:: Blog – 4promote.com.au ::

You are surrounded by potential customers. One Australian bank advertises that 45% of all Australian businesses receive the majority of their sales from local customers, and if this is not your experience, you are losing out.

There are 3 main reasons to garner local business

1) Higher referral potential

2) Lower cost of business (less travel for one)

3) Easier, Quicker and Cheaper to build a reputation (ie Trust which leads back to point)

Your problem is how to tap into that lucrative local area market.

Before you can begin, you have to learn some facts about your customer base. Your brand has already been defined within your business and marketing plan.

Now, you must identify your target audience, including age, affluence, interests—basically everything you can find out about them. Who will your business attract and why?Once you have identified your target audience, think about where they go within the community. What do they do for entertainment? Car races? Shakespeare Festival? Where do they shop? It is important to analyze this Most Important Customer, and begin to draw some generalizations. Once you know your customer base, you can design a marketing plan which will attract these individuals to your product.

How to do it:

If your targeted customers attend cultural events, think about becoming a sponsor of the local Shakespeare Festival. The image of this type of sponsor is extremely positive, for people see such support as altruistic and community-minded.

Go one step further and on one night of the Festival, give away a promotional item such as an insulated picnic bag emblazoned with the Festival name and your name as sponsor. That bag not only goes to the Festival, but to other events and is seen by even more potential customers. Or, you could give a number of the branded insulated picnic bags to the Festival to sell in their shop—a win win, for the Festival receives income and you receive valuable publicity. Not every bag may make a sale for you, but keep in mind that your company name has to be seen at least 27 times before people begin to automatically recognize it. That positive exposure of your business name and its association with a community treasure is priceless. Sponsor a local sporting team, this local support has a way of reciprocating.

There are countless ways to promote your business locally, and you just have to be proactive. Look for favorable connections within your community and be willing to put that one-of-a-kind, splendid idea into practice to see the results.

Look for Joint Ventures

There are many non-competitive businesses in your local area who are already servicing your target market. Joint Ventures in your marketing will give you many benefits including:

• cross-pollinate databases
• potentially double your target market
• save on marketing dollars
• leverage off the trust your JV partner has built up over the years

Top Local Promotional Ideas – look for items that people use around the neighbourhood, let them be walking advertisements for you.

Effective promotional products in this area are Umbrella’s, Coffee Cup Totes, Magnets with To Do’s, Cooler Bags, Takeaway coffee cups and shopping bags.With Local Sponsorship – promotional products that are cost and advertising effective are drink bottles, marques, sporting uniforms and sports bags. To ensure the recipients use want to use the product co-brand the promotional item with then sport team’s logo.

Matthew Bywater
Marketing Strategist

For more marketing insight from Matthew check out his blog – www.matthewbywater.com