Local marketing - what works for you and what doesnt?

[mdavies]

Do you offer a service locally?

Interested to find out what works in terms of getting clients - adverts/word of mouth/other?

Thanks

[epiphany]

Small business on a low budget = word of mouth. You just can't beat it, when you get a recommendation it's almost a guaranteed sale. Do what ever you have to do to get word of mouth going, be exceptional, offer referral incentives. Get people taking about you in the local media (if your concept allows it)

[daveashton]

This depends

Is it B2C or B2B? becuase they have very different answers

[mdavies]

The service may include both - please share your experience.

[daveashton]

Ok

A few basics ( this is not hard and fast because I know little about what you are doing but here goes and hence firm advise is impossible, sorry)


B2C

Using royal mail for leaflet drops £45.00 per thousand and 21 days to pay.
Ask your customers why they bought and that provides the content for the flyer.
Yell Pages. This is still a major source of leads for local companies selling in a small geographical area.
Yell. As above but online and more instant. Yellow pages can take 12 months if you have just missed a deadline for your area.
Local paper. Possition is king so try not to be in the classifieds unless you have a specific reason.
Local Radio. Works well on some products and services so get them to send data about previous projects. Costs from £250.00 upwards for a week of adds

B2B

Sorry but letters followed up with telesales is still 7-10 the best way to go.
Events
Seminars
Joint campaigns with other business selling to the same people in your target companies.

NOTE word of mouth is great in principle but this will often happen by default and is hard to run a campaign with measurable ROI.

BOTH

Referral campaign 1 for clients and another for any other contacts you have and do as much as you can by email and remember to do it monthly.

Formal up-sell campaign linked to your TCM This works great for products and services that you can sell to the same people i.e. it is not a one off sales like a B2Ckitchen

[mylocalentertainment]

I have also been researching large mail drops for my business and did also notice that royal mail do offer a mail drop. Here’s the page if you want more info on them;
http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=600112&mediaId=3100085

But I found you can usually keep the costs down little and increase the quality by getting my own prints done in bulk. I was looking at leaflet a little larger then postcode size and a quantity of around 30,000 Full colour, gloss for about £160 - £180. I'm sure you could find better if you look around, even manage to haggle a deal with a printers with the promise of more work coming their way in the future.

Also in my area, as I’m sure there will be businesses in yours. Where leaflet businesses offer design, print, and delivery of up to 10,000 homes for as little as £199. My plan is to ask if they could just deliver my leaflets and I'm hoping to knock the price down by at least £50. This way I'm saving more then £300 on what it would cost with royal mail. I hope some of this helps. :)

Good Luck
Ian

[Rob Holmes]

We support alot of local companies which I personally really enjoy.

They've generally come on board after a letter followed up by a phone call, or even just a straight cold call.

Local companies are great for us as our intangible product becomes something tangible to them where they can pop in, have a coffee etc etc

Rob

[top-click]

Can PPC work locally?

The answer is only partially in the UK.

You can target Googles adwords to be shown only to particular cities, regions and areas in 2 ways - by 'geo' targetting and by including the area in the keyword phrase.

The latter works well but with a much, much smaller potential audience - while 'Geo' targetting serves by IP address, which, although quite tight in the States is very hit and miss in the UK.

Regards
Rob