The modern customer expects a lot. They want a personalized experience. They crave convenience. They demand transparency. And if you can’t give them what they want, they’ll turn to your competitors and find what they’re looking for elsewhere.

Offering a great product and stellar customer service isn’t enough. You need a well-thought-out plan that will take you to the finish line (a sale) and beyond (repeat purchases). 

Does the thought of creating a marketing plan send a chill down your spine? Do you want to tear your hair out every time you brainstorm ways to get your brand in front of your target audience?

If so, you’ve come to the right place.

In this step-by-step guide to local marketing, we’ll dig into the details of what a great marketing plan looks like. From building buyer personas to identifying which tactics and channels help you connect with your customers, this resource is every local marketer’s best friend. We’ll cover: 

• How to define your ideal buyers
• The ins and outs of creating solid marketing messaging
• The pros and cons of different marketing channels
• How to gauge your marketing success

And so much more. 

>> Download Your Free Marketing Plan Template Today! <<

Local Marketing 101

Before you put together a local marketing plan, you need to understand the basics. Let’s go over a few local marketing FAQs.

What is Local Marketing? 

Local marketing is when a business markets itself to consumers within a certain radius of its physical location. It’s how local businesses attract foot traffic, drive sales, and improve brand awareness in their local communities.

Who should use local marketing tactics? If you have a locally-based brick-and-mortar business that serves customers face-to-face, local marketing should be high on your priority list. 

As customer expectations adapt and the desire to shop locally increases, local marketing grows all the more crucial. Let’s look at some numbers: 

• In the past two years, the volume of “near me” searches has increased by 900%.
• Nearly half of all searches have local intent. 
• Local searches result in a purchase 28% of the time. 
• 4 out of 5 consumers turn to search engines to find local information. 

If you run a local business, connecting with local buyers is crucial. And to do that, you need a local marketing plan. 

How is Local Marketing Different From Other Types of Marketing? 

Actually, local marketing utilizes digital and traditional marketing tactics. The difference is in the who and the where. Local marketing targets people in a specific region, whereas a more general marketing approach targets shoppers across the nation—or even the globe. 

The difference also becomes apparent when it comes to messaging. Local businesses interact with their customers differently than national retailers—for many customers, that’s part of the appeal. They want to feel a personal connection to the local businesses they buy from—which is why personalization is a crucial aspect of effective local marketing. 

Now get out your pens and pencils, let’s dive into the details and start creating your marketing plan. 

Defining Your Ideal Buyers

The first step in creating your marketing plan is to get clear on who you’re marketing to. 

Now, you may be thinking: I want anyone and everyone to buy from me. 

While it may seem counterintuitive to limit the people you’re trying to sell to, doing so can actually help you sell more. Think about it: Your business is unique—what you offer solves a specific challenge or fills a need in a way no other product, service, or business can.

For example, imagine a pest control company has always said that their ideal customer is a homeowner. But after conducting some market research and figuring out who is already buying from them, that pest control company might find that their ideal customer is a middle-aged homeowner who is married, has no kids, makes six figures, spends an hour a day on Twitter, and goes out of town on business often. 

These simple distinctions will help the pest control company get into the minds of their potential buyers and decide which marketing tactics to utilize.  

It all comes down to this: No matter how great your offering is, if you can’t get the right eyes on your brand, the sales just won’t come. 

What is a Buyer Persona? 

A buyer persona is a detailed description of the best-fit customer for your business. Creating well-defined buyer personas helps you align your business goals to the needs and expectations of the people you’re most likely to do business with. A typical buyer persona includes the following information: 

• Demographics: Age, income, education level, and marital status.
• Psychographics: Values, lifestyle, hobbies, and morals/beliefs. 
• Pain points: What problem(s) are they paying you to solve?
• Channel Preferences: Where do they spend their time (both in the digital world and the physical world)?

Conducting Market Research 

You can make educated guesses about who your customers are, what motivates them, and why your target audience would choose your competitors over you, but at the end of the day, the best way to get information is to go straight to the source. You do that by conducting market research. 

Don’t let the term “market research” deter you—it’s simply the process of gathering information about your target buyers. This information will help you better understand who is buying from you, which will in turn help you improve existing products and launch new products to solve customer pain points.

How do you conduct market research? Here are a couple of common tactics we’d recommend. 

1. Run a Competitive Analysis 

A competitive analysis gives you insight into what your competitors are doing. Conducting this kind of research gives you a double win: You can test strategies things that are working well for your competitors and you can avoid strategies that flopped. 

Here’s how to run a competitive analysis in three easy steps. 

1. Identify 5-10 of your top competitors. This sounds pretty straightforward, but it’s important to note that there are different kinds of competitors you might want to consider.

