What is local retail marketing?
Local retail marketing involves utilizing the “4Ps” (product, price, place, and promotion) to attract customers in-store and drive sales.
Local marketing is vital because it’s likely that the vast majority of retail customers live within 10 miles of where they shop, so getting brand exposure to these people is crucial.
Here are a few tips and ideas to help boost your brand awareness in your local area:
1. Understand Your Community
To connect with your community, you need to understand their needs and wants. Focus on understanding things such as:
- What activities are popular in the local area?
- How do people here like to spend their free time?
- What is the demographic and psychographic makeup of the community?
The answers to these questions will help you create the right messaging and marketing activities.
2. Invest in Local Search Ads
As Adweek points out, 45% of all searches on Google now include local intent (i.e., finding nearby businesses), and 84% of those local searches result in a purchase.
For more information on local search, read our blog about “Hyperlocal Marketing.”
3. Talk to local journalists
Media coverage is a great way to build credibility, trust, and brand recognition. It gains a lot of visibility quickly and has the added benefit of helping build your website backlinks and improve your SEO. Thankfully, this process is pretty straightforward (albeit a bit time-consuming).
4. Consider exploring the wild side with Guerilla Marketing
Guerrilla marketing is a strategy whereby a company uses surprise or unconventional interactions to promote a product or service. It’s a type of offline marketing that uses public places to get the word out about your business. If executed correctly, it can be a great way to boost your store’s visibility in a fun and creative manner. A bonus is that guerilla marketing is usually pretty cost-effective.
5. Participate in or sponsor local events
Local events are a great way to connect potential customers, the press and gain backlinks to your website. So, if something is happening in your neighborhood that you think might be relevant to your business, find ways to get involved.
6. Your team can be your greatest asset
A happy workforce is better for business. That’s why companies should strive to keep their employees engaged and motivated. The key is to hire the right people and provide ample training and competitive compensation. This leads to happier employees who feel connected to the business and will perform at higher levels, which means better retail experiences for consumers and increased sales.
7. Leverage social media
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for gaining visibility amongst your ideal audience while engaging existing customers. Have strong engagement on social media; you need to do the following:
- Post content regularly, which creates value for the reader
- Consider running paid ads
- Use social media to help communicate your brand essence
- Include hashtags to make your content more searchable
4. Leverage video
When used correctly, video provides an excellent way to showcase your brand and products. Video content should be:
- Relatable: Feature people who look like your target customers and make them as relevant to the audience as possible.
- Have a clear call-to-action: Mention the CTA in your video, add a link in the description or embed the link directly into the content.
- Please choose the proper format and platforms: Decide which platforms to publish your videos where your target audience is most likely to see them (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, Youtube…etc.). Ensure the video length and file format suit the channels you’re publishing to.
5. Focus on email marketing
Email marketing can be a highly effective marketing activity if appropriately executed. To set yourself up for success, make sure you segment your audience customers from non-customers so you can send “first-time offers” or “win-back” campaigns.
6. Run a referral campaign
Referral campaigns are a great way to stimulate word-of-mouth marketing. Again, you can determine what structure works best for your business, but essentially, the idea should be to provide an incentive for your happy customers to spread the word about your brand to their friends and family.
7. Loyalty program
Slightly different from referral campaigns, loyalty programs reward existing customers for their continued patronage—for example, discounts on subsequent visits, free products, birthday discounts…etc. Up to 77% of shoppers participate in loyalty programs and help consumers choose where to spend their money, so having a program set up will keep your business competitive.
Conclusion
Without focusing on local marketing efforts and strategies, your business can miss out on customer growth and loyalty. Local marketing is ideal for any business because it focuses on targeted marketing campaigns in a specific area. These tactics can help create customer engagement and loyalty.
As consumer experts, Mobeo understands how important local retail business is for a community. Customers want to support their local stores. We help connect the two through digital ad localization, which results in increased traffic and sales.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.