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Local online marketing – The most important in a nutshell |
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Are you a company with different, local locations and wondering to what extent online marketing is at all interesting for you? In general: online marketing is not only relevant for large online shops – local businesses can also benefit considerably from online marketing measures. The potential of local online marketing is often underestimated. But – for companies, this marketing tool offers an extremely effective advertising opportunity to gain new customers and strengthen brand awareness. But what forms of local online marketing are there? How do I approach this topic and what do I have to consider? In this article we would like to give you an overview of the topic of “local online marketing”.
There are many ways to advertise online. Newsletters, social media or advertising on Google: we present the most important online marketing channels for your local business here:
Worldwide, 4.2 billion users actively use social media in 2021. An impressive figure – and it makes clear how much social networks are part of our everyday lives these days. In Germany, people spend an average of 84 minutes a day on social media (as of January 2021). In a 2019 survey, 39% of respondents said they like to be inspired by social media. Best conditions for companies that use social networks for marketing purposes. And social media marketing can also make perfect sense for local businesses.
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Facebook is the classic, but what other social networks are there? And which social networks are suitable for local online marketing? We give an overview of the most popular and important networks for local social media marketing.
Local Online Marketing Social Media Marketing
Facebook is the oldest of the social networks presented here. It was founded in 2004 and has 2.91 billion active users per month (as of 2021). This makes it the world’s largest social network. Facebook is part of everyday life for many people, the reach on this platform is huge. Users from almost every target group can be found here. This makes this platform very interesting for companies as well. Companies can create their own company page here. This is similar to a personal Facebook profile, except that it is designed for companies. Here (unlike with a personal profile) you can, for example, also enter opening hours, store contact and location data and get in touch with your customers. In addition, you can also make posts on this company page – and thus inform your followers about current offers and promotions.
Originally, only pictures could be posted on the Instagram platform. Now, longer videos, “reels” or short “stories” (short videos with a maximum of 15 seconds that are deleted after 24 hours) can also be posted there. Users can comment on posts, link or write private messages. Instagram is the social network most used by the 14-29 age group.
The TikTok network is particularly popular with Generation Z, but meanwhile you can also find more and more older users on this platform. TikTok is used to share short, funny & creative videos. These are usually between 15 and 60 seconds long and are usually accompanied by songs. TikTok is a suitable medium especially for companies that want to address a younger target group.
On Pinterest, users can discover and save ideas in the form of images. Pinterest mainly functions as a source of inspiration. Users can pin images on virtual pinboards and create their own pinboards for different topics. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Pinterest is not about interacting with followers – it is mainly about searching for ideas and topics.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Pinterest are among the most important and popular social networks. However, depending on the industry and target group, other platforms can also be considered for local online marketing such as Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn or Xing.
The use of social media platforms differs a little according to age group. For example, the group of 14 – 29 year-olds is mainly on Instagram, 30 – 40 year-olds are mainly on Facebook, as are 50 – 69 year-olds and even at 70+ some users are still on Facebook.
Use of social networks by age
There are two main differences in social media marketing: organic & paid. What is the difference?
To increase your brand awareness, it is advisable to place paid ads in addition to organic posts. Why? With organic posts, you mainly reach the users who already follow you anyway. That means those who already know your company and sympathise with it. This is also good and important, because with organic posts you can increase and intensify customer loyality. But if you want to attract new customers to your business, then paid ads are worthwhile. Especially for local marketing, the advantage here is that there are numerous targeting options. This way you can narrow down your target group quite precisely and avoid wastage. For example, you can determine from which region the users who receive your ads should come, what age or gender they should be or what interests they pursue.
Furthermore, the costs for social media ads can be controlled very well. As a rule, Facebook uses a CPC for billing. CPC stands for cost-per-click. This means that you only pay if someone has clicked on your ad. If a user only sees the ad but does not click, you do not have to pay. In general, the success of social media ads can also be monitored quite well. Every interaction with your ads is automatically recorded, so you can create evaluations and measure quite accurately how successful your ads were.
Local online marketing – These are the advantages of paid ads on social media |
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In addition to social media, it is nowadays just as important to be found on Google. Search engine marketing deals with the findability of a website in the search engine results. This is divided into the sub-areas of search engine advertising and search engine optimisation:
Search engine marketing
What exactly is the difference in the Google search results? When you Google a term, in most cases some paid search results appear first, followed by organic results. Visually, these are hardly distinguishable, but the paid advertising is marked “ad”.
Paid ads and organic results in Google search results.
Search engine advertising in particular is also extremely interesting for smaller, local businesses. Because just as with paid social media advertising, Google ads also offer some advantages here: These are also well suited for acquiring new customers – so you can attract potential customers to you. You thus ensure that you are always found for relevant search terms and prevent your website from disappearing somewhere on the back pages of Google search results. Here too, you only pay if a user actually clicks on your ad. This means the best possible budget control and optimal monitoring of the success of your ads.
You know the situation: You want to go to the bakery around the corner, but is it still open? Then you quickly google and find the current opening hours directly on the Google search results – without having to visit the baker’s website. These business listings on Google are controlled by Google My Business and look like this:
Google My Business entry from LocalUp
Businesses can create their own Google My Business profile and store a lot of different information there. The most common are opening hours, address or telephone number. Customers can also leave reviews about your business here. An own Google My Business profile is – especially for local businesses – indispensable nowadays, because this is also responsible for the location markers on Google Maps. Learn more about Google My Business here.
If you have a large number of businesses, creating individual campaigns can be time-consuming and labour-intensive. After all, manually entering campaigns for over 30 locations is not a process that can be easily integrated into your daily work routine.
We have the solution for this. With our LocalUp services, we offer automated processes for efficient, simple and effective regional online advertising.
Example Facebook campaign from LocalUp
Without any manual effort for your marketing team, LocalUp creates your locally individualised advertising campaign for you. All variables (image, text, radius, location, etc.) are automatically adapted to the respective ad, so that individual ads can also be easily implemented in a uniform corporate design.