Local Level Marketing: Understanding Your Neighborhood Market

Corner stores, hole-in-the-wall successful establishments, and farm-to-table restaurants all have one thing in common: they are marketing at the local level and using their understanding of their immediate area to their benefit. Everyone can think of at least one such local business in their area that is embedded and in touch with the neighborhood and the trends and needs of the local market. It’s this marketing and branding strategy that can help drive different kinds of steady growth for a business. Having a dependable and consistent local customer base can provide stability when testing out new products or business ideas.

Marketing a global or national level is very different to marketing to your local neighborhood or region. Trends, fads, and hot topics are easier to research and track on the larger levels, since so much data is available online to the public, in terms of what business ideas are succeeding, failing, or developing for the future. In terms of the local market, businesses have to gather and assess data for themselves in order to understand their customers.

How to Present Your Business to a Local Audience

Building personal and connections with customers can start with both engaging through your business’s physical location as well as through social media. In terms of local engagement with a physical store, you can market using your storefront, in your local newspaper, and through other local channels of advertising. This way, those in the area learn about your business and come check out what you have to offer.

On the digital side, customers may learn about your business or provide feedback and reviews digitally. According to Hootsuite, 48% of U.S. consumers have engaged with brands on social media. Social media is an excellent platform for attracting new customers to your business, as well as building relationships with existing and loyal returning customers. By offering personal engagement with your audience, they’re more likely to remember your business and think of your business in the future.

Being engaged online and on social media will also make your business easier to find using search algorithms in your local area. Since location-based searching in search engines and apps has become the standard for finding businesses to frequent, having active profiles on social media can help provide useful updates for curious potential customers. They can see any recent or local announcements, they can check out your social media content to get a feel for your brand, and they can get the logistical information about how to shop either online or in-person.

How to Act on Local Feedback

Implementing feedback from your customers, especially local and repeat customers, shows them that your priority is the growth and evolution of your business. By understanding and addressing feedback from your customers, you can showcase the relationships and impact your neighborhood has on your business and how your neighbors continue to help your business grow and flourish.

Shining a spotlight on your loyal customers and any feedback you get on a local level can also help you attract more customers who are curious to see if the buzz is true. Testimonials from customers, both positive and negative, can show potential customers more about your brand, and what matters to your business. You can use their feedback to adapt how your business runs, and even use feedback to drive future planning and marketing efforts.

How to Plan for Success at the Local Level

By understanding who your target audience is at a local level, you can better plan for what their eventual or current needs are, thus driving your business strategies. Being close in relationships and location to your customers can help you gather the news happening in the area and plan for promotions and new products and services around your local trends. Marketing to and for the local level can help your business have a steady customer base, from which to grow and engage with potential shoppers on the local or wider levels.

How We Help Big Businesses at a Local Level

At OSG Analytics, we’ve worked on planning and implementing marketing and product strategies on every level, from the global market and country level to the neighborhood level. We work with you to understand your business needs and what opportunities are available for your market share to grow. With our behavioral and cognitive analytics technology, we’re able to help you understand your local business audience by digging into the data and getting to the “why” behind their decision-making process. Check out our case study of helping a national auto service provider address larger and smaller level customer needs to drive their business growth.