• • Direct competitors, who offer similar products/services as your business. 
  • Indirect competitors, who offer different products/services but are in the same category as your business.
  • Substitute competitors, who sell products/services that are in a different category than yours but could be used as a substitute for what you offer. 

2. Analyze their content. Look at things like:
   • Social media: Consider their engagement and the types of content they publish.
   • Website content: Do they publish content regularly? Do they have clear calls to action? Do they showcase their reviews somewhere on their site? Do they offer easy ways to get in contact with them?
   • Pricing: How do their prices compare to your own?
   • Online reputation: How many reviews do they have? What is their star rating? Is their Google Business Profile up to date? 

3. Write everything down and make a plan of action. What are your competitors doing well? What are their weaknesses? Are there things you could do differently to differentiate your business?  

2. Gather Customer Feedback

Most people are happy to give a business feedback…if the business is willing to ask for it. Here are a few ways you can gather customer feedback. 

Ask for a Review

Reviews give you actionable insights from the people who matter most (your customers). And gathering reviews doesn’t have to be hard. Enter: Text.

Text allows you to gather reviews with minimal effort. Any time a customer makes a purchase, consider sending them a quick text asking them to leave you a review on Google or another relevant review site. Here’s a text template you can use: 

“Hi :customer_first_name:, your honest review helps our local business more than you know. We’d be so grateful if you’d take the time to let us know about your experience. It only takes a minute! Click here to leave us a review: :link:”

Struggling to gather reviews? Check out our guide, Creating a Review-Based Culture.  

Send a Survey

SMS surveys are a great way to gauge overall customer satisfaction—and because they generally only require customers to answer one question (Think: On a scale from 1-10, how satisfied were you with the service you received today?) the likelihood of a decent response volume is high. 

Conduct Interviews

When was the last time you sat down and had a conversation with your customers? Not only does doing so strengthen relationships, but it also gives you a deeper understanding of who your customers are—what do they value? What are their pain points? How do they talk? The more you get to know your customers on a personal level, the easier it will be to keep them in mind with every business decision you make. 

Conducting a customer interview might seem intimidating, but it will be less intimidating if you go into it prepared. Here is an interview outline to follow: 

• Get some background information. Ask them what they do for work, where they spend time, what their hobbies are, etc. 
• Ask them how they found you. What pain point were they looking to solve? Was there a specific factor that made them decide to do business with you instead of one of your competitors? 
• Dig deep into the customer experience. How did they feel about the purchase experience? Were there any obstacles that almost made them change their mind? What do they wish your business had done differently? 

Building Buyer Personas 

Even if you feel like you know the ins and outs of who is buying from you, writing it all down so you and your employees can reference that information is a must. 

So, once you’ve conducted your market research and you know your buyers like the back of your hand, it’s time to start building your personas. Here’s an example of a buyer persona that you can reference as you create your own. 

And remember—while creating buyer personas is all about getting specific and weeding out the people who don’t fall into your target audience, you probably won’t narrow it down to one persona. Your target audience can likely be segmented into multiple personas. A good starting point is three, but don’t be afraid to create a few more than that if necessary. 

Creating Your Marketing Messaging

Every brand needs a voice. Let’s talk messaging. 

Your marketing messaging will play a huge role in convincing people to do business with you. Your marketing should tell a story. It should help people see the value your business provides. From taglines to sales pitches to blog posts and everything in between, getting your messaging right is critical. 

6 Steps to Planning Your Marketing Messaging

1. Define your audience. If you’ve followed all of the steps above, you already have a good understanding of your target buyers. Make sure they’re your central focus as you plan your messaging. Your messaging should speak directly to their pain points. 

2. Get clear on your unique tone. Your brand is unique, and your messaging should be, too. Consider your company values and culture. Make a list of words you want people to associate with your brand; how do you want people to perceive you? You might consider words like empowering, useful, knowledgeable, casual, professional, trendy, etc. 

3. Outline your core message/value proposition. With your customers’ pain points in mind, it’s time to write your core message or value proposition—a short statement that summarizes why you’re the best solution for your buyers. A value proposition might look something like the following:

• • Our law practice helps small business owners navigate the legal side of running a business. 
  • We’ve got the most reliable used cars on the market at prices you’ll love. 
  • Our advisors make financial planning quick, easy, and pain-free.

4. Come up with other key messaging. A core message is a good starting point, but your brand doesn’t just do one thing. You’ll want to come up with a few messaging pillars that align with that core message.

5. Brainstorm ideas and start writing. Now that you know what key points you want to get across, it’s time to do some tactical planning. You might start by planning a campaign around each key message you came up with in step 4.

6. Test, test, test. Good marketers aren’t afraid to fail. As you start testing your messaging ideas and running new campaigns, make sure you monitor the results closely. If something isn’t working, go back to the drawing board and test something else. The more campaigns you run, the better you’ll understand what sort of messaging your audience connects with. 

