Local Marketing Strategies (and how to reach local audiences on Instagram)

Jenna Harding you can bring in more local business using all sorts of different marketing tactics. I think sometimes location-specific businesses who aren't online businesses, it's not Zoom call coaching, we're not selling a digital product here, you have a location-specific business, maybe that means people come and see you in person or buy from you in person. I think sometimes you can feel like you're getting a little bit left behind because so much of the marketing advice online is geared towards online businesses.

But the way I see it, It's not a disadvantage to have a location-specific business. It is an advantage because you can use all the online strategies and marketing strategies that everybody has access to and the local ones. If I put up a sign on my local billboard that you can buy my Instagram marketing class, that's probably not gonna go very far. But if you paint houses and you put a sign up on your local board, Let me tell you, I live in such a tiny little place, such a small, I'm not even actually on a map.

The hydro company thinks we're in a different city than the mailbox thinks we are in, then we're actually in. All of our bills are billed to a different location because we're in such a small place, it's not even a real town. And I live and die by that local bulletin board and the pin board in our one store, our corner store slash liquor store slash fry truck slash gas station. The only establishment in my not town.

I live by those signs because I can find out so much stuff that's going on. There's like local babysitters, there's dog walkers, there's roofers, people selling firewood, like all of those things. So it's actually a huge asset, right? And you know what?

I should do an experiment where I do make a poster advertising my Instagram marketing course because there actually is a chance that I pull in a few people from that it would stand out. I would be the only person on the board who actually knows how to make a good flyer with Canva And because there would be literally zero competition for what I'm offering. Meanwhile, there's three different guys offering stump grinding. Jenna Warriner As someone who's worked with hundreds of businesses, I can tell you the whole local versus online, which is the better one, it's kind of a grass is always greener situation.

Because when I first started my business and I started working with a lot of online business owners, they would come to me because they felt like they had such a disadvantage. Because if you have a local business, say you have a storefront. People are driving by your storefront. You can put that sign outside on the road.

The local communities start talking about it. It's easier to maybe infiltrate like a networking group. People just inherently know you exist because you're the talk of the not town is outside Winnipeg. Every time something new opens in Winnipeg, the city rallies and visits and checks it out, right?

Like there's a new donut place. Everybody goes because they want to check out this new place. So that's the perception the online people have. Meanwhile, the local businesses...

are looking at the online businesses going, yeah, but you can infinitely scale. You can sell to people all over the world. if people check out through an online store, you don't even need to be manning your desk. You can just be selling in every time zone at every time.

Yeah, both have benefits. Both sides of the coin have benefits. And it's really just like embracing the one that you're at and taking full advantage of. what is before you and the opportunities in front of you.

Local collaborations can truly be so strong. There's someone who works with me right now, she's a flower farmer, she collaborated with a local coffee shop and I thought that was so smart, even though coffee shop, flower farm, they might sound like how could you even make that collaboration work? What matters is that your ideal clients are the same. And when you're looking for other businesses, whether it's online or local, when you're looking for other businesses to collaborate with, The most important thing is that you have the same ideal client, the same customer archetype, however you want to name it.

Maybe you're a chiropractor and there's a local yoga studio. You have the same people looking for alternative physical wellness. Maybe you're a karate studio and there's a family-friendly restaurant nearby. Maybe you're an artist and there's a school you could work with where the parents are your ideal customer.

So when you're looking for these collaborations and different ways to support each other and create referral networks, the main thing is that your ideal client is the same. And also, last week's episode is called... book a client by Friday, your boot strappy action plan. it's all about actions you can take right now if you need a client like yesterday, chances are, like spoiler, if you need a client yesterday, your real life connections and sending out emails and really truly reaching out to people or past leads or whatever.

is probably the way to do it, not create a new online marketing funnel. so you can go back and listen to that for a bunch of bootstrappy action steps. I'm gonna give you a bunch more bootstrappy action steps specific to marketing your local-based business and getting local customers. And I'm gonna tell you how to make your Instagram show up in front of local audiences.

another super clever way to get local customers for your business. Jenna Harding runs a swim school, like swimming and instructing. actually, she was one of the first people I hired to work in my business. And then her business grew so much, she was able to quit and run it full time, which is awesome, and that was years ago, and now she has this thriving swim school.

