A local branding strategy is vital to bringing more clients.
Local branding can be challenging to target a local or nearby market. Targeting a local market can be challenging, whether it’s for your own company or for your clients.
For starters, you must have a thorough awareness of the size of your local market and how prospective customers locate you geographically.
Another consideration is the chance that, as a new player in the industry, you may be competing with established rivals who rely on foot traffic and recommendations.
Foot traffic is a term used in business to refer to the volume of customers entering a mall, store, or another establishment. In certain types of retail establishments, such as department shops, store owners keep close tabs on foot traffic statistics.
Because of this, some digital marketing strategies might not work as well for you.
You require a local branding strategy that is concentrated on the locations of your target clients and the online and offline channels they use to find your services.
Learn about local branding before I walk you through the seven steps.
What Is Local Branding?
Let’s first clarify what we mean by local branding to make the most of it. At the risk of stating the obvious, “local” and “branding” are the two most important terms in local branding.
The term “local” describes the geographic extent of your brand’s reach. But every company and community will have a different definition of what “local” really means. For instance, you can limit your scope to a single block or locality in a large metropolis where you would anticipate higher foot activity. In a rural area, it can cover the whole town, county, or province.
Another term is “branding.” Branding refers to the precise steps you take to influence how the audience sees your company (which is to say, your brand). The most crucial element is developing a compelling brand message that connects with your target market. You would be missing out on more than half of the puzzle if you jumped right into the marketing strategies.
Market research and brand messaging are therefore used as the first steps in this approach.
Follow seven steps to bring more clients, and increase traffic.
1. Undertake Local Market Research For The Best Local Branding Strategy
Understanding what your target market genuinely wants is always the first step in developing a marketing strategy. If you don’t, you might completely miss the mark and your marketing efforts will be useless.
Because you also need to take into account where your audience is located, local marketing may seem a little different.
However, you must first provide some basic information about your company’s structure and objectives before you can begin measuring your audience. These consist of:
- How big is the service area that you cover geographically?
- How far are customers prepared to physically go to use your services if you have a physical location?
- How big is your local or nearby market?
- What number of competitors do you have?
- What distinguishing features or unique selling points do they have?
By providing answers to these questions, you will build the groundwork for performing market research since you will be able to determine your objectives. Starting too broadly will waste your time and cause you to focus on clients and rivals who are irrelevant to your industry.
The best methods for locating a target market include gathering demographic information, developing buying personas, and analyzing your competitors.
You can benefit from more direct techniques for local marketing. One easy way to do this is to regularly engage in conversation with clients about their daily life. In contrast to one-off internet reviews, you will frequently hear complaints or better things about products or services in person. This provides you with a better opportunity for ongoing communication and appreciation.
To do so, create a local business profile or social media business page for your client on google or other search engines.
Business profiles help you compile information about your ideal customers such as who they are, what they need, want, and where they look for services similar to yours. This is a representation of the ideal customer you wish to draw to your company.
You can use social media or survey templates to ask your audience the questions listed below and gather the information that will help your local branding strategy.
- What are the top three problems they face?
- What solutions have they already tried?
- What did they like about those solutions? What did they complain about?
- How long have they been facing such problems?
- What is their level of income?
- What values do people seek in the companies they work or deal with?
- What makes them choose to partner with a brand as their top consideration?
- On which websites do they spend the most time?
- Where can they find brands similar to yours? (Google, social media, recommendations, etc.)
This will help you assist in determining:
- unique selling proposition (USP) to differentiate your brand.
- how to attract a target audience using different types of products or services.
- marketing platforms for promotion
- how to write content and use tone for your website and posts.
It will only position you for success to have this local branding market research on hand.
2. Build A Brand Message And Share It With The Audience.
Marketers need a comprehensive local branding identity to explain what their company does, what it’s about, and why it differs from competitors. Oh, and it ought to be relatable to people and enhance the reputation and values of your business.
This is because, by studies from Bergische University, brands trigger emotions that are comparable to those we experience when we are attracted to someone. Therefore, we have comparable feelings toward brands and people.
