East Cheshire Chamber

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Attracting customers for products and services from anywhere around the country has been transformed by the online revolution. However, whilst focusing on the big buck traffic from the capital and other city centres, is your business missing a trick with your local area and failing to engage their attention?

 It’s a well known mantra – don’t forget your local trade! Companies establish their presence and build their brand identity in their local area or territory and will often like to be seen as its key product/service provider. Much depends on the company size and business products, of course.

 And indeed, some business models are based principally on servicing their surrounding customer base, preferring to be a well known leading player on their home turf, reflected in their advertising material.

 Offline and online, a company will flag up its encouraging strapline announcing they are set up to serve their local town and its surrounding population, e.g. Manchester and the NorthWest!

Regular email marketing newsletters will feature news and issues affecting local concerns and events,  highlighting an engagement the company has with people, businesses and organisations in its catchment area.

 It is perfectly in tune with today’s social media networking approach!

 The explosion of online marketing  technology has created a multitude of ‘contact’ channels via multiple access platforms, both static, dynamic and mobile. Functionality and website design have been evolving to meet the demands of interactive engagement for full optimised visitor site experience.

 If you operate an eCommerce site, then there is likely to be an attraction for local custom from the point of view of ‘customer service’ and easy reach, and a marketing strategy should be created to incorporate a provision for the specific key needs of your particular local customer base.

 Link baiting casts its net over a precisely targeted but vast ocean of potential search visitors, so it is only to be expected that those forward thinking and savvy business owners, keen to steer a course up the Google Page rankings, may lose sight of valuable fishing in shallower waters.

 Local trade is most likely to be regular trade! Despite of instant global communications sitting on your desk or in the palm of your hand, there is still a reassuring notion attached to b2b or b2c contact being available if need be, only ‘up the road’.

 And of course, in the current economic client, a regular revenue stream, generated by working with more compact local business is more than a little useful whilst waiting upon the contracts to come through from the international corporates!