The holiday shopping season means more traffic both on your website and in your brick-and-mortar store. Your online and real-world presences are far more connected than you think they are. Now is the time to bring more of this traffic in through local marketing strategies.

Here are four local marketing strategies for this holiday season and beyond:

1. Make It Personal

Most people enjoy an experience personalized to them and their needs. Your potential customers are no exception. This personalization also benefits you. By creating a pleasant experience, your customers will be more likely to return to you in the future. 

How can you personalize customers’ experiences?

First, you need to collect data like their location, device used, and demographic information like their age and gender. From there, use this data to provide them with content customized to their needs. 

For example, special email offers only available to the consumer in question, product recommendations based on their search, and retargeting ads. If the customer is local to you, you can provide them with offers that draw them into your location. 

2. Geofence

Geofencing serves smartphone users with ads relevant to them by creating a virtual boundary around your business. This is an opportunity that should be taken advantage of when marketing locally. Geofencing your store location and remarketing to current customers can keep them coming back.

For potential customers, it can draw them in and convert them by providing a personalized experience. You can also geofence competitors’ locations to draw in consumers who may consider their products or services as well. Ideally, however, you should focus on your own location when using this method. 

3. Know Your Audience

Platforms like Google and Facebook allow you to create target audiences for your ads. These audiences are based on data you may already collect about your potential customer, including age, gender, and location. 

One resource that can help you with this is a buyer persona. This is a fictional representation of your ideal customer made using the exact demographic information needed to create target audiences. 

Once you create this audience, your ads appear to people who meet those criteria. You can create an audience as narrow or broad as you need. If you want to focus on a local market, a narrower target audience is better. 

4. Target Your Ads

Your ads are what your audience sees. Images, videos, text, and calls to action should all be part of these ads. You also need to determine how your ads run, your advertising budget, schedule, and audience. 

Fortunately, you can customize these features of your ads to meet your needs. You can also use data from these ad campaigns to adjust them as necessary during the campaign. In turn, you can better customize your ads to meet customers’ needs as well as your own.

Need Help With Local Marketing?

With the holiday shopping season upon us, it may seem like you have so much to do in such little time. That’s where we can help. Contact Links Web Design for a free consultation to improve your local marketing strategies for this holiday season and beyond. 

Links Web Design is a Local Marketing Company in Bangor, ME, and Fruitland Park, FL.