You should learn from your market research what your target audience values and needs most.
By positioning your brand to directly appeal to them in light of this, you may say, “Hey. We understand you. This is the reason you should be working with us.”
Larger brands accomplish this by developing a local branding style framework that they use as a reference when writing marketing copy or content for their websites. By doing this, you can make sure that your audience always knows what to expect and that your message is constant.
Brand Messaging
Through verbal and nonverbal messages, your brand communicates its distinctive value proposition and personality through brand messaging. Customers can get inspired and motivated by your messaging, which will encourage them to purchase your goods or enroll in offered services.
Figure out who you are. Your brand messaging will comprise:
Brand Value – What do you stand for?
USP or Unique Selling Proposition – What distinguishes you from your competitors?
Tone – Does your target audience want professionalism? Humor? Direct? Quirky?
Benefits – What benefits come from using your services? What does your audience care about?
Calls-to-Action – What actions do you want customers to do after seeing your brand?
Which messages will be effective with your intended audience?
When you’re ready to generate website content or launch a new campaign, take care of everything listed in the bullet points and have this handy.
By doing so, you can be sure that you are constantly speaking to the appropriate group of people at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner.
Consequently, a local branding messaging framework can be constructed as follows:
“We provide [services] that [features] to [the audience] in [region] to [achieve benefit].”
Or
“We help [the audience ] in [area] to [ achieve benefit ] through [ services ] that [features].”
For Example: if you are a Lucknow-based online marketing company, your brand message can be:
“We help small businesses in Lucknow to enjoy a flawless user experience for online customers tailored to their needs and interests, and get automated solutions that dramatically boost sales through personalized online sales funnels that help increase 5X sales revenue.”
Here, this is made very apparent who your target audience is, what advantages you offer them, and which service is relevant to them.
This local branding strategy may be applied to specific service pages and recreated for any business. Additionally, the [area] option can be modified for local targeting when it comes to SEO.
3. Apply Local SEO
Local SEO is important because it increases your local online presence. It Increases the number of people who visit your physical site. Moreover, it attracts more targeted traffic to increase conversion rates.
Due to the accuracy of local targeting, local SEO is significant for local brands. It really is the finest strategy to drive consistent, relevant traffic to your website.
Ranking for keywords that people in your local region are actually searching for is the best approach to get traffic.
Most SEO best practices still hold true when it comes to local branding SEO, but there is an additional emphasis on targeting a specific geographic area. Typically, localized keywords, local citations, and link building are used to accomplish this.
The fact that 97% of people immediately use search when looking for a local business is also interesting to notice.
If you have the time and money, perform local SEO.
By raising your chances of attracting inbound leads, you considerably lower the number of hot prospects you need to actively find.
"If you can demonstrate your high ranks, potential clients will have considerably more faith in your expertise."
As part of your local branding SEO strategy, you should:
- Design an appealing and mobile-friendly website.
- Build fast loading of websites.
- Target localized keywords through On-page SEO.
- Build citations in niche- and locally-focused directories.
- Create a Business profile on search engines that is optimized to attract customers from local and map searches.
- Develop links with authoritative websites in your niche and vicinity.
- Include localized content that appeals to your target and uses your focus keywords.
Although a detailed blog post is available on local SEO, the aforementioned methods and resources ought to be plenty to get you started. Keep in mind that SEO is a long-term endeavor that will require testing and ongoing tweaking.
Maintaining your attention on what your local market wants and is looking for on search engines is essential.
4. Establish Strategic Alliances or Partnerships.
If your target group isn’t very active online, local branding can be particularly challenging.
For example, they might be using conventional strategies like newspapers or asking relatives and friends for recommendations.
So, if they aren’t online, how can you reach them?
Through establishing strategic alliances with nearby businesses.
Consider that your client is a Kanpur-based manufacturer of chemical supplies. They may form alliances with nearby contractors or tradesmen who would be rewarded to utilize their products and refer business to them.
