Targeted online advertising has truly revolutionised modern marketing, and it’s become especially useful for small businesses looking to increase local sales. With the click of a button you can get your adverts in front of the right people when they’re most ready to buy, saving you time spent hunting customers by bringing them straight to you.
Whether this is your first venture into online advertising or you're just looking to refresh your knowledge of this game-changing marketing method, there are some useful and easy principles that can help you speed to success.
A great way to directly reach our local community is to place your ads on local news sites. This is an essential but simple method of targeting, as these sites will overwhelmingly be read by people all around your area. The most recent major study carried out by Newsworks into the effects of advertising on newsbrands concluded that ads placed alongside premium news content are:
Advertising on newsbrands doesn't only boost your visibility; it awards you a degree of trust that can only result from being placed alongside the credible content that local communities rely on to keep them connected to their area. For more tips about building confidence in your brand, check out our article How To Build Trust In Your Company Name.
If you’re looking to increase local sales of a specific product, then targeted advertising is your secret weapon. Even if the same product is available from other sources all over the internet, a well-crafted targeted ad can still draw in nearby customers looking for the most convenient solution.
You can easily advertise on search engines using Google Ads, refining your target audience by location, demographic and interests. You simply set which search terms you would like to trigger your ad, and a bespoke segment of customers in your area will see your ad whenever they type these keywords into Google. 9 out of 10 consumers use search engines when they are looking for a local company or business, and 95% of these already motivated buyers will not look past the first page of search results when choosing a merchant.
With a minimum of effort and expense, you can use intelligent advertising to appeal to local customers at the crucial moment when they want to spend their money. You can learn more about Google Ads in this handy explainer.
Newsbrands and search engines are certainly not the only means of increasing local sales. The most effective campaigns will advertise in print and across a range of digital channels to reach potential customers whatever their choice of media. For instance, businesses that use social networks to reach out to their local customer base can see spikes in sales, as these personalised attempts to engage with customers, when done right, help to build customer loyalty.
Mixing your marketing both widens and intensifies your visibility. Research shows that spreading your campaigns across various formats has a positive knock-on effect on the success of each individual channel. Here’s a pretty amazing example - running a banner ad campaign on your local news site is proven to double the effectiveness of your campaign efforts on social media. This multiplier effect should be reason enough to get your ads out there wherever you can.
If you don’t develop the habit of recording and studying your campaign’s performance, then your marketing will never deliver the mighty increase in local sales that’s well within your grasp. Smart marketers carefully measure the impact of their ads and use this data to improve their strategy going forwards, focusing time and resources on honing the most successful methods while eliminating mistakes.
The beauty of online advertising is the sheer scale and depth of the feedback it gives you in real-time. For instance, if you are selling a specific product, you might choose to market it both via punchy copy on search engines and also with eye-catching visual material on pre-selected websites. You would be easily able to track and compare the performance of each advert in each location, showing you the difference in view figures and clicks. Even while your campaign is live, you can obtain a more developed picture of which modes of advertising are most prone to increase local sales in the future and give you the ultimate return on your spend.
There’s an abundance of customers right on your doorstep waiting to hear about the killer product or service that you’re ready to sell them. Getting through to those most ready to buy has previously been a game of chance and hope, but with such sophisticated targeting methods available to even the most cash-strapped, time-poor businesses, there’s no excuse not to get your ads up and running in front of local people who want to see them. Remember, your competitors are definitely doing it already!
If you want to read more about the sensational potentials of online advertising for increasing your local sales, why not check out some of our other quick and easy guides?
