Are you trying to do Instagram marketing as a local business, tried an uncountable number of this, but nothing got you any customers?
If so, then this blog post will be a game-changer for you.
You see, Instagram marketing for local businesses looks way different than for companies that operate nationwide or worldwide (like me.)
There are way fewer people to target, any person out of reach will never become a customer, and you have more limited options.
What to do next? Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you in this blog post. Are you ready to begin? If so, let’s dive in.
Use Location Tags
Location tags are most likely going to become one of the key attention drivers for your business.
The way you are going to choose them is simply based on the location where you are, and if you’re based in a large city, narrow it down to where most of your dream customers are hiding.
For example, if you live in LA, and 90% of your prospects are most often in downtown LA, you’re not going to use “Los Angeles” location tag in your posts but you’ll use “Downtown Los Angeles” location tag instead.
Why? Because your dream customers are congregated there.
The next way you can use location tags is to comment on the posts there. When you comment on the posts, every person who is going to see the post and check the comment section will see your comment…
…and if it is good, they’re going to be compelled to check out your profile and follow you.
That way, they are one step closer to coming to the front doors of your local business. It is incredibly powerful.
But there is another Instagram marketing tip that works even more effectively for your local business and is sometimes way more powerful.
Use Local Hashtags
This is probably way more powerful than the tip before. You can literally reach so many of your dream customers using hashtags that it is crazy.
The way you’re going to use hashtags for your local business, like a dental practice, is by choosing them based on location. Simple, right?
For example, if I would own a restaurant in London, I am not going to use hashtags like #resutarant, but I will use hashtags like #londonfood and #londonrestaurant.
And that’s because only my dream customers in London would check those hashtags as they have the target location in their name.
You always want to add 30 of those location-based hashtags to your posts, and you also want to comment on the posts there.
Collaborate With Influencers In Your Area
One of the best ways to get more exposure is to collaborate with influencers in your area.
If you know some influencers that have a massive impact in the town that you’re in, then you definitely want to consider working with them.
For example, if I would be in Miami real estate, I would collaborate with Jamestown or other companies that make a big impact.
It is one of the simplest ways to reach your dream customers.
And what’s more important is that the dream customers you are going to reach already trust the influencer that you are working with…
…which means that they are going to be ready-to-buy even if they see you for the first time.
Use Refferals
What do I mean by this? For example, let’s say you’re a barber and you own a barbershop.
When somebody comes to that barbershop, they pay you, you do your job, and they are so astonished by the way they look that they can’t help themselves but to take a selfie and post it on their Instagram.
Well, what if you started to give the people some little rewards for mentioning you as the ULTIMATE hair studio that they went to?
You’d instantly get a ton of new exposure, and most importantly, you’d totally dominate the market in your location.
Why? Because the friends of your customers would come there, anybody who follows them would come to visit you, and before you know it, you’re reaching thousands of people, getting a ton of new followers, and working non-stop because you have more clients than you can handle.
It is one of the most powerful things that you can do and it doesn’t cost you anything.
Do Your Location-Based Research And Project It Into The Way You Create Your Content
No matter where you are, you want to do your research not just based on what your dream customers want generally worldwide and what appeals to them, but you also want to know how to communicate with them in your local area and project it into your content.
The easiest way to explain this to you is to talk about the language people use.
For example, the normal way to greet somebody is by saying “Hello” or “Hey”, right?
Well, if you come to Houston, Dallas, Austin, or any other city in Texas, instead of hearing “Hello”, you’re going to hear “Howdy.”
And that is what I am talking about.
If you’re going to use local language and address local traditions and basically instead of appealing to your dream customers just on a general level appeal to them on a local level as well in your posts, you’re going to be way more successful when it comes to getting new customers.
Use Giveaways
I want you to be careful about this one as you don’t want to overdo it. But you DEFINITELY want to do it.
There are only a few things more appealing than the word “free” and if you’re going to use giveaways in your location-based Instagram marketing, your business’s name is going to spread like a wildfire.
The example above has been posted 1 minute before I took the screenshot and it already has 12 likes and 2 people who participated.
And there’s another week left so there can be well over another 2,000-3,000 participants and tens of thousands of people who will hear about the brand.
Why? The giveaway is structured around more exposure. One of the entry rules is to tag at least 2 friends and the more people you tag the higher the chance to win.
What that means is that if 3,000 people participate, 9,000 people will INSTANTLY know about the brand as they’ll be tagged, and who knows how many people will see it.
Everything in the local area. Just imagine you can get 10K people to know about you in your town and buy stuff from you over time.
How much would that make your cash register happy? Well, it’s all possible.
But again, you got to be careful about giveaways as you can overdo them, cause the participation rate to be super low, and then give stuff away for free without getting any results.
That’s why you shouldn’t do more than 1 giveaway in a quarter to become successful with them.
Build Your Email List
Nothing is more powerful than building your email list.
Now, of course, as a local business you have traffic naturally coming indoors, right?
Then you support it with your social media, and the results are unbelievable, so why build an email list?
It’s simple. Instagram can ban you, Facebook can ban you, LinkedIn can ban you, but nobody can take your email list.
And if something like a lockdown happens again, and you get banned, not only you won’t have any traffic coming into the front doors, but because your networks are gone, unless you have a huge ad budget you won’t be even able to sell anything online to keep your business alive as there’s not going to be a single buyer that is going to buy.
But even if this is not going to happen, your email is another channel of communication, and the more of them you have, the more successful when it comes to getting to customers you are going to be, as you’ll be able to reach more of them and persuade them to buy on many fronts.
So, not only your email list is going to cover your butt when the world goes down, but also it is a great way to market your local business and get new customers when it doesn’t.
So, never forget to build it.
Filip Konecny 