In exchange, they may provide discounts on chemical supplies and suggest other manufacturers to clients for their projects.
Both offline and online interactions of this nature can be successful. The objective is to establish mutually beneficial relationships and generate leads for each brand’s different but related offerings.
Through outreach and content marketing, you may assist your clients in creating these partnerships as a marketer. The LinkedIn and email marketing platforms are two excellent ones for this.
Just be sure to express the value offered to the partner and the alignment of the brand’s values.
5. Participate in networking events like webinars or public speaking sessions, host marketing events, and invite businesses locally.
It is advisable to start by providing uncompensated or first offer free, value-free support.
Sending a friendly email, SMS message, or, in this case, sharing your expertise at real-world or virtual events are all acceptable ways to accomplish this.
The most effective local branding resources for increasing engagement are events and webinars.
You can commonly attract clients by imparting your knowledge via a formal speech, an online interview, a networking event, or a conference.
Also, keep in mind that business owners that are proactive in attending such events tend to attract customers.
The following are some suggestions for using events to generate leads:
- See what’s happening in your favorite market (if applicable). For instance, you could wish to attend The DEVOPS Conference, Women in Tech Global Conference, etc. if software businesses are your main clients.
- Ask for communication. Take advantage of whatever chance you get to speak at a gathering. If you feel comfortable speaking in front of an audience, this might be a great way to stand out and attract customers.
- Many conferences provide parties or happy hours after the event. Some individuals host lunch. Personal networking can be quite beneficial.
- Participate in online interviews and webinars. Online, there are plenty of speaking opportunities. Keep an eye out for chances to take part in podcasts and video interviews. Share this information.
Being active in your community might be a distinct benefit when competing for local branding. Even better if you can offer seminars and give presentations at events. These can be fantastic sources of leads.
6. Run Digital Ad Campaigns
Launching a digital ad campaign such as PPC (pay-per-click) might be the best course of action if you want to intensify your search engine marketing efforts.
Both Google Ads and Facebook ads, which are the two main advertising platforms for this, let you target a particular demographic based on interests and location. You can choose the targeting criteria with the help of your market study.
PPC is among the quickest strategies to increase the number of leads for your business or your clientele. This could play a significant role in your local branding strategy if you have the funding.
7. Use Social Media Platforms To Share Targeted Content.
If your audience is engaged on social media and you are aware of the main channels, as established by your market research, it is time to share content that will catch their interest.
Simply publish inspiring content that gives readers a wow-thinking experience.
You should concentrate on content that is:
- Informative.
- Accurate.
- Relevant.
- Timely.
- Well-Written.
- Engaging.
- On-Brand (tone, values, style).
Using the example of the digital marketing agency, some viable suggestions for social media content include:
- a video testimonial from a client describing how working with a digital agency enhanced their website traffic and helped them generate more leads.
- A blog post on the “Top 10 Benefits Of Effective Digital Marketing Strategies.”
- An infographic on how to use the ideal marketing procedure.
- A public opinion poll about the latest trends in business promotion.
- a meme that describes what it’s like to deal with challenging marketing circumstances.
Testing various content formats will help you determine what works and what doesn’t. Examine what your competitors are sharing to determine if it would be beneficial to your audience as well.
Sharing value consistently is more important in social media marketing. To keep your audience coming back for more, share the content they want to see.
Conclusion
You’ll learn that developing honest connections is the secret to luring superb local SEO clients. This strengthens local branding.
Therefore, whether through networking, public speaking, developing collaborations, or providing value for free, establishing deep connections is the best strategy to attract exceptional clients.
Think about how you can assist local businesses or groups.
Many people are receptive to professionals who take the time to get to know them, address their concerns, and cultivate a friendly relationship.
Want to collaborate with additional prospective local SEO clients?
Utilize the tactics listed above to establish local branding connections and encourage long-term partnerships.
Are you a local SEO professional or business? Has the current rise in the competition made it more difficult or simpler to draw in local SEO clients?
What methods do you use to find quality local leads? Post your experiences and suggestions in the comment section below.
