Tweet

How Smart Is Your Local Business Marketing?

Guest post by: Danny Brown

Article Overview: Local businesses tend to market locally and with the same approach. A flyer in the weekend paper and maybe some radio ads, and with the same offers week in, week out. This can definitely work, and weekend sales might be all you need to get by. But do you really want to continue just getting by at weekends, or do you want to be a business for every day of the week?

How Smart Is Your Local Business Marketing?

Every weekend without fail, my local electronics retailer runs a flyer in the local newspaper. It highlights special offers and discounts and proudly displays "This weekend only!" in the header. The flyer's nice and bright and there's a huge collection of images, from large-screen TV's to computers to video games to smartphones and more.

Great, you might say. Can never have enough advertising or marketing, right?

Wrong.

You see, every weekend the retailer puts out his flyer, it's always the same. Same products. Same discounts. Same busy flyer with image overkill and small text.

Because it's the same, customers now wait until the weekend to buy anything. They sit by their breakfast tables waiting for the newspaper to be delivered, grab the flyer, and drive on down to the retailer to maybe buy a new TV, or phone, or games console.

While this is great for weekend traffic, the store's pretty empty during the week. The busiest it gets is when one of the sales associates gets the vacuum cleaner out and does a round of the store.

Sure, you could say that the retailer must be doing alright, as the weekend business covers the quiet week, right? Possibly. But think how much better it could be.

Mix It Up a Little, Mix It Up a Lot

With very few exceptions, the retailer's flyer has the same products and offers on sale every weekend. Now, this could be down to the fact that he has less of a relationship with suppliers than the bigger outlets. But he could still make his offers more selective and therefore more effective.

• Carry out an audit on what's the most popular product, and then who the most popular supplier of that product is. Then look at what accessories are available for that product. Contact the supplier in question and show them your information and what that relates to in hard sales figures. Then offer to promote the heck out of their brand for a weekend. Better still, have a manufacturer appreciation day during the week to show off their products, with offers only for that day.

• Take the "less is more" approach with the flyer. The human being is primarily a visual person - it's how we've communicated through the ages and it's still true today. Instead of assaulting the eyeballs, though, highlight one great product per page and then have four or five smaller additions to complement. The litmus test is how your eyes are drawn to the information - if they go where you want the eyes of the customers to go, you're on the right track.

• Stop the regular weekly offers. When something becomes a regular fixture, we know when it's going to happen. This takes the edge of it, and lessens any impact. Change the advertising up. Compare a weekday ad instead of the usual weekend ones, and tie it into a truly unique offer. The promise of the sexy sale that day will beat the sameness of the weekend flyer - try it.

Take It to the Masses

The beauty with an electronics retailer is that you can pretty much guarantee the audience - male, 18-45, gadget-friendly geeks (and I say this with nothing but love, as I'm one of these geeks).

The great thing about that demographic is that they're very web-savvy too. They're hanging out on social networks, online forums and blogs. So take advantage of this.

Make a social map and see where your audience is. Then market to that audience accordingly. If you find you have a lot of potential customers on Facebook, run an ad on there specifically tailored to your audience. The great thing with Facebook ads is that you can really drill down into your target audience.

Or try banner ads on forums and speak to niche bloggers about special offers that their readers can benefit from (obviously this works better if you offer e-commerce options as well).

I've used my local retailer as an example here, but you can swap the ideas for your own business. Yes, social media is international, but so many businesses forget that their local customers are online too - it's not all down to simple local advertising. And if you're unsure of how to market effectively online, speak to a company or agency that can help you.

The thing is, local businesses tend to market locally and with the same approach. A flyer in the weekend paper and maybe some radio ads, and with the same offers week in, week out.

This definitely works, and weekend sales might be all you need to get by. But do you really want to continue just getting by at weekends, or do you want to be a business for every day of the week?

