Local Small Business Marketing Tips
As a small business owner looking for marketing tips when dealing with your local marketing strategy, you may be wondering how you can take advantage of some of the recent developments in marketing and social media to help drive local awareness.
Small business owners everywhere are tweeting and Facebooking and “going viral”, but you may find that many of these vehicles don’t seem as helpful when you try to apply them to a neighborhood or local area.
Here are some local small business marketing tips to help you take some of the latest tools in marketing and them work in your neighborhood.
Start a Community Blog – You can build your brand as a local business by setting up a community blog to talk about local happenings, items of note for local residents, and so on. Invite others in the community to contribute. Over time, you can build a community resource that will drive traffic to the blog and in turn, drive awareness for your business.
You can go a few ways with this idea. If you own a business related to children, start a blog about local children’s activities. Invite people from non-competing businesses to contribute (i.e. own a daycare? Ask a local ballet school, a soccer league, and a karate school to post some success stories about local kids who enjoy taking part in those activities, and make sure your brand is prominent on the blog).
Play the History Angle – Get in touch with city hall and ask about interesting milestones that might be coming up that are worth celebrating. Is a town anniversary approaching, or a milestone date in the town’s history? Offer to work with prominent local residents to stage an event to celebrate with your business as the centerpiece of the promotional effort.
These types of events are attractive to local media and represent a great way to get free publicity for your small business – and as I always say, publicity is one of the best forms of small business marketing there is.
Looking for something with a zero budget? Set up a Facebook page and do some research to find local residents who have a connection to the milestone (i.e. a long time resident, or other prominent business people). Tell their stories on your facebook page, branded under your business name.
Promote the facebook page with help from city hall, organized under your business name. You’ll connect with local residents online and have a chance to get to know them and build …
Start a Holiday Tradition – If your business is seasonal, make sure you are a big part of the holidays in your town. Most major cities have some type of milestone holiday event, like the lighting of a big Christmas tree, etc. But what about your local area? Is there a well established tradition? If not, could you start one, either on your own or as part of a group?
These are just a few of the ways you can leverage the broad reach of social media as part of local marketing strategies in your neighborhood.