Businesses that focus their marketing strategies to connect in a meaningful way with high-intent audiences in their communities can set themselves apart from their competitors, increase foot traffic, build trust and drive sales.

Local businesses create jobs, shop at other local businesses, and invest in their communities. Consumers understand the importance of buying local and want to support the businesses in their neighbourhoods. It’s a trend that took hold during the pandemic and remains strong today.

Businesses that focus their marketing strategies to connect in a meaningful way with high-intent audiences in their communities can set themselves apart from their competitors, increase foot traffic, build trust, relationships and loyalty — and drive sales.

Here are 10 proven strategies to help your brand connect with local high-intent customers.

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How to connect with local high-intent customers

1.   Make it easy for people to find you

  • Include your physical address on your site and embed a Google map showing the business location on your contact page. If you have multiple locations, create a locations page to list them all. Add location-based structured data to your site.
  • Invest in local SEO to improve your business’s visibility on searches that include a geographic descriptor, such as the city, postal code, service area or term “near me.” This includes identifying the key search words and phrases people are using to find what you’re selling. This will help you determine the searchable, locally focused words and phrases you should use on your landing pages to help drive traffic to your site. It will also help you better understand the behaviours of your customers.
    • Tip: Use Google’s People Also Ask feature to find alternative search queries people might use to find your business.
  •  Claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing. This is a free business profile that shows up on Google search results and maps. It includes your business name, location and category. It may also include other information Google has indexed from across the internet. To boost your visibility further, keep your page up to date, add photos and FAQs, and ask for and respond to consumer reviews.
  • Use GMB Insights to track your local SEO performance. This free reporting tool will show you how many calls, website clicks and direction requests you’ve received each month from Google local searches and maps.
  • To help Google trust that you are who you say you are, make sure your business name, phone number and address appear in well-known local and national online directories or business listing sites. These include sites such as Yelp, YellowPages and Facebook, as well as GMB, Bing Places for Business and Apple Maps. Make sure your business citations are consistent wherever they appear. Build local links to your site by providing guest posts to community organizations, connecting to local events, and contributing content or getting featured in your local paper.

2.    Go niche

Establish your brand as an expert in your local niche. This will help build trust, credibility and engagement.

  • Develop and post high-quality content that can help address your target audience’s needs and interests, and that they will want to share. For example, this can include blogs, checklists, infographics, how-to-videos and comparison guides, .
  • Get your name and thought leadership out there. Contact local media to offer your expertise on topics that relate to your brand and community.
  • Use what you know about your existing and potential customers to organize events that will appeal to them and that will showcase your knowledge.

3. Encourage online reviews

Consumers are still looking for ways to reduce the uncertainty around purchases and they trust what other customers have to say about a business. Google reviews can affect your site’s position on search engine results pages (SERPs) because they influence how Google evaluates your relevance for searches.

  • If you have a good relationship with your existing customers, reach out and request a review.
  • Make it easy for customers to leave reviews. Share review links with customers on GMB, Yelp and other relevant platforms. Create a reviews page on your website and make sure it’s listed on your main navigation page. Include a call to action (CTA) on the review page encouraging people to share their experience with your brand.
  • Reward positive reviews. Discounts, special offers, gift cards and contests are ways to incentivize customers to take the time to write a review.
  • Respond to reviews. Google recommends responding to reviews as a best practice that goes a long way to earning customer loyalty and strengthening relationships. Good or bad, be sure to respond within 24 hours — that’s when most customers expect to see some sort of reply or acknowledgment. This is especially important when responding to negative reviews.

4. Leverage the power of social media marketing

Building your presence and credibility on social media complements more direct SEO efforts by giving you another way to engage with customers, build trust and expand your reach. Social media channels make it easy for customers to share photos, reviews and testimonials, and will help drive people to your web properties.

  • Understand your audience. Create an audience persona for the customers you’re targeting. Similar to a buyer persona, an audience persona is a research-based fictionalized profile that represents a group of similar people within your target audience. It describes who they are, what they want, their challenges, their interests and how they make decisions.
  • Show up where your audience is. Knowing your target audience will help you determine which are the best media channels to reach them and the type of content that will both showcase who you are and resonate with them.
  • Create great content and share it regularly. A content calendar will ensure you are consistently posting content your target audience can use.
  • Integrate paid social media ads. Most social media platforms offer their own tools and advertising products to help brands tell their story and promote their products directly on their channels. Unlike organic posts, these ads are sponsored and can take the form of pay per click (PPC) advertising, branded content and display ads, for example.

5. Focus on user experience (UX)

UX is about how a user interacts with and experiences a website. It is an increasingly important aspect of how Google’s search algorithm determines rankings. Is your website easy and efficient to navigate and use? Do pages load quickly and are they optimized for mobile?

  • Organize your site to be accessible and safe. Make sure your site is designed to help customers of all abilities find and purchase what they want. Pay attention to text size and colour contrast. Provide logical internal links and HTML sitemaps. Use alternative text to explain images and provide transcriptions of audio and videos. Incorporate apps that allow customers to take a close look at products and chat with salespeople. Ensure your site is secure with Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) as part of the URL.
  • Optimize your site for mobile devices and speed. The ability to access a site from a mobile device and fast load times are essential. If your site isn’t mobile friendly and fast, you won’t rank as high as competitors’ websites that check those boxes.
  • Develop, update and regularly share compelling content. When it comes to SEO, this means creating expert advice users want and need. This type of content will rank higher than posts and articles that just try to sell a product or service. Adding relevant audio, video and photos will help you boost your ranking even further.

6. Connect via email

More than 4.8 billion people use email,  making it a critical marketing tool and a highly effective way to engage with potential clients, build trust and create meaningful connections. Email marketing includes simple updates, regular email newsletters designed to keep you top of mind and promotional emails to turn the spotlight on special events.

  • Target the right audience. Use the data you’ve collected about your customers to segment your email audience by such characteristics as purchase history, interests, demographics and where they are on their buying journey — whatever you think is relevant to your business.
  • Be precise in your messaging based on audience segments.
  • Create compelling subject lines that will entice your target audience to open your email.
  • Monitor open rates, click-through rates and other important metrics to improve effectiveness.

7. Invest in paid online advertising

Complement organic outreach by investing in paid online advertising.

  • PPC ads appear on social media, SERPs, websites, and in email campaigns and apps. They allow you to set a budget and employ precise targeting — including location targeting — ensuring your ads go to users in your neighborhoods.
  • Create compelling content that features the keywords and phrases your target audience is using to find your products.

8. Automate

Use leading-edge technologies to enhance the online experience of visitors/potential customers to your website. For example, chatbots and AI assistants can immediately answer common questions and requests.

9. Earn customer loyalty

Prioritize retaining existing customers by:

  • Delivering great customer service and experiences;
  • Implementing a loyalty program to reward customers and keep them coming back; and
  • Incentivizing existing customers to champion your brand by referring friends and family to shop with you.

10. Build strategic partnerships with other local brands

Collaborating with other local businesses can help broaden your audience and build brand awareness. Here are a few ways to get started:

  • Co-host events with complementary businesses in your niche.
  • Develop cross-promotions that offer special discounts to both customer bases.
  • When appropriate, recommend your partner business to your customers.

Connecting with local high-intent shoppers is an important way to gain competitive advantage and drive sales. Build these strategies into your overarching marketing plan to take your business to new heights.

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