The success of any business hugely relies on marketing. Marketing covers every aspect of a business, ranging from attracting, getting to retaining customers, and is a major challenge to many small business owners. Every business needs the right marketing strategies to fuel its growth and stay afloat.

Nevertheless, identifying the right marketing strategies to skyrocket your business is increasingly becoming difficult, especially with the current diverse market. Note that this begins with identifying the right audience and crafting a marketing strategy that will get your message to the identified audience effectively. That said, for local business, they can try out the following marketing great practices for growth.

• Social Media Marketing

In the current marketing sphere, it is impossible to ignore the power of social media. So to say, some businesses are solely built by the power of social media. Using social media for marketing can be intimidating at first, but becomes easier as you build momentum. You can consider doing it by yourself or hire a social media manager if you have some budget.

Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, SnapChat, Twitter and Instagram have made it easy for brands to market their products. To succeed in social media marketing, all you have to do is be yourself. Be authentic and post your thoughts, products and any other relevant stuff that can be useful to your audience. You can also use these platforms to reach out to clients directly.

Just to mention, some effective social media marketing techniques include;

• Use Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are perhaps the most powerful method to market anything in the current sphere. With Facebook, it is possible to reach a specific audience easily. You can modify your search based on relationship status, location, age, interest and much more. By running Facebook ads, focus on retargeting and conversions that can be eased through pixels.

• Use LinkedIn

Using LinkedIn is another best social media marketing strategy for your local business. As for LinkedIn, you can leverage all types of content marketing, including the use of videos. It is an easy way to market your venture, and when done right, it results in magical results. Begin by getting connections, mostly from local people, who will bring forth second connects within your locality. LinkedIn is a great place to tell stories and discuss your entrepreneurship journey, and you could also use LinkedIn outreach automation tools to help speed it along.

• Use Video Tutorials

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate how to use your products to potential customers is by creating video tutorials. In the tutorials, teach people how to use your products step by step. The better you do this, the more value you will provide to your users. Similarly, it quickly boosts your visibility and sales ultimately.

YouTube is currently the second largest search engine platform coming after Google, and everybody often heads there if they need to learn something. That said, use this platform to help your customers learn something by uploading your video tutorials in this platform. Most people fear to do this, claiming that hearing their voice playing back or seeing themselves is hard. However, you don’t have to appear visually and on audio in the video.

• Start Blogging

If you don’t have a blog for your business, it is time to start one. Nonetheless, it isn’t a must to start and run your own blog. Most entrepreneurs find blogging quite mundane as they lack visibility.  Blogging is technically a big part of content marketing and requires a completely separate plan for this recurring project.

Your blog shouldn’t be solely for posting your ideas. Consider authority blogging using several platforms such as answering questions on Reddit and Quora. You can also share your blog posts on LinkedIn’s publishing platform. All these authority domains have massive audiences that give you an immediate local business audience with instant reach.

• Leverage Influencers

Using influencers is not only beneficial for getting your business to the global market but also potential local prospects. Influencers are the best way to boost your visibility on social media without taking a long time building your audience base. The key to this is finding the right influencers. For your local business, you don’t necessarily have to find influencers with millions of social media followers. Opt for micro-influencers with thousands or hundred thousand followers but are relevant to your business.

The trick lies in finding the right influencers within your niche. Finding the right audience means that you will be targeting the right audience. Note that the focus isn’t just spreading your message but spreading your business message to the right customer base.

• Run an Affiliate Program

Most people ignore the power of affiliate marketing or rather understand but overlook its importance. When done effectively, affiliate marketing is a receipt for massive business growth. Nonetheless, approaching the right affiliate partners is always a tough challenge.

Navigating this powerful affiliate minefield is tricky and requires imminent persistence. Most businesspersons get easily discouraged after experiencing a few setbacks. However, you shouldn’t allow simple emotions to control your affiliate programs.

• Posters and Flyers

Displaying posters, flyers and giving out brochures are another best marketing strategy for local businesses. Posters and flyers are the best choices for small businesses especially if you need to market their products within a specific location. A major challenge commonly experienced with using this marketing strategy is that measuring its success is quite difficult. The only way to measure success is including coupon codes that suggest direct leads.

• Print Advertising

Print advertising is perhaps one of the oldest approaches to marketing but still remains among the marketing best practices. This is simply about purchasing some Ad space in the local print media such as magazines, direct mails, yellow pages, newsletters, and newspapers. Whereas this might sound kind of old school compared to the aforementioned online marketing strategies, there are many reasons why it still exists.

Since you are a local business, print media commands significant attention compared to social media, websites and short online videos, making them effective.

• Business Partnerships

To make your local business stronger, sometimes looking for other small or local businesses to partner together is prudent. The best way to succeed in this is by cross-promoting products or co-hosting an event with your partner business. Find prospective partners by searching through your audience. Try finding out what other products they might need, list the businesses providing those products and approach them for partnership for mutual benefit.

Good examples of business partnerships include one between wedding photographers with wedding accessories providers.

Conclusion

There are different marketing channels to leverage to make your local business increase visibility. However, it is important that you test various local business-marketing strategies to find the best practices. Whereas you don’t need to use all the above-mentioned techniques, start pursuing those that fit your budget and goals. Implementing the right marketing practices, you can be certain of imminent growth, better leads, and sales.