Localized marketing, also known as neighborhood marketing, or local marketing is the process used to optimize your website and online advertising to help generate traffic to your business from local areas.
Learning how to market locally is a science and when done successfully, it can help business owners realize the full potential of their target market.
This specialized online marketing strategy targets potential clients within the community, based on the business’s physical location. The importance of this marketing strategy has become even more intrinsic in recent years. Google’s algorithms now look at the location of each search, to provide more relevant results to their users.
Can every business benefit from local marketing? Yes! Successful businesses and brands of all sizes are benefiting from specialized local marketing. Localizing your SEO (search engine optimization) can present your business with more opportunities to reach local clients and the chance to push non-local competition out of the market.
Working with an SEO and website professional to use the various software tools and applications available will help you localize your marketing and get your brand out to a greater percentage of local customers.
SEO professionals understand that there is more to a successful local marketing campaign than just adding some other descriptions and tagging some local specific keywords to your website. They now take a much more personal and targeted approach.
#1 It all starts with a website
If you want to showcase your brand, you need to create a website worthy of it. One of the most important things you’ll do at this point is invest in your website. This is intrinsically tied to your URL or website address. This address needs to be unique to your brand. Far too many small businesses fall into the trap of using cheap URLs given to them by free providers or other sub-domains. If you want to be taken seriously, buy a unique URL and build your online presence from there.
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#2 Understand your goals
It’s impossible to build an online presence without first understanding exactly what your brand goals are. To do this, you need to answer three questions.
Your goal should be to provide your customers with a unique value proposition. You need to clarify exactly what you want people to think of your brand. Who are you? What are you trying to accomplish? What sets you apart from your competitors? This should also be visible on your website through your logo and tagline. All of which help reinforce your brand or service in a potential customer’s mind.
#3 Decide on your target market
Once you have decided on your URL and set your goals, it’s time to get your website up and running. To successfully localize marketing you will have to add relevant information and exactly what you want your service or brand to offer.
To do this, define who your target market is and what specialized services or products you can offer them. Watch out! Many businesses try to bite off more than they can chew. They go looking for broad market appeal too early. When you do this, you can draw the attention of larger competitors, most of whom will have much deeper pockets that you cannot compete with. Instead, choose a specialized niche rather than open yourself up to vast amounts of competition. As your business develops, you can then broaden your target market comfortably.
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#4 Calls to action are important
Having an excellent service and a recognizable brand is of no use to any business unless they can successfully make sales. To do this, you need to actively encourage visitors and clients to engage and take action.
Whether your goal is getting clients to read your company’s blog, subscribe to a newsletter, leave reviews and comments, follow links, or buy something–whatever your call to action is, make sure it really grabs their attention. Make it exciting, eye-catching, interesting! It benefits your business and helps you reach your end goals.
#5 Content is still king
Once your website launches, it is essential that you do not ignore it. Keeping its content and pages up to date and as presentable as possible is essential to successful online marketing. Consistently adding new blog posts, updated images, and information on new products as often as you can will help you keep your website relevant and seen by your customers.
#6 Add your business to local online directories
As important as your website is, local directory sites are of equal importance to you. Yelp is a popular example, but there are likely to be other more industry-specific directories that you can add your name to. Start with the broader directories, as people are more likely to stumble upon these ways of searching online for services you provide. Once you have successfully entered the more general directories, try to get your business into more specialized ones.
Remember, your work doesn’t end after you create your account. You will need to continually update your profiles, providing much more than just basic contact information. The more up-to-date and detailed information you provide, the better your customers’ confidence in your brand.
#7 Start socialising
Once you have your name in some local directories and your website is fully functioning. It’s time to work on your social media profile. Social media will allow you to engage with your audience daily. These sites, if used to their full potential, can provide your business with much more opportunities than just the ability to broadcast to your customer base.
Key strategic social media plans can generate specific results. If allowed to evolve successfully using Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can help you get the most out of your target audience.
Depending on the approach you want to take, social media will enable you to do the following
It is important to understand that successfully managing social media accounts takes time and money. You will need to commit significant resources to get consistent results.
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#8 Get help from experts and stay relevant
After successfully completing everything we listed, your business will eventually reach a ceiling. To take the next step, you will need to surround yourself with experts in social media, publishing leaders, and innovators in the online world. Keeping track of what’s happening in the industry is central to not getting left behind. If you do this successfully, you may eventually be lucky enough to establish yourself as a recognized leader in your field.
Regardless of the size of your business, learning how to market locally and successfully maintain a local customer base will depend on how well connected your customers feel to your brand.
#9 Keep active
Once you’ve gone through all the hard work of building an online presence, it’s important to continue to communicate and interact with your audience. Keeping them engaged and committed to your brand will help take you to the next level.
If you want to build and maintain a loyal customer base, they will need to feel included in your business. If your customers feel that you care, then they’re far more likely to remain loyal to your brand. You can achieve this by doing the following.
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#10 Be adaptable and open to ever changing strategies
One thing you will learn about online marketing is that you will need to be open and adaptable. Using analytical tools that allow you to follow what people are doing on your website, will help you learn how successful or unsuccessful specific strategies are.
Don’t get too attached to any single approach. Having the ability to adapt and overcome any issues that arise will be the difference between success and failure in maintaining a productive online marketing strategy that will enable growth in the future.
The more likeable your brands persona, the more effective your local marketing campaign is likely to be. To do this, you will have to:
As customers and search engines continue to favor more localized marketing, now is the time to take advantage and make this technology work for you. Are you ready to take the next step? Ask us about Localized SEO Marketing as well as other services. We are here for you!
