5 Strategies to Grow Your Startup Within a Local Community

Attracting new customers is priority number one for startups. In this digital era, most marketers will advise you to invest in online strategies, such as running influencer marketing campaigns, using social media, and relying on PPC ads to bring customers to your storefront. Although these practices are essential for growth, it takes time for online promotional strategies to translate to profits.

What you need right now is to put your brand on the local market’s radar. Below are the top proven strategies you should try:

Partner With Other Local Businesses

Smaller markets provide the advantage of community-driven and complementary advertising opportunities. For example, a local bookstore can partner with a coffee shop where they can promote new releases via discount coupons. In turn, the bookstore would refer readers to the coffee shop where they can sit back, relax, and enjoy their new purchases.

Help Walk-In Traffic Find Your Digital Content

It doesn’t matter if your walk-in visitors end up closing a purchase or not – make sure they find your digital content by including your website address or social media accounts in your packaging and in-store display materials. Just like when designing online landing pages, focus on highlighting the benefits of your content and cap it off with a compelling CTA.

Another creative strategy is to generate a QR code that leads to your site. Doing so will make it easier for your audience to access your site on their mobile devices. And for this, you can take advantage of free QR code generators like QR Stuff.

Enlist Your Business in Review Sites and ‘Finder’ Apps

When discovering new brands, a huge chunk of consumers use digital apps and platforms. This enables them base their expectations on customer reviews, photos, and conversations. As a business, enlisting your site on review sites like Yelp is a step in the right direction.

Rather than casting your net wide, try focusing on platforms and apps that cater to a specific audience type. Look for unique features you can utilize to promote your products in the best light. FoodFaves, for example, enables users to find the nearest food establishments based on hashtags or their own food cravings. Souvenir Finder, on the other hand, is a broader platform that’s aimed towards tourists exploring new locations.

Use Snapchat Geofilters to Attract Social Influencers

By now, you should already know that 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from their peers. This is why leveraging the reach of social media ambassadors is a great way to raise brand awareness and win the trust of potential customers. And to bring socialites to your establishment, a creative strategy is to create on-demand SnapChat Geofilters.

Although image filters aren’t unique to SnapChat, it’s the only platform that allows businesses to design exclusive filters, which are only accessible to user within the vicinity. This is a great way to encourage your walk-in visitors to post about your brand as well as invite their social media followers to your location.

Host a Live Event

Last but definitely not least, hosting live events in your location is guaranteed to generate buzz. That is, if you have the budget to make it memorable to your attendees. If you’ve partnered with other local businesses, try collaborating with them to reduce the costs and attract a bigger crowd.

Once you’ve worked out the details of your event, be sure to promote your event through social media and in-store materials.  Having an influential speaker on board is also effective since they already have an established following. To look for influencers, you can implement different strategies such as using LinkedIn, inviting them to interviews or podcasts, and attending other events.

Read more about growing your startup here on Tech.Co

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Written by:
Jyoti is a tech writer who loves to write about anything that is related to technology, She also has interest in entrepreneurship & Digital marketing world including social media & advertising.
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