How nice would it be to follow a template for local marketing strategy? In fact, I really wanted something I could put together and sell to all our clients. Who doesn’t really? How easy would that be to fill out some template information and then charge companies “big dollars” to get it done. Lucrative, for sure.
But we quickly found out that while a template sounds good – it won’t make the phone ring for the client. In fact, we’ve found the needs of our clients to be so incredibly different that only small parts fit into an overall formula. Basically our local marketing strategytemplates are no more than systematized paths.
We know what we need to get done first, second and third – but by no means are those steps the same from one client to the next. Take for example our RE/MAX Lake of the Ozarks client. the way clients interact with them is much different than our Nashville Electric Scooter friends.
Giving “home buyers” access to the office address of the real estate company is 3rd, 4th or even 10th on the list of things a home buyer looks for when searching on the internet. Whereas, someone looking to buy a scooter, after doing internet research, is very much interested in where they can check these scooters out in person. For one Google Local is crucial, and the other it is only important from a visibility standpoint.
What’s similar between the two clients is the purchase frequency and the consumer buying process. So for both companies, product education, product comparison, testimonials, the “test drive” and finally the purchase are the same. In fact, both sets of clients repurchase at similar intervals. But from an internet search and deliver standpoint, the information presented is entirely different.
If you’re a local company looking to improve your results in the on-line frontier, the acquisition of a template is going to ease your mind, but won’t necessarily improve the bottom line. Go back to understanding the buying process of your customer and do whatever it takes to tell them what they need to know – when they need to know it. Your local marketing strategy should center on that.
Amen to that, Dan. Even if there was a “one size fits all” strategy would businesses really want to use it. Differentiation is the key. Especially in businesses within the same category. What makes one RE/MAX office better than another? Or one scooter store more interesting than another scooter store?
It would be cool and, possibly, a real money maker if you could bake in a differentiator into a template based on industry type but that sounds like a lot of work to me! :-)