And I remember one of the ways that she got clients was by doing door hangers. We hear realtors doing this quite often, right? walking up and down a street and putting little signs on people's doorknobs. That's huge for her.

Another place that she got a lot of clientele was because the moms would talk. Moms would talk. And Facebook groups. Communities love Facebook groups.

I don't know how any community organization got together before Facebook groups because I also turned to my local Facebook group for so many things, like those community pages, right? For your kid's school, for the neighborhood, for the lake, for the cottage country around us, like every neighborhood. has at least two. community Facebook groups and don't get me wrong, they can be kind of gossipy, kind of toxic, but they're also great for pitching a local business and letting people know that you exist.

There's a restaurant near my house and that's exciting because as I told you, we have one store and we just got a Vietnamese restaurant of all things about 10 minutes away and somebody posted about it in the Facebook group, I immediately texted the group chat, let everybody local know and everyone has gone. to support this restaurant. if you're keeping track, we already have. bulletin boards, door hangers, and community Facebook groups, that's already three things that you can use to get new clients that a generic online business cannot.

Running events, local meetups. Google Maps, my goodness. You can show up on Google Maps. Everybody is Googling what they need.

We have a client right now in Booked Out Offers who's a dog trainer and she's about to go just hand out business cards and little free dog treats at her local dog park. I thought that was so cute and boot strappy. All of those things can happen in conjunction with your online marketing as well. really want to focus a lot of this episode on how to get clients from Instagram as a local-based business because people come to me so frequently.

thinking Instagram isn't for them because their business is local-based and that just simply not the case. I have had realtors get clients from my program. have had ... therapists who can only legally work with people local to them use my program dog trainers, karate schools, producers.

I've worked with all of these people. I myself ran the socials for a yoga studio, for a bar. for a local choir. I wish people didn't have this assumption that social media marketing isn't for you because your business is local, because it absolutely is.

It's just simply untrue. And here's one way to look at it. What you want is global reach for local sales. Global reach for local sales.

Think about it this way. Even online businesses like mine, we want to get a massive amount of reach knowing that a fraction of the people that see our content will actually become the clients. And that's why things come back to the growth, nurture, sales content strategy that I teach my clients in Magic Marketing Machine that I have seen how small business owners bring in over $100,000 from their social media using this strategy, growth, nurture, and sales. Some content, your growth content designed to get a bazillion eyeballs on you, nurture meant to warm them up and build their trust, and sales meant to sell.

So it's like panning for gold, right? whole bunch of people, a whole bunch of views, that's your rocks and sticks and stones and sand and it all goes into the pan and we shake the pan with our nurture content and the little diamonds fall out of this gold pan and those are your clients. We know we're gonna reach hundreds of thousands of people in order to find the diamonds, in order to find the clients. And for you, those clients also have to be local.

But local people love a local celebrity. When somebody meets you and they see that you have this audience of global people online, they're now trusting you faster. They're now excited to work with you. Plus, the apps get you.

The way that the algorithms often work is like, when a group of people starts interacting with you, you're going to be shown to more of the people that are connected to that person. It's not going to necessarily randomly show your post to somebody in Tokyo if you are in Arkansas. But if Sallie Mae in Arkansas sees your post sends your post to her neighbor next door, the algorithm sees that this kind of pool of people are interacting with it and it's reasonable to assume the algorithm is then going to keep showing it to people in that group.

So already, even though, yeah, sometimes, sure, we're seeing content from worlds away from us, it's often not. How often are you on TikTok and you're like, hey, that's a restaurant in my town. That's a donut shop an hour from here. Hey, that's somebody I went to high school with.

How weird that I would find them on here, right? It's not like it's completely random. And you can optimize your Instagram so that it is shown. to more local people.

First and foremost, we want your location in your bio. account right now. Make sure your location is written in your bio somewhere so that when people do arrive at your page, they immediately know, hey, this is local. This place is nearby.

