When deciding which local businesses to patronize, consumers choose ones they know and trust. If you’re a marketers looking to help your business cultivate a strong image within your local community, how can you come across as authentic, believable and local? If you’re a BAM client, you know we preach local, and how leveraging local ownership can help you beat the national chains.
Welcome to the post-truth world. A world of fake news and faulty Facebook metrics. A world of Yahoo data breaches and WikiLeaks scandals. A world in which it’s hard to spot a glimmer of truth when it’s sunk to the bottom of a Flint, Michigan well.
With truth in short supply these days, a brand’s authenticity, particularly its local authenticity, is more important than ever. We trust those we know, those who live in our community. They’re one of us. We are forever suspicious of outsiders, the unscrupulous “them.”
If you’re a local marketer for an SMB (small or medium-sized business), you’ve got an advantage over larger brands with multiple locations. You’ve got your finger on the pulse of the community. You live in it. It’s easy for you to capitalize on that pop-up holiday market on the corner of 5th and Main.
But marketers at multi-location brands often don’t have this luxury. Their local marketing campaigns are typically run by corporate offices far removed from the locations they’re managing. And it’s hard for someone in a Manhattan skyscraper to know what’s happening on the streets of Akron. Multiply this problem by a thousand — or ten thousand, depending on the number of locations managed — and it’s obvious why national brands have trouble providing local credibility.
So how does one project local authenticity without faking it?
Let’s take off our tinfoil hats, emerge from our post-truth bunkers and see if we can shine some light on the subject. more…
(source: searchengineland.com)