Some small businesses in Nigeria just have that magic touch when it comes to massive progress and sales. You want to know the trick? Most of the time it’s simply local marketing.
Small businesses in Nigeria are beginning to foresee the potential and importance attached to local marketing in growing their businesses.
For Nigerian small businesses competing against the top dogs in your business industry, one fast way to reach a new peak and have a leg-up is to simply take advantage of different sauce and one of them remains local marketing.
Hence, this is a major reason why local marketing is consistently talked about in this business era. This article will explore the major or key reasons why Nigerian businesses should automate local marketing for growth and sales.
What is Local Marketing for Small Businesses?
Local marketing is simply the business endeavour or strategy that surrounds reaching out to a specific target audience within a hemisphere of interest.
Either your aim is to reach new potential customers or to attract new geographical audiences, the main focus of local marketing is centered towards proximity. When we say proximity, I’m talking about attracting customers within an area of your interests.
Take for instance, you’re selling food online or any product online in Ibadan, Nigeria. Your aim of automating local marketing is to ensure you attract customers within the hemisphere of Ibadan or other regions around. Simple as that.
Why Nigerian Businesses Should Adopt Local Marketing?
Having understood what is local marketing, it is also important to understand why small businesses in Nigeria should adopt local marketing.
It is worthy of note that not only big businesses should benefit from local marketing as small businesses are in more need of local marketing compared to the bigger brands.
Hence, why should we invest in local marketing as small business owners in Nigeria? Let’s take a dive into some of the crucial reasons why small businesses in Nigeria should adopt local marketing.
1. Gain Business Reach
It is undeniable that one of the most difficult things for small businesses in Nigeria is to attract both first time and returning customers. This is simply because of the lack of information and idea on the importance of local marketing in attracting reach.
Local marketing is important and beneficial to reach hundreds and millions of new customers that can either be first time customers and also returning customers.
2. Generating Business Leads
Generating and gaining business leads is simply to gain interest and insights from potential customers in form of contact information with the aim of pushing those interests towards your business. How can this benefit small businesses in Nigeria?
These leads can be contact information of customers such as emails which can be used to alert customers of future products that are available or yet to be available.
The purpose of generating and collecting these leads is to attract interest of customers which can be converted into sales in the future as well as unlocking new business opportunities from these leads.
3. Business Sales & Conversions
With the help of local marketing, business sales is another benefit of adopting and investing in local marketing.
Aside gaining reach, it is important that these customers make a purchase or show interest in your product or business. There is literally no point in reaching millions of potential customers if they don’t convert and make sales for you or your small business.
Therefore, it is clear that local marketing will help to improve your conversion rate and boost sales aside just gaining reach towards new customers in a local area of your interest.
READ ALSO:
How To Grow Your Business in Nigeria Using Tiktok
How To Register a Business Name In Nigeria With CAC
4. Trustworthiness
Have you ever come across a business page or profile and you instantly gained their trust without making a purchase? If yes then your attention was captured with the help of local marketing.
Another crucial benefit of local marketing is to gain trust of new and potential customers around the geographical area you’re targeting for your Nigerian business.
There are tons of people looking for a specific product or related product but can’t access a trustworthy brand or business. However, with the right marketing or advertising strategy you can establish yourself as a trustworthy business and be a step ahead of your competitors when it comes to attracting new customers.
5. Building Strong Local Presence
Just as I explained from the start of this article, the aim of local marketing is to target a geographical area of your business interest. Therefore, another reason why Nigerian business should invest in local marketing is to build strong local presence.
Come to think of it, you must have noticed there is a particular business that stands out in your area when it comes to selling of food. Same applies to selling houseware products or any other type of product.
These businesses are well known in your area or radius because they established a well grounded local presence and you can do that too with the help of local marketing.
How Small Businesses in Nigeria Should Do Local Marketing
Aside understanding the benefits and reasons why Nigerian small businesses should adopt local marketing, it is also necessary to know how to approach and apply local marketing.
There are different strategies that can be adopted when trying to market your business locally. Let’s dive into the basic three.
1. Local SEO
Search engine optimization is the first strategy for small businesses in Nigeria to market their business. I’ll make you understand better. There are thousands of Nigerians typing into search engines like Google every minute. What are they searching for? That is a crucial question you should be asking yourself.
These customers or potential customer are searching daily for products that are close to them. Searches like “food vendor near me”, “hotels near me”, “hairstylist near me”, “photographers near me” and many more.
Local SEO is the reason your business will be at the top page of these questions or queries and this will drive you hundreds and millions of potential customers even from your sleep.
How can you use local SEO? Try these:
- Create and optimize your business website
- Create Google business profile (formerly GoogleMyBusiness)
- Use local directories to your advantage
- Create content customers can find easily
- Get customers to review your products for trustworthiness.
2. Strategic Advert & Campaigns
Another method to do local marketing is advert and campaign. We all know what advertising means and we all know the aim is to promote and persuade customers to try out a product.
Hence, running local advertising to target your region or radius of business will improve your brand visibility and also improve your sales massively. Either the advert is a physical one or content form or social media adverts, it is important to target locally as per your business region of interest.
The purpose of running ads locally as per your region is to alert potential customers in your vicinity to be aware of your business which boost conversion rate in return.
3. Social Media
Social Media is another way of using local marketing strategically in order to grow your small business in Nigeria and also scale it up to another level.
Social media is rapidly growing and potential customers tend to find products on social media and get them delivered to their doorstep rather than visiting a nearby convenient store.
Hence, optimizing your business page on social media such as X, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook will give you an edge over your competitors locally. Simple as that.
Final Thoughts
Local marketing in Nigeria is really crucial for small business and new business owners looking to have a leg-up in their industry. However, local marketing is strategic and can never be stressful as it sounds.
When it comes to marketing your business locally, the business and platform or strategy of marketing matters a lot.
Local marketing can skyrocket your business reach and traffic in short time. With any of the highlighted strategies in this article, small businesses in Nigeria can have a leg-up and stand out in no time.