Creating a unique brand for your company is just part of the process of building success for your business. There are many ways to get your product or service out to consumers with today’s technology, and our first instinct is usually to advertise. We’ve seen it all before: bright and colourful ads on billboards, television, flyers; even during your morning commute on the bus or subway. These eye-catching advertisements, also known as outbound marketing, bring your product or service to prospective consumers. But what if there was a way to bring those potential clients to you?
Inbound marketing is the process of helping prospective clients find your company.
This can be just as effective as traditional advertising, in that it occurs before the customer or client is thinking about making a purchase. Opening a dialogue between you and the consumer early on can help with brand preference, which will in turn result in more leads and revenue for your company.
Inbound marketing uses a variety of different types of marketing, such as blogs, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and social media to raise your brand’s awareness to attract new customers. The main focus of inbound marketing is visibility to have prospective buyers come to you, allowing your brand or company to build trust with people who are actively interested in your product or service.
- Stux / Pixabay
Whereas outbound marketing attracts attention and “tells” the customer why they should buy your product, inbound marketing seeks to educate and entertain the customer about your product. This engagement between you and the customer makes your company more memorable and creates a lasting impression on them and their future marketing decisions.
More importantly, this good impression will keep consumers coming back over time as they become more familiar with your product or service, strengthening that trust you have already started building upon. With a variety of mediums and methods at your disposal for inbound marketing, where do you begin?
Here are some ways to give your company a boost in helping people find you.
Local Marketing Consultant
A marketing consultant is exactly what their position says: they are here to help improve your brand’s marketing by creating and implementing different marketing strategies. A marketing consultant is consumer-oriented and is an expert on the products or services your company offers; their expertise is important in developing the right marketing plan and message to engage with prospective consumers, finding one that fits your company while giving you the results you want to see.
Each brand and company has its own business goals and fair share of challenges. It is the marketing consultant’s responsibility to identify opportunities and overcome obstabcles through research and what they know of the market and your product.
A local marketing consultant is someone to consider, especially if the product or service your company offers is unique to your area. With their knowledge of the locale and the types of consumers, they can work with you to design a marketing plan that’s specifically tailored to your company to engage with prospective customers.
An effective local marketing consultant will raise your company’s visibility with your business goals in mind, helping to build trust between you and future customers on your behalf.
Local Email Marketing
About 81% of small businesses rely on local email marketing as their main method of acquiring customers, and it is easy to see why: it is a simple, low cost, but highly effective alternative to getting your company’s message directly to prospective consumers in your immediate and surrounding area.
Email marketing works well with both large and small businesses, adapting to each company’s needs of reaching thousands of people across the country or targeting consumers on a more intimate and local scale.
As its name suggests, email marketing utilizes an email list or newsletter to communicate and engage with current and potential customers. By creating an incentive, such as a new kind of product or service exclusive to people who sign up for the email newsletter, you will give your interested audience a reason for them to sign up and encourage them to continue engaging with your company.
This method is extremely effective for smaller businesses, as it allows you to create lasting local connections that will help strengthen your company’s image in your area by encouraging subscriptions through face-to-face interactions or through hosting events.
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Local Marketing Automation
Marketing automation involves using software to do any repetitive marketing activities, such as email marketing or social media posting. Not only is this more efficient and can provide a more personalized experience for your customers, but it also allows you to focus on other aspects of your marketing campaign or business in general. Local marketing automation is geared towards helping local businesses connect with their community and automate the process of engaging with ideal customers.
Local marketing automation tools are specifically designed to meet the marketing challenges of creating a systematic process of recurring tasks. It’s the best way to build efficiencies into your operation so that businesses are able to serve their customers more without the bottleneck of tech or marketing. Campaigns, such as creating direct mail, landing pages for websites, and sending newsletters that are uniquely relevant to a locale are ways to implement automation.
Local Influencer Marketing
Searching online for local businesses has become more frequent recently, especially in 2019, when consumers were encouraged to shop local to support small businesses affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic. On average, about eighty-two percent of customers read online reviews of local businesses, which makes having an online presence crucial for local companies seeking to grow their business.
As a result, consumers are frequently encouraged to leave reviews online sharing their experience of a company’s product or service, with the added incentive of receiving a discount or gift in return. This is the focus of local influencer marketing: by building your brand awareness and engagement at a local level, they can help increase the visibility and credibility of your products or services.
Word of mouth is a powerful tool, and many prospective customers discover new companies through their family and friends.
This can be especially effective for local businesses who collaborate with local influencers, such as journalists, bloggers, speakers or individuals with a large social media presence, to help spread the word about their business in a way that is authentic and relevant to their area. The idea is to find and collaborate with those who have a close-knit following based on your location to influence purchase decisions, with the goal of their recommendations reaching your target customers.
- Rocheartist / Pixabay
Conclusion
With a variety of methods for you to choose from, local inbound marketing can help your company grow and boost sales no matter its size. Visibility and trust are key to effective local inbound marketing; whether you decide to work with people such as local marketing consultants or influencers, or keep emailing lists and newsletters, you can develop a marketing plan that fits your brand and make it easy for prospective customers to find you.