Marketing Messaging Best Practices

Coming up with messaging can be daunting. Understanding a few key best practices will give you confidence as you brainstorm. Here are a few pro tips. 

• Prioritize clarity. Don’t use big words for the sake of sounding fancy. Avoid using jargon that your audience might not understand. You want to sound friendly, clear, and concise. 
• Keep the customer in mind. We mentioned this already, but it bears repeating. If your messaging doesn’t speak directly to your customers’ pain points, it won’t be effective. 
• Be original. Remember, the goal is to differentiate your business. Good messaging is unique, authentic, and brand-appropriate.
• Personalize where possible. The modern consumer loves personalized messaging. They want your campaigns to speak to them as an individual. 
• Keep the customer journey in mind. Your messaging will probably change at different stages of the customer journey. That’s a good thing, as it will help move people down your marketing funnel.  

Identifying Your Local Marketing Channels

You’ve done the research. You know your customers like the back of your hand. You know exactly what you want to say to them and how you want to say it. 

Now it’s time to decide where you’ll say it. 

It’s never been so easy to stay in contact with friends, family, and yes, even customers. Digital marketing makes it possible for businesses to reach a wide audience. But with options come decisions, and analysis paralysis is real. Each marketing channel offers its advantages and presents unique obstacles (time required, cost, etc.). Chances are, it won’t make sense for your business to invest time, effort, and money into all of them. 

So how do you decide which marketing channels are right for your business?

Part of the equation is knowing where your customers spend their time—you want to show up in the places where they’re most likely to see you. Another part of the equation is knowing your goals—different channels will help you achieve different outcomes. But in order to know which channel is right for your business, you need to understand what each channel has to offer. Let’s talk about your options. 

SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to connect with customers and grow your business. (Hint: One Podium customer generated 40k in revenue in two days with a single text campaign.) 

Additionally, text boasts a 98% open rate, so your customers are almost guaranteed to see what you send them, and since 97% of Americans own a cellphone, you can reach the vast majority of your customers with this channel. 

One thing to keep in mind with this channel is that in order to text your customers, you need to get their permission. Not to worry, we’ll teach you how to grow your subscriber list. 

Email Marketing

Email marketing isn’t dead. While this channel does have a lower open rate than text (roughly 21% across all industries), email still has an impressive 4 billion daily users. This channel offers customizability and trackable, measurable results. 

And don’t even get us started on combining the power of email and text, which makes cross-channel marketing a breeze, leads to more personalized campaigns, and can even result in lower cart abandonment rates. That’s where the magic lies. 

The downside of email marketing? Because you’ll be up against an entire inbox full of emails, it’s going to be harder to win attention with this marketing method. 

Social Media Marketing

What if there was a way you could share your message with your target audience for free? That’s exactly what social media marketing offers. But from TikTok to Instagram to Twitter and everything in between, it can be difficult to know which social platforms you should prioritize. Here are a few tips: 

• Consider the type of content you plan on making. If you don’t have the resources to make videos, you probably don’t want to make TikTok a part of your strategy. If you don’t have any photos to post, you might want to steer clear of Instagram and opt for Facebook or LinkedIn. If you want your brand to be an active voice in real-time conversations, Twitter is probably your best bet.  
• Consider your target audience. If you’re targeting Gen Z, showing up on TikTok is crucial. If you want to reach middle-aged business professionals, you should probably be showing up on LinkedIn. 
• Consider your time. Some platforms just require more effort. While you might be fine posting on LinkedIn 3-4 times per week, if you want to thrive on a platform like Instagram, you’ll need to show up daily, both in your feed and in your stories. Make sure to factor in the time you’re willing to dedicate as you choose your social platforms. 

Search Engine Optimization

SEO. You’ve heard about it. You’ve been told it’s important. But…What is it? Where do you start? 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing tactic that involves optimizing your content for search engines so that when people search for you on Google, they find you. It’s a great way to boost your online reputation and grab the right eyes. We’d recommend that every local business prioritizes SEO. 

Here’s a basic checklist to get you started. 

