Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully. -Zig Ziglar
Entering and breaking into the local industry is not easy. Regardless of your business's size or the niche you are operating in, there are costs, business plans, and hiring associated with them. At the same time, you have to find suppliers and deal with several other problems before opening your doors to the local market.
Local branding gives you the chance to bond with the inhabitants and drive your sales to reach new heights. To brand yourself successfully, you must understand the market. But it is more important that you actively engage with your customer and other local businesses.
When people refer to branding, it is usually about large companies that have a budget for their marketing strategies. However, brand building is also essential for local businesses. It is what will set you apart from your competitors and determine how your customers view you and your brand.
To successfully build your local brand, you need to thoroughly understand your local market's scope and the potential of your clients. Another factor to consider is the possibility that you may face a bigger brand that depends on foot traffic and referrals only. If that is the case, then digital marketing will not be enough for your brand. You will need a local marketing strategy that will focus on where your potential clients are.
At the end of the day, what is branding? Or, to put in relative terms, what do Coca-Cola and Nike have in common? Do they sell you water, sugar, and running shoes, or do they sell you inspiration? They know how your brain works and how customer behavior works, and here is the simple hack.
We all know that Nike sells to bring out the athlete in you. They motivate you on a psychological level so that you purchase their product. You don't have to be an athlete to wear running shoes. You need to believe that they work on bringing the athlete out in you. In the same way, Coca-Cola sells you open happiness, the concept of family, friends, and good times.
Today, it's hard for you to create that image for your business online. All you need to do is follow the steps in this book and implement a core digital strategy for yourself. A process that your local or hyper-local community begins to notice online. With the following helpful techniques, you can quickly boost your local branding:
Find the Right Message for Your Local Audience
Creating a local brand strategy means understanding your audience. Once you know them, you can easily create content and spread the message. Your local content should target your market's needs with values, selling points, and calls to action. You need to have open communication to understand the local customers and understand what they want and messaging.
When creating the right message for online content, including the local market's location is the best way to connect with regional consumers. Other tools are researching trends in the local market for your content.
Conduct Market Research
Succeeding in a local market means building your brand with a target audience and competing with your competitors. That is where market research comes into play. Through it, you can understand who your competitors are and how you can outdo them with respect to customers.
Depending on the type of business, you may be facing dozens of local competitors who already have an established clientele. However, with the right research, you can easily target the customers who are not really satisfied with your competitor and turn them into your customer.
Invest in Local SEO
If you want to get your digital offerings in front of your local customers, Search Engine Optimization is the best possible option. SEO is a tool that uses targeted keywords to place your website on the top of search engine results. This is especially the case when you are against a crowded local market. SEO can help in ranking your website higher than your competitors.
Build Partnerships
If you want to build your brand in the local market, forming strong relationships with local businesses can boost you. These partnerships will help you build your network and boost your word of mouth and bring quality online backlinks to your website. The more your brand engages with other local businesses, the more you will be seen as a trustworthy and authoritative business in your local industry.
Local SEO
Local SEO is a Search Engine Optimization that helps your business's local search results on Google. Any company that has a physical location can take advantage of the local SEO. Suppose a potential customer searches for any essential keywords that are related to your business and a map with three listings underneath it. In that case, the local SEO can help you in growing your business.
To understand SEO, you need to comprehend the inner workings of Google. When the internet was first introduced, there were not many websites. And, because of this, surfing through the web was pretty easy. But once the internet started to expand, search engines were introduced to narrow down users' searches so they could easily find the websites they were looking for.
If a user typed a phrase into a search engine, that phrase would be matched to different websites present on the web, including those phrases. Google implemented this same approach. However, it quickly took over all other search engines when it became the first search engine to use links between sites to indicate which websites were trusted.
Today, Google looks over hundreds of factors on and off your website and determines if it is relevant enough to show it as a search result. Factors are what form your digital footprint, and each factor has its own weight or value. The search engine then combines these two to get results. Your digital footprint is what determines whether you are a top search or not.
Now that you know how Google ranks local search results, you can start working on optimizing your site's digital footprint in the region-oriented search ecosystem. This way, your business shows up higher on the results page, and it can lead to more customers finding your presence online.
Google My Business
As the name implies, Google My Business allows you to create a listing for your business on Google. When a consumer finds your business on Google or searches for terms related to your business, you have to ensure that the consumer has all the information they need to visit your company, make a purchase, or contact the company.
With Google My Business, you can create a listing for your business, and you can manage the appearance of your company on the world's most popular search engines. These features give your business a lot of perks. That is why Google My Business makes it very easy to:
• Interact with the reviewers
• Provide all the necessary information about your business.
