When it comes to advertising, it’s best to feel out all your options. In some cases, it can be helpful to take advantage of different mediums during different seasons.
For example, sponsoring a local sports team in the spring is a great way to reach your community and add some local flair to your campaign.
Similarly, looking into grocery store advertising around the holidays is an easy way to reach your customers when they’re shopping for their families.
There are also other partnerships you can forge with your local Chamber of Commerce or online. If you’re curious about what these campaigns would look like and want to learn more about other possible campaigns, keep reading.
Sponsor The Team
Pitching in to support your local team makes a world of difference — not only for that team but also in your advertising. If your business chips in to buy the team uniforms, you should ask to print your logo on them.
This wholesome advertising will tie your business directly to your community and get the word out about your business. Every time they play, the team and their fans will see your logo and begin to build brand familiarity. This brand recognition will help you build more and more customers in your area and become a household name.
Use Facebook Targeting
Another way to advertise locally is through Facebook Location ads. Today, you can use these ads to target potential customers a few miles from your store.
If you establish a radius around your business, you can advertise within it and track how many people see your ad. At the bottom of your advertisement, you can embed a “Get Directions” call to action, which can direct and funnel customers right into your business.
From there, Facebook can even tell you if they went on to visit your store by tracking their phones with geolocation data.
Grocery Store Advertising
If you’re wary about tracking customers’ data, don’t worry, every business is doing it. However, we get that it might not be your style.
A perfect way to instill a local feel in targeted ads is to look into grocery store advertising. By running an advertising campaign in local grocery stores, you can rest assured that customers will assign a locality to your business and see your store as a neighborhood option.
However, because grocery stores typically pull their customers in from a three-mile radius of the store, these options allow you to take advantage of hyper-local targeting.
Grocery Store advertising can take different forms. Some businesses, like restaurants and salons, use coupon-receipt advertising. This option allows these businesses to run their supermarket advertisements on the backs of grocery store register tape, so every customer leaves with that store’s coupon in their pocket.
Other campaigns like “Cartvertising” let pros run their ads on the sides of shopping carts so they can get their branded image out there. The repetition this medium allows makes it an excellent option for realtors and lawyers whose customers want to go with a face they know and trust.
YouTube Ads
YouTube ads are great because they’re less intrusive than geo-tracking options. These ads typically entail producing and recording an ad for your business, but today there are plenty of socially-distanced, animated routes you can take.
You can have a beautiful, thirty-second ad that stands out against the rest with the right graphic designer. Consider this option if you’re looking to advertise directly on YouTube itself, as animated content often stands out against the regular videos users are used to watching.
Otherwise, the possibilities are endless. If you’re looking to produce an ad that you can link to from your site and have on hand, then feel free to get creative! Do what works for your business and try to add a bit of local flair to it.
When customers recognize any local influencers or celebrities you include in your ad, they’re more likely to pay attention and build brand familiarity.
Learn About Your Chamber of Commerce
There’s one team every small business should be able to count on: the Chamber of Commerce. It’s their job to make sure that small businesses succeed, so it’s only natural to try to work with them.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Chamber of Commerce in your area, you can Chamber of Commerce website to find your local chapter. From there, you can learn about what they do for your community and how you can work with them.
Allowing this team to spread the word about your business is great because they retain strong authority and legitimate judgment in your area. This means that when they send out a list of “businesses to check out” to any new arrivals, people are going to listen. It’s all you can do to be on that list, so try to make it happen.
Advertising on Yelp
Love it or hate it, Yelp is here to stay. No matter what customers have to say about your business, other consumers will see it.
It’s essential to keep track of your feedback to know what customers see when they check out your profile. If you’re happy with your standing or are eager to get customers in your door no matter what, you might consider advertising on Yelp.
When consumers are searching for a particular type of business or restaurant in their area, they’re going to use Yelp. You can take advantage of this by showing up in more than just local, relevant searches — and tempting customers who are further away to come see you.
Of course, you can also run targeted ads for the customers who live in your area., Just make sure your profile is spotless before you start encouraging new traffic.
Best of all, you can even run your targeted ads on your competitor’s profile. This means that while customers are checking out the competition, they’ll also have a link to your profile and rating right there. This is a great way to disrupt your competition and win back a few locals in style.
By IndoorMedia Marketing
By Eric Shafer