• Start with keyword research. Keywords are at the heart of successful SEO. You want to choose keywords that will help you win local customers. What does that mean? Well, if you own a swimsuit store in Lubbock, you likely won’t be able to rank for the generic keyword swimsuits—the national retailers are going to rank for that. But if you focus on the more specific keyword women’s swimsuits in Lubbock, Texas you’ll probably gain a lot more traction. 
• Optimize your Google Business Profile. A Google Business Profile has become a make-or-break component of a small business’s online reputation. Having an optimized profile will help you rank higher, which will lead to more traffic for your business. Plus, it’s often the first impression potential customers get of local businesses, so it’s crucial to make sure yours has up-to-date information. 
• Optimize your onsite content. A good small business website is full of clear, relevant, and structured content. Not only does this lead to a good user experience, but it also makes it easy for search engines to scan your site. Additionally, make sure to use your target keywords often—in URLs, descriptions, headers, and throughout your web copy. Lastly, create a blog and publish content on it consistently. 
• Prioritize page speed. Your customers expect speed, and search engines do, too. If the pages on your site take too long to load, search engines are less likely to crawl the content you put effort into creating. Not sure how you’re doing? You can check your page speed easily with tools like PageSpeed Insights. 

We’ll teach you how to create a small business website that converts. Check out this guide to get started. 

Measuring the Success of Your Local Marketing Plan

Alright. You did the research, outlined a plan, and launched a bunch of campaigns. But successful marketing doesn’t stop there. Now, it’s time to figure out if your hard work is paying off. There are countless marketing metrics to measure, and knowing which ones to track is essential for understanding the performance of your marketing efforts, as well as for finding areas where you can improve. 

Let’s talk about a few key metrics you should use to measure the success of your local business marketing efforts.   

Cost Per Lead 

Cost per lead (CPL) measures how much each lead costs your business. This metric is important because it gives you an idea of how many leads need to convert into customers in order for your campaigns to be profitable. To calculate CPL, divide the total cost of a particular campaign by the number of leads generated from that campaign. While CPL can vary greatly depending on your industry, if the cost of acquisition is lower than the cost of the revenue your business received, your CPL is probably in a good spot. 

Lifetime Value 

Lifetime value (LTV) measures how much money a customer brings in over their lifetime with your business. This metric helps you understand what kind of return you can expect from different types of customers; it also gives you insight into which types of customers you should focus your efforts on acquiring and retaining over time. LTV is usually calculated over a 12-month period for individual customers or averaged out across all customers in order to get an overall picture. Ideally, you want your LTV to be three times greater than your customer acquisition cost. 

Customer Retention Rate 

Your customer retention rate tells you how many customers have stayed with you over time rather than leaving for other services or products. By tracking this metric, you can see which strategies are working in terms of keeping existing customers engaged and interested in what you offer. 

To calculate your customer retention rate, you need to choose a period of time for the calculation—12 months is a good place to start. Then, figure out how many customers you had at the beginning of that time period, how many you had at the end, and how many you gained. Next, you’ll subtract the number of customers gained from the number of customers you had at the end of your chosen timeframe. Finally, divide that figure by the number of customers you had at the beginning of the timeframe and multiply the result by 100. 

Customer Satisfaction Score 

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is pretty self-explanatory—it gives you an indication as to how well customers think that your product or service is meeting their needs and expectations; this information can help inform future product decisions or changes in strategy as needed. 

Calculating this metric starts with a survey. For example, you could text your customers a question like, “How satisfied are you with your recent purchase from our company? Please choose a number between 1 and 5 (1 meaning highly unsatisfied and 5 meaning highly satisfied). From there, you divide your satisfied respondents (who answered with a 4 or a 5) by the total number of respondents and multiply that number by 100. So, if you surveyed 100 people and 50 of them were satisfied, you would divide 50 by 100 and multiply it by 100, giving you a CSAT of 50%. 

Conversion Rate 

The conversion rate is another key metric when it comes to measuring the success of your marketing efforts; this metric tells you how many people actually took action on something after seeing an ad or engaging with a piece of content on social media, for example. The higher the conversion rate, the better—so tracking this metric helps businesses identify areas where improvements need to be made in order for campaigns or initiatives to be more successful overall. 

Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the number of conversions. The higher your conversion rate, the more effective your marketing campaign is. If your conversion rate is low, it might be time to make some adjustments or stop the campaign altogether. Conversion rates vary across industries but generally speaking, you should aim for a conversion rate somewhere between 2% and 5%.

Test, Adjust, Repeat     

Tracking the above metrics will help you measure your success and determine if your campaigns are profitable or not—which is essential information when deciding where to allocate resources and budget dollars in the future. Additionally, tracking these metrics allows you to build better customer relationships, target specific audiences more effectively, and optimize their campaigns for maximum returns moving forward.

And remember: Even the best marketers have to pivot sometimes. If you’re not satisfied with the results from your marketing plan, don’t be afraid to make a few changes and see what happens. With time, you’ll gain marketing confidence, figure out what works best for your business, and ultimately boost your bottom line because of it. 

Download Your Local Marketing Strategy Workbook

Time to pick up your pencils and put your newfound knowledge to work. Download our Local Marketing Plan Workbook and we’ll walk you through the process of creating a marketing plan that will grow your business and boost your bottom line.