Around 82% of consumers reported to have used local businesses in the last year. So, how do you grab your local audience’s attention? We have you covered.

In this article, we will go over 7 effective local marketing strategies to grab your reader’s attention and keep them hooked! Read on to discover these 7 hacks.

1. Unleash Intriguing Content for Local Marketing

Around 2 million blogs are posted each day! You want your customers to read your content right? When you read your own content, do you find it engaging? Remember, it’s not just about blogs. Videos, images, infographics, and lists are all high-engagement tools for your business.

It’s all about quality content in your writing that will attract your consumers. When writing out content, keep your consumer in mind and think about what matters to them! For example, if your consumers are in the health and wellness niche, you don’t want to spend the bulk of your time writing about topics that don’t pertain to them.

How funny but not helpful would it be to talk about your guitar collection to a mom looking for a dentist?

Once you have quality content, make sure to break up your blogs and not just have one long post. To break up your posts, have subheadings, and also images! According to Adobe, blogs that break up their content with images have 650 times the engagement!

Emphasize that you are a local business! Remember those stats above. You want to attract the local shoppers, so make sure you are giving them quality content. When you are writing, add your address and location, whether it’s on a landing page or a blog. Making your messaging personal is essential.

2. Use Strong Keywords

Not sure on how to use keywords? Moz has some great information on how to pick great keywords! This is broken down by a few factors, one of which is your geographic region.

Since you’re local you want a local marketing strategy right? Don’t shy away from looking into neighboring towns. If they’re close by and a larger population, you can target them as well and then have even more keywords to choose from!

3. Micro-Influencers in, Celebs Out

What are micro-influencers? They aren’t as big as celebrities, but they still have a significant following on social media. With their smaller following they tend to have more trust with users.

They also cost much less than hiring a celebrity influencer to promote your product! Whether you’re watching your wallet or not, micro-influencers save you money while helping you reach a larger audience! For best results, keep the micro-influencer in line with a localized marketing strategy.

Another great joint strategy is backlinks! Reach out to different publications in the area and see if they’d be open to guest writers, business listings, or just a quick write-up about your company. Ready to kickstart your research? One great example is Barbon’s Barbershop, who had success with receiving publications by mentioning they’re one of the few female-owned barbershops in Austin.

Think of something unique about yourself when reaching out to publications!

4. Build Up Your Email List

You might be wondering, is email marketing dead? Not quite! Email lists are an essential component of local marketing. As algorithms change, your audience is more likely to see a message delivered to their inbox than in their social media feed. Did you know most health and fitness brands enjoy a 20-22% email open rate? Think about how fast you’d grow with little effort if you have an email list of 100 people, 20 open it, and even five sign up each month?

You definitely want to grow an email list for your business. Think about it, when you have their email, then you can always reach back to them again in the future. This way you don’t have to worry about continually finding new customers. Make sure that the content you provide them is relevant and engaging.

5. Use Video Instead of Words

Did you know 82% of people would rather see a live video than read content? Pretty crazy right? In this day and age, many people browsing skim or scroll as opposed to reading all the way through an article.

Think of all the avenues out there for video, such as Youtube, Facebook live, and so many more! Mix it up, with both written content and videos for the ultimate engagement team.

6. Focus on Local for Social Media

Tag local locations when you post! Think about using local keywords in your profile, hashtags, etc. Search engines will notice when you have tags that are local and you will rank better with local searchers!

When writing ads, make sure they interest the local consumer by talking about different events in your area and niche. Remember, you want your content and ads to be relatable!  If you’re using Facebook, you can actually choose the location for who sees your ads. You can always separate it by state, city, etc. Want some help with Facebook or just marketing in general? Check out these services.

7. Testimonials Are Gold

What’s the first thing you check out when you’re pondering a product online? Reviews! More than 75% of customers say that online reviews are important to them in making an assessment of a company. Reviews are important to us, and rightfully so!

If you’re local, try to gather your testimonials from local consumers! When potential consumers see these testimonials, your trust value increases! Make sure the consumer also writes their city and state in the review. This will help you appear in searches!

Here’s another useful statistic: 90% of consumers said they would leave a review if asked! That’s even more of a reason to not fear asking your consumers for a review!

Encourage your consumers to leave a review next time they come by!

Next Steps

Implementing these steps will result in more leads and more satisfied clients. Remember to wow your current local consumers as well as your new ones. Did you know that 88% of consumers want special offers for being returning customers? That’s a great way to entice them to come back.

These points for local marketing will help you earn more local consumers! Do you feel like all of this information is a bit overwhelming, and you don’t where to start? At Selene Marketing, we will guide you along in the process for more leads and less stress!

Contact us to redeem your free strategy session. If you’re looking for marketing in Bend, Oregon or Portland, we’ll buy the coffee. We look forward to speaking with you soon!