If your business serves specific locations to reach audiences in multiple areas, you need effective local business marketing that works for every location. These strategies have unique needs that you’ll need to consider, separating them from broader business marketing tactics.
In this blog, Mark Renehan, Vice President of Franchise Development, will explore marketing for local businesses, including how it works, the different strategies and tools you can use to fuel success, and the benefits of working with a marketing agency to develop and manage scalable campaigns.
What You’ll Learn:
- What Is Local Business Marketing?
- The Role of a Local Business Marketing Agency
- Key Strategies for Marketing Local Businesses
- Digital Marketing for Local Businesses: Tools and Tactics
- Services Offered by Local Business Marketing Companies
- Choosing the Right Local Business Marketing Services
My Expert Opinion on Local Business Marketing
Competition will only continue to grow for local businesses as they attempt to stand apart and engage their target audiences. To get and stay ahead, you must take the right approach to maximize connectivity and reach, which is where strong local business marketing strategies can help.
By using tailored brand messaging and consistent branding in ads and marketing content, businesses can stand out and attract high-value customers within their target audiences.
However, it’s important to know what goes into marketing for local businesses to facilitate real success. These solutions differ from general marketing, as they must appeal to audiences in every target location, requiring more diverse campaigns while maintaining a singular brand identity that audiences come to recognize and trust.
What Is Local Business Marketing?
Local business marketing is a type of marketing strategy that entails promoting a brand and its offerings to customers in specific locations. This strategy can blend different types of marketing and advertising methods to reach audiences with locally targeted content.
Digital marketing for local businesses is particularly integral to these kinds of campaigns, as the majority of people looking for local businesses begin their searches online. In fact, according to Moz, 96% of American adults read about local businesses online, especially reviews, before engaging with a brand.
Whether through search engines or ads on social media or other platforms, there are many tactics you can use to develop a robust digital marketing campaign that supplements offline efforts.
Take, for example, McDonald’s ability to locally target audiences across the globe with its marketing, tailoring menus and their respective advertising to all types of cuisine and cultures while maintaining consistent branding that’s unmistakably theirs.
The result is an increasingly eclectic menu that appeals to a wide range of various tastes without losing brand identity in the process.
Source: McDonald’s
The Role of a Local Business Marketing Agency
A reliable and experienced local business marketing agency will be able to assess the individual needs of your business and target market, helping you with a full suite of digital marketing services.
A good agency will be able to help you research your audience, segment campaigns by location, and create a well-rounded strategy that really works for your business.
The following are some of the specific benefits of working with an agency for local business internet marketing:
- More Experience: The right company will have plenty of experience working with local businesses like yours to develop winning campaigns. Look for success stories from a potential agency partner to see what results you can expect.
- Ample Resources: A national-to-local marketing company will also have sufficient resources to help you build and maintain highly successful campaigns. For example, a good company will have plenty of marketing professionals to devote enough attention to your efforts for long-term success, along with access to some of the best tools available for everything from keyword research to campaign analysis and reporting.
- Increased Cost-Effectiveness: While the initial costs of marketing services might be higher than the software on its own, you’ll get a lot more from working with an agency and with experts who know how to fully implement and manage solutions.
- Regular Monitoring and Optimization: The right agency will continually monitor the results of your campaigns, measuring them against your goals to help determine what’s working and what needs improvement. In turn, you can work toward better results as your agency collaborates with you to adjust campaigns.
Some of the key services you can get with a good agency include website optimization, local SEO and PPC, social media marketing, email marketing, creative design, and much more.
Key Strategies for Marketing Local Businesses
There are several potential strategies that can help you succeed with local business marketing in different ways, including:
Local SEO
Local search results can help each of your locations get in front of search engine users on platforms like Google and Bing, making it highly effective in boosting visibility for your brand on the local level.
Using local keywords and other strategies, you’ll be able to dominate rankings for relevant searches.
In optimizing for local SEO, you’ll want to develop a solid Google Business Profile (GBP), which summarizes your locations and their details in a convenient format. For example, you can display your business name, photos of the location, address, phone number, and hours.
The keywords you target should be specific to each location, including terms like “shoe store in [city]” or “financial services near me.” Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help you find the right keywords based on search volume and other metrics.
Paid Advertising
In addition to local SEO, you should implement a combination of search and display ads that target local audiences.
