Promote Local Businesses

With an estimated 5.5 million privately owned businesses in the UK.

How is your small startup able to attract customers with all this competition?

Trying random marketing tactics for a week or two won’t work.

Or, maybe you have customers coming in but you need more with a boost in lead generation.

In this article we will learn how to promote your business.

Let’s dive right in.

Promote your local business

• Brand image
• Know your audience
• Social media reach
• Email marketing strategy
• Build a community
• Optimise your content

No matter the reasons for promoting your business, these tips will help you:

• Reach new customers
• Expand brand awareness

So, keep reading for tips on promoting your business:

Brand image

A brand image is your identity and how the public remembers you.

Your brand image is made from:

• Business values
• Sales techniques
• How customers feels when they use your products or services

A brand identity is what makes your business stand out to your audience.

The elements that make up your brand identity includes:

• Reputation
• Tagline
• Logo
• Product or service

For example, you can easily identify your favourite business by its logo, product or tagline.

In order to create your brand identity, you will need to:

• Create credibility
• Establish your business in your industry
• Use marketing to communicate your mission

If you do this well enough then your brand identity will stay on your customer’s mind.

And even if they know your company name, they will remember different elements of its identity.

Know your audience

You need to know:

• What your audience wants
• The problems they face

Doing so will help your audience become:

• Loyal to your brand
• Your brand’s advocates

Knowing your audience starts with creating a buyer personas.

Buyer personas are your ideal customers with their problems and needs.

Note: customer data gives you an idea about your audience’s response to your business.

And you can use this data to:

• Create surveys
• Create audience segments
• Go over customer feedback and comments 

Remember to create content your customers want so they share your brand and promote via word of mouth.

All of what’s mentioned above comes from knowing your audience.

Social media reach

Social media marketing can help:

• Your brand interact with its audience
• Boost brand awareness
• See what competitors are doing and what works for them
• Generate leads

So, make a social media account or if you have one, start making the most of it now.

Remember, use different platforms for different goals.

For example, use Twitter for B2B industry, B2C industry and customer service.

And use LinkedIn for B2B industry, building professional relationships and business goals development.

Knowing what each social platform is best used for will help with:

• Your marketing goals
• Reaching your intended audiences

You can start by organising business goals and deciding:

• How you want to use social media to promote your business
• The strategy for helping you achieve that

When making the content for your social media strategy, do the following:

• Make your content unique
• Decide on a posting schedule
• Collect feedback data
• Decide which platforms to focus on

Basically, find your audience, make content they like and build a community.

Email marketing strategy

Your email marketing strategy can promote development in your brand to different types of audiences members.

Use email marketing to shares valuable content to your audience like:

• Exclusive offers
• Discount codes
• Product pre-sales

Email marketing can also be used for building leads:

• Subscribers exchange contact information for content, like a free ebook
• Then, nurture leads with content to help with their problems or goals

Note: Start an email marketing strategy using a content management system (CMS) with tools that build and monitor email lists. 

For example, tools like email marketing software helps users create and manage lists. 

Build a community

Talk to your audience for audience research. 

Don’t guess when it comes to knowing your audience’s goals and problems, ask them.

Doing this helps with:

• Insights into making an effective campaign
• Making prospects connect with your brand

The different ways to engage with your audience includes:

• Responding to comments
• Asking audience questions
• Re-posting user-generated content

Communicating with audiences like this, makes them feel like you care.

Don’t forget to ask email subscribers to leave net promoter scores for your business to help:

• Improve customer experiences
• Satisfied customers recommend your service

You could also promote your business by engaging with your industry:

• Write a guest post for a competitor’s blog linked your business
• Host an industry topic webinar
• Speak at a university about your career path

In time these efforts will boost your credibility and generate leads. 

Optimise your content

Using SEO to optimise your website and its content can:

• Bring traffic
• Generate leads

A lot of SEO takes time to see results so don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results the next day.

The key is to develop SEO strategies and stick to these strategies over time.

This will help your business and its content get in front of the right audiences.

Conclusion

Use the above mentioned strategies to promote your business and target larger audiences.

The best formula you need is:

• Patience
• Business knowledge
• Knowing your audience
• Consistency

Now it’s over to you.

Tell me what strategies you use to grow your local business?

Let me know in the comment section below.