Extra Mile Writing

Extra Mile Writing

The Most Effective Way to Market a New or Growing Business

starry sky just after sunset

When I first started my business many years ago I was a complete space cadet.

I thought that because I had a website up on the internet, I’d somehow magically attract business enquiries from across the state and across the country.

I soon discovered that the reality would be the complete opposite. 

All of my business came from my area of Western Australia. 

And as I ran my business as a side hustle initially, it wasn’t until a number of years down the track that I even had clients from the capital city within my own state.

But beautifully, people from my area of Western Australia gave me a red hot go, supporting my business, referring me to others and helping me with testimonials.

And it turned out that marketing local was not only the easiest way to go, it was also the most effective marketing strategy out there.

This is because we all have a personal and professional network, and our businesses exist and grow through such a network.  In contrast to what I initially thought, we don’t exist in a vacuum, where business somehow magically drops down from the sky from elsewhere.

However, please don’t get me wrong. 

I’d definitely encourage you to grow your business as large as you want it to be and to dream big. 

But starting and growing your business from where you live is a fabulous experience.  In my case, I was even able to start my business whilst living on a farm that was located over three hours north of my state’s capital city (Perth) and 45 minutes from my closest regional centre. 

The legendary tennis player Arthur Ashe summed it up beautifully when he said:

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Arthur Ashe
Tennis Player
hay bales in paddock

I also discovered that marketing your business locally came loaded with so many other benefits. 

I found that knowing someone even slightly before doing business with them softens the process for both of us, as there’s already some trust or a favourable recommendation there to warm both of us up. 

I also discovered that I loved working with clients who live in my area and seeing the tangible results of my work relatively close to home.  I’ve had a hand in making my area and my state a better place to live, and I’ve supported fabulous local businesses who employ locals. 

I love where I live, and I love the people who live here too.

My Local Marketing Journey

women talking at cafe

Luckily, back in my space cadet days I was smart enough to make contact with my local business association/chamber of commerce who totally stuck their neck out to support my business.  Not only did they support my business directly, they’ve referred multiple clients to me over many years and they’ve been absolutely invaluable in helping my business get more runs on the board.  My business has also gained immeasurably from their fabulous awards program. 

In addition, their member directory hugely helped my online business visibility, especially in the early days.  They have an extremely affordable annual membership rate, and they’ve given me so much more than I’ve ever invested in return.  Thank you, Wheatbelt Business Network

I’d also recommend listing your business on local shire directories if you’re lucky enough to live in a supportive shire that has one of these, again to boost your local and online presence.

Back in the day, I was also thankfully wise enough to make contact with the person running the tourism organisation in my area who I knew from a couple of previous positions that I’d worked in.  I was so blessed to have her as a contact because she is an exceptional operator who strongly supports local small businesses.  Wonderfully, she also supported mine. 

And do you know what the best part is?

Leveraging your personal and/or professional reputation and network to get business is a win-win situation.  You benefit by earning business with quality clients that you already know something about.  And people in your network benefit because they’re able to either use or refer people to businesses they already know and trust. 

As Tim Sanders famously said, “Your network is your net worth.”  Having a network doesn’t need to be salesy or sleazy, it’s more about being generous and supporting others.  And please, don’t try to run a business without a network.  Take it from someone who tried this for way longer than she should have, growing a business is full of enough challenges.  It can become heartbreaking when you add preventable and unnecessary loneliness to the situation.   

The Best Way to Market a Business Locally

people talking at event

This is critically important.

When I talk about marketing your business locally, I mean being brave enough to talk to people in person and to get on the phone to get clients and generate work. 

I was not only delusional in thinking that my business would come from far away when I first started out, I was delusional because I thought business would come to me somehow through weak and fluffy promotional efforts associated with my website and with social media.  These marketing strategies are seriously way down at the bottom of the list. 

You have to take a deep breath, be brave, and make an effort to actually talk to human beings to get real results in your business.  I have to thank Marie Forleo for her advice in this area, because it really was life changing.

Personally, I’m as shy as they come.  But I only get joy in my week when I push through such fear and speak to the awesome people around me as part of marketing my business.  I find it helps when I remind myself that I have absolutely nothing to lose by speaking to people.  The worst that can happen is that someone could be rude, and I’ve handled rude people plenty of times before. 

