6 Regional Marketing Tips for Brands Trying to Tap Into a Local Market

Local marketing isn’t just for local businesses.

Multi-location brands and franchises also need to take a local-first approach to their marketing strategies. As more and more customers crave unique and personalized experiences, regional advertising must embrace a local spin if they want to excite and engage nearby customers.

Here are some tips for how national brands and franchises can boost their regional marketing strategies to reach more locals, build more brand affinity, and drive more sales.

What Is Regional Marketing & Advertising?

Regional marketing and advertising refers to the development of location-specific promotional campaigns that multi-location brands run to target customers in unique regions near one or more of their locations.

Regional marketing and advertising does two things. It:

• Uses location-based marketing and geotargeting to reach customers based on where they live
• Provides relevant content and promotions based on the unique environment, culture, weather, and attitudes of the area where customers live

With regional advertising, brands run campaigns that are unique to a defined area around a location, rather than running a general campaign for their brand as a whole. The goal of regional marketing is to get the brand in front of customers who live near a specific location (or multiple locations if the locations are near each other) and appeal to the unique customer base living in the area.

For example, a franchise like DICK'S Sporting Goods wouldn't run the same January promotions for their stores in Colorado as their stores in Florida. They would use regional advertising to put their audience into two categories and create promotions that appeal to them based on where they live. In this case, they may promote skiing and snowboarding to the audience in Colorado and paddleboarding to their audience in Florida.

Types of Regional Marketing & Advertising

When people think of regional advertising, they typically think of traditional media advertising such as television and radio ads. But, there are a variety of digital regional marketing advertising options.

Don't get boxed into thinking the only way to reach a regional audience is through traditional media ads.

You can leverage regional advertising through:

• Programmatic Adverting: includes digital ads such as display and video ads on a website or in an app, video ads before a YouTube video, and native ads on popular websites. These ads also stretch from the web to TV and include video ads that appear on streaming platforms and connected TV (CTV). 
• Social Media Ads: are the paid promotions that appear on social media channels. These ads can be turned into regional advertising by using geotargeting to reach audiences that live in a specific area, city, or zip code.
• Blogs and Articles: are a way to use content as regional marketing by creating entertaining or educational content that is relevant to a specific location. You can publish it either on the brand website or a third-party website.
• Geofencing: is a location-based marketing strategy that pushes ads to people when they move in and out of defined virtual boundaries. It is a form of hyper-targeting that can reach audiences based on the specific neighborhoods or businesses they visit.
• Email Marketing: can be used for brand or regional marketing. Multi-location brands may have one master list of consumer data. Through audience segmentation, they can drill down and create groups of audience based on where they live and which store they visit most frequently. 
• Local SEO: is a strategy for getting a regional location to show up in searches performed by nearby customers. Search engines like to show results that include nearby businesses. Using local SEO optimization techniques, brands can boost the rankings of individual locations.
• Sponsorships: of local teams and events put a brand directly in front of local customers. Sponsorships of community initiatives, such as charity events or local sports teams, also show that a brand is interested in being a part of the community.
• Local Business Directory Listings: are profiles on local listing pages that make it easier for nearby customers to find and discover businesses in their community. These directories include national listings with local footprints (like Google My Business and Yelp) as well as hyperlocal directories (like Local Area Sites). 

Regional marketing isn't just promoting a national brand on local TV and radio stations.

It is a variety of local marketing strategies that help a brand be seen as a local business that is connected to and involved with the community.

Related: What Is a Local Marketing Platform and Why Do You Need One?

6 Regional Marketing Tips

Now that you know what types of tactics are available to you as you approach regional marketing, here are a few tips for getting started.

To get the most out of your regional marketing efforts, keep these six tips in mind as you craft your strategies and campaigns.

#1) Get to know your unique, regional audience. 

First thing first: don’t start any marketing initiatives for regions you haven’t researched.

While your brand may have already done research on your audience and created buyer personas for your business as a whole, it might not translate to all of your regional customers. Customers in New York City are very different from customers in rural, upstate New York. They have different interests, values, wants, and needs.   

