Simple Marketing Strategies to Improve Local Customer Base

There can be so much emphasis on promoting your market to reach a far and wide audience. However, it’s imperative to also hold your local community down.

When planning for general business marketing strategies, including schemes that specifically target audiences that live within the area where your business is located is vital. Keying into a local customer base can become the sustaining factor that your business needs to stand the test of time.

Attracting and retaining customers around your locality isn’t more stringent than any other business marketing strategy that exists.

In this article, you’ll learn about the best, yet simple marketing techniques that you can adopt to gain a strong local customer base.

Optimize Ads and Content with Geo-targeting

Advertising has a large chunk of any marketing strategy.

One way to go about this is by creating informative and consistent content for your business. This is one of the main factors in attracting and converting new visitors. Publish informative and relevant content on your website from time to time so your website can be found on search engines.

However, it’s not enough to put up content that nobody can find or one that isn’t directed at your target audience. Optimize your website content by using relevant keywords and building a grid of authoritative backlinks.

Use keywords that are location-specific so you can get the attention of local customers to your business.

Adopt digital advertising strategies like Pay-Per-Click campaigns, retargeting, remarketing, and email. Specifically, use geo-targeting for advertising to local prospects around your business location.

Google Ads allows you to advertise to a specific location(s). Once you do this, your ads will only show to prospects around there. It’s important to do this – especially if your business is a brick-and-mortar store, it depends on deliveries, or it’s an e-commerce business.

Create and Print Posters

While a decent fraction of your marketing is done online, you should never neglect the impact of a great offline strategy involving posters. Attractive custom posters around your locality can bring in the right kind of attention you need for your business, especially if you are just starting out or you have a special event.

Not only can posters create awareness for your on-site business, they can also drive people to your online presence (when you include web addresses or social media handles).

Creating worthy posters for your business may require professional help. However, you can now work with an online poster maker option that offers you a wide range of beautiful customized poster templates. You can easily edit these templates and create a poster of your choice, even without design skills.

PosterMyWall is an online poster creator that gives you hundreds of professionally crafted poster templates to choose from. You’re able to create your posters at cost-effective rates and within a short time.

You can take your business marketing game to the doorsteps of people in your locale by creating, printing, and placing posters in targeted areas.

Get Testimonials

Some customers give reviews or testimonials about a business or service, while many others don’t bother to do so. And for your business to thrive, it’s important to get as many testimonials as possible and share them with the public.

It’s not enough to trust patrons to give reviews in their own time. Sometimes, you may need to take an extra step and push them to do so.

One way to do this is by offering free or discounted trials to new customers. A free trial is a great marketing strategy that attracts new customers and ‘compels’ them to give testimonials about your business.

You can offer a first time or periodic free trial to your customers like RiteKit and watch them convert to loyal and paying customers with time.

You can also provide your business service for free to targeted (prominent) clients in your community in exchange for an in-depth testimonial. It’s a slight version of influencer marketing, except it’s targeted at your locality alone.

Leverage and Expand Existing Network

If you start a business in a community, chances are that there’s an existing network already. This network can include potential clients or fellow business owners. Reach out to these people and develop a good relationship with them.

If you have an existing business, build on your core customers and drive them for referrals. This can be strong leads to improve your local customer base.

Join groups that have businesses with the same target audience as you, network with them, and figure out how they build their customer base.

The reality is, there will always be an established link you can leverage on –friends, family, colleagues, or old customers. Find them and build on them to push the product or service you offer.

Make Use of Local Directories

Take advantage of directories that can drive local traffic to your business.

Listing on certain local directories will ensure your business shows up in local search results. Such local directories include;

• NextDoor- 67% of members share business recommendations, and once posted, your business instantly appears in the feed of every member within 2 miles of your location.
• Yelp- has recorded 214 reviews and an average of 28 million mobile app users monthly as of the second quarter of 2020
• YellowPages- records more than 60 million visitors every month, and about 91% of the visitors contact a business after searching YP.
• Google Map- makes sourcing for information more straightforward and encourages people to look a business up on the internet before stepping into the actual store.

It’s important to verify all your details –store open hours, contact info, address, and website –on these platforms.

Maintain Excellent Customer Support and Services

Positive first impressions are vital in sustaining a business. A high percentage of customers are willing to pick excellent customer service over low prices when deciding where to patronize.

Having an outstanding customer experience strategy in place is as important as having the business itself. Customer service is the lifeline of referrals and positive reviews.

First, you can build good customer service through a stellar phone answering service. Swiftly responding to inquiries and politely walking enquirers through their issues is the right way to go about phone answering services. Customers are more likely to return to businesses that ‘treat them right’.

Also, loyalty reward is a strategy you can build on. Offer loyalty cards, discount codes to new customers or those who spend a certain amount, and promo programs to customers from time to time.

To do these, however, it’s important to account for the customer’s contact details. You can make use of CRM software to keep track of customer communication and details.

Excellent customer support and services improve your retention and conversion rates.

Social Media Promotion

Just because you’re targeting your local community audience doesn’t mean you cannot find them on social media platforms. Every business that wants to thrive needs to have an adequate level of social media presence.

With social media, you can showcase your products or services and promote your posts to your target audience. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are platforms where you can make good impressions with your business.

Share exciting and constant insights on your different platforms, put more emphasis on your target audience, and engage with them as much as you can.

There’s the need to create eye-catching social media posts that’s super focused on your audience’s interest. Therefore, use a wide range of templates from PosterMyWall to customize your posts on your different social media platforms and connect with your audience in a professional but social way.

Community Participation

To thrive in a community, the locals need to be able to identify you and see you as an important part of the community.

Get involved in different community events and indirectly promote your business. At these events, have emblems that represent your business, so you’re identifiable. You can also donate prizes on behalf of your business during contests or engage in charity events to engage your community.

Running a periodic trademark event is a great way to seal your businesses in the mind of your community. If you can’t do this, you can host and promote existing community events, no matter how small or blown up it gets.

Also, if you’re trying to break into a new customer target in the community, you can tailor your event to suit that particular need.

This strategy is very effective because it attracts the right audience faster. People tend to stay loyal to a business that supposedly has them in mind. It’s a significant plus if your event turns out great and you’re able to promote your business.

Conclusion

Your business needs to build on your local customer base to thrive. Optimize your ads and content with a focus on your local community, create attractive custom posters, and distribute them around, call the necessary attention to your business and engage the locals, and gain loyal customers.

Whatever you do, make sure your business is on the faces of your local community.