Smart Strategy For Your Local Marketing

Online, April 29, 2011 (Newswire.com) - In order to make a success of our newly started business, it is very important to concentrate in the local market, then think about consolidating and expand your wings. Key to the success is the smart local marketing strategy.

Today we live in an environment where change in the Local Marketing arena is at an all time high. The biggest challenge facing national brands and local businesses alike is how do you cut through all the noise of what's available and strike at a prioritized approach to building local lead generation.

How much time should my company devote to Google, Twitter, Facebook, Mobile advertising... The key to understanding the answer is to begin to catalogue how consumer usage is shifting for the category you do business in.

The biggest mistake facing businesses is to rely on simply looking at their competitors moves and then blindly following their moves in a "cover" strategy. The challenge with this approach is it assumes that your competitors have a well thought out and strategic plan, which most do not.

Fish Where the Fish Are

Start with usage data specific to your business category and develop a matrix of media options that. This can be accessed from a number of sources, here are some good ones:

1. Syndicated research providers - e.g., comScore and other that capture usage and category information.
2. Primary research - conduct a recent purchaser study and question your customers on the local marketing sources they used to select your business.
3. Media Reps - before you purchase, ask for specific numbers of monthly usage for your category. Be wary of a rep that throws out numbers on the spot or try to convince you that this information is not important; 'because we will leave your campaign live until it achieves 'X'. In this case they might be selling you a program that will go one for over a year because they have low usage in your category. Keep in mind they have a direct compensation relationship to what they sell you. Exhaust unbiased sources before relying on the website or media rep directly.