If you own a local business, you focus on more than just having an excellent digital presence.
You also want to attract foot traffic to your business. Since you’re faced with heavy competition, it’s important to utilize the best marketing tools to stand out.
You can still use the power of the internet to grow your local customer base – and you’ll specifically want to use video. 55% of web users watch videos online every day.
But you don’t want to simply use video marketing. You want to optimize your videos for your local audience. Just as using the proper language is vital for reaching customers, understanding the local culture, customs, and preferences is equally important.
If you’re working on a localized marketing strategy, here’s how to include locally optimized videos.
Build your local strategy first
When using video, you shouldn’t jump into video marketing immediately. You should create a concrete local marketing strategy before making videos. This ensures that you have a reliable platform for your video content, resulting in a greater likelihood of success.
Here are the core components of a local marketing strategy.
- Branding
- Company website
- Local SEO
- Blogging
- Social media
- Print marketing
These factors can help strengthen your local marketing strategy and result in your company becoming a local influencer. This, in turn, will help leverage your video success.
How to use video
There’s a reason why video marketing is so successful. Our modern digital platforms open up countless opportunities to utilize video.
Just about all social media platforms optimize video to make it likable and shareable. And with live video, it’s easier to capture the moment and share your experiences with an audience.
All of these factors are vital when trying to engage customers. If your content is engaging, informative, and understandable across languages and cultures, your marketing strategy will almost certainly result in a wider audience.
Still unsure about how to use video? Here’s what makes video a powerful form of marketing.
Be seen with video ads
Mobile phone video viewers in the U.S. are expected to reach 179 million by 2020. But are millions of people watching your videos? That depends on the quality and accessibility of your content. However, creating video ads offers an easier way to reach a huge audience that is already partially interested in ideas similar to your own.
Video ads help increase brand awareness, grab the attention of a wider audience, and make your company a household name. This can increase sales and foot traffic to your business.
How do you optimize video ads? YouTube and Facebook are your best bets.
YouTube popularity
YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, right next to its owner, Google.
And similarly to its big brother, YouTube leverages one major power: SEO. Not only does video marketing help increase your video viewership, but it can also improve your SEO results, allowing your content to show up more regularly and pushing more potential customers to your business.
Great way to engage with customers
Brand videos aren’t the only popular types of videos. Many consumers love to make “unboxing product” videos, product review videos, and other types of videos where customers can engage with your brand.
In addition, you can communicate directly with customers through video. Host a video product review contest or offer rewards when customers film themselves talking about your brand.
Stories and live video
Video marketing doesn’t only include high-priced advertising video campaigns. Short social media stories and live videos are also effective ways to leverage video in your marketing campaign.
For the best results, use Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Document fun company stories or major successes and film live videos during fun events. Curious customers will tune in to see what your business is doing, piquing their interest in your culture and values.
Additional Tips
Now that you know why video is such an engaging way to build a local audience, you need to know how to use video in your local marketing strategy. Here are a few tips.
Focus on local events
A great way to promote your brand is by engaging in local events. But why stop there? Take out your phone, add your experience to your social media story, and take some live video.
This shows your brand is engaged with your local community. This also serves to promote your business as a familiar face to your local audience, proving you’re more than just another shop in town.
You don’t have to focus on major local events. Partner with different local businesses. Are you a regular at a local restaurant? Do you plan on checking out the new brewery? Take a video of your experience and post it on social media.
Partner with local influencers
Do you see popular local people in your feed?
Artists, musicians, journalists, and models aren’t only popular online – they’re also popular in their local communities.
Reach out to them and partner. If they’re familiar with your business, ask them to take a video of themselves promoting your brand and reciprocate in kind through your own social media channels.
Their devoted followers will now be interested in your brand, increasing your popularity.
Make your videos shareable
What’s the easiest way to gain more followers with a video? Making videos shareable is key. Your audience can share your videos on social media, send the YouTube link to their family and friends, and show your videos to others.
While social platforms make sharing easy, it is content shareability that counts. Give your audience an incentive to share by offering an exciting and engaging insight into your brand or industry.
For example, let’s say you own a restaurant and you have a unique dish. Invest in a video marketing campaign revolving around how the dish was conceived, interviews with your chefs, and testimonials from happy customers. Your audience will share this content with their friends, driving more local interest and traffic to your business.
Time to include video in your localized marketing strategy
Localized video is a great way to engage your audience, create business relationships, increase your brand awareness, and gain more sales. But getting to the point where this content is the most powerful can be difficult.
Make sure to pay attention to local culture and preferences. If the market you’re trying to tap into speaks a different language, hire a professional translator who is either a native of the area or has a deep understanding of that culture to translate your video content in the best way possible.