 

open treasure chest

As Joseph Campbell so eloquently states,

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
Joseph Campbell

The braver you need to be, the greater the reward you’ll obtain from anything in life.  As I’m the sort of person who is scared of pretty much everything, I’ve had to learn to love forcing myself to be brave in even the smallest of ways in order to snatch joy from life and from business. 

Does Marketing a Business Locally Include Marketing to Family and Friends?

busy main street

Yes, marketing a business locally does include marketing to family and friends.

You need to talk about your business with pride, and with anyone and everyone that you know.

This doesn’t mean pushing your goods and services onto people in a unending harangue of verbal diarrhoea, it means simply stating what you do in a matter-of-fact way and with ownership and pride.

As Australians, we really need to watch our tendency to think that we’re big noting ourselves or to think that we’re full of it if we talk about our businesses.  Stating what we offer is not blowing smoke up our own *rse, it’s simply stating the facts and providing useful information that could benefit the person we are speaking to.  Being able to discuss our businesses in a matter of fact and grounded way shows respect for ourselves and the person we are conversing with.

I’ll give you an example.  There’s a person in my family who runs a business and I’m incredibly proud of this person and their business.  If anyone I knew needed their services, I’d give them a raving recommendation.  But when I asked this person about their business I couldn’t believe it when I found that they were very non-communicative, and actually appeared to be ashamed of it.  With a shock, I finally realised how important it was to be able to talk about your business to everyone, including friends and family.  And I realised how I really needed to start doing this far better myself too.

It’s important to state that if you do provide goods or services to friends and family, don’t ever feel that you need to provide a discount.  Initially I had no idea how to handle providing a service to friends or family, and for some reason I felt like I had to offer a discounted rate or provide additional work for nothing.  Luckily, a friend of mine mentioned a gentleman they knew who ran a business and who was very open about the fact that he doesn’t have a “mate’s rate” at all.  He’s running a business, he has costs to accommodate and his business has to put food on his table and be profitable enough to grow, so everyone pays the same rate.  This was an absolute revelation to me at the time and such an approach makes complete sense, because while we enjoy doing things for friends and family when it suits us (like when we have a huge stock of a certain product), business is still business.

To sum up, there are three invaluable benefits that are associated with marketing your business locally: 

1. You’ve Already Have Some Background Knowledge About Clients or Prospective Clients

woman writing in notepad

As alluded to earlier, knowing a bit about prospective clients in your area helps significantly, especially in the early stages of a business when you’re dealing with a lot of unknowns and new experiences.  Marketing my business locally has also meant that if I do have a knowledge deficit about a prospective client, I can ask people I know and there’ll always be someone in my network who can help me out.  My existing knowledge has also enabled me to work out who I might align with and who might have a need for the services I offer in advance, and to more effectively target the right prospects.  I’ve actually been super blessed because one of my previous employers who I align really well with has become a long term client who is an absolute dream to work with. 

2. Marketing Your Business Locally is Free

word results above excuses crossed out

Marketing locally is not only super effective, it also doesn’t cost a cent to talk to people in your area about what you do, or to make a phone call and then send an email further outlining what you offer.  Not only is communicating about your business in this way free, most of the people you talk to are actually interested in knowing about your business, because we all get a sense of delight from finding out about another business that is operating in our area.  The conversations that I’ve had about what I do have also strengthened my relationships with some awesome people, who’ve even offered to share my blog posts through their social media or to support my business in other ways. 

3. Marketing Your Business Locally Results in Lots of Word of Mouth Referrals

people at busy cafe

I’ve benefitted so richly from word of mouth referrals from my amazing clients and from my family and friend network.  My business is an enormously long way from perfect, but thankfully I do always look after the basics, which includes getting back to people, doing the best job I possibly can for every client, being reliable, etc. 

It really is a beautiful thing that people tend to preference and share information about local businesses that have a presence in their area, and it’s even more beautiful that they don’t expect your website or your business to be 100% perfect.  They preference businesses from their area because they know that these businesses have some idea already about how things work, and know that such businesses have a sizeable vested interest in doing a good job in order to earn more business.  They also genuinely want to support you because they realise that supporting local small businesses supports and strengthens the local economy, which benefits absolutely everyone. 

This is the same principle behind my community’s support for Western Australian made and Australian made goods and services, and I absolutely love seeing this in action.

© Annemaree Jensen