Once the fundamentals of your local business are in place, promotion is about consistently reaching the people most likely to visit, order or book. It can all feel rather overwhelming when you first start out – How do you know which is the right channel to choose? Should you pay for local advertising or stick to online? Is it worth going to networking groups? Where will I get the most bang for my buck?
Yet rather than trying every channel at once, focusing on a few that genuinely reach local customers tends to deliver far better results without meaning burnout or a huge financial commitment.
Make sure your business is easy to find online by keeping your Google Business Profile, local directory listings and contact details up to date. This is often the first place a potential customer looks, and an incomplete or outdated profile can cost you visits before a customer even reaches your door.
You should put a reminder in your diary to check these listings every few months rather than assuming they stay accurate once set up. Opening hours change over holiday periods, phone numbers get updated and even small details like a missing photo or an old menu can be enough to send a potential customer to a competitor's listing instead.
Google Business Profiles carry real weight with local customers. Research shows that 58% of customers report that having a Google Business Profile increases their physical visits to a business, making it one of the simplest and most effective promotional tools available to any local business.
Share regular updates, offers and behind the scenes content on social media so local people remember your business. Use local groups, community pages and neighbourhood forums to reach people in your area more directly, since these channels often reach a more locally engaged audience than general social media posts alone.
Add hashtags which refer to city names, neighbourhoods, community tags, events and markets to help raise your profile locally but keep it to three to five rather than great long spammy lists. Add a geo-tag/location pin because social media networks treat these as a primary discovery signal.
Online isn’t the only way to grow your local business profile. Get involved in local events, fairs, markets and partnerships to build trust and visibility in the community. Meeting potential customers face to face, even occasionally, builds a level of familiarity and trust that online promotion alone struggles to match, particularly for service-based businesses. Ultimately, people buy people and if you want people to engage with your business, then you need to engage with them in a meaningful and authentic way.
Not every promotional channel suits every type of business equally. A visually-led business such as a florist, bakery or independent boutique often gets more from image-focused platforms, where products and finished work can be shown directly. A trade-based or service business, such as a plumber, accountant or personal trainer, often gets more from local groups, recommendations and reviews, where trust matters more than visual appeal.
Rather than assuming every channel is worth an equal amount of effort, it’s worth reflecting on where your own customers are actually likely to be looking and concentrating promotional effort there first before expanding further.
It’s easy to assume that promotion means doing more of everything, but a smaller number of channels used consistently tends to outperform a scattergun approach. If you regularly update your Google Business Profile, post a couple of times a week on social media and show up reliably at one or two community events each year you will usually build stronger local visibility than a business attempting to do everything at once and maintaining none of it well.
Local promotion tends to build gradually rather than delivering immediate results, particularly through channels like community groups and events where trust and recognition build slowly. It is common for a business owner to try a new channel, see limited immediate results and abandon it before it has had a genuine chance to reach a meaningful number of local people.
This can feel frustrating, but patience is key. Give each promotional channel a fair, consistent trial, generally a few months rather than a few weeks, to get a much clearer picture of whether it is genuinely reaching your local customers before deciding whether to continue, adjust or move resources elsewhere.
Download the Loci App to give your business a stronger presence in the local community. Share updates, help nearby residents discover what you offer and build valuable local connections. Keep your business visible alongside the services, events and information that matter locally.
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