Local Marketing Both Digital and Physical

If you have a local business, it does not do you much good to rank in Google for the wrong location. Local marketing matters because you need to reach your customers where they are, in an area close enough to entice them to visit your restaurant, store, or other place of business. This is a different type of digital marketing that targets local search results.

At the same time, you need physical marketing as well. It is said it takes 7-10 touchpoints with a customer before they buy from you. This means that digital signage, posters, billboards, and print ads all matter as well. Do how do you balance these two, measure your ROI, and spend your ad dollars wisely?

Here are some simple local marketing tips related to both physical and digital campaigns.

Know Where Your Customers are Coming From

The key to any kind of marketing is to be able to determine your ROI. If you do not know where customers have heard about you or seen your ads, you can’t very well improve them or shift the where your ad spend is going to better reach them. Of course, knowing these things is different for physical and digital marketing.

For digital marketing, various kinds of analytics are your best friend. From Google to Jetpack for WordPress, you can not only see where your web traffic is coming from, but how that traffic behaves, and what pages produce conversions. A good look at your analytics can tell you a lot about a buyer’s online journey, and how a typical customer behaves.

With physical marketing, things are a little different, because you can’t track the customer in real time. However, you can determine where they are hearing about you in a number of ways.

  • Use Google Shortcodes or Unique Phone Numbers: There are several apps that allow for many numbers to actually reach your one central number, but then you can track who is using what number to call your business. Using a different number for each physical campaign and location accomplishes this.
  • Use unique coupon codes: Like unique numbers, creating several unique coupon codes allows you to track where customers saw the coupon, helping you measure ROI, at least indirectly.
  • Ask Them: If you ask them to fill out a quick survey or even give them an incentive to do so, customers will tell you where they heard about your business and other information about how you are doing. This is a great way to measure the ROI of physical campaigns.

Whether you are using digital signage in strategic locations, signs or billboards, or other forms of physical marketing it is possible to track ROI with other creative solutions as well. Think outside the box so you can judge where your ad dollars are best spent.

Know Where Customers Work, Live, and Play

This is the key to good marketing. You must reach your customer at the right time and place, when they are ready to make a buying decision, or where your brand will stick with them when they are ready to do so. For instance, if you have a dinner restaurant, reaching potential customers on their morning commute is a great way to trigger in their minds an idea of what they might want to do for dinner.

If they see the same ad on the way home or a different one that mentions your restaurant, they are even more likely to want to try your food or even return if they have been there before. This means knowing where your customers work and what they do allows you to put those signs and ads in the right place, and in many cases display them at the right time.

The same is true for digital ads, but on a different level. Are your customers more likely to be on Facebook or Twitter? Perhaps even LinkedIn? In these cases, ads can be targeted not only to specific locations, but occupations, ages, and more. You can target your audience exactly, but you must know first where they spend their time and how.

Doing market research and refining your target is essential to marketing success, digital or physical.

Know How Customers are Influenced to Buy

What words, phrases, colors, photos, and ideas cause your customers to move from shoppers to buyers? This too involves a lot of market research and a realistic understanding of the psychology of color.

For instance, think of digital signage. A sign or ad is visible for a short period of time, and crowded text will just cause a lead to look away. They won’t have time to read it anyway, and the ad is not visually appealing. Using the example of the restaurant, photos of food, along with the coupon code mentioned above, and a simple method of contact will resonate the best with potential customers and perform better.

Your customers likely needed several touchpoints before they try your restaurant or visit your business, so don’t discount some marketing simply for the sake of brand awareness. Think of the large brands like Pepsi, Hershey’s, and others. They have many ads with no words or content at all other than their logo or sign.

Sometimes, seeing that sign again, or your familiar logo, is all it takes for a customer to be influenced to make a purchase.

The same is true for Facebook ads and other digital marketing efforts. Sometimes it is about giving the viewer the right information at the right time. Others it is about simply reminding them that you exist.

The mix of physical and digital marketing for businesses is an important one. Need help navigating these tricky waters or organizing your next digital signage campaign? Contact us here at info@signspan.com.

Troy Lambert
Troy Lambert
Troy is a content strategist, freelance writer, and consultant from Boise, Idaho. He lives there with his wife, son, and two very talented dogs. In his spare time, he is a cyclist, skier, motorcyclist, and all around outdoorsman.

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