5 Ways To Win Your Local Market

Many small-sized businesses are not doing enough to reach their local audience.

There are many ways to engage the local community in your products and services.

So, here are five suggestions to help win your local market.

Join Local Groups

In your community, there are groups and forums that your target audience will be a part of. Consciously search those associations out and join them too.

By being active in these groups you are able to gain an insight into what drives local commerce and trading. Your local Chamber of Commerce is an excellent platform, to begin with, its members often include residents and businesses from your area.

Do Local SEO

While it is great to want to target a broad audience with your search engine marketing including local SEO is one of the best strategies.  Local SEO includes listing your business on Google’s free business directory.

To get listed, you will have to provide detailed information about your business such as your complete address, phone number, hours open, directions to your office, your website address, and pictures of your premises.

Once set up, you may want to get your customers to write reviews about their experience – think of these reviews as word of mouth marketing.

Now, as you know, people are more likely to purchase from a business after reading honest reviews from other buyers. Plus, Google ranks your business higher the more reviews you get.

Attend or organise Networking Events

The old-fashioned networking events are still powerful ways to market your brand while also building local connections.

Register to attend these custom exhibitions that seek to bring professionals and local businesses together.

custom exhibitions

These events provide a great opportunity to connect with other people and for them to discover new local businesses. Take advantage of these positive experiences to grow your business.

Are you wondering about the type of networking events to attend? Niche-specific events plus tradeshows for complementary industries are great places to start building out your connections.

You can even plan your own events. Be deliberate in your planning, make use of available tools such as event planning templates to help organise your thoughts and get your proposal out there to other businesses who might be interested.

Sponsor Local Events

Sponsoring local events is a strategy that will pay for itself. The idea is to stay active in your community. To always remain in the mind of your customers. And what better way to do that than to sponsor community events they care about?

Does your community host annual carnivals? End of year school party? Or any yearly civic event? Consider developing a professional and compelling event plan to motivate your network of prospects and local industry

You can even get involved with local charities or local sports clubs.

91% of consumers say they would switch brands to support a business involved in charitable works. 85% say they view companies with local charity affiliation favourably.

Now, that’s a valuable way to raise your business profile in the local community, gain new customers without additional effort, and dominate your local market.

Use Social Media and Local Directories

Your customers are on social media. They read review sites like Yelp to learn about local businesses. They use location-specific business directories to gather information about your business.

Remember though; it is not just enough to open accounts on these websites. Take the time to brand your profile to reflect your overall marketing strategy.

Publish content that showcases your expertise; however, be sure to post only engaging content — no sales pitch.

Finally, encourage your customers to review your business on Yelp. You may want to offer incentives – maybe a discount, redeemable points – to nudge them to take action.

So, there you have it. Use these five proven methods to win your local market.

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