Top 5 Creative Digital Marketing Ideas For Local Businesses (Part 1)

Not sure what you can do with a small digital marketing budget? Here are 5 ideas to spread the word about your local business online.

How did you find your favorite coffee shop, restaurant, or antique shop?

Maybe your friends showed it to you. Maybe you just saw a nice sign and came in one time. Or maybe you saw one of their amazing marketing campaigns.

One social media ad or a blog post from an influencer can do wonders for a local business.

However, there is a problem: for local businesses, it’s often harder to find budgets for marketing activities.

They often don’t have the resources of huge commercial chains and corporations to pour them into advertising, celebrity collaborations, and so on.

Nonetheless, marketing doesn’t have to be expensive.

You’ll just have to get more creative with it.

In this article, we hope to inspire you with marketing ideas that local businesses can implement on a smaller budget – or even for free!

1. Collaborate With A Local Influencer

You might not have a budget to buy a promotional post from an Instagram blogger with 1 million followers, but micro-influencers can be just as (if not more) effective.

2. Write Your Business Into A Local Narrative

People love stories!

That’s perhaps one of the most essential parts of human experience – creating and consuming stories.

You can create a story around your brand to make it more memorable.

Create a character that would always sit in your cafe in a particular seat with this specific drink, or make up a lovely anecdote about the building your business occupies.

Sometimes you don’t even have to make up everything – you can do a little research about the town’s history and find out some unexpected and exciting stories.

Talk to the local historians, go to the archives and museums, and maybe you’ll discover something that will bring you even more clients.

3. Create Search-friendly Content About Your Town

Local SEO is a great way to get more customers. First, you bring more traffic to your website, then you get more foot traffic in your store.

However, it’s something that every business should do – so I wouldn’t call it a creative marketing idea.

The thing is, businesses tend to optimize their website for the most obvious requests; for example, “buy furniture Nashville.”

The content I’m talking about is more entertaining in nature. Its goal is to tell locals and visitors about your town and simultaneously promote your business.

4. Join And Engage On Local Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are THE places your audience hangs out.

By joining a Facebook Group in your district, you kill two birds with one stone: you are able to learn more about your clients and at the same time promote your business.

5. Utilize Your “Localness” In Digital Marketing

As a local business, you have an inherent advantage over corporations and chains in that it’s much harder for them to target specific locations since their shops are everywhere.

You can benefit from this by creating such hyper-focused ads yourself.

Here are some tips on how to create such ads aimed at people in your local communities:

Use Google Search Console to find new ad group options based on what’s the driver of search impressions.

Try including your Zip Code or name of the street in the ad and make it visible.