The Beauty of Digital Marketing is ‘entry’. What I mean is, any small business can now go toe to toe with a larger company with a larger budget if they are smart enough. The financial barriers that were present for smaller or start up businesses before the Digital Landscape exploded are gone. And within this blog post, we will focus on seven cheap and very affordable ‘local’ ideas that would be ideal for any local business targeting local consumers. Here goes…well, before we start, there is one core principle to all this activity, which is content marketing. CONTENT…
With every one of these very affordable ideas you MUST create a blog post on your company website in order to make the most of your spend. This is KEY. Essentially, you are creating material for content marketing, content you can turn into a new page on your website. So, why is this important, why is a new page on your website that important?
Search engines love new pages, their robots will scan your website every five days or so (usually for small websites) and will look for new content to scan and index and by this it also informs the search engines you are still in business and so you are more likely to get ranked on the search engines. Also, try and get a backlink to your website, again, backlinks are good for your SEO performance and also you might get some direct sales leads.
So, this blog post will highlight what you should do with a generic blog post and how you can promote your content. Let’s get straight to it and investigate some local advertising ideas….but remember, spend the advertising budget, then take photos and videos of the event or sponsorship and then upload a blog post.
There is a position in sales negotiations that states, sell something that is of low value to you, but of high value to a prospective customer or Club. Use this to get a deal over the line….
There will be a number of Sports Clubs running a Race Night, buy a half page advert and buy a couple of horses and use the company name – 100 Euro
World Cup or EUROS Competitions – enter your company name into the competition and ask to sponsor the competition – 100 Euro
Advertise in the Local School Calendar – 50 Euros
Sponsor or even plant some trees
Get involved with a Community Clean Up Day
Place an Advert in the Local Clubs Wallchart Advert, like this:
Sponsor a Basketball Team or a few Boxers with gear, far fewer team numbers than a Gaelic or Soccer team!! Or even sponsor Hats for a Teams Winter Training
Sponsor a prise in a Christmas Raffle or a Field Day Raffle – Cost 100 Euro
Buy some pizzas for a local Club and take photos – 50 to 100 Euro
Now that you have bought the advertising, create a Blog Post, Try and Get the Club or School to get a backlink onto their website and upload the blog post link onto your social media platforms and include some photos and any quotes from the organiser.
Repeat the same procedure for every small advertising outlay as described above, buy one every month or two.
Great value…and a smart use of your marketing budget.
Feel Free to add any other local ideas you find in the comments section below.
Diarmuid Haughian – Business Development Director – Digital Sales
Post Grad Dip. User Experience (UX), Dip. International Selling, Cert. Digital Marketing, MSc. BITS
