Localizing Your Brand for Consumers

All across this country, there is a steadily increasing preference among consumers for favoring local goods and local companies. This is undoubtedly in response to a corresponding mistrust of huge corporate brands, and in fact, a recent survey pointed out that between the years of 2012 and 2017, consumer confidence in large corporations has plummeted by 20%.Recognizing this loss of confidence, many large corporations have increased their focus on localizing products and services in their marketing initiatives. By using messages and techniques which favor smaller and more specific audiences, large companies are able to retain the connection with local consumers which small companies have become very good at. Given the fact that localization has become so effective and so desirable for both big and small companies to emphasize, it becomes clear that increased emphasis on localization should be a priority for virtually all businesses trying to maintain a solid and loyal user base. The methods which you can use to incorporate localization into your own marketing efforts are not difficult to master, and should be taken advantage of, so as to maintain a good rapport with your target audience.

Thinking small can be big

You don't have to develop huge, splashy marketing campaigns to get your objectives across and to get in touch with your target audience. For instance, consider the specific area of influencer marketing. You might be able to engage the services of a well-known national celebrity with a huge following to become the face of your company and attract large numbers of users to your brand.But it could also be very effective to reach out to a number of lesser celebrities with more limited followings, who can reach niche audiences and smaller groups of followers with your message. Even though you're reaching out to smaller numbers of people, you will be establishing more intimate connections and potentially greater engagement among your users. According to the influencer agency known as HelloSociety, these small-scale influencers have an engagement rate which is 60% higher than nationally known celebrities. Followers of these lesser celebrities have a great deal of trust in their chosen heroes because they feel that the interests are local and can be relied upon. In order to find these kinds of smaller scale influencers, you can make use of a tool such is Followerwonk, since it helps you to analyze your Twitter audience, and identify those influencers who have the ability to reach specific audiences. Then it becomes a matter of courting these influencers and interesting them in representing your brand, so that their followers can become your followers.

Cater to locals

To the greatest extent possible, you should extend your brand to support any local businesses within your area. This means that even if you have stores and outlets which span the entire country, you should include a strong local message and identity at each location. Any marketing and advertising efforts that you conduct at each of these locations should include references to the city's history or its ongoing development, or possibly to local landmarks and institutions.This helps a great deal to develop local loyalty, and it relates your company to the strong social presence that any local area embodies, and it makes users feel much more comfortable, because they feel that the store and its content is part of their own daily lives, rather than an extension of some giant corporate conglomerate. By showcasing local businesses, you can increase the visibility of your brand by using numerous backlinks and citations such as name and address of each of those local businesses.

You can also take advantage of local SEO rankings by claiming your Google my Business listing and making sure that it is completely filled out, so as to provide the most useful information to local users. This will help your local business be found more readily through any local searches. It can also be tremendously advantageous for you to sponsor unique events at the various blank branch locations within your organization, because these will provide plenty of citations for your company.In this same general area, you can put to use such effective SEO tools as Yext or Whitespark, because both these tools help you to audit any citations you receive, and will help you to centralize all of your data, while also improving your local search rankings. Keep in mind that even though consumers are reaching out to local brands in ever greater numbers, that doesn't mean that large companies have to suffer by that growing trend. By emphasizing local marketing, you can still make a huge impact on your intended target audience, and you can still accomplish your corporate goals by thinking smaller rather than bigger.

Get involved with the community

One of the best ways for you to become involved with the local community is to associate your company with nonprofit organizations. These organizations almost always have some very worthwhile causes which they're supporting, and by associating with them your company benefits by the positive image it projects in supporting that cause. Your credibility will increase dramatically because of this, and that is bound to have a positive impact on local sales and local support.Any kind of support you can provide for local nonprofit organizations will increase your reputation as a community-minded company, at the same time as providing legitimate support for local families and local causes. In order to make this happen, you will need to authorize your regional managers and subsidiaries to develop partnerships with such nonprofit organizations.Partnering with local community groups and nonprofits is simply good business, and since more and more companies are recognizing this, the concept is beginning to spill over into some of the established social media channels like Facebook. That social media platform is currently developing methods which will allow companies to partner with nonprofit organizations and community groups right on its platform, which will be of enormous benefit to companies trying to localize their efforts and achieve a solid standing with local communities.