When it comes to local marketing, your small business has a lot of options, which means you can quickly become disorganized in your marketing efforts. To streamline the process and keep you organized, we're presenting our comprehensive local marketing checklist for two of the most important elements of local marketing: social media and business cards.
Register your business name: Keep your personal social media profiles separate from your professional ones. Developing a business social media persona is the best way to keep your social media accounts professional and easily searchable.
Company logo: Your company logo should be featured prominently either as a profile picture, banner, or elsewhere on your social media sites so that followers can easily identify your company. Your logo serves to brand your business, so you want it to be easily identifiable when people see you outside of your social media page and vice versa.
Description: Develop a concise one-sentence description of your company so that people can quickly determine what your company is and does. Your "about" section on your social media pages can go into more depth for people who are interested in learning more about your company.
Update hours and location: Your hours and location are important elements of your social media pages and should be current. Keep them updated if you change the hours or have to unexpectedly close for one reason or another. Customers rely on businesses to keep current on their social media pages, and having unreliable information is a sure way to lose followers.
Follow other local businesses: Customers appreciate local connections, so make sure you're following other like-minded (but not competing) local businesses. For instance, if your business is a running store you might also follow local running groups, gyms, and/ or cycling stores to develop a community feel centered around fitness.
Keep it simple: Business cards should be informative, not decorations. Resist the urge to put all of your company's information on the card (i.e. description, motto, photo, website, phone numbers, etc.). Your name, phone number, email, and website are enough information for people to find you when they decide to pursue your business.
Add information personally: One reason for keeping the business card simple is that it gives you the perfect opportunity to make a personal note on your cards as you hand them out. For instance, hand writing your personal cell number on the back of your card when you hand it to a potential customer demonstrates your dedication to your customers and will make your card stand out among the rest.
Hand them out!: Business cards only make sense if you actually hand them out. Be liberal when you distribute business cards. Teaming up with another local business and acting as marketing partners is a great way to get your business recognized without constantly marketing yourself. Using the running store example, you can ask a local gym to partner up so you can leave a stack of your business cards at their front desk and offer to return the favor.
Local marketing is the best way to get your business recognized within your community, and taking the above steps will give your business the local recognition it needs to become the next community hot-spot. Can you summarize the importance of having a clear business description on social media pages?
This prompt doesn't seem malicious.