Opening a local business used to mean a lot of local fanfare – promotional ads mailed to local homes and local signage welcoming people in. While that’s still a great way to get the word out about your company, it’s no longer the ideal way to connect and build your brand. To enhance your brand story in the neighborhood, there are several core factors to consider, starting with defining your brand image and then building a local brand story that helps people connect with you.
At Surefire Local, you’ll have all of the tools you need to make this possible. Before diving into those robust features, let’s focus on the factors that make local branding effective at building business success.
Define Your Brand Image and Local Brand Story
Before you can tell the world about your business, you need to know what you want them to know and learn. A brand image is the way your customers and the community as a whole see your business. It can include all components of your brand, including:
- Visual elements like photos and color schemes
- Your company’s values and mission statement
- The type and level of service provided
- Your competitive edge over your local competition
- The language you use on your website, blog, and social media
Your local brand story is the narrative behind your brand image. It’s the reason that your brand is valuable to your community. In some situations, it will be based on your local heritage and growing up in the community. Other times, your business may be local because of the sheer need for the services you provide. Determine what makes your brand unique and what you want other people to know about it.
Building a brand image is not simple, and it should not be something you rush into. When you create a compelling brand story, you give people a reason to want to interact with your company. You’re no longer just a company providing a service that’s the same as any other in the industry. There’s a reason – one you define – that people go to you.
Strategies for Building and Improving Your Local Brand Story
Now that you have some idea of what you want people to know and think about your brand, you need to pull together some specific strategies for how to communicate this. Let’s break down the most important ways to achieve this:
Listings (NAP Consistency)
Consistency is a term you’ll hear a great deal about when it comes to brand image and storytelling. It’s a way for you to ensure every person, no matter where they find you, experiences the same thing. NAP consistency is no different.
NAP consistency is the importance of having every mention of your business’s name, address, and phone number exactly the same. That includes your website, social media profiles, associations and directory listings, and any other listing that may be out there. This consistency helps Google learn that all of these elements are connected and represent the same company.
Outdated or inaccurate listings (also called citations) hurt your business. They make it hard for Google to know what accurate information to communicate to the customer who is looking for your information. You do not want your search visibility harmed by a simple typo or an out-dated phone number.
Remember that local citations are often the first thing a potential customer will find when they search on Google, so they serve as a start point for your customer’s journey, from having a problem to finding your company as a solution. They only work if they are accurate. Mistakes or oversights confuse Google and your prospective customers and also contribute to a lack of trust.
Reviews
The next strategy for building your local brand and driving more local customers to your website is to use reviews. Accurate reviews are crucial, and it is hard to overestimate their importance. To ensure you get the most out of your reviews, consider these steps.
Find your reviews
Start with checking out your existing Google Reviews. If you have your Google Business Profile in place, this is the most effortless place to find your reviews (or to start building them). There are likely other directories related to your business model (for example, for attorneys, any of the directory sites for attorneys, such as Justia or SuperLawyers, could have reviews for your website on them that you’re not even aware of. Find your reviews.
Respond to your reviews
Having a review is just the first step. The next step is demonstrating your brand through your response.
- Positive reviews: Thank the person, using their first name, in the response for the review. Make sure it’s authentic and seems that way.
- Negative reviews: Even more powerful in building your brand image, negative reviews allow you to showcase your customer service and desire to make customers happy. Respond with an apology for how they feel that way and ask them to contact you for more help and support.
Acquiring reviews
Once you see the power of reviews, recognize that this multiplies time and time again with the more reviews you have. Recent reviews with responses offer numerous benefits to your business, including:
- Encouraging Google to rank you within the Map Pack
- Building authoritative branding as the local expert
- Driving more traffic to your website
There are numerous ways you can get more reviews. The first is to ask your existing customers to provide one. Consider these strategies to encourage it:
- Send a message to a client who used text reminders for an appointment with a link directly to your reviews. Ask them to take a moment and rate your service.
- Send a follow-up email to the customer after the service. Include a link where they can easily leave a review.
- Ask your social media, LinkedIn, and other communities to leave a review if they’ve used your services.
A core component of your brand image is the way in which you interact with your customers. Reviews are one way to showcase this. They also help you boost your ranking and give your prospective clients a reason to contact you.
Social Media Management
Social media isn’t an optional feature for businesses. It’s a must, especially when it comes to building your local neighborhood brand. This is where people find you, connect with you, and form opinions and relationships with your brand. Consider these strategies.
- Post frequently. To be found online, you need to post often enough so that the algorithms find you. That doesn’t mean spamming your social media pages, but it does mean having a consistent daily or every other day post.
- Ensure your social media profiles are on brand. Your brand image should come through here. Ensure your content is locally focused, too.
- Respond to messages on social media. This is a great way to interact with your local community.
- Join local groups within your community. Be a presence within those groups by making social media comments on stories or factors impacting the location.
- Interact under your page name on various other social media pages related to your business’s community.
Photos
Photos bring your business to life. They provide not just words that tell your story but images that help people remember and form bonds with others. It’s a great way to showcase your people and make sure that your local audience views your business as a personable experience, a local company, not a big corporate name and logo.
Photos of the following lend themselves to your brand story and can be a core component of your local branding:
- Owners and management of the company
- Key technicians or providers who are likely to walk into your customer’s home or meet with them
- The town where you work, especially if people visit your office
- Community-specific photos, such as your participation in local events and photos demonstrating the local community as a whole
- Behind-the-scenes videos and photos that showcase what you do and why you do it
Check-Ins
Here’s the hidden secret to effective local branding. You need people to see that you’re active in the community (that’s going to do more than just help people find you – it builds your presence in the search engines).
These check-ins are profoundly effective when it comes to local brand image and telling your story. The Surefire Local platform lets you create and publish these check-ins on your website in the same way that you’d post on social media. These check-ins add location tags automatically, helping your website rank higher in the search engines. You can use check-ins for any location where you are working – whether that’s your city or one that’s an hour away. If that is a place you service, it should be a component of your website’s ranking.
By incorporating these types of check-ins into the work you do, you’ll build local credibility. You also help showcase your brand story in your neighborhood – or any area where you provide service. Surefire Local can help you.
Ready to Get Some Help?
Attend a Surefire Local demo now to find out how our all-in-one platform can help you ignite your local visibility online.