Effective local marketing with video

For many businesses, prospects in their local area is one of their target audiences, especially for service based businesses. Marketing to local prospects is called, unsurprisingly, local marketing.

Whilst seemingly less exciting than marketing on a global scale, local marketing is a very effective way to generate leads as more and more people are keen to support local businesses. 

As the most engaged form of media, video is one of the best ways to reach out to your local audience. In this post we’ll review 4 ways to effectively use video for local marketing. 

1. Film testimonials with locals
2. Connect locally on social media
3. Offer local promotions in your videos
4. Partner with local influencers

1. Film testimonials with locals

As covered in a previous blog post, video testimonials are one of the best ways to build trust and credibility with new prospects. 

Word-of-mouth has been unanimously agreed upon by marketers as the most powerful marketing tool. It taps into a deeply rooted psychological bias where we trust the opinions of people we know. 

By creating a series of video testimonials with customers in your local area, you are positioning your businesses as the local authority in your industry. 

By creating a series of video testimonials with customers in your local area, you are positioning your businesses as the local authority in your industry. 

This will increase your credibility with local prospects, increase your conversion rate with locals, and likely generate even more referrals.

2. Connect locally on social media

The best part of social media is that there is no limit to your reach. As such, a lot of businesses often focus on global reach, and unintentionally neglect their local audience online. 

Businesses often focus on global reach, and unintentionally neglect their local audience online. 

As an exercise, spend 30 minutes online trying to find where your local audience lives online. This might be by using local hashtags, check-ins, facebook groups, forums, or somewhere else. 

But once you have identified where they are, you can start targeting them and see what works best. As with all marketing, you post, review, and adapt. 

As mentioned earlier, video is the most engaged form of media so once you begin talking to your local audience online, start creating videos relevant to them; or even better, hyper-specific to your location. 

Prospects will enjoy engaging online with a great local business providing great video content.

3. Offer local promotions in your videos

Promotions are a great way to increase interest and conversions in your products or services. Everyone loves a deal. The only thing better than a deal, is an exclusive deal. 

The only thing better than a deal, is an exclusive deal. 

Video is a fantastic way to offer local promotions. You can create a sense of exclusivity amongst your local prospects, and a sense of urgency with timed promotions to increase conversions. 

Local promotions are also great to increase awareness of your business. For example, you could create a promotion requiring customers to share your offer with a certain number of people, or tag others. 

These types of promotions leverage your local audience to do the hard work, finding you more customers for the chance of a discount. 

4. Partner with local influencers

The value of influencers is in their name, influence. The same way that customer testimonials increase trust and credibility, so does the words of an influencer. 

Local and micro influencers have been on the rise for several years. 

When identifying influencers to work with, engagement rate is the most important figure. Often smaller influencers have greater engagement than larger influencers relative to their following. Meaning that despite having fewer followers, the followers they do have are more active. 

Locate influencers local to your business and reach out to them. Send them products to review, information about your services, or sponsor their content.

By creating video content with local influencers, you’re getting your businesses in front of a very devoted local following. 

By creating video content with local influencers, you’re getting your businesses in front of a very devoted local following. 

Video remains one of the most effective ways to reach out to customers. By targeting your local market with video, you can increase local authority and conversions for your business.