Appeal to Masses with Social Media, Get Intimate with Local Marketing

Local store marketing is more than optimizing your website for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or creating a Facebook page. While social media should play a role in making your location locally relevant, it is not the same as Local Store Marketing.

Local marketing is a way to do business, a way to do marketing, a way to reach your customers in a way that is relevant, personal and intimate. Local Store Marketing uses social media as a tool to spread the word to your customers and potential customers, but social media is not the strategy behind Local Store Marketing.

Social Media is mass communication – you can reach a huge number of people that you don’t know (and who don’t know you), but your message has to be less personal, and more generalized. Your ultimate goal is to convert these “general” customers into specific, face-to-face, one-on-one customers.

Think of social media as a radio station. People can tune into you and even add you as a favorite station (and your Facebook page, Twitter feed or Pinterest boards). But your message isn’t intimate as it would be face-to-face because you have such a large audience on the radio.

Local Store Marketing is more about writing a personal thank you note and having one-on-one connections with your customers. It’s all about building one to one, personal relationships. The goal is to have a first name relationship with your customers.

So, while social media or a website optimized for SEO can help those in your neighborhood find you, it’s your personal connection to your customers through local store marketing efforts that will result in building lasting relationships with these people to ensure they don’t turn your radio station “off.”

To see how to incorporate social media into your Local Marketing Plan, check out our recent series on social media, “Tweet, Post & Pin: A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media.”

Tweet, Post and Pin: A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media (Part 1: Facebook)

Tweet, Post and Pin: A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media (Part 2: Twitter)

Tweet, Post and Pin: A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media (Part 3: Pinterest)