Using a local marketing strategy to reach your best customers

What is local marketing?

Local marketing is a marketing strategy that directly targets customers with a certain radius of the physical location of a business. It is also known as neighbourhood marketing or location-based marketing and is perfect for businesses that rely on driving customers in a local area.

Local marketing allows you to focus your budget and efforts on an audience that is more likely to respond to and buy from you, providing a better return on investment for your marketing efforts.

Who can benefit from local marketing?

A range of businesses can benefit from local marketing but it’s particularly important for any brand with a physical location. Some businesses benefit more than others from a local marketing strategy. For example, restaurants offer dine-in, takeout or delivery services and are locked into a physical location so relies heavily on local customers.

Retail stores can also benefit from local marketing along with lawyers and accountants who offer professional services locally.

Why is local marketing so important?

72% of consumers who conduct a local search visited a store within five miles. In addition, more than 30% of all searches conducted on Google have local intent. If you have a business that relies on local customers, you need to make sure you’re there when people are searching for your products and services online. If nobody knows your business exists, you’re not going to get any customers visiting you.

Local marketing will help to ensure that your business appears when potential customers are looking for what you do. It will also help you to attract those who are most likely to engage with your business and buy from you. If you want to target customers who are within 5 miles of your store, there’s no point wasting your budget on customers who are outside this range and who will never visit your site.

Top 6 local marketing strategies to help grow your business

Here are just a few of the local marketing strategies we recommend you can implement to target local customers and make sure your business is seen by the right people in the right place.

1. Make sure your website is mobile friendly

Over half of all internet traffic worldwide is from a mobile device. In fact, 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile friendly site.

Mobile friendliness is not only important for user experience, it’s also a huge factor in how well your site ranks SEO-wise and how well your paid search campaigns are likely to work too.

With so many customers searching locally on mobile for ‘near me’ or ‘in [city]’ searches, making sure your website is mobile friendly will help to convert these searchers and visitors into paying customers or store visitors who come and buy from you.

2. Localise your website

Localising your website means tailoring your web content to make sure it’s relevant to your local audience and customer base. Add location based terms to the content on your website as well as the meta titles and descriptions. Keep this consistent between your website, social media and digital ads too for the best results.

We also recommend adding location pages to your website which is particularly important if you have more than one bricks and mortar store or if you’re targeting more than one location. You should use these pages to publish your business name, address, phone number and other relevant store information and will also help you rank for local SEO.

Research the keywords that people are using locally to find products and services like yours and think about what your potential customers might be looking for, then optimise your site for these terms where possible.

3. Claim local listings on third party websites and directories

You can list your business and location on a number of third party websites, directories which provide local customers with relevant information and help you to appear in the search engines when they’re searching for relevant terms.

These sites are important for both SEO and search intent and help you to establish authority online. The most important business listing to claim is Google My Business. This will allow your business to show up in the search results on Google when people are searching for your name, industry, products or all of the above. These platforms also give customers a chance to leave reviews for your business.

4. Create a local SEO strategy

According to Google, 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a physical place within 24 hours and 28% of those searches result in a purchase. If you want customers to find you when they’re searching, you’ll need a local SEO strategy.

Local SEO involves optimising your website to make sure it ranks locally for relevant terms and keywords. As well as adding relevant keywords to your website, you should also create local content that’s relevant to your business. This type of content helps to localise your website and paint you as a local authority.

5. Localise your paid ads

Paying to advertise your business locally is another great way to reach the right audience, in the right place. Paid search and paid social advertising allows you to target specific audiences and personas in a particular area so you’re only spending your budget on the most relevant customers.

This also means adding location-specific keywords to your ad content to draw as many local customers in as possible.

6. Localise your social media activity

Social media is another great way to reach your local customers. Social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram allow you to localise your content. Whether it’s setting a location in your profile or tagging the location of your posts, you can increase the chances of your brand being seen by customers in your local area.

If you want to know more about how local marketing can help you grow your business, sign up to our newsletter for more insights.

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