Importance of local marketing in 2025

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Local marketing helps a business to promote its products & services to its potential customers in its local area. The main goal of local digital marketing is to increase online visibility for businesses targeting local audiences and ultimately drive more foot traffic, phone calls, appointments, and purchases. 

Hi, I am Anish Vijayan, digital marketing strategist at Graffiti9 digital marketing agency. With my years of experience in digital marketing I have understood that local marketing has become the necessity for every business. 

The purpose of this guide is to explain what is local marketing, what its benefits and provide actionable insights on how businesses can effectively leverage local marketing strategies to foster growth.

What is local marketing?

As the name says “local marketing” is a branch of digital marketing which emphasizes promoting a business in its physical area. Where customers can purchase the products mostly offline and online too.

Local marketing works in two ways, as per the nature of the business. In one way, a user visits the store; in another way, the business has to visit the user’s place. Let me explain by giving some live examples. Currently I am working on 2 projects called DFM Greenland Solutions & Allen and Habour

1. DFM is an anti-termite service provider. When somebody searches for “best anti-termite service provider in Kottayam”, DFM ranks in the local pack. On the basis of the enquiry, they have visited the location and provided their services.
2. Allen is an eyewear store in Kottayam. So, if someone searches for the best “Ray Ban sunglasses in Kottayam”, their business ranks. Then the user visits the business location to avail of the services.

For both projects, we have implemented a local marketing strategy, but the services are consumed in different ways.

Local marketing can do wonders but it requires planning and strategic implementation. Before you start doing local marketing it is necessary to understand your buyer’s persona.

Understanding buyer’s persona refers to having a clear understanding of your buyer’s lifestyle, its preferences, buying habits, age, professions and all. There is one more step, after you implement the local marketing strategy, always map your results. Always check customers footfall, number of followers increased on social media, number of products sold etc. This will help you to improve your marketing strategy.

Benefits of local marketing for small businesses

Increase local visibility

If you want to be a global brand, the first step is to ace your local market. This can be achieved by implementing local marketing. Local marketing consists of creating a strong and informative GMB profile, writing localized content and giving more attention to local SEO. Implementing all these things conjointly may increase the local visibility of your business.

Reach local customers

An effective local marketing strategy can help you to reach your local & targeted customers. Want to know? Let us understand this by an example.

Example – Suppose there are 2 new “Medical Stores” in your area. The first one did not bother with marketing and started just like that, but the second one created a GMB profile and a fully optimised & informative website for the local market.

Despite being in the same area, with almost the same products, you will notice that the first one is not doing well, but the second grabs good customers. This is the difference local digital marketing can bring to your business.

Cost effective

Credit – https://precoro.com/

Local marketing is a cost effective process. Let me explain how?

• Creating a GMB profile – Free, creating a google my business account is absolutely free.
• Social media – You can create and optimize your social media profiles according to your local market, that too absolutely free.
• Website – Having a SEO friendly website is a one time investment. Once the website is ready you can optimize it as much you want as per your local market.

Customer engagement

You can run loyalty programs where customers can use certain cards or coupons. Example – Customers can get a free hair cut after 5 visits at your saloon. These kinds of small programs actually help to engage with the customers and make your brand stand out in your local area.

Easily measurable results

One of the most interesting benefits of local marketing is that you can measure the results. As a business owner you should always make a habit of measuring your results. This will help you a lot to understand the local marketing gaps and improve your strategies to get maximum results.

Top local marketing strategies

Local marketing works on 3 factors –

• Relevance – Is your product or service relevant enough for your target market?
• Proximity – This means location, in which kind of area your business is located. Means the area belongs to high income group people or low income group people.
• Popularity – In your area how many people know about your business. Increment and decrement depends on the popularity of the business.

Now, let us see what are some top local marketing strategies which can actually help to grow your business.

Optimize GMB

Update your Google my business profile by adding all the necessary details like:

• Correct name of the brand
• Exact address of your store
• Contact details
• Opening hours
• Brand description with location, major products & services you provide
• Provide list of products & services
• Website address

Create local content

Create high-quality, informative and local content. You should write the content which has geotargeted keywords and key phrases. 

For example, instead of writing for “best saloon”, write for “best salon in Kottayam”. This way, you are targeting the specific audience, and writing this type of content may help you to rank in your local search results.

