In today’s competitive market, UK businesses need to ensure that their marketing campaigns have a special edge. One of the most effective, yet often overlooked, ways to gain that edge is through a local marketing strategy. By targeting potential customers in your immediate area, you can deliver a more personalised experience, foster customer loyalty, and stand out from the competition.
Whether you’re a small independent retailer or a larger company with multiple locations, a well-executed local marketing strategy helps you engage your community. From optimising your Google My Business listing to partnering with local influencers, there is a wealth of tactics available to help your business implement this strategy type, providing a range of benefits along the way.
Find out more about how to implement a local marketing strategy and the methods and techniques to use when trying to optimise content and ideas.
What is a local marketing strategy?
Local marketing, also known as neighbourhood or location-based marketing, focuses on promoting your business to a specific geographic area. Whether it’s a single town, city, or region, local marketing strategies target nearby customers who are more likely to convert due to proximity, relevance, and convenience.
This type of marketing can take on various forms, including:
- Search engine optimisation (SEO) for local queries such as “restaurant near me” or “best accountants in…”
- Paid ads that appear only to users within a specific area
- Social media campaigns tailored to a local audience
- Community engagement through sponsorships, local events, or charity partnerships
The benefits of a local marketing strategy
Increased visibility in local search
One of the most significant benefits of a local marketing strategy is increased visibility in local search results. When potential customers search for services or products in their area, search engines like Google prioritise businesses that are relevant and geographically close. This is where local SEO plays a crucial role.
Key features of local SEO:
- Google My Business optimisation: Ensuring your business profile is up-to-date with correct contact information, operating hours, and photos
- Local keywords: Use keywords that include your location, such as “best marketing agency in Nottingham”
- NAP consistency: Maintaining the same name, address, and phone number across all online directories and listings
- Reviews and ratings: Positive customer reviews on Google and other platforms can boost your ranking in local searches
Improving trust and customer relationships
Local marketing allows businesses to establish trust with their community. Customers are more likely to trust and engage with businesses they feel are part of their local ecosystem, especially if it is a small business or uses resources from the local areas. When you position yourself as a community-based business, customers perceive your brand as more approachable, and reliable, and support specific investments. There are also a number of ways in which you can build closer relationships with local customers such as sponsoring local events, collaborating with other businesses and gathering testimonials and case studies.
Cost-effective solutions
Focusing on local marketing is often more cost-effective than nationwide campaigns as rather than spending a large portion of your budget on a wider audience, local marketing enables you to target people who are already likely to engage with your business. Some of the most cost-effective solutions include geo-targeting which reduces wasted spend on irrelevant audiences, influencer marketing and community partnerships.
Leveraging recommendations
One of the easiest ways to leverage more consumers and bring in fresh eyes is through recommendations, with local, regular customers being the pivotal point of this. People trust friends’ and families’ opinions so building a strong local presence means you can increase the likelihood of satisfied customers who spread the word and tell others about your business.
Audience targeting
A local marketing strategy allows you to target more specific, relevant audiences through more precise keyword research and direct strategies. Businesses use features such as geo-targeted ads, tailored social campaigns and hyper-local content that is relevant to a specific area, city or event.
Local SEO solutions
Our local services work out what people are searching for the most when it comes to businesses like yours and then create a strategy to position you in front of them. Imaginaire offers our local SEO services with a simple monthly price, based on the area or areas that you’d like to target, with no long contracts to speak of (we hate them). We also help small businesses to get their SEO strategy right and then implement that strategy to produce tangible results.
Get in touch today to speak to one of our experts on 0115 971 8908 and we’ll be glad to give you some of our ideas.
