Marketing your brand at your primary location is pretty straightforward, and most businesses can get the hang of it with a bit of experience. However, marketing your company off-site is more challenging. You don’t always have the same level of control.
So, what options are available? What strategies can you employ to do better branding when you’re somewhere other than your premises?
Partner With Local Influencers
One option is to simply go out there and start partnering with local influencers. Teaming up with regional personalities can help you make more of an impact on your target areas.
Many brands already do this with Howard from the Halifax adverts. They want to work with him in specific areas because he has so much goodwill because of his role in a series of highly influential adverts more than two decades ago.
The same goes for celebrities like Peter Andre. Many of these people aren’t particularly active right now in the public imagination, but they have gravitas among specific communities that makes them excellent candidates for brand-building and general company growth that goes well beyond what most companies can achieve.
Deploy Guerrilla Marketing Tactics
Another approach is to deploy guerrilla marketing tactics. These are sort of underhand approaches you can take but that have the potential to offer a massive impact.
Of course, guerrilla marketing is inherently risky. There’s always a chance that it could backfire and leave your company worse off than you’d like. But if you take measured risks, it could go the other way and actually be a good thing for your enterprise.
For example, you could change your messaging to fit the local culture. Let’s say you already have a brand in Tennessee, but you want to expand it globally to places like Lagos in Nigeria or Baku in Azerbaijan. Using the same marketing tactics as you’re already using probably isn’t going to work in these locations, but if you can develop something clever, then you might be able to talk to local people more directly in a way that has a real impact on them.
You could also try posters and flash mobs, though these are less effective these days. The best option is to be clever with your time and do what works.
Host Experiences
Another approach that many leading brands are using is hosting experiences. Red Bull really got the ball rolling on this, but now thousands of companies are doing it, and many of them are seeing significant success.
Hosting experiences is a way to increase your reach and build brand recognition immediately. These events immerse your customers in what you’re doing and how you want them to feel when they use your products or services.
Obviously, you’re not giving away everything for free. Instead, you’re intriguing people and building a kind of relationship that encourages them to come to you in the future when they need something (ideally, whatever it is that you offer).
When you host these experiences, use outdoor banners to advertise what you’re doing. Make it clear that something is happening and that it’s a big event.
Optimize Local SEO
Another approach is to look at your digital strategy and ask whether you’re optimizing local SEO (something you should be doing anyway). You want to ensure that you’re targeting keywords near you so that when you’re away from your primary location, your name still shows up.
For example, if you offer services out of your hometown, make sure you have landing and location pages that explain this. These should be crawlable by Google so that it can recommend them when audiences look for them and want to experience the services you offer.
You also want to set up various locations on Yelp and Google Business Profiles. Yes, these require physical premises, but these are simpler to set up than you might think and can be a great way to reach more people outside of your immediate area.
For many companies, Google is the best way to win customers for their services. Businesses that succeed in this area are usually those that people don’t need to use often but are required when things go wrong, like plumbers or handymen.
Use Local Sponsorships
It might sound clichéd, but leveraging local sponsorships is another excellent way to market beyond your immediate premises. Working with companies that people love and respect in the local area is one of the most powerful ways to get your message out.
For example, you could work with local event organizers or sports teams. Simply putting money into these outfits can have a profound effect on how local people see you. It boosts brand recognition and almost helps you become a part of the furniture of their existence.
You can also try things like on-site branding using banners and boards. These can be effective if you work with a highly visible entity in the community, perhaps a football team or a supermarket. Getting your branding placed more widely can have a powerful impact on how well your enterprise does with local consumers.
Work With Local Media Outlets
Failing that, you could team up with local media outlets. Radio and newspaper publishers are always looking for brands and businesses with stories to tell.
Yes, you will need to ensure that whatever story you put out is newsworthy. It can’t just be about how amazing your company is. But once you get into one of these publications, it immediately raises your status. All of a sudden, you’re in the top tier of the local community, and people trust you simply because a local journalist does.
Working with media outlets can feel a bit like collaborating with influencers, but it is more formal. Everyone these days knows that influencers are essentially paid marketers who have their own channels. But publishers still have credibility, which is why an endorsement from them is so powerful.
Where possible, pitch compelling stories to radio hosts and news writers. Explain to them why your ideas are so compelling and what their audience will get from a story about you.
Sometimes, journalists will come to you and want to write stories simply because they see your impact and think you’re interesting. This is the best of both worlds because it is completely organic but also gives you the visibility that you need to succeed.
Make Promotions Location-Based
Another approach is to make promotions location-based. These incentivize local customers and make it more likely that they will become regionally loyal. Investing in a BEE 4 Large Format Printer can help you to create large-scale promotional materials that can then be distributed properly. You can then employ local pamphlet or leaflet teams to help you to deploy your materials.
Location-based promotions require slightly more admin, but you can streamline the process by pricing from a central location. These systems allow you to tinker with your strategy and change your setup on the fly to reflect new campaigns when they occur.
You can also use QR codes on printed and digital media. These are other ways to track regional engagement and encourage people to forward your other materials and ideas.
If you can link these to landing pages, that’s even better. Combining promotions with a linked up sales funnel is currently the most effective direct marketing strategy out there.
Utilize Geofencing Ads
Finally, you could invest in geofenced ads. These only show up on users’ devices when they step into a specific area close to your location, based on their location data.
Geofencing is effective because it provides users with shortcuts. When they see an ad in a new place, it means that they don’t have to think as much about where to buy next (for example, eating at a restaurant).
