You’ve established a new business, you’re eager to provide services, but you’re struggling to find customers because you’re not yet known. This is a common problem faced by many entrepreneurs. Developing a successful local marketing strategy is a particularly intricate task for newly established businesses.
The Dream of Rapid Growth vs. Reality
Most businesses want to grow instantly. It seems to be human nature. We want everything to happen at once! Build muscle immediately! Lose weight instantly! Get rich quick! But when these things don’t happen, many people give up at the first hurdle and say goodbye to their dreams.
In this article, I want to discuss a marketing strategy that will accelerate your growth process and build on more solid foundations. This strategy offers a more controlled and systematic approach beyond the concept of viral marketing.
Challenges of Traditional Marketing Approaches
As a new business owner, you might think: “If I try to reach 3 billion people, I’ll get much more return” or “If I target a high-welfare area, I can maximize my profit!” These thoughts seem logical at first glance, but if you think about them enough, you’ll see their challenges. Unfortunately, people usually learn this through experience.
You need to spend a lot on advertising to reach many people. When you target high-welfare communities, you’ll see how high the cost per click/impression is and how much competition there is.
In our culture, there’s a saying: “Stretch your legs according to your blanket.” This implies that you shouldn’t suddenly undertake something bigger than yourself. Even if you allocate the desired resources to high-cost advertisements despite exceeding your budget, a bigger problem awaits you. Many ventures in that market have done things by the book, identified the region’s needs very well, and proceeded with an appropriate vision. If you enter this market with the argument “I trust my product,” you’ll probably crash.
The Strategy of Expanding from a Small Point
Now I come to my main thought that will help you overcome this situation. Start expanding from a small point! What do I mean? For example, when advertising on platforms like Instagram or YouTube, target a location as narrow as possible. This way, you’ll have a small but recognizing community.
A local marketing strategy is developed to attract more customers around your local business, gain brand awareness, increase sales, and build trust. This approach provides significant advantages, especially for newly established businesses.
For instance, there’s a big difference between hearing about software you’ve never heard of when a friend says “qualitysoftware is great! Have you tried it?” and saying “Yes, I’ve heard of it but haven’t tried it yet.” Due to people’s herd-following instinct, this gives you confidence. They think, “If so many people know about it, I can trust it!” This way, you’ll start acquiring customers quickly.
As these customers become satisfied, they’ll provide positive feedback about you, and seeing this feedback, people from other locations will spread slowly, growing like an avalanche.
Local Targeting Techniques in Digital Marketing
Digital marketing for local businesses is quite different from how marketing works for a national or global business. Local businesses target local people geographically around them. In 2019, more than 90% of users searched for local businesses on Google. This shows how important a local marketing strategy is.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become a strategy that enables businesses to appear at the top of search engines for the keywords they want, creating a competitive advantage. Especially local SEO efforts are critical for reaching regional customers.
Local SEO is a set of practices that ensure good rankings for specific keywords in Google listings made regionally. Google, due to its working principle, lists local search results to provide users with the most useful results.
Barriers to Expansion
There are a few situations that hinder expansion. At the forefront of these are language barriers and borders. Border barriers in digital products are almost non-existent except for some bureaucratic obstacles, but language is an important problem.
For example, if you want to apply this method on a blog, you’ll need to set up a site with at least 2-3 languages. In some cases, you can start with just the target location’s language, but you’ll face significant obstacles in SEO.
Therefore, targeting an English-speaking community will provide an advantage. Especially preferring locations close to your server will be much smarter as it will provide them with better service.
Social Media and Local Marketing
Social media marketing is the set of activities carried out by brands to interact with their target audiences through social media platforms, to promote their products and services, and to increase their sales. Using social media platforms effectively for your local marketing strategy allows you to interact directly with your target audience.
One of the most effective ways of social media marketing is creating content that will interest local users. Sharing informative content about local events, news, and developments helps you connect with people in your region.
Creating Your Long-Term Strategy
A marketing strategy operates in a wide range from defining your business’s target audience to competitive analysis and brand communication. When determining this strategy, you evaluate your business’s strengths and weaknesses and develop tactics appropriate to your marketing goals.
To develop a successful local marketing strategy:
- Clearly define your target audience
- Research local needs and demands
- Analyze competition and identify your differentiation points
- Prioritize local SEO efforts
- Create local content on social media platforms
- Participate in or sponsor local events
- Monitor customer satisfaction and encourage referral marketing
By systematically applying these steps, you can create a customer base that starts from a small point and grows progressively.
Conclusion
Starting with a local strategy and gradually opening up to wider markets is the healthiest growth model for new businesses. While the desire for quick success often leads to disappointment, a step-by-step, solidly based growth strategy produces much more effective results in the long term.
As you grow your business, always prioritize the satisfaction of your existing customers and aim to reach new customers through their referrals. This organic growth model will reduce your advertising costs while increasing brand loyalty and ensuring your business grows sustainably.
