10 Tips To Rock Your Local Marketing Strategy For 2016

Local marketing seems to get more challenging every year. With the rise of digital marketing, it's common for small, locally focused businesses to feel smothered under the growing pressure to compete with larger businesses, who of course have much larger budgets to work with.

However, there is still a major opportunity for small businesses to really own their local landscape. We'll share some proven tips and tactics below, to help you rock your local marketing this upcoming year.

1. Make social media a priority. Local businesses can really become part of their local community if they do it right. The most important thing is to develop a solid strategy that focuses on providing value, engaging, and giving back to the community. You don't want to use social media as a sales tool, but as a relationship builder.

2. Get networking. Your local community is probably full of groups who get together, in person, every single month. This is an invaluable way to make new connections and gain a steady stream of referrals. Many of them have online directories you can be listed in. When you're networking, be present with a mindset of offering value to others. When people meet you and get the sense you have something to offer, they are more likely to do business with you and recommend you to others.

3. Focus on local SEO tactics. Rather than focusing on getting your website found for broad, popular terms, really hone in on what's being searched for locally. Include geographical words that are specific and tailored to your ideal audience. For a more detailed plan of action, check out this recent report from Small Business Trends.

4. Speaking of ideal audience, take the time to truly understand who that is. Create your customer avatar, and make that the foundation for every message you put out there. Design all your messages for that specific person.

5. Find out what local directories are out there. This could be Yelp, YellowPages, or smaller, lesser-known local directories that can really make a difference to your online visibility.

6. Embrace e-commerce. Even though you're a local business, e-commerce can still be a major source of revenue for you. Not everyone wants to leave the comfort of their own home to make a purchase, regardless of how close you might actually be. And, this opens you up to the global market.

7. Focus on relationship building with your existing clients. It costs much less to up-sell to your existing clients than it does to find new ones. Make sure that every single client knows they are appreciated, and continue to foster that relationship.

8. Explore partnership opportunities with complementary businesses in your local community. For example, if you're a website designer, maybe there are writers or graphic designers in your community who would love to partner with you, and send clients back and forth.

9. Pay attention to your results. When you're trying some of the new ideas above, don't go in blindly. Take note of how many inquiries you get through Facebook, or how many new clients came from your Networking events. You need monitor your own personal data so you know what's working, and what's not. For example, if you invested one evening, collected 20 business cards, and wound up with 2 new clients, you could determine whether or not this event was a worthy investment.

10. Don't try to do everything at once. Don't panic and invest your time, energy and money into 6 different things at once when business is slow. Be proactive -- this means you plan ahead, strategize, implement and monitor.