Engaging local customers is one of the most reliable and effective ways of taking your business to the next level. It allows you to make your business a roaring success by ensuring that the local audience identifies with your brand and helps you grow continuously.
It becomes even more important for local and small businesses—as local customers are likely to be repeat customers if a company ensures maximum customer satisfaction. Here are 8 tips and strategies you can use to increase engagement with local customers:
Pay Attention to Reviews
It's crucial to demonstrate your engagement with local customers, regardless of the feedback. Responding to reviews on social media is an excellent method to stay relevant. When customers choose to leave a review, they give you permission to interact with them. Therefore, you should definitely respond to both positive and negative reviews.
Take an interest in the Local Raleigh Community
People will support your business if they view you as a pillar of the community. Participate in neighborhood events, give to local charities, and keep up your local reputation. The more involved you are with your local community, the more people will take note.
Engage with Influencers
Influencer marketing is a new yet effective strategy for maintaining local awareness. If you own a restaurant, encourage representatives from nearby companies to hold their lunch meetings there.
You can also give your time to a nearby nonprofit and then invite an influencer to donate their time as well. There’s an extremely good chance that they will feature you provided that you’re adding value to their channel.
Building local reputations is the foundation of influencer marketing. Find people who will promote your brand and maintain constant communication with them to maximize the benefits of influencer marketing.
Improve Signage
Your outdoor signage will benefit you more as a local brick-and-mortar business than any digital advertising when you are targeting local customers. Businesses should allocate significant time and money towards making sure that exterior signage is attractive to local customers. Ultimately, attracting more people to your business means you will be able to make more sales.
Sponsorship
There are many possibilities for community sponsorship. These activities range from race league teams to auto shows and many others.
Demonstrating your involvement in neighborhood events will get you the admiration of potential customers as well as brands to give good reviews about you.
Furthermore, if you include promotional materials like t-shirts or bumper stickers in the sponsorship, they will promote your business even after the event has ended.
Rely on Local Radio
Local radio is a fantastic marketing tool for your target market because it allows you to reach local as well as global audiences. You can rely on radio channels to promote your business in many different ways. Customers will hear your pitch and remember it, whether they're driving home in traffic or flipping through the stations looking for something to listen to.
Online Ads
PPC advertisements can be geographically targeted in the modern era of digital advertising. Targeting only your local community when running ads on Facebook or Google will guarantee that your message is seen every day.
This shotgun approach to advertising might also be the most economical because of the low prices. Your local consumer base is the only one you have to work with, so make sure you put some good effort into your ads!
Think about the strategies listed above to maintain your consumers' local relevance and favorability.
Service Promotion
Provide a punch card for client loyalty, place a sales leaflet at the entryway with your door open, and display your daily offers on a whiteboard. You can reach clients using any of these methods without coming off as too salesy.
To stay in touch with your customers, make sure you are following them on various social media sites. You can determine what cross-selling, or upselling offerings will be the greatest fit for them by keeping tabs on what they post and what's going on with their business. You can also establish rapport with them by discussing their accomplishments and status updates to maintain a business friendship.
Every Bit Counts
Engaging local customers is highly important for the success of your business. You must focus on building a brand identity to ensure you are able to establish a large enough customer base.
Before dropping oodles of money on the above eight tips, you should determine where your audience hangs out. For example, if your audience views radio as “archaic,” buying a radio spot probably isn’t the best use of your advertising dollars.
To learn more about how AlphaGraphics of Downtown Raleigh can help with your marketing needs, you may request a quote, email us, or call us at (919) 832-2828.