Simple Things Your Local Marketing Team Could Do To Increase Customer Engagement, Improve Customer Relationships, and Increase Online Visibility
A strong social media presence could be a valuable addition any local marketing strategy. Is your organization utilizing social media channels to the best of their ability? Social media is an excellent way to notify your local audience about company events, such as flash sales, community gatherings, or a new product hitting the shelves. Check out these tips to ensure you’re getting the most value out of your social media content.
- Interview your audience to establish customer personas. In order to create the most effective local marketing strategy possible, it is imperative that you have a thorough understanding of your target demographic. By thinking of the customer first, you can ensure that the ensuing strategic planning is optimized for your audience. Customer personas allow marketers to create a local marketing strategy that will bring about the most customer engagement; With a customer persona, marketers are able to tailor social media messaging around a precise targeted demographic.
- Use influencers to your advantage. Having a celebrity (or any public figure of influence) co-sign your brand can be very effective. While your ideal targeted audience may be skeptical of your brand’s credibility, utilizing influencer marketing can grant you access to these skeptical audiences. Perhaps your audience is simply tired of your traditional marketing and advertising, in which case an influencer could greatly improve your metrics.
- Establish your position on topics that are relevant to your targeted demographic. Nothing is more important to your social media strategy than establishing your brand as a thought leader within your industry. With as many as 2 billion people utilizing social media applications like Twitter and Instagram, it is harder than ever to differentiate your company from all of the noise. That being said, the most effective way to get noticed amongst others is to establish a clear perspective on topics regarding your industry, and be vocal on your social media regarding said perspective. Sharing quality content with confident and clear perspective will always be a solid social media strategy.
- Swap accounts with a brand that has a similar target demographic. Switching social media accounts with a brand (with a similar target audience/industry) is a cheap and effective way for brands to quickly expand their audience. By switching social media profiles for a short period of time, and announcing beforehand that the swap will be happening, brands are distributing quality content from a different perspective to their audience, as well as increasing brand advocacy by being vocal on a competitor's social media platform.
While social media channels bring the opportunity to speak to a global audience, they are also good for driving local business when utilized in a more targeted, direct manner. It’s more than likely that your prospective and current customers are using social media, so it’s important that you find new and innovative ways to reach them.