Search ads appear in search results and resemble organic results, often outranking them. As such, people are more likely to click on these than organic results in many cases.
Meanwhile, the Google Display Network and Microsoft Advertising can help you reach local audiences with targeted image or video ads.
These ads can maximize your reach and engagement to build recognition and trust among target audiences.
Email Marketing
Another critical component of local business marketing is email, which can further boost engagement with your audiences.
Billions of people across the globe use email, and marketing emails have the chance to stand out and reach your audiences when other tactics fail. It’s also extremely cost-effective, with an ROI of around $36 per $1 spent on these campaigns.
Emails can regularly engage recipients with everything from introductory and thank you messages to abandoned cart reminders and local offers.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing offers one of the best ways to reach local audiences in any area, whether through locally targeted ads or posts.
For example, you can target specific demographics with hyperlocal ads or post about new location openings on your main feed.
Just be sure you choose the right platform based on where your audience spends its time, whether it’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or elsewhere.
Digital Marketing for Local Businesses: Tools and Tactics
To succeed with your campaigns, you need the right tools for the job, such as:
- Analytics Platforms: Certain platforms like Google Analytics and Semrush can provide you with in-depth analytics and reports. These insights can then inform adjustments and future strategies depending on whether you achieve your goals.
- Social Media Tools: To assist with social media marketing, you can also use native analytics and campaign tools along with third-party management solutions like Hootsuite and Buffer.
- Email Marketing Platforms: Craft high-quality personalized emails and manage your campaigns with solutions such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact.
- Reputation Management Tools: As you monitor and address online reviews and brand mentions, you can utilize Birdeye, Sprout Social, or other reputation management tools.
While implementing these tools, try to integrate local business internet marketing with traditional marketing tactics.
For example, to complement your digital efforts, you can use other tactics like direct mail and physical advertisements, some of which could include URLs or QR codes to funnel them into your digital campaigns for better tracking.
Services Offered by Local Business Marketing Companies
In providing effective local marketing for multi-location businesses, a local business marketing agency should offer the following key services:
Local SEO and Geo-Targeted Advertising
The ideal company will help you build local SEO campaigns that maximize visibility in search engines while using geo-targeting strategies to reach the right people at the right time.
Website Design and Optimization
You should also receive help from your local business marketing company to design a website that connects with all audiences. These services tend to involve developing optimized local landing pages that correspond with each ad or search engine result to drive conversions and sales.
Managing Online Reviews and Reputation
Local business marketing services may also entail managing online reviews and reputation management. For instance, you could encourage customers to leave reviews of your business while responding to all negative reviews with a thoughtful reply.
Social Media and Content Marketing
A reliable agency will also provide you with social media management and content marketing services. In the process, the company will help you regularly post locally targeted content and ads while producing and managing a range of content, such as blog posts, main web pages, videos, and more.
Choosing the Right Local Business Marketing Services
As you search for the right local business marketing agency, make your selection based on the following key factors:
- Industry expertise
- Local market knowledge
- A results-driven approach
- Responsive communication and collaboration
- Comprehensive services
- Flexible pricing and scalability
- The use of the latest technologies for analytics, management, and more
There are also multiple questions you can ask to get a better feel for a prospective agency partner, such as:
- “What sort of clients do you work with?”
- “How do you approach marketing campaigns in my industry?”
- “What differentiates you from other marketing agencies?”
- “What were the results of similar campaigns to mine?”
When “interviewing” agencies and asking these and other questions, you’ll be able to better determine whether the company is ideal for your strategy.
Connect With Ignite Visibility to Succeed With Local Business Marketing
To get the most from marketing for local businesses, it’s often ideal to connect with experts who can effectively set up and manage campaigns, continually perfecting them in the process for better results.
Enter Ignite Visibility, which is a leading provider of local business marketing services for businesses of all sizes and industries. Whether you’re a small business just starting out or a national franchise looking to continue expanding, we’re here to help you experience long-term, sustained success.
Our solutions include:
- Campaign development using the latest tools
- Local SEO to rank high in search results
- Paid advertising that maximizes visibility on all major ad platforms
- Content marketing that elevates all of your marketing content to connect with local audiences
- Social media marketing to reach audiences on the platforms they use most often
- Consistent monitoring and measuring to guide optimization
- And more!
Like the sound of that? Don’t wait to contact us and discuss your needs with our team.
