Many offline businesses don’t put any attention into their Internet or Affiliate Marketing. This is one of the biggest reasons for business failures. Just opening your doors and hoping customers show up isn’t good business.
Getting Customers Is a Science
In business school, people are often taught that the secret to good business is “location, location, location.”
While location is certainly important to a business’s success, it’s by no means the only factor. In fact, great marketing can easily conquer having a poor location.
Take Domino’s Pizza for example. Domino’s was first started by a college student, who had the audacity to guarantee his pizza’s delivery time. Despite not being able to afford top locations, his phenomenal marketing propelled his business to the top.
The long and short of it is this: if you want customers, you need to actively solicit them.
Why Local Marketing Is King
Marketing in your local community gives you one big advantage over big brands: personal relationship.
Think about it. Would you rather go to Supercuts, or the hairdresser whom you’ve known for years? By marketing and building your brand locally, you have the ability to build a personal relationship with your audience.
Big brands simply can’t go into every major city and establish relationships with people. On the other hand, with strong local marketing, you can do just that.
What Does Local Marketing Look Like?
Local marketing can be anything from advertising on billboards and radio stations, to using locally targeted online marketing through blogging.
The idea is to get people into your business using as little capital as possible. Test different advertising methods to see what works and what doesn’t.
Once you find a marketing method that’s generating results, try to scale it up as much as you can.
For example, let’s say you try radio advertising, online advertising and newspaper advertising. Radio and internet don’t bring you any results, but newspaper ads seem to perform really well.
If that’s the case, start buying ads in as many newspapers as you can. Buy bigger ads. Keep increasing your ad spend until the ROI begins to drop off.
Making Things Happen versus Hoping for Business
If you want to build a successful business, you need to take your marketing into your own hands. Hoping for more business is not a good strategy for success.
Map out at least ten different local marketing strategies you can try. Include review sites like Citysearch and Yelp, traditional media like billboards and radio, as well as off-the-wall ideas like pizza box marketing or throwing special interest parties.
You never know what will work. Some methods work phenomenally well for particular businesses and not at all for others. The trick is to find the one that works for you.