Local vs. National Marketing Strategies—Why Going Local Is the Best for Your SMB

Whether you’re a new player in the field or have been around for a while, you know how important a sound marketing strategy is for your business. Devising and deploying such strategies requires expertise in areas like digital marketing, trend analysis, and branding.

Your target audience’s geographical presence determines whether you are going for a national marketing strategy or a local marketing strategy. Firstly, let us understand the difference between the two. 

National Marketing Strategy 
When this strategy is implemented, you are positioning yourself as a national brand that can cater to the needs of customers across your country. All your marketing efforts are aimed at appealing to people countrywide. 

Local Marketing Strategy
In this strategy, you understand local trends, and your target market is a specific and smaller geographical area. Your marketing moves are consumer-oriented, and you remain focused on positioning yourself as an industry expert in your locality. 

Whichever strategy you choose to deploy, the following aspects will be integral parts of them.
Let’s look at how they vary for local and national strategies.
 
Relationship Building
While trying to attract audiences on a national scale may bring in more leads, converting those leads into sales/closures will require you to build a relationship with them. This is best done when you target local markets, as you will be able to respond to and follow up with more leads, leading to building relationships with your potential clients. You will also be able to provide more personalized services to your clients if you remain focused on your locality.

The Costs Involved
Because of operating on such a large scale, and for some of the reasons discussed above, the cost of acquiring a single customer is often very high with national strategies. With local strategies, you can attract and convert a higher number of leads within your budget.

Social Media Strategy
One of the biggest differences between local and national strategies is the difference in the use of social media. Whatever your business size, it is imperative that you make the right use of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. While local a national marketing strategy would require you to post generic content at a mutually-agreeable time for your entire nation, a local marketing strategy will allow you the flexibility to post at your local timings. Your content can also afford to be focused more on local events, festivals, and culture, leading to better relatability with your audience.

The Web Content
Focusing your web content to include local SEO keywords, such as adding the geographical location of your store/office to your metadata, is the key element of content on websites going for a local marketing strategy. With national strategies, you would use broader, generic terms to denote your presence, which may expand your target base but not target any one area/community in particular.

Community Networking
Probably one of the biggest advantages of local marketing is how your happy customers can become your ambassadors in their community. When a client advocates for your brand or refers you to their congregation, children’s school, or other social gatherings, you’re getting marketed without spending an extra dollar! The scope for this is very limited on a national scale.  

For the aforementioned reasons and more, it is best for small and medium-sized businesses to adopt local marketing strategies. Speak to a professional at Go Lead Consulting if you’d like to discuss more.