Best Ways to Promote Your Business Locally
Some people would argue that promotion is everything. And, frankly, they are right to an extent. All—with a few exceptions, of course—leading companies and businesses in the world have got some of the most amazing, mind-blowing promotion strategies behind them. They have helped them get to where they are, and they keep them at the top.
The lesson is that no matter how hard you work to make your business the best, you still need to promote it. If people don’t hear about how good it is, they won’t ever find out.
With that in mind, we bring you 4 ways to promote business locally; let’s start out in a small-ish area that we can control and see the fruits of our labor more directly.
Social Media
One thing you will find out is that social media is absolutely huge even in smaller places. Towns of just a couple thousand people are completely obsessed with social media—it’s true. So no matter how small you think your audience will be on social media just because it isn’t New York or someplace big, it will have a big impact. In fact, the smaller the town, the bigger the impact!
There’s more than a few ways to go about social media. But here’s three of the ones that prove to be more effective more local promotion:
Local influencer
Every town and city has one (or a bunch!). They are the closest you can get to celebrities and usually have a huge online presence. Influencers nowadays have audiences from all walks of life and from all ages, so they’re a perfect opportunity for promotion.
The idea is to contact influencers to see if they would be interested in partnering up with you. Seeing as you would be local, depending on the place, the agreement should not be too constrictive for you. Hopefully they support local business and don’t see it as just an opportunity to make a buck, so be sure to emphasize that you are part of the same community.
The rest will largely be part of your business and the influencers’ modus operandi. The simple fact of the influencer talking about your business, or wearing branded clothing, or even giving you a shoutout before a video will make a big impact.
Local sports teams
Have you ever taken a look at just how many local sports teams there are? Hundreds of them. Your goal is to seek out sports teams and, basically, sponsor them. This practice is very popular for local sports teams who are always desperately trying to be sponsored, so it shouldn’t be too hard to make it happen.
Your aim should be to go for your town’s most popular sports first, whatever it may be, then work your way down to the least popular one. Each team has several teams within it, both in the male and female categories, so you’ve got plenty of space there to promote your business. And plenty of work to do!
Local events, giveaways and contests
A slightly more passive approach. It essentially requires you to always have your ear to the ground and be aware of all sorts of events going on in your town. Whenever there’s a window of opportunity, you have to get in there some way or another. You can sponsor stalls, have small presentations, and so on.
Giveaways and contests are something that is practiced on a bigger scale, but can also work locally with these same sort of events. Usually, local events will have a giveaway or something to entice people to come; you can be sponsoring that giveaway with one of your products or something similar. As long as it has your business name on it, logo, etc., it works.
Branded Merch
Branded merch has been at the core of business promotion for a very long time. The reason is actually rather simple: it works. Like an actual spell, branded merch has a way of paying for itself threefold.
Branded merch has several advantages:
- It’s a passive strategy. That means that, for the most part, you put it out in the world and wait. Then you rake in the rewards. It’s a lot like fishing, if fishing has a 100% catch rate. The similarity is that you need patience. But if after you muster some, then that’s all the work you need to do.
- Unlike most other ways to promote your business, branded merch is solid, palpable, and will serve its purpose for years upon years; unlike an ad campaign that can only really run for a few months at a time (at insane prices), a T-shirt or a patch will still be used in x years’ time from now.
- It’s fun and your business can engage with it. Not only will customers love it, but also your employees are sure to appreciate the branded merch as it feels good to represent your company while having practical and/or good looking clothing items. It’s also been shown that wearing branded merch boosts employee morale. Talk about a win-win!
Blogging
Blogging has been around since the beginning of the internet. Some of the most powerful content conglomerates on the internet today started as that—simple blogs on the internet. And then, they saw the power of promotion: how through posts, they could promote products and businesses and reach their readers that way.
The formula remains unchanged until today. Of course, blogging per se isn’t as popular right now—at least not in the same form. Blogging is a sort of shapeshifter. You see a lot of Instagram bloggers, for example. These are not technically influencers but have amassed an equal amount of loyal followers. They document their life, create food blogs, or sport-related entries.
In essence, they are bloggers. They occupy a very specific niche (unlike influencers) and share useful or educational videos with their followers.
Because of this, bloggers, instabloggers, and so on, can be a thousand times more effective than influencers. Instead of a barrage aimed at a general direction, if you identify a blogger that aligns with your business and/or product, you will find an audience that will almost 100% be interested.
Reviews & Anecdotes
We live in an era where customers want to know whether they can trust a business before getting involved with it. So they go to spaces where other customers can go and post detailed, long reviews about it.
Getting good reviews is important, but that can only be done by encouraging people to do so. Encourage clients to spread the word and share reviews online so that other customers know their experiences. People trust word of mouth.
Anecdotes curated by you can also be powerful. Videos and other sorts of media with actual anecdotes from actual clients that can easily be googled is a very powerful tool. Make use of it to help your future clients know that you are trustworthy and deserving of their time and money.
Conclusion
Social media, branded merch, bloggin, and reviews. In no particular order. Four viable ways to promote your business locally, four ways of promoting your business locally. Give them a chance and see just how easy and effective they can be!
