — which means business advertisements in your local newspaper will never be a wasted opportunity.
Plan to design an eye-catching newspaper advertisement on the relevant pages for your business, and include relevant contact details to ensure that your business gets more easily noticed within the community.
Try Your Local Chamber of Commerce
A local chamber of commerce is the ideal opportunity for local businesses to interact, communicate and indulge in some key networking. So if you're not already considering your local chamber of commerce as a great way to market your business to the community, you might want to.
Chambers of commerce are also very respected institutions with a history, which means any local business getting involved in one is also getting involved in a reputable opportunity, with the chance to engage with the local community.
Encourage Word of Mouth Marketing
What's great about local communities is that a lot of people will interact, know each other and talk. A tight-knit community will often make recommendations to each other in passing conversation, especially about local services and business requirements. Therefore, it's a good idea to encourage as much word-of-mouth marketing as possible.
While you can't directly control when and if people talk about your business, there are plenty of ways you can encourage a positive experience to make it more likely for consumers to recommend you to others. Interact directly with your customers, deliver positive customer service, ensure you go above and beyond to meet their needs, and even directly request that they recommend you to family and friends if they're satisfied.
Get Involved with a Trade Show
Exhibitions and trade shows are prime opportunities to show off your business brand to the local and global community alike. If you can find local trade shows that cater to people in your area, this is a key solution to promoting your business in the community and getting involved with those potential consumers who matter.
Local trade shows are also perfect opportunities to provide custom promotional products which can raise awareness of your brand and help people in the community to remember you by using free custom merch and other goodies.
Use Branded Gear Out in the Community
Exploring how to promote your business in the community is naturally going to see you spending more time out and about with local people in order to see how best to market your business. That means it's the perfect opportunity to show off your brand with clothing items that reflect your business. These could be t-shirts, hoodies, or custom hats.
If you're getting out in the community and promoting your business, wearing such merchandise can have a more positive effect and make your brand more memorable if people in the community can see you wearing it. You may also want to use custom screen printing to make wearable items for the local people you interact with too.
Use Email Marketing and Email Lists to Your Advantage
When exploring the different ways to promote your business in the community, it doesn't mean abandoning the power of online and email marketing potential. You can target your email marketing to people in your area and build an email list for the relevant people in your community. As you start to build a consumer list, be sure to use email marketing tools to stay in touch with the community at large and send out relevant information, like a local newsletter or product sales. This is key.
Start Writing Blog Posts
Blogging is one of the fundamental ways you're going to be more easily found by search engines and local customers. It's a key component of good SEO practices, so you'll want to make sure you have a business blog when deciding on the best ways to appeal to your community.
Blogs are great for engaging new customers regarding your products or services, as well as keeping existing customers informed and entertained.
Try these ideas for successful local business marketing.