Optimize website for local area

Develop a SEO friendly website and optimize that for your local area. That means you can add local keywords in your website  like “Best salon in Kottayam”, “Top rated salon in Kottayam”. These keywords can be added into the main content area, meta titles & descriptions, image alt tags, H1, H2 etc.

But make sure never over do it. Adding localized keywords should look natural, adding too much will not give you desired results.

Use social media for local marketing

Social media is one of the strongest tools for local digital marketing. As per status approx 96% small businesses use social media as their major marketing tool. You can start a small ad campaign just for a week, if the results are as per your expectations you can increase ad duration and budget.

But to run effective social media ads you need marketer’s expertise and precision. The first step is to analyze the market and what type of products your potential customers are looking for. Then you have to map the right audience and more.

Want to know how social media can help your business grow? Read this blog

Leverage local SEO

I have noticed many business owners run behind ads and completely ignore SEO. But let me tell you an interesting fact: approximately 76% users search with a local intent, i;e – “near me”.

When someone searches for “best salon near me,” Google typically displays results within a 10-15 km radius. The top results are usually located less than 10 km from the user’s current location. Therefore, it’s essential to rank well within the geographic area of your target audience. 

If used properly, with local SEO you can generate high quality and convertible leads daily. Local SEO can benefit your business in several ways like – 

• You can generate convertible leads
• Reduce leads closing time
• Improve brand awareness
• Build brand authority
• Beat local competition
• Reduce marketing cost

Local citation building

You can list your business in the local directories like GMB, Bing, sulekha etc. Optimize them properly with phone number, address, products & services available, opening hours, business photos. There are a lot more technical and non-technical things in Local SEO, for that you need an experienced SEO expert.

How Graffiti9 can help you to grow your business via local marketing

Graffiti9 is a full fledged digital marketing agency in Kottayam, Kerala. I started this agency with a vision to help small business owners. Big and established brands usually have enough funds for marketing on the other hand  small businesses look for cost effective marketing methods. 

In the last 17 years I have worked with many national and international clients and I can confidently say that local marketing proved to be the best strategies for their businesses. At Graffiti9 digital marketing agency we have a team of young professionals who constantly look for unique local digital marketing strategies for your business. The strategies we implement are purely on the basis of your business requirements. Let us understand how we create a local marketing strategy:

1. Understanding of business goals
2. Project study
3. Website audit
4. Keyword analysis
5. Competitor analysis in your local area
6. Finding the marketing gap
7. Understanding target audience and their marketing behaviour
8. Strategy creation on the basis of above points
9. Final implementation
10. Reporting and optimization

Other services at Graffiti9

Other than Local marketing, Graffiti9 has a good grip on other services too. You can convert your potential leads into real customers with our advanced digital marketing services. 

1. SEO 
2. Content marketing
3. Website design & development
4. PPC
5. Facebook marketing
6. Social media marketing

Our client base

Graffiti9 digital marketing agency has a versatile client base, that includes businesses in –

1. Education sector
2. IT companies
3. Old age homes
4. Eye care brand
5. Automobile company
6. Land surveyors
7. Hotels & resorts
8. Travel agencies
9. Auditing firms
10. Dental clinics
11. Autism centers and more

Our Local Marketing Case studies

Mathew homes

Mathews Home is a luxury senior living/ old age home in Kottayam Kerala, India. They provide a luxurious homely atmosphere and personalized care to the elderly so that they can feel relaxed, forgetting the loneliness and stay happy.

We offer Mathews home an advanced local SEO strategy that can help brand awareness in the right target audiences when they search online for their problems and motivations.

Results

• Client started getting organic & high-quality leads
• In 11 months, they closed more than 20 admissions all by leads from SEO.
• This time client retention was also increased.

To know more check the full case study here –

Generative Design Solutions Middle East

Generative Designs Solutions is a reputed engineering solutions company operating in Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman & India. They are one of the premium resellers & CATIA V5 resellers and other solutions in Qatar.

Earlier, they were concentrating on offline marketing efforts only. During that time, their conversion window was 3-6 months long. That was the major issue they were facing. They contacted us to try out the scope of digital marketing with the hope of getting more business and shortening the conversion window.

Results

With our advanced marketing strategies, we helped them generate quality leads, reduce the lead-closing window, build brand recognition etc. 

To know more check the full case study here –

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