Wow, they look so cool. This founder seems so cool. I would love to work with them. I would love to.

get a massage from them, and what are the chances they're right here in my neighborhood? So we often want to see that with a little pin emoji. the pin you put in a tack board, but the pin you would drop on a Google Map, so it's a little round circle, little round red circle with a stick coming out of it. We often see that next to location, and that says, hey, this is where I am.

You can also, it used to be called check-in, but basically like tag your location every time you put up a post. Put up a post on Facebook, put up a post on Instagram, you can denote the location it was taken in. And if you have a physical location for your business, you can do that. Or you can often check into your neighborhood.

If you filmed this a block away at Starbucks, you could check into that local Starbucks. Check into your town, your state, your country. Think micro and macro. I don't recommend checking into your house because you don't want to tell people where you live unless you have a home office, in which case, go nuts.

The algorithm will see that you are there. It's now more likely to show you to other people who are also there. Even though hashtags are sort of a dying you can use hashtags and get creative with those too. Also think micro and macro.

Hashtag Canada, a little bit smaller. Hashtag the province of Ontario, a little bit smaller. Hashtag the city of Toronto, a little bit smaller. Hashtag Parkdale, that's the neighborhood I used to live in in Toronto.

Hashtag. Moms of Parkdale, hashtag Parkdale BIA. Like keep going smaller and smaller and smaller. Hashtags aren't super needed anymore, but they do tell the algorithm who you are, what you are, what the post is about.

So we can use those. And some people are always going to be using them and even just SEO. So mentioning in your caption where you are and you can find some like organic feeling ways to do that. Like, man, this is the best pizza in Parkdale.

⁓ good morning, what a beautiful day in Toronto, Canada. You know what I mean? Like, find some natural ways to say it. All of those things are cues to the algorithm.

It doesn't want to show your post to someone in Timbuktu who the post isn't relevant to. It wants to find an audience that is interested, so give it more information for it to find that interested audience. And then you want to do best of both worlds, right? Some in-person, on-land marketing, and then a ton of digital marketing and social media marketing and online marketing.

Let me tell you a story. When I, I feel like I have told this whole podcast is in such a wonky order. I'm like, great, let's start with a boring list, and then I will give you some of my best Instagram tips for appearing to local audiences. And now I will end it with a story that it probably should have started with.

But I used to run a viral YouTube channel with my friend Cole. It was really his project and I just helped for several years. And he was really the brains behind the operation. He was years ahead in social media and online marketing, because we were in our 20s at the time, before it is what it is now.

YouTube was just starting to pay creators. And so we had this viral channel doing flash mobs. Another story for another day. He was like, okay, let's brainstorm how we can get more views on our video.

So I said, all right, what if we go to Yonge and Dundas Square, which is the busiest square for pedestrian traffic in Toronto, very busy place, right, where the mall is and there's like concerts there and billboards. It's the Times Square of Toronto. And I said, and we can print out little flyers and stand on the corner and hand them out. And I think that idea came to me because I worked at a comedy club and that's how comedians would get people to come to their show, right?

For that local audience, they would pass out these flyers and get one person at a time. And Cole said, if we do that, we can get one person at a time. Sure, we can sell to one person at a time. We can get one person at a time to maybe type in the link and come watch our videos.

But if we use online marketing, we can reach thousands of people at once and get hundreds of thousands of views at a time. And one right move can get us in front of millions of people versus that single flyer. It's always just going to get us in front of one more person at a time. So when you're trying to grow your local based business, use a hybrid in-person networking to really build a strong relationship with someone you bump into at the local business breakfast networking event and online, where in the click of a button, you might use a five second reel to suddenly be in front of tens of thousands of people.

And if you want to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and coming up with random content that doesn't do anything for you or chasing trends that are exhausting. Come join Magic Marketing Machine. I will show you the proven strategy to get clients from Instagram. We have a bunch of amazing guests coming up, by the way.

There's gonna be fewer solo episodes in the coming weeks because I have some awesome people I want to introduce you to. Stay tuned to that. Meanwhile, I'll see you next Monday.