• Make it easy for clients to find your location
• Promote any news and events about the company
• Add photos of your company
Google My Business is crucial as it aids your business in interacting with your targeted audience and provides all the information to your current and potential customers. If you skip on Google My Business, you will be missing out on potential sales, exposure, and revenue for your company.
Why Should You Use Google My Business?
It is Free
Unlike other platforms, Google My Business is a free platform, and it does not operate via a freemium business model. Google My Business comes with no limitations. This means that you have access to the same tools, just like your competitor.
With no costs at all, Google My Business can be used by any business. You do not have to invest anything. You can easily sign up at your convenience and enjoy the benefits of Google My Business.
It Generates Leads
When people want to search for anything, they refer to Google. For any local searches, Google displays all the Google My Business profiles. This is the reason it is important to create and maintain a profile. Without a profile, users can easily find your competitors and deal with them.
Making GMB a part of your digital marketing strategy can help you gain new leads and generate other additional sales.
GMB Helps Your Ranking in Search Results
Google is a pervasive website, which is why you want to ensure that your business does not get lost in the search results. When you are more visible on Google, you have a higher chance of getting noticed by people's searches.
If you want to maximize your rank in the search results and improve the number of clicks on your Google My Business profile, then you need to optimize and maintain your profile.
Social Media
If your local business is not active on social media, you miss out on all the opportunities. Social media networks are one of the biggest sources of inspiration for consumer purchases. Nowadays, ignoring social media and not incorporating it into your marketing strategy can really cost you. There are 65 million local business pages on Facebook. So, if you are not contacting those potential customers, then your competitors will grab this chance.
Social media not only allows your local business to connect with new customers but also enables you to retain your existing customers. Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram are all used for the same purpose – socializing. By connecting with your customers through these social media platforms, you can build connections, sustain relationships, and retain your customers.
Benefits of Building a Community Brand
Creating an online community around your brand is a modern approach to marketing. This is a strategy that every business should consider. A brand community is a group of customers who are brought together as they share the same interest in your brand and what your brand stands for. It is a group of people who are united under the banner of your brand.
Building a community brand is all about breaking those customer-brand boundaries and giving your customers a feeling of being a part of your brand.
It is all about "we" rather than "us-and-them." Creating a brand community takes time, although the results can be more than worth it when it is created. Brands who build their communities successfully get a few benefits, such as:
Authentic, User-Generated Source of Content
One of the biggest benefits to brand communities is that they are a free source of authentic content regarding your products and services. Online communities can offer you free product reviews, comments, and Q&As. These can be used as social proof to attract new customers.
Builds Brand Loyalty
Brand communities help build brand loyalty by making your customers feel like they are invested in your brand. This leads to increased revenue as two-thirds of consumers will spend more on brands that they are loyal to.
Reduced Cost of Customer Support
Online brand communities and forums also act like the customer support department. Your customers ask questions on the forum, and members of the brand can answer their queries for free. This means that customer support teams will have less work. This is one of the reasons why almost half of the business which has online communities have claimed to save between 10%-25% of their annual cost.
Increased Brand Exposure and Brand Credibility
Brand communities also contribute to your marketing efforts by sharing and promoting your brand on their own social media profiles. This helps increase the exposure of the brand and builds brand credibility. Customers are more likely to trust your brand when they see actual social proof.
It is a Valuable Source of Data, Insights, and Feedback
About two-thirds of businesses utilize their brand communities to gain insight into new products and services. Your brand communities will give you honest data and feedback. This is great as the input you receive will be accurate.
Customer Retention
Brand communities become a good source for post-purchase communications. Your customers keep interacting with your brand even after they have made their purchase. This means that you have better customer retention and more business.
It is a Great Pre-Release Channel
The best way to leverage your brand community is to utilize it as a prerelease channel. You can share your new products and services with them, and they will give you honest feedback. This way, you can fix any wrongs before launching the product in the market. To summarize, the last few 28 chapters basically ask you to take the following seriously to succeed with your digital strategy:
• Think about your online presence and brand presence and align them well with what your business stands for in the community
• Build a good website with great content and always keep it fresh
• Implement SEO for both local and broader searches for your website
• Use Google my Business and other local and relevant directories
• Keep a solid social media presence and build your community online
• Be authentic and keep your community well informed online about what's going on with your business
• Put some budget into local online advertising
• Create videos that can be used online as a part of your social strategy
• Always get your customers feedback and compel them to give you excellent reviews
• Be consistent and persistent
• Never give up
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Ampjar (2020). Why Brand Communities Are Awesome (and How to Build Your Own). Retrieved 28
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