Related Articles
  LSM Is Catching Fire
  Entrepreneurs – How To Grow Your Taxi Business
  Local Store Marketing- A Process
  Track, Track, Track
  Top 10 Online Marketing Trends For Small Businesses
  MLM Success: 6 MLM Secret Tactics To work Smart
  The hard part (one of them)
  Local Marketing For Faster Small Business Growth
  What is Your Company\'s Mobile Web Strategy?
  Everything I Know About Business I Learned from Colonel Flagg
  Local SEO First Page of Google local Marketing for Local Business
  Marketing to get results!
  Get Out Of The Branding Business
  “Your PR Doctor’s Prescription For Healthy Local Media Relations”
  Local Search Continuing To Gain Steam
  ••••••>Getting Top SEO Ranking for Local Listings on Google Local, Yahoo Local, City Search etc.
  “Your Strategic Thinking Coach Shares Six Smart Marketing Strategies For Professional Service Firms”
  Rank Your Local Business Website Fast With Local Business listings
  Steam is coming out my ears, and it will be coming out of yours too!
  10 Simple Steps To Getting Started With Local Search Engine Marketing

Article Tags: business marketing, local businesses, radio ads



Related Forum Posts
Re: How can I promote my site? - I recently added my details to Google Places. Is that the same as a Google Local Business Listing?
Why should I hire a virtual assistant for SEO purposes? - Do you find it hard to find time for rest because of promoting your business or your website all by yourself? Well, perhaps it is the right time for you to hire the services of an SEO virtual assistant. Virtual assistants for SEO services will help you on the process of improving your rankings within search engine results to achieve an increase in natural traffic. The higher your site in the search engine results page, the more traffic and sales conversions you will obtain. Using the services of virtual assistants (VAs) certainly is the best method to move in order immediate results and in reduced operational charges. This provides a great answer especially for a small business owner whoever company is actually considerably expanding, and the jobs have normally doubled. Here are some of the services that a virtual assistant can do for you: • Traffic Geyser • Main Street Marketing • Data Entry • Web Research • Market Samurai • Managing Facebook • Managing Twitter • SEO • Local Business Listing Robot • Traffic Revolution • Infusionsoft • Senuke • Angela’s Banklink • Linkjuicer • Blogging • SMM • Virtual Assistant • Personal Assistant • Article Writing • Spinning Article • Press release • Email Response Handling • Online Order Processing • Word Processing • Forum/Comment Posting • Social Bookmarking • Video Editor • Internet Marketing • Email Marketing • Link Building • Powerpoint Presentations • Web Development • Other Administrative Support
Re: How can I promote my site? - [quote="smartcompanysoftware":1buq8jkk]I recently added my details to Google Places. Is that the same as a Google Local Business Listing?[/quote:1buq8jkk] Yes, they're the same. You add your business information so that you can be found on the web. You can engage with customers and much more. You just reminded me to add my business there as well. Thanks!
Re: Fill in the blank: The best decision I ever made with my bus - Focusing on my Internet Marketing Business
Looking for creative ideas - I’m a student of Business management. I have been given a task by a local business to Improve there marketing to increase their sales, after a drop in interest in a certain service. The Business is a Local Health and leisure centre and is currently suffering from a drop in sales and interest in the adult swimming service. The Business have suffered from a drop in sales by nearly 50% in the past two years. They have asked me to create a business plan and an idea to how they can improve their marketing and increase their sales in adult swimming sessions. I am posting on here, to seek advice on any ideas that you may have about how a small leisure centre can increase sales in the adult swimming market. Any ideas would be welcome as I am currently struggling to come up with an idea that is very effective and cheap to carry out, so any ideas would be welcome. Hope I have given you enough basic info, don't hesitate to ask if you need more information. Again any ideas would be very welcome and I would appreciate your help. I will be looking forward to hearing some of your ideas. Looking for a quick reply as i have not got long to complete the task and organise my presentation to local businesses. Thanks for your time and interest.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The Value of Small Businesses

Are You Listening?

Top 7 Tips to Real Estate Agents’ Success

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.