SME Marketing – Why It Will Pay to Go Local

Contrary to common assumption, your company doesn’t need to be big to be global. In fact, these two have nothing to do with one another. In reality, you can set yourself up with just a £20 website and £150 worth of stock – if you target buyers on a global basis, this makes you a global business. Similarly, you can have the biggest and most successful business imaginable, but decide only to focus on a relatively small, local area. If you’re marketing your services and products and your business in general in English without specifically targeting one area, you are basically a global business – it is as simple as that. Which can admittedly sound like a predominantly positive thing, but it could result in you missing out on some advantages that only come with local focus.The thing is, there is absolutely nothing to say that your company can’t be global in its nature but incorporate specific local focus in the overall marketing plan. And when you think about the advantages local focus and marketing could bring, you immediately begin realising it is more than worth the effort.Here are three simple but clear reasons why it can make sense to bring some more local focus in for the overall benefit of your brand:

1. Budget OptimisationFirst up, one immediate benefit of a local focus is the way in which it helps you to dedicate more of your marketing budget to the areas of greater importance to you and less to the ones you can really do without. Chances are there are some countries, regions and areas that are bringing you the lion’s share of your revenue, while others don’t contribute much. So the question becomes – why not pay a closer attention to those which give you the most in return?

2. SEO EffectivenessThe major search engines have made it no secret that they approve and encourage local focus in terms of the marketing efforts if businesses. Because of the sheer competition out there, achieving any kind of significant exposure as a global brand is very difficult. By contrast, having exposure in a specific locality by prioritising local SEO is significantly more achievable. The search engines already give some priority to brands that focus on local – a trend that’s only going to grow stronger.

3. Cultural AppealLast up, the more narrow your marketing focus, the more effectively you can appeal to your target customers in a culturally relevant way. For instance, you cannot expect to attract Chinese or Turkish customers with Christmas promotions and themes, considering the way they don’t celebrate it. Similarly, many Arabic countries forbid the use of images and visuals featuring women. Trying to please all of your customers all the time with a one-size-fits-all approach is not just difficult, but it will also result in excluding certain demographics. When you focus on local, you focus on what matters to your target audience and can be significantly more cultural in your approach.