Smart Local Advertising for Smart Local Businesses
The lifeblood of a local business will always be local support. For this reason, it’s important (not to mention, cost-effective) for local businesses to focus their advertising efforts locally. Here are some ways that a local business can make itself heard in the community…
Show up to community events
Nothing brings a community together like special events, whether they be fairs, festivals, conventions, or even just movie nights in the park. For a business that wants to make itself known to the local community, there’s nothing more valuable than showing up to these events and being apart of the communal experience.
Whenever a convention rolls through town, make sure that you are setting up a booth and being a part of it, somehow. If you really want to go above and beyond, don’t even wait for a community event to happen, but set one up, yourselves!
Sponsor local programs
In any town or neighborhood, there are usually several community organizations that do special projects to make their community a better place to live.
These programs and organizations love to do partnerships with local businesses for funding and resources, so that they can have as much of an impact as possible.
Becoming a sponsor for these types of groups lets the community know that you are invested in the wellbeing and future growth of everyone inside of it.
Make your marketing local-focused
How you choose to portray yourself with your marketing makes an enormous difference in the way that people see you. Typically, it’s hard to juggle multiple images, so it’s best to find one that truly fits your company’s identity.
If you want to really portray yourself as a bastion of the community, then all of your marketing should work to set up that foothold.
Today, this means finding ways to create content that reaches out to the community in specific ways that are unique to them. Just using words like “local” don’t really show that you understand a community. You need to make yourself relatable to a specific group of local people, rather than a general idea of what local means.
Sponsor school teams and competitions
The key to the heart of any community is through schools. Helping improve the lives, experiences, and education of the kids in a neighborhood is always a noble pursuit.
If this is something that your business can get behind, then contact local schools to see if there are any programs that you can sponsor that will help improve some activity or department within the school.
In terms of exposure, competitive teams are great to sponsor, because you are able to get your branding up in the place of competition (such as a banner on a baseball diamond, or similar).
Get a PR team
Even if you are a community-focused local business, it can be hard to present yourself as that way. Creating and managing a company image is a specific skill that most people don’t inherently possess.
However, there are plenty of PR services out there for small businesses to take advantage of, without needing a full-time PR staff, in-house. These types of services typically include a marketing specialist, a PR spokesperson, and access to a lawyer that specializes in small businesses.
Collaborate with other local businesses
Usually, in a thriving local community, there is a strong presence of local businesses in a variety of different industries. Working together with these other businesses to bring better services and experiences to the people in a community shows that you are dedicated to the town.
You can set up business collaborations by either combining different types of services or products (for example: a local restaurant serving ingredients from a local farm), or by cosponsoring the different programs that are mentioned, above.
Category: Business