Drill down into your personas (or create new ones from scratch) and define the unique audience in the region you are targeting.   

Related: Get to Know Your Customers Through Super Simple Buyer Personas

#2) Get inspired by local experts and insiders. 

It will be difficult to get to know customers in an area you aren’t familiar with. So if you can’t spend time in the region, find someone who is already there.  

Work with local influencers, bloggers, or area experts to get insights into the region. Local experts and insiders can help you identify themes, tastes, and even the unique language that people in the area use (like saying soda, pop, or cola) so you can infuse the local culture into your marketing and business.   

Also, follow local media stations and blogs to keep a read on what is trending and popular in the area. Find and follow the local Area Network in the region to get a consistent insider's look at the region. Click here to find your local Area site.

 

#3) Create different campaigns for different regions. 

Once you get familiar with the region and the people who live there, start to create regional marketing campaigns for your individual locations. As you go about creating campaigns, keep a few things in mind.  

Shape your messaging for the region. Use what you know about the local audience to capture their attention. Create campaigns around local holidays or events, feature local celebrities or sports teams, or even use common colloquial language that resonates with nearby customers. 

Shape your offerings for the region. Also, shape your offerings -- the products and services you offer -- to cater to the region. For example, consider the different seasons and environmental factors of the region. Frozen drinks might work year-round in Florida, but customers in Vermont probably wouldn't be interested in them in January.

Advertise local properties to local customers. Regional brands and franchises usually have national marketing campaigns that go out to audiences across the country. But to succeed at local marketing, you also need to have marketing campaigns that only go out to audiences in the area of one of your locations. Use geotargeting and geofencing to create hyper-local ad campaigns that target nearby customers with messaging that is specific and relevant to them.

#4) Create local content for each location.  

In addition to local marketing campaigns, also build specific local content campaigns for each location.   

Create a location page on your website. You may have multiple locations under your brand, but you don’t need a website for each location. Instead, you need a stand-alone location page for each individual storefront or property. This helps boost local SEO while giving local customers a resource to use to learn about the location near them.

Recommended Reading: How to Optimize Your Brand’s Website When You Have Multiple Locations

Create locally relevant content. Don’t stop at one page on your website. Consider launching a local business blog that showcases the region to help tie your location more to the surrounding area. Also, create social profiles for each location and share locally relevant content. For example, a spa brand in Colorado might share the ski report while a spa brand in Florida might share the beach report.

Create a profile on your local MyArea site. MyArea sites are where locals go to find the best things to do, see, and eat in their areas. So build up your presence on your local site by finding your region (all Area sites are organized by area code) and creating a profile for your individual business location. Create your free local business profile today.

#5) Create ties with the local community.

Local customers can sometimes be skeptical of big national brands or franchises. The local movement includes a desire to support small businesses so customers feel that they are also supporting the community. So to get customers to see that your regional brand also cares and gives back to the community, get involved.     

• Host events. Give locals a reason to come and visit your location. Give extra value by hosting free events that offer fun, interactive activities or useful trainings. 
• Sponsor local events. Also, consider getting involved with other events. Sponsoring local events is a good way to get your brand name out there while supporting local causes and festivals. 
• Support local charities. Find out what charities make the biggest impact in the community and work on ways to work together and give back. 

#6) Review performance data segmented by region. 

Once you get your regional advertising initiatives going, take time to go back and review your results. Segment your sales and marketing data by region to get a good look at what is working (and not working) in certain areas.   

This process will help you learn about your audience and see what national marketing initiatives perform well across the country and which regional campaigns are powerful in smaller, local markets. 

Get Help with Your Regional Adverting Initiatives

If you’re a national brand, you need to also be a local brand.

You need to connect with your community and show customers that even if your brand has multiple locations, the location closest to them cares about promoting and supporting their region. If you’re looking for ways to build this local rapport, let’s talk.

MyArea Network specializes in helping brands make a splash in their local market whether they are a small mom-and-pop shop or a national franchise brand. 

Contact us today for a free consultation to learn how we can help your brand boost your regional adverting success by tapping into the power of hyperlocal marketing. 

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