3 Tips for Local Marketing and Advertising Success

Far too often, startups and small businesses focus too much of their energy and effort on large-scale marketing and advertising campaigns. Unfortunately, in the pursuit of connecting with everyone, they fail to engage anyone. Local marketing is the answer.

The Value in Local Promotion

Have you heard of the mere-exposure effect? Also referred to as the familiarity principle, it’s a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a strong preference for things that they’re familiar with. And while not strictly a business principle, it certainly has its fair share of application in the corporate world.

Small businesses, in particular, can take advantage of the mere-exposure effect by unleashing local promotional campaigns that target consumers who are in the geographical vicinity of the brand.

The best example of this is the “buy local” campaigns you’ll see in different cities from time to time. While these campaigns are traditionally based on the sustainability of purchasing products that are locally sourced, they have just as much to do with familiarity.

As you look for ways to improve your marketing and advertising strategies, you can benefit from applying the mere-exposure effect and going after a local market. Though you may lose some reach by zooming in, you’ll also improve your close rate.

3 Local Marketing and Advertising Tips

Not sure how to best approach local marketing? Here are a few helpful suggestions to get you started on the right foot:

 

  • Narrow Your Online Advertising

 

In order to reach more people online, you should narrow your advertising to specific markets. This will allow you to cut through the noise and reach a local audience.

You can always manually optimize your campaigns, but it may be helpful to find an advertising platform or tool that does it for you. See Local, for example, has an ad platform that features postcode targeting and performs up to 40 percent higher than the industry average. Using a tool like this will save a ton of time that would otherwise be spent tweaking dozens of individual aspects of your campaign.

 

  • Play Around With Facebook Targeting

 

It’s not enough to just target people by location. You most likely need to narrow your aim even further to identify the right prospects within a specified geographical market. This is where Facebook’s robust ad targeting features come into play.

“Facebook allows advertisers to target their ads using virtually every aspect of a person’s life as an advertising parameter, including demographic data such as age, life events like getting married or having a child, their level of education or approximate income, and much more,” marketer Dan Shewan notes. “These parameters can then be combined with location targeting, refining potential audiences even further.”

The more you use Facebook targeting, the more comfortable you’ll get with its features. You’ll also learn the value in studying past campaign results and making inferences based on the results.

 

  • Publish Locally-Focused Content

 

Think back to the last time you were scrolling through headlines on your favorite site and you saw a headline with your hometown’s name in it. In all likelihood, you clicked on it to learn more. The mere-exposure effect strikes again.

Instead of publishing generic content intended for large audiences, consider putting a local slant on your blog posts and articles. Not only will you see a boost in local SEO, but you’ll also attract more engaged eyeballs.

Find Your Niche

In a day and age where businesses are increasingly expanding theirs cope in hopes of capturing entire markets, small businesses would do well to zoom in and take advantage of their natural advantages. By focusing on local marketing and advertising, you can leverage the mere-exposure effect and penetrate your target audience with more consistency. Give it a try and see what you think.

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